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, March 30, 2019

Richard's (Reshaw's) Bridge, Evansville Wyoming.


Reshaw's Bridge, or more correctly Richard's Bridge, was a frontier North Platte River crossing only a few miles downstream from Platte Bridge and like it, it was guarded by a contingent of soldiers.  As noted in the plaque below, it ultimately closed in favor of the slightly newer Guinard's Bridge, which Richard bought, which ultimately came to be referred to as Platte Bridge. 

In 1866, after the bridge had been abandoned, it was dismantled by the soldiers stationed at Platte Bridge Station.


While Platte Bridge Station is remembered for the battle that occurred there, Reshaw's Bridge saw its fair share of action as well. 


Indeed, as we've discussed previously on one of our companion blogs, which we'll link in here below, bodies exhumed at the post when Evansville's water treatment facility was built include what are certainly two soldiers and a pioneer woman.  Generally, the Army would reclaim bodies of troops, but my minor efforts to inform the Army of this failed.

From our companion blog, Some Gave All:

Richard's Bridge Cemetary Mausoleum, Evansville Wyoming




This mausoleum was built when at least part of the cemetery of the military post at Richards Bridge was located at the time Evansville, Wyoming built a water plant near the river. The former location of the Frontier Era bridge across the North Platte had not been precisely known up until that time. When three bodies, believed to be the bodies of two soldiers and one woman, were disinterred they were reburied here, on the grounds of the Evansville grade school. The school grounds were the only nearby public land at the time.

This creates a very odd situation in a variety of ways and the mausoleum is not well maintained. While worse fates could exists than spending eternity near a grade school, it is generally the case that the Army has recovered the lost remains of Frontier Era soldiers when they were located, and it would seem that moving these victims of Frontier conditions would be a positive thing to do.

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