November 8

1861  Denver Colorado incorporated.

1864  President Lincoln reelected.

1873  Winnipeg becomes incorporated as Canada's first city in the West.

1876  Mary Davis was elected Justice of the Peace in Tie Siding, Wyoming, a small town outside of Laramie Wyoming. She was the first woman in Wyoming to be elected to the position (there had been women appointed to justice of the peace previously).

1881  Coloradans vote to make Denver the state capitol.

1887  Doc Holliday died in Glenwood Springs, Colorado. He'd lived over a decade longer than his doctor had first anticipated when he was diagnosed with TB.

1889  Montana achieves statehood.

1892     Former President Grover Cleveland beat incumbent Benjamin Harrison, becoming the only president to win non-consecutive terms in the White House.

Be that as it may, President Cleveland fared extremely poorly in Wyoming that year, which had representatives to the Electoral College for the first time, given its recent statehood.  The election of 1892 saw four candidates compete for electoral votes, and President Harrison ended up polling just over 50% of the Wyoming votes, with Populist James Weaver taking 46% of the Wyoming vote.  Amazingly, the remaining percentage of the vote seemingly went to John Bidwell of the Prohibition Party.  Cleveland's percentage of the Wyoming vote was infinitesimal.

 James Weaver

As surprising as this is, Wyoming was not unique in these regards.  Weaver polled so well in Colorado that he pulled out ahead of Harrison in that state and took that state's electoral votes.  He also one in Idaho, Nevada and North Dakota.  Cleveland was obviously very unpopular in the Rocky Mountain West in the 1892 election.  Indeed, Cleveland only took California and Texas in the West, and polled most strongly in the East and the South.  He polled particular well in the Deep South that year, although Weaver also, ironically, did well in the South.  Cleveland's status as a Democrat probably carried him in the South.

This probably is an interesting comment on both the evolution of political parties, and the make up of the Wyoming electorate at the time. Wyoming was a solidly Republican state then as now, but at that time the Republican Party was split between "progressive" and "conservative" factions.  While their fiscal policies significantly differed in general, the Democratic party had not yet started to have a significant populist branch.  The Democrats retained a very solid base in the South, were the party continued to favor the old Southern aristocracy.  The Republicans generally did well in the North and West.

This year, however, the factions that would eventually split the Republican Party wide open in the early 20th Century started to come to a head and a proto-progressive branch of the party started to emerge.  Interestingly, the Wyoming Republican Party apparently had a strong populist streak.  The strong polling by the Populists in the South reflected a split in that region in the Democratic Party, where the party was controlled by Southern aristocrats but had a large yeoman base.

In the following years Progressive and Populist branches of both parties would vie for control of the respective parties with William Jennings Bryan first making a serious run at converting the Democrats into a populist party and then the Republicans briefly becoming a progressive party during the Theodore Roosevelt years.  The Populist (or rather People's Party) would die after the election of the 1892 with a Progressive Party to emerge in 1912 very briefly.  The Progressive Party proved to be quite popular in  Wyoming when it briefly emerged, with Gov. Carey joining it during its brief existence.

1892  Henry A. Coffeen elected as Congerssman from Wyoming.

1892  John E. Osborne elected Governor.  Governor Osborne was a Democrat who was elected in the wake of the Johnson County War.

1893  Women granted the right to vote in Colorado.

1898  Battery A, Wyoming Light Artillery,  left San Francisco, CA, for Newport.and then on to the Philippines.  The battery arrived in Manila on December 7.

1901   Ben Kilpatrick, a Wild Bunch member, and, with Laura Bullion ({Della Rose"), a female associate of the gang, arrested in St. Louis.  He was carrying $7,000 in cash, a huge sum at the time, from a robbery but would not divulge the whereabouts of gang members.  Both were sentenced to prison.

1904  Theodore Roosevelt wins Presidential election.

1904  Bryant B. Brooks elected Governor.

1911  County attorney of Laramie County warned that all gambling must stop in the county.

1916   The Laramie Republican for November 8, 1916. Results Uncertain
 

The Laramie Republican, however, was only willing to go with "uncertain".

The Wyoming Tribune, the 3:30 edition. . not so sure now.

 

By 3:30 the Tribune was less certain, but still thought it was Hughes, probably.

And other news had crept back onto the front page.

Cheyenne State Leader for November 8, 1916. Getting the election right

 

The less dramatic leader, however, called the election correctly. 

 

The first edition of the Wyoming Tribune for November 8, 1916: HUGHES WINS
 

Except he didn't.  The Tribune had been hoping for Hughes. . . perhaps a little too much?

1921  Tuesday November 8, 1921. Dignatary.

Crow Chief Plenty Coups, (b circa 1908), a Crow leaders since 1876 when he was 28 years old, was back East in order to serve as the Native American representative at the upcoming dedication of the Tomb of the Unknowns.

 
Plenty Coups was a renowned Plains Indian figure and a significant Crow leader.  The last Crow chief to be elected by other chiefs, he foresaw the ultimate European American victory coming and allied his people with the United States. The alliance was a natural one in that the Crow were fighting to retain their lands in Montana and Wyoming from Sioux incursions.

A strong proponent of education, he remained a significant figure until his death in 1932.

1932     New York Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president over incumbent Herbert Hoover.

1932  Leslie A. Miller elected Governor.

 Governor Miller on left meets with the Secretary of Agriculture.

1942  Two United States Army Air Corp fighters conducted a demonstration over Lusk, with one of them being flown by a resident of Lusk, now in the USAAC.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1957  The Most Reverend Patrick A. McGovern, Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Cheyenne, dies after occupying his office for 39 years. Bishop McGovern had been an orphan and grew up in Omaha Nebraska. As Bishop of the Diocese of Cheyenne, he was active in his concern for the plight of Wyoming's orphans.

1960  John F. Kennedy was elected 35th President.  He did not, however, take Wyoming's vote.  Wyoming voters chose Richard Nixon that year, giving him 55% of the Wyoming vote.

1960  Jack R. Gage elected Governor.

1960  William Henry Harrison, great great grandson of President William Henry Harrison, and a lawyer from Sheridan, elected to the House of Representatives from Wyoming.  He had earlier served in that capacity from 1951 to 1955.  He was unusual that he had more than one interrupted periods of representation.

1984  The Lincoln County Courthouse was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

1988  George H. W. Bush elected President.

November 6

1813  Congress of Chilpancingo declares Mexico independent of Spain.

1860 Abraham Lincoln elected President.

Lincoln is obviously one of the most significant Presidents in United States history.  In terms of direct impact on Wyoming, it should be noted that the Homestead Act and the initiation of the transcontinental railroad occured during his administration, amongst many other significant events.

1868  Red Cloud's War ends by treaty, although it had really been over for some months.

1886  George W. Baxter took the oath of office after being appointed as the sixth territorial governor of Wyoming.

1888     Benjamin Harrison was elected President.

1889  Wyoming's constitution adopted. The Wyoming constitution is unusual for a state constitution in that it has survived, albeit with amendments, since adoption.  Most U.S. States have replaced their original state constitutions.  The constitution was the first of a U.S. State to provide for female suffrage in the constitution.

1890  The last troops stationed at Fr. Bridger depart.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1891  Vincent Michael Carter, U.S. Representative for Wyoming from 1929-1935, born in St. Clair, Pennsylvania.  He was a graduate of Catholic University and a World War One Marine Corps officer.  He set up his law practice in Casper Wyoming in 1919, and then relocated it to Kemmerer Wyoming prior to becoming the Rupublican Congressman from Wyoming in 1929.

1900 A terrible train wreck occurred near Tie Siding in Albany County.

1900     President William B. McKinley was returned to office, defeating Democrat William Jennings Bryan.  This go around Wyoming went with McKinley.  It's hard to say what caused Bryan to loose, when he'd done well before, in Wyoming, but it was also the case that Republican progressive Theodore Roosevelt, who was enormously popular in the West, was the the Vice Presidential candidate for the Republicans.  It would hav e been hard to find a figure more popular than Roosevelt at that time.  He's served as McKinley's Assistant Secretary of the Navy in McKinley's first term before resigning to serve as a volunteer cavalryman in the Spanish American War.

Theodore Roosevelt.

1906  Bryant B. Brooks elected Governor.  The Republican won in a four candidate race in which the Democrats were the major contenders, but the Populist People's Party and the Socialist Party also ran candidates, although they received very few votes.

1908  Robert LeRoy Parker, aka "Butch" Cassidy and Harry Alonzo Lonabaugh, aka "The Sundance Kid", are killed in a gun battle with Bolivian cavalry in San Vincete Boliva.  While Parker and Lonabaugh were regional criminals, they were headquartered in Johnson County's Hole In the Wall country for most of their US criminal career.

Harry Lonabaugh, seated, far left.  Robert LeRoy Parker, seated far right.

1916:   The Wyoming Tribune for November 6, 1916. The Nation's Hope, and Do You Want 5,000 Troops at Ft. Russell?
 

The Wyoming Tribune declared candidate Hughes the "nation's hope" the day prior to the General Election.  It also appealed to the business interest in Cheyenne, indicating that a vote for Hughes was a vote to put 5,000 troops at Ft. D. A. Russell, and their paychecks, of course, with them.

The Cheyenne State Leader for November 6, 1916
 

The day prior to the election readers of the leader had their attention directed to Mexico, including the war in Mexico and the relatively recent battle of Carrizal.

A late supposed scandal received attention from the paper as well, regarding a purchase of property by John B. Kendrick prior to his being Governor.  And, interestingly, the paper abbreviated the name of its base city as "Chian".

1918

Countdown on the Great War, November 6, 1918. Americans switch horses in the middle of the stream, Wyomingites vote to go dry, French and Americans take Sedan, the Kaiser urged to go.

1.  It happened the day prior, November 5, 1918, but on this day the news of the Republican landslide that swept the nation hit the press, including the Wyoming press, where GOP candidates swept the field.

The news was surprising in some ways.  Wilson had done nationally, as had the Democrats, in recent elections, following the Republican civil war that had caused the party to split.  But something about the war changed everything, as wars do, and even though Americans had solidly backed the war effort, or at least most Americans had, going into the peace they were rejecting the President and his party.

Even Robert Carey Jr. was benefiting from the Republican rise. Carey had been the subject of a lot of reporting in the Fall as Governor Houx had offered him the command of the Wyoming National Guard and he'd declined, and then belatedly accepted after that position had been filled (as it was, the Wyoming National Guard, like many Guard units, didn't not go to Europe as a single unit anyhow).  In an era in which people publicly shamed "shirkers" that Carey was able to politically survive this decision is really remarkable.  Indeed, as Carey was only forty years old in 1918, his declination is in fact somewhat inexcusable.  No matter, Houx went down in the election.

And this would matter in the upcoming effort to secure a peace. Wilson had outlined his vision in his Fourteen Points.  Would a GOP Congress support it?  As would be seen, it wouldn't.

And that wasn't the only big election news.

Wyomingites also voted to go dry, voting two to one in favor of the Constitutional amendment to bring in Prohibition.

2.  The leader of the Reichstag urged Kaiser Wilhelm II to abdicate, in favor of a new monarch, seeing the only alternative to be the success of a socialist revolution.

3.  The American and French armies took Sedan and the surrounding territory.  The French army too Rethel and Vervins. The Canadian army entered Belgium.  Foch assigns the American Army to advance into Lorraine.

4.  The Polish Soviet of Delegates, obviously styling themselves after the Soviets of the USSR, established the Provisional People's Government with Ignacy Daszynski as Prime Minister. As a body, it would exist only an additional week until it turned over its duties to Jozef Pilsudski, famous Polish revolutionary leader, who was newly freed from German imprisonment.  On the same day, polish peasants led by Communist Tomasz Dabal took control of Tarnobrzeg Galicia and proclaimed it an independent republic.

5. The Dutch cargo ship Bernisse struck a mine and sank.

6. The Kiel rebellion begins to spread wildly to various German cities. 

1919  November 6, 1919. Congress offers citizenship to Native American veterans.

American Indian soldier on sentry duty in Europe, World War One.

On this day in 1919 Congress passed legislation allowing the approximately 9,000 American Indians who served in the Armed Forces during World War One and who had obtained an honorable discharged to apply for citizenship.

BE IT ENACTED . . . that every American Indian who served in the Military or Naval Establishments of the United States during the war against the Imperial German Government, and who has received or who shall hereafter receive an honorable discharge, if not now a citizen and if he so desires, shall, on proof of such discharge and after proper identification before a court of competent jurisdiction, and without other examination except as prescribed by said court, be granted full citizenship with all the privileges pertaining thereto, without in any manner impairing or otherwise affecting the property rights, individuals or tribal, of any such Indian or his interest in tribal or other Indian property.

Few of them actually applied.

This is a bit of a confusing story in that some Indians already were citizens, and had been for decades, but the means by which they became citizens is not clear.  As a basic rule of thumb, Indians in the East tended to be regarded as citizens and this was all the more the case the greater their degree of assimilation.  Indians who came from reservations in the West were almost uniformly not American citizens.

This is one of those odd areas that tend to really shock people as the basic assumption is that American Indians were always citizens as they were Americans.  In fact, this wasn't the case and it still wasn't in 1919.  This gets into the topic of tribal sovereignty, which is somewhat complicated, but for our purposes here we'll simply note that on this date in 1919 Congress offered citizenship to those Indians who had served in the Great War and who wanted to apply for it. As noted, very few did.

Also on this day, Arthur Eddington made his presentation to the Royal Society and Royal Astronomical Society regarding his observations during a solar eclipse which confirmed Einstein's theories of special and general relativity.  Einstein would learn this while ill and bedridden due to wartime deprivation.  He was famous by the following day as a result of headlines around the world which announced the confirmation of his revolutionary theories.

Doc was seeking advice on whether to trade in a car or not. . . something that we're debating here a century later at the present time.

1920  U.S. Air Mail pilot John P. Woodward was killed when he flew into a snowstorm near Tie Siding, on his way from Utah to Cheyenne.  His plane crashed near Laramie, a few miles away.

The 26  year old Woodward was flying a DH4 when the crash killed him.  He as last sighted over Laramie itself.  In his honor, Woodward Field was named after him at 22nd West and North Temple in Salt Lake City, the city which he had last departed from at 11:30 that morning.  He was to have landed in Laramie at 3:00 and nearly in fact made it.

Woodard Field is now the Salt Lake International Airport.

1928     Republican Herbert Hoover was elected president over Democrat Alfred E. Smith.

 President Hoover

Hoover won by a landslide that year.  Wyoming was no exception, as Wyoming's voters gave Hoover 64% of the vote.

1928  Vincent Michael Carter elected Congressman from Wyoming on his birthday.

1930   J.B. Okie, a giant in the sheep industry, and a relocated wealthy Easterner, died while duck hunting near Lost Cabin, his Wyoming home.  Okie's life reads somewhat like a soap opera.  Economically, his small start in the sheep industry turned into a giant regional industry centered around Fremont and Natrona Counties, with a large headquarters in Lost Cabin, a railhead in Lysite and stores elsewhere.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1934  Joseph C. O'Mahoney elected to the Senate from Wyoming.  He was an incumbant as he was serving out the term of John B. Kendrick, who had died in office the prior year.  The Democrat held the office until 1953.

1934  Paul R. Greever elected to Congress from Wyoming.

Former Governor Nellie Tayloe Ross and Congressman Paul R. Greever at a Wyoming Day event.

1947  First broadcast of Meet The Press.

1956  President Eisenhower wins a second term in office.  Not surprisingly, Wyoming liked Ike for a second term.

1962  Milward Simpson elected Senator from Wyoming.

1962  Clifford Hanson elected Governor.

Hanson's election ended a period in which both of Wyoming's Senators were Democrats.

1981  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that a black footed ferret, an animal presumed extinct, had been discovered in Wyoming.

1990  Governor Michael Sullivan defeats contender Mary Mead in the Gubernatorial election.

2012  Election Day for 2012.  President Barack Obama reelected.  Wyoming's electoral vote went to challenger Mitt Romney.  Sitting Congresswoman Cynthia Lummis reelected, as was sitting Senator John Barasso.

2018   Mark Gordon elected Governor of Wyoming in an election that also saw Edward Buchanan elected as Secretary of State and Melissa Racines elected as Auditor.  Senator Barrasso and Congressman Cheney were reelected to their offices.

November 4

1804  Lewis and Clark record in their journal that Sacagawea was the wife of Toussaint Charbonneau.  In fact, she was one of two wives that Charbonneau had married either at the same time or close in time, with both of them being in their mid teens at the time.  He'd marry three more times during his life, with his last marriage coming at age 70. All of his wives were Native Americans and none of them were older than sixteen years old at the time of the marriage.

1835  Texas forces defeat Mexican forces at the Battle of Lipantitlán in San Patricio County.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1856  The Mormon Martin's Handcart Company, attempting a late crossing of the Oregon Trail, and having run into trouble with the weather, seeks shelter in the Martin's Cove area near Independence Rock, along with a rescue party having sent to find them.  They had not embarked on their efforts until August 27, making an attempt to cross extraordinary late in the year.

1856  James Buchanan was elected US president.

1868  Red Cloud arrived at Ft. Laramie to execute a treaty that gave him victory in Red Cloud's War.  The treaty had been negotiated that prior April.

1879. Will Rogers was born in Oologah, Okla.  Sometimes forgotten, Rogers' career as a humorist and political commentator commenced when he started doing a monologue while doing rope tricks.  He was, at first, a cowboy and trick roper.

1884 Grover Cleveland elected President.

1889  A meeting regarding the ratification of Wyoming's Constitution was held in Rawlins.

1924 Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming was elected the nation's first woman governor, when she was elected in a special election to fill the term of her late husband, who had been governor. She would serve until 1927, when she would leave office after having narrowly lost the 1926 election. She refused to campaign in either election, but remained popular nonetheless. Her 1926 loss is likely attributable to her refusal to campaign, which her opponent did do, and her strong support for Prohibition. She would later serve in Franklin Roosevelt's administration and Truman administration as the head of the United States Mint.

 

1924  Calvin Coolidge elected President.

Coolidge took 52% of the Wyoming vote, but showing a strong remaining progressive/populist streak, Robert LaFollette of the Progressive Party took second place with 32%.  The Democratic candidate, the forgotten John Davis, took the balance.

1930  The USS Wyoming became the flagship of Rear Admiral Harley H. Christy, Commander Training Squadron, Scouting Fleet.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1952     Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower elected president.

The popular Eisenhower took 63% of the Wyoming vote.

1952  Frank A. Barrett, Republican from Lusk, was elected to the Senate.

 

The Republican Barrett concluded a term of Governor upon his election and he had been a Congressman from Wyoming previously.

1980  Ronald Reagan elected President.

Reagan took 63% of the Wyoming vote.  Third party candidate Anderson took 7% and the balance went to the unpopular incumbent Jimmy Carter.

2008  Barack Obama elected President.

John McCain took 65% of the Wyoming vote.

2008  Cynthia Lummis elected to Congress from Wyoming.

October 24

1859  Residents of what are now parts of Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska and Kansas voted to form the Territory of Jefferson.  The extralegal putative territory would have included some of Wyoming, but also would have included parts of what are now the neighboring states including nearly all of Colorado.  It was never afforded recognition by the United States although, amazingly, it did elect a government and legislature.  Admission of Kansas, and more particularly Colorado, into the Union ended it.

1861 The first transcontinental telegraph message was sent from California to President Abraham Lincoln.

1861  The Pony Express was terminated.

Contrary to widespread popular belief, they weren't all orphans. Nor were they all young, as at least one rider was in his 40s.

The hard riding part, however, is correct.

1861 West Virginia seceded from Virginia.  This rather obviously has nothing directly to do with the history of Wyoming, but it's included here to note what was otherwise going on, on this momentous day in 1861.  The Pony Express ended, cross continental telegraph communications began, and the Civil War was ripping the country apart.  In some ways, the closer future and the disparate present was particularly prominent on this day.

1877  Famous suffragette Susan B. Anthony visited Cheyenne.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1902  A jury, having gone out the day before for deliberation, found Tom Horn guilty of the murder of Willie Nickell.

1929 Black Thursday—the first day of the stock market crash which began the Great Depression.  A significant recession, however, had been going on in Wyoming, following the economic declines following World War One, in Wyoming since 1919.

1939. Nylon stockings sold publicly for the first time.

1940 The 40-hour work week went into effect in the United States under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Interesting to note that this happened right before WWII, which would temporarily suspend it.

1969  Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, released.

The iconic Western movie, of course.

It's a movie that I haven't reviewed yet (I guess this will have to suffice for the review), in spite of an effort here to catch movies of interest that are "period pieces", if you will, which all non fantasy movies set in the past are.

The 1969 movie is one of the best loved and best remembered western movies.  It took a much different tone in regard to Western criminals than the other major Western of the same year, The Wild Bunch.  I frankly prefer The Wild Bunch, which as I earlier noted is a guilty pleasure of mine, but I love this film as well.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is a romanticized and fictionalized version of the story of the two Wyoming centered Western criminals who ranged over the entire state and into the neighboring ones.  In the film, which is set in the very early 1900s before they fled to Boliva, and which follows them into Bolivia, the two, portrayed by film giants Paul Newman (Butch) and Robert Redford (Cassidy), come across as lovable rogues, and barely rogues at that.  The film had a major impact at the box office and came in an era in which the frequently predicted "end of the Western movies" had already come.

The Hole In The Wall Gang, lead by (Robert LeRoy Parker) Butch Cassidy, far right, and Harry Lonabaugh (the Sundance Kid). This photograph was a stupid move and lead to their downfall.

So how accurate is it?

Well, pretty mixed.

Even the Pinkerton Detective Agency allows that they are the two romanticized Western criminals, and there are quite a few romanticized Western criminals, are closest to their public image. They were intelligent men and got away with their depredations in part as there were locals who liked them well enough not to cooperate with authorities, although that was also true of much less likable Western criminals.  And the vast majority of characters in the film represent real figures who filled the roles that they are portrayed as having in the film.  So in that sense, its surprisingly accurate.

Where it really fails, of course, is in glossing over the fact that they were in fact violent criminals.  And as outlaws their history is both violent and odd for the era.  The Wild Bunch, the criminal gang with which they are most associated, was extremely loosely created, and people came and went, rather than there being just one single group of outlaws.  The Wild Bunch itself generally took refuge, when it needed to, in Johnson County's Hole in the Wall region (their cabin exists to this day) and perhaps because of this or because of several of them being associated with the Bassett sisters, the daughters of a local small rancher, their activities oddly crossed back and forth between pure criminality and association with the small rancher side of the conflict that lead to the Johnson County War.  This latter fact, once again, may have contributed to their image as lovable criminals, even though they themselves were not in the category of individuals like Nate Champion who were actual small cattlemen who were branded as criminals by larger cattle interest. The gang was, rather, made up of actual criminals.

So the depiction of them simply attacking the evil (in the film) Union Pacific is off the mark. They were thieves.  Just less despicable thieves than most.

They did go to Bolivia and their lives did end there, according to the best evidence.  The film accurately portrays their demise coming in the South American country even if it grossly exaggerates that end, persistent rumors of at least Butch's survival aside.

Material detail wise the film is so so.  This late 1960s movie came at a time at which a high degree in material details, a bar set by Lonesome Dove, hadn't yet arrived, so the appearance of things reflects the movie styles of the late 1960s more than the actual appearance of things in the early 1900s.  Arms, however, are correct as in this movie making era the tendency to try to stand out by showing unique items in use hadn't arrived.

All things being considered, it is a great Western and well worth seeing.  It belied the belief that the era of Westerns was over, and in some ways it recalls earlier sweet treatment of Western criminals who were supposed to be just wild boys at heart.  Nobody gets killed in the film until Butch and Sundance do at the bitter end, which contributes to that.  In reality, The Wild Bunch is likely a more realistic portray of Western criminals, but this is a great film.

1989   Brooklyn Lake Lodge added to the National Register of Historic Places.  Attribution:  On This Day.

2008  "Bloody Friday" saw many of the world's stock exchanges experience the worst declines in their history.

2014   Long time Wyoming Federal Judge Clarence Brimmer passed away.

Judge Brimmer was a Rawlins native who went on to law school following World War Two, during which he had entered the Army Air Corps late war.  He served as the Attorney General for the State of Wyoming in the early 1970s and then was briefly U.S. Attorney for Wyoming before being appointed to the Federal bench in 1975 by Gerald Ford..

October 18

1854 Reciprocity Treaty between the US and Canada comes into effect.

1868 Vigilantes hanged three members of the Asa Moore Gang in Bosler, where some of the gang members owned a bar. One of the gang members, Big Steve Long, asked to leave his boots on, stating:  "My mother always said I'd die with my boots on".  He was lynched with his boots off.

1871  A gunpowder explosion on the Colorado Central saw 600 kegs of powder explode, but with no injuries.

1919  Robert Russin's statute of Lincoln on the Interstate Highway between Laramie and Cheyenne dedicated.  That route was part of the Lincoln Highway at the time, hence the dedication.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1929   The Historical Landmark Commission of Wyoming set up an advisory committee to explore acquiring  the grounds of Ft. Laramie. Attribution:  On This Day.

1931  A Pony Express Historical marker was dedicated at Independence Rock.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1969  The football game between the University of Wyoming and BYU that sparked the protest of the Black 14 occurred.  Wyoming won the game.

1973  Thursday, October 18, 1973. Creeping embargo.

The IDF recrossing the Suez Canal.  The artillery pieces are M107's, a heavy US artillery piece much loved by the IDF. Amos1947, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Saudi Arabia cut its oil production by 10% and threatened to halt all of its oil shipments to the United States unless the US halt aid to Israel.  The United Arab Emirates completely stopped shipments to the U.S.

1984  A 5.5 earthquake occurred about 50 miles from Casper, WY.

1989  The Contract to build  SSBN 742, an Ohio Class nuclear submarine, was awarded to General Dynamic's Electric Boat Division.

October 15

1887  Mail service discontinued between South Pass City and Lander.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1919  October 15, 1919. Airplane Mania

The 1919 Air Derby was still on and Lt. Maynard, who had one the transcontinental one way contest, was flying back across the United States to the east to hero's accolades.

And, as has been seen from other recent issues of these century old papers, the flying mania was spreading.  Just a few days ago a couple of papers were making deliveries to their outlying subscribers by airplane.  Today the Mrs. Mildred Chaplin, nee Harris, was in the news concerning an airborne event.

Harris in 1919

Harris was a Cheyenne native and at this point, one year into her marriage with Chaplin, was already separated from him or about to be, in spite of Harris' determination to save the marriage.

The marriage would end in 1920.  The whole affair provides an interesting insight into how certain news regarding celebrities varies from era to era, as the entire matter was really fairly scandalous.  Harris and Chaplin met when Harris was only 16 years old and at the time of their marriage she was just 17 and likely thought to be pregnant or she believed she was.  They would subsequently have a baby in 1919 who died after only three days of life and the marriage fell rapidly apart.  Harris had, overall, a tragic life, dying at age 42.

The entire event has the taint of scandal attached to it.  Chaplin was 35 yeas old, twenty years older than Harris, when the affair commenced with the teenage actress he'd met at a party.  The clearly involved a relationship that would have constituted statutory rape and which today would result in the end of Chaplin's career. At the time, and for decades thereafter, the marriage of couples in that situation precluded prosecution as married couples may not testify against each other, but perhaps the more significant aspect of the story to us in 2019 is that the marriage didn't result in an outcry, which it most definitely would now.  Instead it was celebrated and in Cheyenne it was certainly such.

The taint of scandal, or the presumption that there would have been one, is all the more the case as Chaplin's next wife, Lillita McMurry, was 16 years old when he started dating her at age 36.  That marriage would not last, and he'd next marry Paulette Goddard when he was in her early 20s. Goddard was the only one of Chaplin's four wives who was legally an adult at the time they started their relationship. That marriage didn't last, and he next met, romanced and married Oona O'Neil, who was 17 years old at the time. They married when she was 18 and he was 54, and remained married until his death at age 73.  With all that, Chaplin is still celebrated as a comedic genius (I really don't see it myself) and is widely admired, which would certainly note be the case today.

All of that, however, may simply be evidence how people are seemingly willing to allow teenage girls in particular to be exposed to creepy stuff on the presumption that it'll advance their careers.  In the 20th Century this continued on with actresses for ever, even featuring as a side story in the novel The Godfather (and briefly alluded to in the film).  It likely continued on until the modern "Me Too" movement, and can be argued to have spread into sports.

At the same time, hope that the Reds might fall in Russia was rising.

While in the US, fears over coal supplies, which were critical to industry and for that matter home heating, were rising.

1943  The Cheyenne chapter of American War Dads founded.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1962  Construction firm  Morrison-Knudsen won a contract to construct 200 Minuteman silos over an 8,300-square-mile area of Wyoming, Nebraska, and Colorado.

1966 Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area was established by Congress. Attribution:  On This Day.

1966  South Pass was added to the National Registry of Historic Places.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1984  Queen Elizabeth II visited her cousins, the Wallops, on their ranch in Sheridan.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1991  Verda James dies at the age of 90.  She was the first female Speaker of the House in Wyoming's legislature. James was born in Ontario and grew up in Iowa.  She was an educator by profession and served in the Legislature from 1954 to 1970.  An elementary school in Casper, where she resided, is named after her.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

2004   A Federal Court rejected President Clinton's 2001 ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks.  Attribution:  On This Day.

2015:  Lois Layton, a well known Wyoming bird conservationist, passed away on October 15 at the age of 92.

Layton grew up on a ranch in Oklahoma and took a strong interest in nature. After moving to Casper in the 1950s, originally just a stop on her way to Alaska, she ultimately married and founded an institution dedicated to restoring injured birds, often raptors, to the wild.

September 16

1620  September 16, 1620. The day the "Pilgrims" . . .

 set sail for the New World.

It was at sea for ten weeks, putting in near Cape Cod on November 11, 1620.

1810  Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costillo and several hundred of his parishioners seized the prison at Dolores, Mexico marking the beginning of the first significant Mexican rebellion against Spain.

1811 The  Astorians renamed Seeds-Kee-Dee-Agie (Praire Hen River) the Spanish River.  It would later be renamed the Green River. 

1875  J. C. Penney Jr, founder of J. C. Penny's, which first opened its doors in Kemmerer, born in Hamilton Missouri.

1920  While it didn't occur in Wyoming, and event which impacted the entire nation:

September 16, 1920. The Wall Street Bombing.

On this day, at 12:01 p.m., terrorist widely believed to be Galleanist anarchists, set off a bomb in New York's Wall Street district which killed thirty-eight people and injured hundreds more.

The bomb, designed to deploy shrapnel, killed mostly young workers in the district at a time at which young workers were very young.  It was left in a horse drawn wagon, with horse still attached, and went off at the busy noon hour.

The direct perpetrators of the act were never discovered.

On the same day, a Polish artillery regiment was destroyed, with some prisoners and wounded, by a Red Army cavalry unit that outnumbered it after it expended all of its ammunition during the Battle of Dytiatyn.  The Red Army unit was itself destroyed by Polish forces a few days latter.

The battle became a famous one for the Poles who established a military cemetery there.  That was later destroyed by the Soviets following World War Two and the location is now inside of Ukraine.

1924  A coal mine explosion at Kemmerer kills 55.

1940 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Selective Training and Service Act, which set up the first peacetime military draft in U.S. history.

1940 President Franklin Roosevelt orders the Army to begin mobilizing the entire National Guard for one year’s training. The National Guard's horsed cavalry regiments, would go into Federal service for the last time. Horse mechanized units, such as Wyoming's 115th Cavalry Regiment (Horse-Mechanized) would go into service for the first and last time.

More on the last two items:

Today In Wyoming's History: September 16, 1940. Conscription starts and the National Guard mobilized.

Some of those conscripted men in 1945.

On this day in 1940, a couple of monumental events occurred in the history of the US and the state. These were:

Today In Wyoming's History: September 16: 1940 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Selective Training and Service Act, which set up the first peacetime military draft in U.S. history.

1940 President Franklin Roosevelt orders the Army to begin mobilizing the entire National Guard for one year’s training. The National Guard's horsed cavalry regiments, would go into Federal service for the last time. Horse mechanized units, such as Wyoming's 115th Cavalry Regiment (Horse-Mechanized) would go into service for the first and last time.

The story is always told a little inaccurately, and even the way we posted it on our companion blog slightly is.  The 1940 Selective Training and Service Act, reviving a conscription process started during World War One, was the first "peacetime draft" only if we omit the story of state mandatory military service which had existed from the earliest colonial times (recognizing the colonies as precursors to the state) up until after the Civil War, when it petered out.  Indeed, this history is why the National Guard, not the Army or Navy, is the senior service, dating back to December 13, 1636.  People didn't "join" the militia, they, or rather men, were compelled to be in the militia.  Only when the Frontier period caused populations to be so transient did this really change and even today many states define all men of sixteen years to sixty to be in the militia.

But Federal conscription itself was an anomaly and had only existed twice before, once during the Civil War and then again during World War One.  It had never been in existence in peacetime. And for that matter, hardly any Americans in 1940 had a living memory of mandatory militia duty, although there would have been those had been alive when it still existed.

Also of huge significance was the mobilization of the National Guard.

The mobilization of the Guard in 1940 is well known, but underappreciated.  The U.S. Army would have been incapable of fighting World War One or World War Two without the National Guard. During the Great War the reorganized Guard, reorganized as its state determined peacetime branches did not all comport with the Army's needs for a largescale European war, constituted a large percentage of the actual fighting force throughout the war.  It's peacetime establishment was reorganized again in the 1920s to match needs upon mobilization and accordingly many of the Army units that fought in the Army's early campaigns, all the way into 1943, were made up of Guard units.  Indeed, to at least some extent the Army simply used up Guard units until it could deploy newly trained men.

The significant story of the National Guard in both world wars was downplayed by the Army as, in spite of its absolute reliance on the Guard, the Regular Army always looked down on it in this period and tended to ignore its contributions.  Those contributions were enormous, and the Army's treatment of the National Guard's history unfair, and the wartime treatment of its officers shameful.

Conscription would soon start a labor shortly and ultimately start a series of social crises, conflicts and changes that permanently changed the United States and its culture.  One year of service, as had originally been passed into law, would not have done that, but when that service extended into years and ultimately into the largest war fought in modern times, it certainly did.  World War One, coming in an era of more privative transpiration, even though it was only twenty years prior, had not resulted in the transcontinental mixing of races and cultures the way World War Two did, and of course the Great War was shorter.  Those conflicts certain arose, but many of them arose afterwards, as reflected in the Red Summer of 1919.  The Great War changed the country as well but those changes really bloomed during World War Two, for lasting good and lasting ill.  The Civil Rights movement that started with the integration of the Armed Forces in 1948 really had its roots in the war during which there was a lot of dissatisfaction on the part of segregated blacks in regard to segregation, both in the military and in society itself. By wars end that segregation was going to be on the way out, even if that wasn't appreciated at the time.

The war also started the process of dismantling the strong ethnic neighborhoods in the country's majority white population and to at least some degree turned the temperature up on the melting pot.  At the same time, the war encouraged a period of loose morals that would begin to reflect back on the country after the war, really starting off when Hugh Hefner took the wartime image of the town girl that had adorned American bomber after bomber and put her in glossy centerfolds.  Much of what the war brought is still being sorted out, and the full impact of it will likely take another half century or more to really appreciate.

And that process, for the United States, began today, eighty years ago.

1947  BB-32, the USS Wyoming, stricken from the Navy rolls.

1950  War Memorial Stadium opened.   Attribution:  On This Day.

1988 Casper native Tom Browning, Cincinnati Reds pitcher, pitched a perfect game against the Los Angeles Dodgers.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.