April 19

1859  Camp Walbach, in present day Laramie County Wyoming, abandoned.  It had been occupied by two companies of the 4th Artillery.

1865  The 11th Kansas Cavalry established temporary quarters six miles from Platte Bridge Station, Wyoming, at Camp Dodge, which was a tent camp.  They had arrived in order to relieve Companies A, B, C, and D of the 11th Ohio Volunteer Cavalry, which was mustering out.  Other companies of the 11th Ohio Volunteer Cavalry were to remain.

1877. Crazy Horse (Tȟašúŋke Witkó) and his followers, numbering 2000 warriors, surrender.  Crazy Horse had spent much, probably the overwhelming majority, of his free life in Wyoming, although he widely ranged, as would be expected, throughout the region.  He was present at the Grattan "Massacre" in 1854, at which time he would have been about 14 years old.  He is believed to have participated in the Fetterman Fight and the Wagon Box Fight.  He was a notable figure at Little Big Horn, fought in 1876.  His 1877 surrender shows how far Sioux and Cheyenne fortunes had declined in less than a year.

1916:   Casper Daily Press for April 19, 1916. Mexico, Germany and the early campaign for Henry Ford, yes that Ford, for President
 

This edition has a note about something we have largely forgotten.

Henry Ford, the founder of Ford Motors, was a candidate for the Presidency in 1916.  He ran on the GOP ticket, and he took Nebraska's and Michigan's delegates that year.

That's all he took, but for a time Ford, who was of course a well known businessman (and of course that calls to mind Trump invariably) and an opponent of entry into World War One to such an extent that he opposed military preparation, which was a big ongoing deal at the time, did well in those two states and was a sort of serious contender.

 

1917: 

 I have no idea what "Wake Up America Day" was, but somebody was commemorating it in 1917.

1918  When Wyoming Registered, and then Confiscated, Firearms
 

Gun registration and then confiscation, in Wyoming?

Yes, as part of the vast nationwide overreaction to all things German during World War One.

It's largely been forgotten, but prior to the Great War Germans in the United States were quite proud of their heritage and stood out, almost, but not quite, uniquely as an immigrant group that strove to retain their traditions and identity.  In many places shooting matches, a strong German sport in rural Germany, remained one in the rural German areas of the United States.  Many communities that had been originally settled by German immigrants retained German as the primary language, including for example Dyersville Iowa where my grandfather had been born.  

But the Great War changed much of that.

A real wave of anti German prejudice swept the nation and German communities reacted by shutting down much of the outward cultural attributes they had exhibited. Still people remained strongly suspicious of Germans and, oddly Eastern Europeans.  Those sorts of feelings lead to the item we saw recently accusing breweries of being money pipes to Germany.  And, in Wyoming, they lead to the 1917 act of the legislature requiring aliens to register their firearms.

Many apparently didn't, as this article notes, because they were simply unaware of the law.  And on this day the news hit that the state, using the Game and Fish Department as state police, raided a mining camp and confiscated the arms found there.  Clemency was granted to those aliens who simply surrendered them and plead ignorance, prosecution awaited for those who objected.  This amounted to a haul of seventeen firearms, not exactly a large number.

There are lessons here of all sorts, and people will draw their own, I suppose.  I suspect, although I don't know, that all the miners who found their arms taken were German, Austrian or Eastern European.  This occurred in the Sheridan area which had a large ex-patriot British community but somehow I doubt they found their arms taken.  I'll bet not.

Miners, it might be noted, were rural people and this wasn't necessarily a minor matter for them.  T he article notes that the 17 arms included a Sharps rifle, a large 19th Century rifle best recalled for use by frontier buffalo hunters. That was likely that miners hunting rifle and he likely was then going without a means of augmenting the dinner table.  Other arms may have been for self protection. Mining communities were not dens of passivity.

For what its worth, there was some armed opposition to the American role in World War One within the United States, or perhaps more accurately to conscription. We've already covered one such incident. Those incidents were, however, ones in which rural Americans took up arms against the government.  Not armed fifth column actions by immigrant aliens.

1919  Pipeline completed between Lost Soldier and Ft. Steele, which was a major railhead.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1922  Hell's Half Acre withdraw from homesteading, although its difficult to imagine anyone homesteading it.  Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.

1998  Manges Cabin in Grand Teton National Park added to the National Registry of Historic Places.