New electronic archive:
How To Use This Site
How To Use This Site
This blog was updated on a daily basis for about two years, with those daily entries ceasing on December 31, 2013. The blog is still active, however, and we hope that people stopping in, who find something lacking, will add to the daily entries.
The blog still receives new posts as well, but now it receives them on items of Wyoming history. That has always been a feature of the blog, but Wyoming's history is rich and there are many items that are not fully covered here, if covered at all. Over time, we hope to remedy that.
You can obtain an entire month's listings by hitting on the appropriate month below, or an individual day by hitting on that calendar date. Use 2013 for the search date, as that's the day regular dates were established and fixed.
We hope you enjoy this site.
Tuesday, November 21, 2023
Monday, October 16, 2023
Towns and Nature: Chugwater, WY: Lost/CB&Q Depot and Three Wood Grai...
Thursday, September 21, 2023
Sunday, August 6, 2023
Towns and Nature: Gillette, WY: 1907 CB&Q Roundhouse and Water Tower
Sunday, July 23, 2023
Railhead: Rail Features. Thyra Thompson Building, Casper Wyoming.
Rail Features. Thyra Thompson Building, Casper Wyoming.
The building is built right over what had been the Great Northwest rail yard in Casper, which was still an active, although not too active, rail yard into my teens. I can't really recall when they abandoned the line, but it was abandoned.
Monday, June 5, 2023
Painted Bricks: Tumble Inn, Powder River, Wyoming.
Tumble Inn, Powder River, Wyoming.
As this institution is in the news, and as I knew I'd taken these photographs, I looked to see if I had posted them.
Of course, I had not.
The Tumble Inn was a famous eatery and watering hole in the small town of Powder River for decades. As odd as it seems now, particularly as it would have been practically impossible to leave the establishment without having had at least a couple of beers, it was very popular for travelers and people in Casper, who'd drive the nearly 30 miles for dinner and then drive back.
Open well into the unincorporated town's decline, in its final years the restaurant, which had rattlesnake and Rocky Mountain Oysters on the menu, closed under new ownership and in its final stage was an alcohol-free strip club. Apparently it recent sold and the new owner has taken down its famous sign in an effort to preserve it.
On that sign, I don't know how old it is, but from the appearances, it dates from the 40s or 50s.
The recent news article:
Powder River’s Iconic Tumble Inn Neon Cowboy Hasn’t Blown Over, It’s Being Restored
Sunday, June 12, 2022
Friday, May 20, 2022
Tuesday, December 14, 2021
Wyoming Fact & Fiction - Neil A. Waring: Wyoming and the Old West
Saturday, December 4, 2021
Lex Anteinternet: Geography, Native Ameicans, Women, French, and Fem...
Saturday, October 23, 2021
Railhead: South Torrington Railroad Station, Torrington Wyoming (Homesteader's Museum).
South Torrington Railroad Station, Torrington Wyoming (Homesteader's Museum).
Above is a fisheye view of the South Torrington Railroad Station. I used this view as its a long station, and to get the entire station in otherwise I would have had to walk across the highway, which was busy.
Wednesday, October 6, 2021
The Aerodrome: Delta receives a subsidty to continue serving the Natrona County International Airport.
Monday, August 2, 2021
Friday, June 18, 2021
Lex Anteinternet: Juneteenth. What the new Federal Holiday Commemorates
Juneteenth. What the new Federal Holiday Commemorates
Today is a Federal Holiday. And for the first time.
The holiday is Juneteenth.
The creation of the holiday is certainly proof that the Federal Government can in fact act quickly. The bills on this were very recently introduced and this just passed Congress earlier this week and was signed into law yesterday, giving Federal employees the day off today. On Monday, they weren't expecting a day off.
So what is it?
The day basically celebrates the end of slavery, but in a bit of an unusual way. The Emancipation Proclamation was issued on September 22, 1862. Juneteenth, however, marks the calendar date of June 19, 1865, when Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, after the end of the war, and issued proclamations voiding acts of the Texas legislature during the war and proclaiming the enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation. His General Order No. 3 was read aloud in the streets. Hence, June 19 became recognized, regionally, as the day that the Emancipation Proclamation reached the most distant outposts of the slave states, bringing slavery finally to an end.
Celebration of the day in Texas started almost immediately, being first observed just one year later, by the state's freed African American population. Interestingly, the day was generally known as Emancipation Day. However, the revival of segregation in the South in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century caused the day to suffer a decline, until it began to be revived in the 1950s. Upon revival, the name Juneteenth began to apply to it. It was made a state holiday in Texas in 1979. The day received recognition in 47 of the states since then, with North and South Dakota and Hawaii being the only ones that had not up until now.
Talk of making it a Federal holiday has existed at least since the 1980s. Generally there's been very broad support for the move, but it obviously has taken years to accomplish, if we regard 1979 as the onset. It's interestingly been an example of states largely being out in front of the Federal Government on a holiday, and not surprisingly the various ways that states have recognized it have not been consistent.
There's been next to no opposition to the holiday being created which is interesting, in part, as the current times have been very oddly polarized in all sorts of ways. The measure had bipartisan support, although fourteen Republican members of Congress voted against it. One interestingly voted against it as he thought the official name confusing, Juneteenth National Independence Day, which in fact it somewhat is. That individual wanted to use the original name, Emancipation Day, which is a view I somewhat sympathize with.
It'll be interesting to see what the public reaction is given that this happened seemingly so quickly. By and large people who are aware of it seem pleased, although Candace Owens, the African American conservative columnists and quasi gadfly, predictably wasn't. It'll probably be next year until there's widespread national recognition of the day.
In very real ways, what it commemorates is the suffering of one of the most American of all American demographics, the African Americans, who have been in the country since its founding, but who still were the victims of legal discrimination all the way into the 1960s and whose economic plight remains marked.