October 29

 Today is National Cat Day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  

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

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

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

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

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

1950  A significant snowstorm struck northern Wyoming.

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

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

October 21

1803  The Senate authorized President Jefferson to take possession of the Louisiana Territory and establish a temporary military government for the territory.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1822  The first chartered bank west of the Mississippi, and the first in territory that included a part of Wyoming, was established inn San Antonio, Texas by Mexican Governor José Félix Trespalacios. Attribution:  On This Day.

1866 Fort Philip Kearny completed.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1872  Construction at the Territorial Prison in Laramie completed.

1873  Wyoming, Iowa, incorporated.

1909  The cornerstone for Jireh College, in Jireh was laid. Jireh College was a Protestant College that no longer exists.  The town likewise no longer exists.  It's history was relatively short, but it featured a combined effort to create a Christian school with a farming community.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1941  It was reported on this day that 53 Wyoming public school teachers were called to military service, a significant number given the population of the state.  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1995  State hit by a statewide blizzard.

October 19

1848  John Fremont moved out from near Westport, Missouri, on his fourth Western expedition.

1867  Ft. Caspar, Wyoming abandoned.  It would be subsequently burned by the Indians. Attribution:  On This Day.

1890   Troop A, 1^st Cavalry Rgt, relieved from assignment to Yellowstone National Park  The Army patrolled the park until 1915.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1915  US recognized General Venustiano Carranza as the president of Mexico, and imposed an embargo on the shipment of arms to all Mexican territories except those controlled by Carranza.  Ironically, Carranza, who was a strongly leftist political theorist, held the US in disdain.

1918  Countdown on the Great War: October 19, 1918. Empires and monarchies of all types continue to fall apart, the Allies continue to advance, the German Navy continues to sink ships, and the Flu remains uncontained.

1. The Allies captured Bruges, Courtrai, and Zeebrugge, Belgium.  In the process, 12,000 Germans surrendered.  The Belgian Army engaged in the last cavalry charge of World War One when the Guides Regiment successfully charged at the Burkel Forest.

2.  The Portuguese sailing ship Aida sunk by a German U-boat. The British ships Almerian and the HMS Plumpton struck mines, sinking the Almerian and damaging the Plumpton. The German submarine UB-123 also hit a mine in the North Sea and went down with all hands.

3. The West Ukrainian People's Republic was established in the Ukrainian provinces of the Austro Hungarian Empire.

4.  A flu hospital was established in Casper.

5.  Old allegiances of all types were seemingly being modified everywhere.  Icelanders voted overwhelmingly for becoming a separate kingdom with the Danish king as their sovereign.

1944  A bomber from the Casper Air Base crashed killing three crewmembers.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1951     Harry S. Truman signed an act formally ending the state of war with Germany.

1973  Friday, October 19, 1973. The Oil Embargo spreads.

Libya announced that it would completely halt oil exports to the United States.  The U.S. Federal Reserve regards this as the beginning of the full Arab Oil Embargo.

President Nixon rejected the Appeals Court decision that he turn over tapes to Federal investigators.  Instead, he proposed to have them transcribed, and then reviewed by Democratic Senator John C. Stennis.  Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox rejected the offer and resigned the following day.

Solutions for the Yom Kippur War were being discussed on an international level.

1996  A 4.2 earthquake occurred 85 miles from Gillette.  Attribution:  On This Day.

October 16

Today is National Boss's Day.

1889  Emma Howell Knight, future dean of women at the University of Wyoming and Wilbur Clinton Knight, future UW professor of mining and metallurgy, and the future parents of future legendary UW Geology Professor Samuel Howell “Doc” Knight, married in Omaha, Nebraska.

1909  Following on his success of the prior month, August Malchow fought again at the Methany Hall in Thermopolis, defeating challenger Johnny Gilsey in a draw.

1912  Clifford Hansen was born in Zenith Wyoming.  The Teton County rancher was Governor from 1963 to 1967 and then Senator from 1967 to 1978.

1916  Cavalry withdrawn from Yellowstone National Park.  Attribution:  On This Day.

 Cavalry in Yellowstone, 1903.

Cavalry escorting President Arthur in Yellowstone, 1883.

1916The Wyoming Tribune for October 16, 1916: Carranza's family in flight. . . or were they?
 

Readers if the always sensational Wyoming Tribune learned, in the afternoon Monday edition, that the family of Carranza was in flight, suggesting he was about to fall from power.

Well, he wasn't.  He'd remain firmly in power, and in fact at that time was working on his proposals for a new Mexican constitution.  Readers of the Tribune, however, were probably pretty worried.

On other matters, Charles E. Hughes declared himself to be a man of peace, and the Wilson Administration denied that the US was somehow responsible for the execution of Roger Casement, who was sentenced due to his role in the recent Irish Nationalist's uprising against the United Kingdom.

1918  Countdown on the Great War, October 16, 1918. British advance everywhere, Dumas struck by lightening, the Kaiser abdicates?, Flu advances.

The front as to Belgium and part of France, October 16, 1918.

1.  The British crossed the Lys.

2.  The British occupied Homs, Lebanon.

3.  The Allies took Durres, Albania.

4.  German submarines sunk the cargo ships Pentwyn and War Council while the British sunk the German submarine UB 90.  The American SS Dumaru, nearly new wooden steamship, was struck by lightening off of Guam and her cargo of munitions caught fire.  Her crew evacuated two two lifeboats and a raft, with the five passengers of the raft being rescued several days later.  One lifeboat drifted to the Philippines over a course of three weeks. The other badly provisioned lifeboat had to resort to cannibalism of the dead in order for the survivors to live.

SS Dumaru

5.  Wild rumors of the Kaiser abdicating and Germany capitulating were starting to circulate.

6.  The Flu Epidemic was undeniable.

The Cheyenne State Leader was correct in this assessment of the Spanish Flu.

Hmmm, do these two newspapers seem rather similar?  Must have been a morning and evening edition of the same newspaper.  Both were reporting that the Flu Epidemic had become just that in the state.

1919  October 16, 1919. The Air Derby's Toll

Air racers continued to pass through Cheyenne, but not all of them were making it out of the state alive.

This demonstrates the different calculations of risk in different eras.  In the current era, any event with this sort of mortality rate would be shut down..  In 1919, even the government, which was losing flyers right and left in the Air Derby, wasn't inclined to do that.

Meanwhile, the Reds in Russia were reported to be on the edge of collapse, and in the U.S., there were fears of a Red uprising.  Neither would prove to be correct.

1940  "R Day", the deadline for all men aged 21 to 36 years old to register for conscription.

1993  Lusk becomes the first town in the United States to have a community wide fiber optic telephone system.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

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.

October 10

1872  The newspaper the "Evanston Age" established in Uinta County. Attribution:  On This Day.

1877  A West Point funeral was held for George A. Custer.

1890  A mine explosion at Almy kills one. Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1902  Tom Horn tried for the murder of Willie Nickell.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1916   Douglas Enterprise for October 10, 1916. A letter from a Guardsman
 

1919  October 10, 1919. The Air Race

The 1919 Air Derby was the big news, already displacing the Red Sox's victory over what would become to be known as the Black Sox in the 1919 World Series.

The race in Wyoming, however, was marred by the news that a pilot had gone down near Elk Mountain, or more accurately sought of Elk Mountain over Oberg Pass.

The aviators were actually flying near Coad Peak, but the result was just as deadly.

Death would also be visiting a 16 year old in the state. . sentenced for murder.

And Casper was getting into the aviation world as well with plans to become the aviation center of the state.

It would in fact achieve that goal, but not for some years.  Cheyenne, in fact, would become that first, and then lose that position given its close proximity, in air miles, to Denver.

Naval base, Hampton Roads, Virginia.  October 10, 1919.

1922:   Lowell O'Bryan Memorial, University of Wyoming, Laramie Wyoming.
 

This is the monument to Lowell O'Bryan at the University of Wyoming.  O'Bryan was a University of Wyoming student who was topping off horses that were to be used in a celebration to greet incoming University President Arthur G. Crane when one of the horses broke and headed towards a fence and a group of students.  O'Bryan, an experienced rider, went to dismount the horse and turn it while it was breaking, which was experienced at doing, but the saddle slipped and he was thrown under the horse, receiving fatal injuries as a result.  O'Bryan's 1922 death was memorialized by this feature, which is a drinking fountain of an unusual design.

O'Bryan might also be commemorated in the murals that were formerly in the student lounge and which are now in the west ballroom of the Student Union, although that is not clear.  Several different figures in the murals may depict O'Bryan.

The lamps shown here are near the fountain are not part of its design, but rather were placed in that location in front of Old Main in 1911.

1926  This photo of a wrecker recovering a wrecked car taken.
1992  A 4.0 earthquake occurred outside of Riverton.

October 7

1759  Comanches ( branch of the Shoshone tribe), Yaceales, and Tawakonis, defeated a Spanish force under Diego Ortiz Parilla on the Red River in Texas.  As previously noted, part of Wyoming was in the Spanish, and then Mexican, colonial administration that became Texas.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1857  Ft. Bridger torched by Mormon forces during the Mormon War.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1885  Those arrested for the Rock Springs riots were released.

1916   The Wyoming Tribune for October 7, 1916: Boston takes game one of the world series

Note, this is the 3:30 pm edition of the Tribune.

1917   The Cheyenne State Leader for Sunday, October 9, 1917.
 

Cheyenne turned its focus to central Wyoming oil.  The issue speaks for itself, and foreshadowed the future at that.

1917   Poster Saturday: 1917 World Series
 

Game Two of the 1917 World Series was played on this day in 1917:  The result was: the New York Giants 2 and the Chicago White Sox 7.  That put the Sox up two as they'd won the day prior 2 to 1.

1918

Countdown on the Great War: October 7, 1918.

1.  The Regency Council of Poland, a temporary council appointed by the Central Powers in support of their claim to create an independent Polish monarchy post war, declared Poland independent of Germany.  Handwriting on the wall?

2.  The Red Army captured Samara, a city on the Volga that in modern times has had a significant role in the Soviet then the Russian space program.

3.  Brigadier General Edward Sigerfoos became the only American general to be killed in action during World War One, although his promotion by a Congress unaware of his death was actually on October 10.  He had just assumed command of a brigade in the 28th Division an hour prior when he was mortally wounded on September 29.

4.  The same day Gen. Doyan of the Marine Corps, stationed to a training role in the United Stated, died of the Spanish Flu.

5. The flu was hitting the front pages of the Wyoming papers:

It was reported in Cheyenne that 285 cases of the Spanish Flu had been reported in Wyoming.

And in Casper "health authorities" were considering closing the schools.

1919  (Posted for 1919 Air Derby):  October 7, 1919. The White Sox Rally?

The Sox suddenly were back in the game on this October 7, 1919 game of the World Series.

Dicky Kerr was pitching again, the Sox's did well in a ten inning game.

On this same day, news hit the state of the impending start of a bit air race scheduled for this very week.  The race was sponsored by the Army Air Corps and was scheduled to commence on October 8.

In other news, the Germans, whom had been kept at first in the Baltic states by the Allies, but who had become very involved in the conflicts there, were being invited to leave.  And a terrible flood hit a small town in Colorado.

Cardinal Mercier continued his tour of Belgium, raising funds for the restoration of the Library at Leuven.  On this day, he spoke at Columbia.

In Czechoslovakia, the parliament was in session.

1935  United Airlines Trip 4 crashed outside of Cheyenne killing all 12 persons on board.

1941  Bandleader and Army Air Corps officer Glenn Miller donated 50 records to Ft. F. E. Warren.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1949   Ft. Francis E. Warren renamed Francis E. Warren Air Force Base with the USAF now having been established as a separate service.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1998  Matthew Shepard was found beaten, burned and tied to a wooden fence outside of Laramie.  He died several days later.  His murder by two young Laramie men became the most infamous murder in Wyoming since the 1970s.

2015  

 Rainy Day in Cheyenne.

Yesterday Governor Mead announced that he intends to trim $200,000,000 from next year's budget.  That's $200,000,000 from a $9,300,000,000 budget, so while its a decline, it's still not a decline that even takes a billion out of the budget.  It's also, it should be noted, a budget that reflects revenue from more than one source.  I.e., not just coal and oil.

But those coal and oil revenues are dropping, and the budgetary chickens are starting to come home to roost.

What will be trimmed hasn't really been announced yet, although there's some concern that the University of Wyoming will be among the state institutions hit. And it unfortunately comes at a time when a judiciary study shows that several Wyoming judicial districts could really use additional judges.

Even now I find some people in denial about the slow down having an impact, and I will say that in some cities around the state it seems construction is still going on like mad.  But certain signals are hard to ignore.