Deer Creek Station, Glenrock Wyoming.

In the last couple of days I've put up some photos of Frontier Era Army posts in the state which were taken years ago. All of those were originally posted elsewhere, but a change in how Photobucket operated made them difficult to view, and I was left wondering why I hadn't blogged those photos.  I know the reason why, actually.  It used to be hard to upload lots of photos onto Blogger.  That's changed.

Anyhow, this photograph is new.  This is the former location of Deer Creek Station.

The sign itself isn't placed on the exact location, actually.  It's near it, more or less, but really a couple of miles away.  I'd guess it may be 1 mile to 2 miles from the original post.  Anyhow, the sign does a good job of giving the history of the post, which started off as a civilian trading post in 1857 and which was occupied during the Civil War by state troops sent to police the frontier.  This post, like a collection of others, was burned by the Indians following the abandonment of the fort in 1866.

Rock Springs Coal.

Rock Springs has several coal related monuments and items on a park downtown located where it's old classic railroad depot is located.  Indeed, the park borders on being a little busy as a result.

This is one of the items there, a State of Wyoming historical sign.  If you click on the photo, you can get a larger version of the photo.

Coal was a major industry in the town, and indeed an entrance to an underground mine, now decommissioned, is very near this park.  In fact, the development of the town over the former underground shafts and tunnels has proven to be a bit of a problem in later years.

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.

Holscher's Hub: The Register of the Desert. Independence Rock

Holscher's Hub: The Register of the Desert. Independence Rock

Some Gave All: Horseshoe Creek Station, Wyoming

Horseshoe Creek Station, Wyoming

Another Wyoming highway marker that's on the old highway, rather than the Interstate Highway. This marker is south of Glendo Wyoming.

December 24

 Today is the day of the Christmas Vigil (Christmas Eve) in the Christian world.
 Aðfangadagskvöld, the day when the 13th and the last Yule Lad arrives to towns, in Iceland.
 Feast of the Seven Fishes in Italy.
 Jul in Denmark and Norway.
 Nochebuena in Spanish-speaking countries.

1809.  Christopher "Kit" Caron born in Kentucky.  Raised in Missouri, he would have an amazing career as a frontiersmen in the West, including Wyoming.  He is one of those fellows who seems to have been everywhere, and at the right time.

1814     The War of 1812 officially ended as the United States and Britain signed the Treaty of Ghent.  Fighting continued, as news in the 19th Century traveled slowly.

1826   The Eggnog Riot at the United States Military Academy begins that night, wrapping up the following morning.

1851     Fire devastated the Library of Congress destroying about 35,000 volumes.

1859  First known lighting of a Christmas Tree in Wyoming occurs, near Glenrock. Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1868  A. J. Faulk, Territorial Governor of Dakota Territory, approved of act incorporating Cheyenne.

1922  Sunday, December 24, 1922. Christmas Eve, 1922.

Normally I post these matters in chronological order, oldest to newest, but I missed something here of interest, that being the death of Sgt. John Martin.

Sgt. Martin, circa 1904.

Martin was a career soldier in the U.S. Army who is remembered today as the 7th Cavalry trumpeter who was assigned by George A. Custer to deliver a message to Frederic Benteen, to the effect of:

Benteen.

Come On. Big Village. Be quick. Bring Packs.

P.S. Bring packs. W.W. Cooke

The message delivered to Benteen, from Custer, had been reduced to writing by Custer's adjacent, W. W. Cooke probably because Benteen didn't trust Martin to be able to accurately convey the message, given his heavy Italian accent.  Martin had been born Giovanni Martino.

Martino had started off in life roughly, being born in 1852 in Salerno and being delivered to an orphanage just days after his birth.  He served as a teenage drummer under Garibaldi, joining that revolutionary force at age 14.  He immigrated to the United States at age 21 and joined the U.S. Army, serving as a trumpeter.  He was temporarily detailed to Custer's command on the date of the fateful Little Big Horn battle, and therefore received the assignment that would take him away from disaster somewhat randomly.

He married an Irish immigrant in 1879, and together they had five children.  He served in the Spanish American War, and retired from the Army in 1904, having served the required number of years in order to qualify for a retirement at that time.  Note that this meant he'd served, at that time, thirty years.  Following that, his family operated a candy store in Baltimore.  In 1906, for reasons that are unclear, he relocated to Brooklyn, seemingly to be near one of his daughters, working as a ticket agent for the New York subway.  The relocation meant a separation from his wife, which has caused speculation as to the reasons for it, but he traveled back to Baltimore frequently.  That job wore him down, and he took a job as a watchman for the Navy Yard in 1915.  His sons followed his footsteps and entered the Army.

In December 1922 he was hit by a truck after work and died from his injuries on this day.

All in all, this presents an interesting look into the day.  Martin was an adult when he immigrated in 1873, and found work in an occupation that readily took in immigrants, the military, and doing what he had done in Garibaldi's forces before, acting as a musician.  His marriage was "mixed", of a sort, with the common denominator being that he and his wife were both Catholics.  In spite of retiring from the Military after long service, he continued to need to be employed, at jobs that at the time were physically demanding.

And of interest, when his life, long under the circumstances, was cut short, he was a veteran of Little Big Horn living during the jazz age.

1944   All beef products are again being rationed. New quotas are introduced for most other commodities as well.

1983  Recluse Wyoming sees -51F.  Echeta, -54F.

December 14

1854   Edward Gillette was born in New Haven, Connecticut.  He graduated from the Yale Scientific School in 1876 and took a job with the U.S. Geological Survey.  He later became locating engineer and chief draftsman for the Rio Grande and Western Railway and later a surveyor and civil engineer for the Burlington and Missouri Railroad. He was married to the daughter of H.A. Coffeen, who at one time was Wyoming’s Congressman. He was elected Wyoming State Treasurer in 1907 and served until 1911. 1907-1911.   He also served as Wyoming Water Superintendent.

Gillette Wyoming is named after him.

1877  Cheyenne incorporated by the Territorial Legislature.

1911 Hiram S. Manville, after whom Manville in Niobrara County is named, died in Nebraska.  He was a rancher and worked for large ranches in the region, and was influential in the early development of the town.

1914  Grace Raymond Hebard became first woman admitted to state bar.

This was a remarkable achievement in and of itself, but it only one of a string of such accomplishments made by Hebard.  She was also the first woman to graduate from the Engineering Department of the University of Iowa, in an era when there engineering was an overwhelmingly male profession.  She followed this 1882 accomplishment by acquiring a 1885 MA from the same school, and then an 1893  PhD in political science from Wesleyan University.  She went to work for the State of Wyoming in 1882 and rose to the position of Deputy State Engineer under legendary State Engineer Elwood Mead.  She moved to Laramie in 1891 and was instrumental in the administration of the University of Wyoming.  She was a significant figure in the suffrage movement, and a proponent in Wyoming of Americanization, a view shared by such figures such as Theodore Roosevelt.

She was an amateur historian as well, which is what she is best remembered for today.  Unfortunately, her historical works were tinged with romanticism and have not been regarded as wholly reliable in later years.  Her history of Sacajawea, which followed 30 years of research, is particularly questioned and would seem to have made quite a few highly romantic erroneous conclusions.  On a more positive note, the same impulses lead her to be very active in the marking of historic Wyoming trails.

While she was the first woman to be admitted to the Wyoming State Bar, she never actually practiced law.  Her book collection is an important part of the University of Wyoming's American Heritage Center's collection today. 

1916  Former Governor John Osborne concludes his service as Assistant Secretary of State for the Wilson Administration.

John E. Osborne at the start of his service as Assistant Secretary of State.

It had been rumored for weeks that the former Democratic Governor would step down, with motivations being various cited as an intent to run for the U.S. Senate and a desire to return his Western holdings.   All of that may have been partial motivators.  He did retain agricultural and business holdings in Wyoming and a 1918 run for the Senate showed he had not lost interest in politics.  However, he also found himself in increasing disagreement with his employer on Wilson's policies in regards to the war in Europe.  So, at this point, prior to Wilson's second term commencing, he stepped down and returned to Wyoming with his wife Selina, who was twenty years his junior.

Osborne would live the rest of his life out in the Rawlins area, ranching and as a banker.  While twenty years older than his wife, he would out live her by a year, dying in 1943 at age 84.  She died the prior year at age 59.  Their only daughter would pass away in 1951.  In spite of a largely Wyoming life, he was buried with his wife in their family plot in Kentucky.
1916The Submarine H3 runs aground, leading to the ultimate loss of the USS Milwaukee.
 

The U.S. submarine the H3, operating off of Eureka California with the H1 and H2, and their tender the USS Cheyenne, went off course in heavy fog and ran aground on this date (although some sources say it was December 16, this seems the better date however).

The H3 during one of the recovery attempts.

She'd be recovered and put back in service, although it was a difficult effort and would not be accomplished until April 20, 1917.  In the process, the USS Milwaukee, a cruiser, was beached and wrecked on January 13, 1917, making the relaunching of the H3 somewhat of a Pyrrhic victory.

The wrecked USS Milwaukee.

USS Cheyenne, which had been original commissioned as the monitor USS Wyoming.

 The USS Cheyenne with the H1 and H2.  The Cheyenne had been decommissioned in 1905, after having served since only 1900, but she was recommissioned in 1908.  She was the first fuel oil burning ship in the U.S. Navy after having been refitted prior to recommissioning.  She was refitted as a U.S. Navy submarine tender, as a brief stint in the Washington Naval Militia, in 1913.

2006  Staff Sgt. Theodore A. Spatol,1041st Engineer Company, Wyoming Army National Guard, died of illness acquired while in Iraq.  He had returned to his home in Thermopolis prior to passing.

Elsewhere:  1916:  In strong contrast to the State of Wyoming,  Quebec bans women from entering the legal profession.

This was in contrast with progress in suffrage elsewhere in Canada that year, but it wasn't terribly unusual for the time.  Note that the first Woman admitted to the bar in Wyoming had only been admitted two years earlier in spite of suffrage dating back to the late 19th Century and in spite of women already having served as justices of the peace and jurors. Having said that, every US state would have admitted at least one woman to the bar by the early 20th Century and many in the late 19th Century

Clara Brett Martin, the first female lawyer in the British Empire.

In these regards the entire British Empire trailed somewhat behind as the first female lawyer in the Empire, Ontario's Clara Brett Martin, wasn't admitted until 1897 after a protracted struggle to obtain that goal.

November 13

1806  Pike's Peak Colorado observed by Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomery Pike during an expedition to locate the source of the Mississippi.

1835  Texas officially proclaimed Independence from Mexico, and called itself the Lone Star Republic.  The very south east most slice of the state was within the Mexican province of Mexico, and therefore within the newly proclaimed republic, although it was not inhabited by European Americans or Mexicans at the time.  Borders in northern Mexico were more than a little theoretical.

1854  The Horse Creek Skirmish when the Sioux attacked a mail stage near the present location of Torrington.

1867  The first passenger train, a Union Pacific train, arrived in Cheyenne, WY.

1890  Fire damaged a saloon in Rawlins, Wyoming (Courtesy the Wyoming Historical Society).

1895  Floyd Taliaferro  Alderson born in Sheridon.  Alderson grew up on a ranch near Sheridan and served in World War One before becoming an actor in the silent movie era.  He acted in 22 silent films and was able to transition into talking pictures. He retired from acting in the 1950s and returned to the family ranch where he painted in his retirement. During his acting years he acted under a variety of names, including most notably Wally Wales,but also as Hal Taliaferro and Floyd Taliaferro.

1901 First CB&Q passenger train arrives in Cody, Wyoming.

1916:   The Laramie Republican for Monday, November 13, 1916. Record Cold.
 

The weather a century ago definitely isn't what we're experiencing this year.

1917

The USS Wyoming becomes  Rear Admiral Hugh Rodman's, Commander Battleship Division 9, flagship. Attribution:  On This Day.

 

Dust storm in Colorado, 1935.

1918 Pondering the Post War World. . .hit and miss. . . the news of November 13, 1918.

On this mid week of 1918 (this paper was published on a Wednesday) the Wyoming State Tribune was pondering the post war world with some optimism.

Not all of which would prove warranted.

First we'll note, however, that the depiction of Germany's new borders was spot on, showing once again how remarkably accurate these World War One papers tended to be.  They weren't always, and this past week with rumors of the armistice arriving prematurely, and with additional rumors that Red German sailors who had in fact sabotaged their ships to some degree were going to come out fighting, they were off the mark more than a little. But by and large, they appear to be on in just about the same degree as modern papers tend to be.

But as to a post war economic boom. .  not so much.

In fact the end of the war brought on a mild recession that started this very year; 1918. That recession would continue on into 1919, when a recovery would be staged, but following that a severe recession hit in 1920 and lasted until 1921.  

Overall, both periods of recession were brief, and there were some oddities to them. The American recession of 1918 actually started in August, which is flat out bizarre when it is considered that the United States was really just getting fully committed to combat in the Great War at that time and that it was conscripting all the way through the end of the war, thereby creating labor shortages that were growing worse.  That a recession would hit should have been expected, but a rational expectation should have been that it would have hit in early 1919.  It didn't, and overall the first recession only lasted seven months.

The second much worse one hit in January 1920 and lasted until 1921. That one makes much more sense if we keep in mind that while the fighting ended, the war technically went on into 1919 and the United States continued to maintain and supply a large overseas army that was on occupation duty that entire time.  Indeed, combat troops finally left Europe in September 1919 but an occupation force of 16,000 U.S. troops based out of Coblenz remained in Germany until 1923.  And somewhat forgotten, while the fighting had ended in France and Belgium, it continued on in Russia where a U.S. commitment remained until fully withdrawn on April 1, 1920. 

Of course, this has an expression in what we was called the Jazz Age.  No era of any kind every has a clean break from one to another, but in this case the effects of the war in various ways lingered through the first recession until the lid really came off and the post war world set in which gave us the Roaring Twenties/Jazz Age, which continued on until the crash of October 1929.  The Jazz Age, in a lot of ways, was the preamble to the 1960s, brought to an abrupt end by the economic realities of the Great War.

In Wyoming, as is so often the case, the national economy didn't really follow the path of the national one.  The oil boom of the Great War came to a screeching halt with the end of the war.  Oil production and refining of course went on, and the conversion of Casper Wyoming from a minor oil town into a significant oil city, was permanent.  But a local recession was inevitable with the end of the war.

Amplifying that recession was a general recession in the agricultural sector as a whole.  Massive demands for meat, wool, leather, and grain came to a rapid end, and with it came an agricultural depression that lasted through the economic recovery and on into the next recession.  1919, in fact, was the last year in American history in which farm families shared economic parity with urban families.

So the paper got that one wrong.  But its map of post war Germany was quite right.  The rest of the new European map had yet to be worked out through the process of the Versailles Treaty and local effort in new nations, to include the effort of new wears that erupted following the collapse of empires in the Great War, but that process was going on at the very time this paper was printed.

Holland didn't really treat the deposed Kaiser Wilhelm II like any other interned German officer.  He became a permanent exiled resident who never did come to see his removal as justified or his actions as questionable.  He'd die there during World War Two.

And while the paper gave a positive prognosis on the news that Theodore Roosevelt was in the hospital but would recover, the old lion wasn't himself anymore.

1933   "(MONDAY)  UNITED STATES: The first dust storm of the great dust bowl era of the 1930s occurs. The dust storm, which has spread from Montana to the Ohio Valley yesterday, prevails from Georgia to Maine resulting in a black rain over New York and a brown snow in Vermont. Parts of South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa reported zero visibility yesterday. Today, dust reduces the visibility to half a mile (805 meters) in Tennessee. (Jack McKillop)"  Attribution:  The WWII History List.

1941  The United States Congress amends the Neutrality Act of 1935 to allow American merchant ships access to war zones.

1942     The minimum draft age was lowered from 21 to 18.

1943  The state penitentiary receives a contract for 8,000 U.S. Army blankets.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

November 9

1849  William "Red" Angus born in Zanesville Ohio.  Angus would be employed as a teamster, drover and bar owner before ending up the Sheriff of Johnson County in 1888.  He was Sheriff during the Johnson County War.  He lost the election in 1893 and later went on to be the Johnson County Treasurer.  He died in 1920 and is buried in Buffalo.

1856  Warming weather allowed the Martin Handcart Company to resume traveling on the Oregon Trail.

1867  John Hardy and John Shaughnessy fought a prize fight in Cheyenne

1883  The Wyoming Stock Growers Association met in Cheyenne to discuss problems with branding iron usage and roundup irregularities.  The meeting would result in a black list of disapproved brands and operators.

1894  Ft. McKinney  abandoned by the Army.

1902  Two women Justices of the Peace were elected in Laramie County.

1910  The Union Pacific rolling mills in Laramie were destroyed by a fire that was started by a passing train.

1916   The Wyoming Tribune for November 9, 1916: Hughes leading.
 

Cheyenne Leader for November 9, 1916: Wilson leads
 

1918  Countdown on the Great War, November 9, 1918: The End of the German Empire.

1.  Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany abdicates as Emperor of Germany and King of Prussia, facing the reality of the revolution in Germany.  The abdication is announced by Chancellor Maximilian of Baden who resigns later that day in favor of Social Democrat Freidrich Ebert.  Germany is then declared a republic.  This made the impending end of the war inevitable and obvious to all.

The Casper Daily Tribune was not subtle in its views on the Kaiser.

The German empire, which came into being in 1870, with the King of Prussia perpetually as its Emperor, was at an end.  Monarchy in Germany, which saw many royal titles lessor than Emperor including various kings, was also at an end.  Wilhelm went into exile in the Netherlands where he would live to see the beginning of World War Two, passing away in June 1941.

The Casper Daily Press was more subdued in its reporting and correctly noted that things weren't over yet.  It was incorrect in the establishment of a German regency. . . and in the spelling of cavalry.  It noted, however, the ongoing disaster of the Spanish Flu, which the other Casper paper managed to miss.

In a lot of ways, he was the worst possible German monarch for his times, taking his imperial role seriously even until his death, and remaining a German chauvinist in spite of the disaster that he had lead his nation into.  Ironically, his parents had very much sympathized with republican ideals and likely would have moved the country in that direction if they'd been allowed to. Wilhelm, however, idolized imperial military ideals since his childhood.

This Cheyenne paper correctly predicted the probable remaining length of the war.

His resignation paved the way to an end of the war in very short order, but it also permanently tainted the new Socialist German republic with the legacy of defeat and would help doom the democratic order in Germany.

The Laramie Boomerang was most subdued of all, but had the interesting headline of about the war solving the "social problem", demonstrating how war changes everything.  Also, a tragic community loss due to the war was reported.

Also complicit in the end of Imperial Germany, in all sorts of ways, was its Army.  And directly implicit in the final act of the German Empire was the Army's abandonment of the monarchy, something it would forget in short order as it began to reconstruct a false narrative of the war's end.

2.  The battleship HMS Britannia was sunk by the German submarine UB-50 with the loss of 50 hands.

The HMS Britannia sinking.

3.  The American Navy's cargo ship the USS Saetia was sunk by a mine laid by the U-117.

USS Saetia.

4.  Pieter Jelles Troelstra declared that a socialist revolution was possible in Denmark, leading to the arming of Dutch police officers.

5.  The Mexican government issues orders to discharge soldiers younger than 18 years of age.

1919  November 9, 1919. Edgar S. Paxson died.

On this date in 1919, Edgar S. Paxson, Montana based Western painter, died at age 67.

Paxson was born and grew up in New York, but moved to Montana shortly after marrying.  He remained in Montana the rest of his life and worked as a self taught painter, painting Western themes.  He's best remembered today for his spectacular Custer's Last Stand which is held by the Buffalo Bill Museum in Cody, Wyoming.

Paxson volunteered to serve with the Montana National Guard during the Spanish American War. His son Harry had also volunteered to serve.  Paxson was 47 years old at the time.  He jointed as a private but left as a lieutenant, serving in the Philippines.  His wartime service likely shortened his life as he contracted malaria while serving.  It was while convalescing in Butte that he started work on Custer's Last Stand.  During this period of time he designed the triumphal arch that Butte built for its returning veterans of the war.  It was not until this period that Paxson was able to work full time as an artist.

While he is best remembered for Custer's Last Stand, which took a long time to create, he also created a substantial body of work on the Corps of Discovery.  His wife outlived him by twenty years, although Harry, whom he served within the Philippines, did not, having died in a mine electrocution accident some time prior.  He left three other adult children at the time of his death.

While in his 60s at the time, he'd attempted to join the Army again, unsuccessfully, during World War One.

He's less well known today than his contemporaries Russell and Remington, and indeed that was also true during his lifetime.  But he was a major Western artists of his day, and a friend to fellow Montana artist, Charles Russell.

1926  Queen Marie of Romania visited Casper.

The Queen's trip was part of her trip to Canada and the United States of that year.  The trip was very wide ranging and covered a huge number of stops.  The stop in Casper was specifically made in order that she might see the facilities belonging to Standard Oil.  Standard Oil was a major economic player in Romania, where the refineries at Polesti existed, and where the company had significant oil production.  This was later to figure significantly in World War Two.

Perhaps emblematic of royalty of the period, which was rapidly becoming an anachronism, the queen was not Romanian by birth. Her father was one of the sons of Queen Victoria and her mother a Russian princess.  In truth, royalty of this period was nearly stateless in origin.  As was also somewhat typical of this period, she worked hard to make a Romanian presentation and dressed in a stylized Romanian fashion.

She would have been queen of England had her mother approved of the English royal family, which she did not, as the Prince of Wales, who would be come King George V of England proposed marriage to her, in spite of her being his first cousin.  The fathers of the prospective union approved, but the mothers did not.  She instead married Prince Ferdinand of Romania, whom ultimately she came to dislike.  Showing, perhaps, the much smaller extent of media attention to such matters at the time, it's believed that she actually gave birth to a child in 1897 due to an affair, in addition to the six other children she bore in the royal household.  That child disappeared soon after birth, and the pregnancy itself was basically kept secret.  The whereabouts of that infant member of the Romanian royal family are unknown, and the child may have been stillborn.   The paternity of three of the other six children of the royal household is disputed.  Her husband, the King, would die the year after this 1926 visit and she would die in 1938, when Romania was still a kingdom.  The monarchy fell early in World War Two to a fascistic dictatorship.

1927  Walter Urbigkit born in Burris Wyoming.  Urbigkit grew up in a sheep ranching family but entered the pracrtice of law in 1951, becoming a member of the legislature, and then a somewhat controversial Justice of the Wyoming Supreme Court.  He was not retained by the voters in the 1993.  He died on October 31, 2011, in Cheyenne Wyoming, where he was practicing law after leaving the Wyoming Supreme Court.

1978  Grumman American N28406 crashes at 43 59N 109 29W

2016   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 Trump won the Presidency.  I frankly thought that impossible.

As I noted here yesterday, I figured that the coronation of Hillary Clinton meant that her enthronement as President would merely need to be ratified yesterday.  I was sure off the mark, and badly so.

So was about 100% of the national press, Id' note ,which was discussing the inevitable Clinton victor as late ago as early last night.  What happened?

Well, a massive working class revolt against both parties happened.  After well over a decade of being lied to, they poked both parties in the eye. 

When this became inevitable or even probable is hard to say, but the Democrats deserve a lot of the blame or credit, depending upon your view, for trying to coronate a 1970s throwback that was widely despised.  Frankly, had Bernie Sanders been nominated by the Democrats he'd likely be yesterday's victor. But rather than do that, they went solidly with a candidate that nobody loved and who was consumed her entire life with politics.  Most people aren't consumed with politics and are disgusted with it right now. So the disgust flowed over onto her.

And on to the entire system, quite frankly.

 Bea Arthur in an advertisement for Maud.  Arthur played the brash, loud, pants suit wearing feminist in two 1970s era television series.  For those who recalled it, Clinton tended to come across rather unfortunately as a character from Maud or at least from the era. Younger women never warmed up to her at all, and indeed people who weren't voting by the 1970s were left fairly cold.

Additionally, the late Democratic administration and things associated with it combined with things that have been brewing for a long time overwhelmed both parties.  It turns out that you cannot take in 1,000,000 immigrants a year and tell rust belt voters that they just need to adjust to the new economy, you can't tolerate shipping endless employers overseas and tell those voters that new better jobs will come, you can't tell people who can tell what gender they are actually in that people can determine their "own gender identify", and you can't threaten to reverse course on firearms possession when people have pretty much determined how they feel about that.

The voters who revolted are, no doubt, going to be accused of being racist.  But to desire the America they grew up in, which was more Christian, more employed, and more rural, doesn't make them that way.  The Democrats have been offering them Greenwich Village, the Republicans the Houston suburbs.  It turns out they like the old Port Arthur, Kansas City or Lincoln Nebraska better, and want to go back. That's not irrational.

 

Port Arthur Texas.  I listed to people discuss the upcoming election two weeks ago at the Port Arthur Starbucks and thought they'd really be surprised when Clinton was elected. Turns out, they were much more on the mark than I was.  And it turns out that people in Port Arthur like Port Arthur the way it was twenty or thirty years ago, and they don't like a lot of big, hip trendy urban areas that they're supposed to.

Will Trump be able to do that?

Well, any way you look at it, it's going to be an interesting four years.

Locally, 818 Natrona County voters went for write in candidates, myself included, for President and Vice President.  That has to be a record.

Locally, Liz Cheney, Dick Cheney's barely repatriated Virginia daughter beat out Greene and has probably taken Wyoming's House seat in Congress for life, or at least until she wedges that into something else, which she almost certainly will.  The seat is the gift of two other candidates who were really from Wyoming and who destroyed each other, but who jointly took more votes in the primary than she did.  Hopefully she'll grow into her position and learn the lesson that the Democratic and Republican establishments did not on the national stage, that people love their local lives more than they do the big issues of any kind.

More locally, Gerald Gay went down in defeat, a victim of statements he could not explain about women.  Dan Neal, whose campaign literature arrived in my mailbox every day for awhile, lost to Republican Jerry Obermuller.  In some ways, I think Neal may have been a victim of his supporters as his own mailings concentrated on public lands while his recent backers mailings urged support of him because of his support of abortion, homosexual rights and "reproductive health", which probably served to turn votes away from him. Being hugged enthusiastically by somebody who people doubt doesn't engender their support of you but Neal probably couldn't, maybe, have told them to shut up and go away, he was doing fine on his own.  Maybe he didn't know that.  Chuck Gray, young radio mouthpiece of the far libertarian right did get in.  Todd Murphy, whose facebook ravings brought attention to him in the press, did survive the sort of attention that Gay did not and ended up on the city council, to my enormous surprise.

The county commission was less surprising, with incumbents generally doing well.  A stable race, it seems.