The grave of Alvah H. Unthank

Alvah H. Unthank was a 19-year-old pioneer travelling the Oregon who died of Cholera at a spot near the Dave Johnson Power Plant outside Glendrock in July, 1850.  

One of many such tragic deaths on the trails.

 

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.

The Rock in the Glen, Glenrock, Wyoming.

The Rock in the Glen, in Converse County, Wyoming is one of the numerous places along the Oregon Trail that served as a register and a marker for those traveling on the Oregon Trail.  It shows up in the earliest guide books for the trail and like other sites in Wyoming, those who camped here often carved their names into the rock.

The location is near the North Platte River, as the trail itself is in this portion of Wyoming, and ultimately the areas features lead to the foundation of the town in the late 19th Century.  Upon formation, the town was named for the rock.

The actual location of the rock belonged to the Continental Pipeline Company up until 1982, when it donated the land to the Town of Glenrock.

The location today is a town park which is currently undergoing improvements.

June 29

1804  Privates John Collins and Hugh Hall of the Corps of Discovery found guilty by court-martial for getting drunk on duty. Pvt. Collins received 100 lashes on his back.  Pvt Hall received 50.  They were less than one month out on their journey across the western portion of the continent at the time.

1857  Nate Champion, a central figure in the Johnson County War, and one of the first victims of the invasion, was born in Texas.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1916   The threat of war recedes. June 29, 1916
 

By June 29, the imminent threat of war was passing.

Note the action by an Austrian submarine. We don't often think of Austria in this context during the Great War.

The easing of the crisis hadn't caught up with the Douglas Budget yet, but it did note that Theodore Roosevelt had declared his political career over, and in sort of a sad way.

I have to say that I find A. R. Merrit's advertisements creepy.  Today, you'll note that they were also inaccurate.  We hadn't declared war on Mexico.  Merritt was jumping the gun.

1919  Sunday, June 29, 1919. Reminding the readers that the war had ended. . . and alcohol was about to exit. Going to the movies, and the Tour de France.

Folks stopping in here yesterday saw, of course, that the banner headlines on the Germans signing the Versailles Treaty and the Great War ending.  As one of the papers below notes, it would actually require the ratification by the various signing countries to do that, but for most it would come fairly soon.  The U.S. never did ratify it, but instead ratified a treaty that picked out the clauses the Administration of the time liked, that coming after President Wilson had left office.

The US version omitted, famously, the League of Nations.

Anyhow, the big news remained on the front pages of the few newspapers in Wyoming that had Sunday editions.  Most did not.

Both local and national prohibition were also in the news.  The national news was that President Wilson had decided he had no authority to lift wartime prohibition and therefore wasn't going to, for the time being.  It was big, if odd, news in that general Federal prohibition was inevitable at this point, given the recently passed Constitutional amendment.

Locally Monday June 30 was the upcoming last day for alcohol in Wyoming, which made such headlines doubly confusing, as while the national story mattered, it only mattered somewhat and it only mattered if you lived in a place where booze was going to remain legal until the Federal ban hit.  In Wyoming, as with Colorado, that day came earlier.

The Sheridan newspaper ran that as its cover, with an odd racist cartoon that depicted booze in a mistral show fashion.  Not only is it odd to see the topic of the legality of alcohol being discussed, and its disappearance frankly celebrated, but it's really odd to see the press lean on racist stereotypes.

On stereotypes, Sunday was a big day for movie releases and the there were a number of interesting options, including Girls.

The romantic comedy Girls was released on this day in 1919.  Like most silent films, the plot is somewhat complicated.  The interesting thing, perhaps, is that this pre production code film shares a title with the latter skanky trash released under the same name more recently by HBO.  While no more restricted by the law than the latter production, the earlier one didn't plumb the same icky depths.

If you preferred Westerns, The Outcasts of Poker Flat was released, which is a well known silent film.

And the dram Sahara was out as well.  Romantic depiction of the Middle East were a big deal with early movies for some reason.

The title Sahara has been used for movies at least five times, including fairly recently.

If you lived in France, where the relief of the end of the war was particularly felt, this Sunday saw the start of the 1919 Tour de France.  The Tour is of course one of the greatest annual sporting events.  This was the 13th time the race had been run, and the first race since 1914, given the interruption of the war.

1923 The Klu Klux Klan marched in Glenrock. This seems like an extremely surprising item today, but the early 1920s were the high water mark of the KKK, which had been revived following the success of D. W. Griffith's film, Birth of a Nation, which took a very Confederate view of the Civil War and reconstruction, and which would be regarded as racist today.  The KKK, and other racist and nativist organizations, were surprisingly present in some Western states at this time.  The KKK and similar groups were never strong in Wyoming.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1945  President Truman approves plans for the invasion of Japan.

1969 - The Jimi Hendrix Experience played their last concert on the last day of the Denver Pop Festival.  After this, Hendrix would play with The Band of Gypsies, whom he felt more kinship with, being composed of personal musical fellows with a similar blues background. Attribution:  On This Day.

2007  Apple Inc. releases their first phone, the iPhone.