October 29

 Today is National Cat Day.

1890  Two silver-tipped bear cubs brought into Laramie from Laramie Peak to be sold. Attribution:  Wyoming State Archives website, which attributes History courtesy of the Wyoming Historical Calendar, published by the Wyoming State Historical Society and the American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

1917  Record cold struck the West with Soda Butte Wyoming's temperature falling to to -33° F a U.S. record for October.  Lander's temperature fell to-14° F and Cheyenne's to 2° F.

The Laramie Boomerang correctly noted the oncoming cold snap as well as noting the war news while featuring a rather dramatic cartoon on the Germans in Russia.

1928  Jacques (Jack) Sidi, long time Wyoming politician and educator, born in Marsailles France.  He entered the United States by serving in the US Air Force, which he had joined overseas.

1929. Stock Market Crashes, sending the United States and Canada into the Great Depression.  The Depression had already commenced in some other regions of the globe, such as Germany. 

It had also already started in Wyoming.  Wyoming's economy then, as now, was dependent upon agriculture and the oil and gas industry, both of which sustained a major decline starting in 1919, when the economic boom created by World War One started to fade.  As Wyoming's boom of the teens was strongly associated with the war, the end of the war created a decline, common to other oil and agricultural regions, which had seen a full recovery when the big Depression of 1929 commenced.

  

Lex Anteinternet: The Big Crash: Today In Wyoming's History: October 29 . Today is the day, in 1929, when the legendary Wall Street Crash occurred. In spite of what we mi...

1942  The Alaska Canada Highway (ALCAN) opened as a military highway.

What does this have to do with Wyoming?  Well, arguably not much.  But the story is relevant, as depicted here, for a couple of reasons.  For one thing, it was the first really all year around, all weather, rural highway in the United States. The trucks depicted here are travelling in conditions that would be familiar to most Wyoming drivers, but which most people avoided travelling in for the most part, for long distances anyhow, prior to World War Two.

Pat of the reason that, after the war, they would travel in conditions like this has to do with a technology depicted here which wasn't common at all prior tot he war. . . the all wheel drive.  In this case, the vehicles are 6x6 2 1/2 ton military trucks, but it was the 4x4 military truck that would really cause a revolution in post war rural travel, when it put on civilian colors.

1943  The National Housing Agency approved 100 trailers for Casper Wyoming for essential immigrant war workers.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society calendar.

1950  A significant snowstorm struck northern Wyoming.

1950  Powell's  acting Chief Tony Nelson, a World War One veteran, died of a heart attack while responding to a call for assistance from two other officers.

1993  Fennis Dembo, former University of Wyoming basketball player, inducted into the Wyoming Athletics Hall of Fame.