How To Use This Site




How To Use This Site


This blog was updated on a daily basis for about two years, with those daily entries ceasing on December 31, 2013. The blog is still active, however, and we hope that people stopping in, who find something lacking, will add to the daily entries.

The blog still receives new posts as well, but now it receives them on items of Wyoming history. That has always been a feature of the blog, but Wyoming's history is rich and there are many items that are not fully covered here, if covered at all. Over time, we hope to remedy that.

You can obtain an entire month's listings by hitting on the appropriate month below, or an individual day by hitting on that calendar date.
Use 2013 for the search date, as that's the day regular dates were established and fixed.

Alternatively, the months are listed immediately below, with the individual days appearing backwards (oldest first).

We hope you enjoy this site.

Saturday, December 31, 2016

Lex Anteinternet: 2016 exits, and 2017 begins

Lex Anteinternet: 2016 exits, and 2017 begins: “The old order changeth, yielding place to new, And God fulfils himself in many ways, Lest one good custom should corrupt the world ...

Friday, December 30, 2016

Wednesday, December 14, 2016

Saturday, December 3, 2016

Some Gave All: Sweetwater Station, Freemont County Wyoming.

Some Gave All: Sweetwater Station, Freemont County Wyoming.:




There's a highway rest station on top of Beaver Rim at Sweetwater Station that I've stopped in a million times, but I've never photographed it before.  Probably because there's always been a lot of
people there and I felt self conscious about it.  Anyhow, the other day I went through and it was just me, so I took these photos with my Iphone.

The photos here will be left large so that the details on the signs can be read.  I didn't do a very good job of photographing them while there, but it was relatively early in the day and light conditions were not idea.



This is a converging location on the trail and a lot of different things are significant about the spot.  It's a significant Oregon Trial spot in and of itself.  It was also the location of an Army post, protecting the trail, during the 1860s.  Lt. Caspar Collins, who lost his life famously leading a mixed company at the Battle of Platte Bridge Station, was stationed at Sweetwater Station.








Sunday, November 27, 2016

Lex Anteinternet: The November 1916 Election in Wyoming

Lex Anteinternet: The November 1916 Election in Wyoming: Today is the centennial of the 1916 General Election, and of course the eve of the 2016 General Election. We have the advantage of the 1916...
Posted late, due to a pre posting glitch.



By now, I'm sure everyone is sick of reading about elections. . . probably even century old ones.

Thursday, November 17, 2016

Monday, November 14, 2016

Lex Anteinternet: What are you reading?

Lex Anteinternet: What are you reading?: A new trailing thread, dedicated to what we're currently reading. And. . . we hope. . . with participation from you. What are you...

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Lex Anteinternet: The 2016 Election

I've posted on this item on yesterday's date, but this is an updated version, fwiw:
Lex Anteinternet: The 2016 Election: I didn't see that coming. . . like all of the rest of the pundits. It's been a wild election year. Yesterday, Donald Trum...

Saturday, November 5, 2016

Lex Anteinternet: Rally for Public Lands, Casper Wyoming, November 5...


Rally for Public Lands, Casper Wyoming, November 5, 2016

 keep-it-public-files_main-graphic



 Rally for Public Lands:



 Join Us!

—WHEN—

Saturday, November 5th

1:00 pm – 3:00 pm

—WHERE—

Izaak Walton League,

4205 Fort Caspar Road

—WHAT—

Live music, keynote speakers, food & drinks!

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Monday, October 31, 2016

Lex Anteinternet: Dark Money

Lex Anteinternet: Dark Money: The Casper Star Tribune is running a series on "dark money", that being money of organizations that they can spend on political ca...

Monday, October 24, 2016

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: Westward Ho the Wagons

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: Westward Ho the Wagons: I can remember many years ago watching or listening to  various programs that ended with some form of the phrase – “and the rest is history...

Friday, October 14, 2016

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: I.S. Bartlett - History of Wyoming

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: I.S. Bartlett - History of Wyoming: One of the earliest attempts to write a history of Wyoming was by Hartville resident, I. S. Bartlett and published in 1918. Vol 1 of the ...

Friday, October 7, 2016

Tuesday, October 4, 2016

New Sidebar: Lex Anteinternet: The Wyoming National Guard and the Punitive Expedion

This post, which appears on one of companion blogs, has just been added here as a Sidebar (see the features off to the left hand margin of the blog).  We thought about posting it here as an original entry to this site, but it fits into the Punitive Expedition theme we're exploring on Lex Anteinternet.  We hope you enjoy it.
Lex Anteinternet: The Wyoming National Guard and the Punitive Expedi...: I'll confess, in making this post, that I have a soft spot for the National Guard.  In no small part that may be because I was in the A...

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Today In Wyoming's History: September 27. Disasters and ships.

From Today In Wyoming's History: September 27:
1923  Thirty railroad passengers were killed when a CB&Q train
wrecked at the Cole Creek Bridge, which had been washed out due to a
flood, in Natrona County.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical
Society.

1944 USS Natrona, a Haskell class attack transport, launched.
There's something in the county memorializing the latter (the ship's wheel, in the old courthouse), but not the former.

Such an awful disaster, you'd think there might be.

Thursday, September 22, 2016

Lex Anteinternet: Cowboy Boots

Lex Anteinternet: Cowboy Boots: Title: An array of boots at the F.M. Light & Sons western-wear store in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.  Library of Congress photographs...

Friday, September 16, 2016

Some Gave All: Mormon Pioneer Memorial, Lyman Wyoming.

Some Gave All: Mormon Pioneer Memorial, Lyman Wyoming.:







This is a Mormon Pioneer Memorial at the rest stop in Lyman, Wyoming. 
It was obviously originally a private memorial and was likely moved to
its current location after the rest stop was built and Interstate 80
altered the original path of the Lincoln Highway.

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: A Ride With The President

Wyoming Fact and Fiction: A Ride With The President: In late May of 1903 the president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt,  rode 50 miles from Laramie to Cheyenne. The story is well know...

Sunday, September 11, 2016

Saturday, September 3, 2016

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Lex Anteinternet: Tracking the Local Races

Lex Anteinternet: Tracking the Local Races: Patrick Henry before the Virginia Legislature. . . probably not quite the way it really was. I haven't tried to do a thread track...

Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Lex Anteinternet: Tracking the Local Races

Lex Anteinternet: Tracking the Local Races: Patrick Henry before the Virginia Legislature. . . probably not quite the way it really was. I haven't tried to do a thread track...

Lex Anteinternet: The Migratory Bird Treaty entered into.

Lex Anteinternet: The Migratory Bird Treaty entered into.: The Migratory Bird Treaty, a major piece of international conservation and a great success, was entered into between the United States and C...

Saturday, August 13, 2016

Some Gave All: Ft. Fred Steele, Carbon County Wyoming

Some Gave All: Ft. Fred Steele, Carbon County Wyoming:



In the past, I haven't tended to post fort entries here, but for net related technical reasons, I'm going to, even though these arguably belong on one of my other blogs.  I'll probably cross link this thread
in.

These are photographs of Ft. Fred Steele, a location that I've sometimes thought is the bleakest historical site in Wyoming.

One of the few remaining structures at Ft. Steele, the powder magazine.  It no doubt is still there as it is a stone structure.


The reason that the post was built, the Union Pacific, is still there.

Ft. Steele is what I'd regard as fitting into the Fourth Generation of Wyoming frontier forts, although I've never seen it described that way, or anyone other than me use that term.   By my way of defining them, the First Generation are those very early, pre Civil War, frontier post that very much predated the railroads, such as Ft. Laramie.  The Second Generation would be those established during the Civil War in an effort to protect the trail and telegraph system during that period during which the Regular Army was largely withdrawn from the Frontier and state units took over. The Third Generation would be those posts like Ft. Phil Kearney that were built immediately after the Civil War for the same purpose.  Contemporaneously with those were posts like Ft. Steele that were built to protect the Union Pacific Railroad.  As they were in rail contact with the rest of the United States they can't really be compared to posts like Ft. Phil Kearney, Ft. C. F. Smith or Ft. Caspar, as they were built for a different purpose and much less remote by their nature.



What the post was like, when it was active.

A number of well known Wyoming figures spent time at Ft. Saunders.


Ft. Sanders, after it was abandoned, remained a significant railhead and therefore the area became the center of a huge sheep industry. Quite a few markers at the post commemorate the ranching history of the area, rather than the military history.









One of the current denizens of the post.











Suttlers store, from a distance.

Union Pacific Bridge Tenders House at the post.













Current Union Pacific bridge.



Some structure from the post, but I don't know what it is.



The main part of the post's grounds.

Soldiers
from this post are most famously associated with an action against the
Utes in Utah, rather than an action in Wyoming.  This shows the high
mobility of the Frontier Army as Utah is quite a distance away, although
not so much by rail.





































































This
1914 vintage highway marker was on the old Lincoln Highway, which
apparently ran north of the tracks rather than considerably south of
them, like the current Interstate Highway does today.













































About 88 people or so were buried at this post, however only 60 some graves were later relocated when the Army undertook to remove and consolidate frontier graves.  Logic would dictate, therefore, that some graves likely remain.




Unusual civilian headstone noting that this individual had served with a provisional Confederate unit at some point that had been raised in California.  I'm not aware of any such unit, although it must have existed.  The marker must be quite recent.