September 8

1829  George Crook was born on a farm near Taylorsville Ohio. The career Army officer was notably successful during the Indian Wars.  Crook County is named after him.

1833   Eliza Stewart Boyd born in Crawford County, Pennsylvania.. She became the first woman in the US to be selected to serve on a jury, with that jury being a Grand Jury.in Laramie in 1870.  She was a recently married teacher teacher at the time.  She was nominated to Territorial Legislature in 1873 and was probably the first woman in the US to hold that distinction.

She was also an organizer of the Wyoming Literary and Library Association.  She became a charter member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union in 1883.  She was a Wyoming delegate to the Prohibition Party national convention in 1888.

1851  Negotiations that would lead to the Horse Creek Treaty of 1851 between Plains Indians and the US begin on Horse Creek, 30 miles east of Fort Laramie.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1867  Army post located on Crow Creek near Cheyenne named Ft. D. A. Russell.

1900  USS Wyoming, BM-10, launched.

1920  September 8, 1920. The start of Air Mail

On this day in 1920, the U.S. Post Office inaugurated Air Mail in the United STates with early morning flights taking off from New Jersey and San Francisco, ultimately bound for the other location, and with distribution stops and refueling stops along the way.  Cheyenne was one of the cities on their flight path.

As the Cheyenne paper noted, unusually spelling it out, the reason for the numerous stops was that the Airco DH4 airplanes dedicated to the project didn't carry sufficient fuel not to make numerous stops.  The DH4 was a British designed World War One bomber which the US had ordered in sufficient numbers to make the United States the largest customer for the aircraft. After the war they were placed into mail service, which they'd continue to perform up until 1932.  Indeed, as late as that year the US seriously considered purchasing an updated variant.

1943  The first woman lookout was assigned in the Medicine Bow National Forest.  Perhaps it is coincidence, but this event occurred during World War Two when women were occupying many traditional male occupations due to labor shortages.   Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1978  Yellowstone National Park designated a United Nations World Heritage Site.  Attribution:  On This Day.

2015  In a controversial move, the Casper City Counsel reinstated a tavern and restaurant smoking ban following the decision of the Wyoming Supreme Court that signatures on an earlier referendum petition had been, in some cases, improperly discarded from counting.  The vote was not unanimous and it certainly set the stage for further debate.