August 11

1806 Meriwether Lewis is accidentally shot in the hip by one of his own men.

1865  Gen. Patrick Connor established Camp Conner in the Powder River Basin.  It would later become Ft. Reno.

1865:  From the Wyoming State Historical Society's Facebook page:

FORT LARAMIE, DAK. TER., August 11, 1865.

Maj. Gen. G. M. DODGE,
Omaha, Nebr. Ter. :
Have heard from Sixth West Virginia and Twenty-first New York. Former ordered here; latter ordered on mail road between Collins and Sulphur Springs. Also hear of three infantry regiments below Kearny. Men rapidly deserting; regiments will be mere skeletons upon arrival at Kearny. Men of Sixth U.S. Volunteers are also deserting. If troops sent out act this way with us will not have force enough on plains this fall unless additional and reliable regiments are forwarded. A half-way exhibition of power toward hostile Indians will only be productive of evil. Troops sent to Utah should have not less than two years to serve. Am sending Sixth United States and Eleventh Ohio there; both only number 1,400 men. There should be not less [than] 4,000 in Utah to protect the development of the silver mines, the surest and safest method of crushing polygamy and the one-man power now crushing that country. Will you please extend your visit to Laramie.

GEO. F. PRICE,
Captain and Acting Assistant-Adjutant-General.
(In absence of general commanding.)

1887  Cheyenne Street Railway announced its horse drawn carriages would be built at Cheyenne Carriage Works.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1898  William O. Owen, Federal surveyor and outdoorsman, Franklin Spalding, Frank Petersen, and John Shive reached the summit of the "Mount Owen" of the the Grand Tetons, the first documented climb of that peak..  The climb was sponsored by a climbing association, the Rocky Mountain Club.  Publication of the news in the New York Herald met with an immediate spat between Owens and Nathaniel P. Landford.  Landford, together with James Stevenson claimed to have reached the summit on July 29, 1872.  However, their description and sketches seem to match the summit of The Enclosure (named after a man made rock palisade of unknown Indian construction) a side peak of Grand Teton.  The debate continues on, as it is not possible to discount, or prove, Landford's earlier claim, while Owen's later one is an established fact.

Somewhat missed in this debate is that another rival claim exists on the part of Captain Charles Kieffer, Private Logan Newell, and Private John Rhyan who may have climbed the peak on September 10, 1893, using the difficult Exum Ridge Route.  These soldiers were all stationed at Ft. Yellowstone and, according to a letter sent from Kieffer to Owen after Owen's assent, accompanied by his depiction.  Kieffer indicated that the three soldiers attempted the climb a second time later, but failed due to early snows.  It's interesting to note that Owen did not publish or reveal the letter, fwiw, and it only came to light when it was uncovered in the Owen papers at the Western History Research Center, University of Wyoming, Laramie, by Leigh N. Ortenburger in the spring of 1959.

The dispute will never be settled, but I suspect that the Army party was the first one.

1911 Catholic Bishop  James John Keane of the Diocese of Cheyenne is appointed the Archbishop of Dubuque.

1919  August 11, 1919. Laramie to Medicine Bow on the 1919 Motor Transport Convoy. Andrew Carnegie passes away and the Weimar Republic born.

A Packard furnished by the Firestone company crosses what passed for a bridge west of Laramie on this day in 1919.

On this day in 1919, the Motor Transport Convoy resumed its travel along a road that today is a state highway.

The path on the state highway today would take you to all the same spots, in much of the same conditions.  You'd still pass through Rock River, although the tiny town today would be hard pressed to offer a Red Cross canteen service.

Motor Transport Convoy in Rock River.

Today Rock River is a very small town, although its fortunes appear to have somewhat revived recently.

Veterans' Memorial in Rock River.

The Virginian Hotel in Medicine Bow is still there and its still open, so perhaps similar festivities could be held today at that location.  The once busy train depot, however, doesn't serve passengers anymore.

Virginian Hotel in background, old Union Pacific depot to the right.  The hotel is named after the protagonist in Owen Wister's novel, which starts off in Medicine Bow.

The big news on this day is that Andrew Carnegie, the industrialist turned philanthropist, died at age 83.  His passing as headline news.

Carnegie in 1905.

In Germany, the Weimar Constitution was formally adopted.  With that, Germany had officially passed from having a caretaker government made up exclusively of Socialist to being a liberal parliamentary democracy. The shepherding of that effort by the heads of the SDP had been a difficult one, meeting opposition from the more radical left which wanted a government of soviets, and which was willing to rebel in support of that cause, and only barely supported by the right, which was already turning to militarism.

On the same day, the Reichstag passed the Reich Settlement Act, and agricultural act that provided for limited land redistribution.  The act did not result in a large scale change in German agricultural land owning patters but it did ultimately result in 57,000 German farmers coming into land ownership.  It's passage took a middle of the road approach to land questions signaling the moderate nature of the postwar German parliament.

1929 Babe Ruth becomes the first baseball player to hit 500 home runs in his career with a home run at League Park in Cleveland, Ohio.

1942  The first internees arrived at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center.

1946 Wyoming Air National Guard organized.

1955 Arthur G. Crane, Governor in 1949 died at age 79, when Lester C. Hunt resigned.  He had been the Secretary of State at the time.  He was President of the University of Wyoming from 1922 to 1941.

1956  Cody born Jackson Pollock died in New York at age 44.

2011 Heart Mountain Interpretive Learning center opened.