"Oil Capital of the Rockies" and other nicknames.

Monument to oil production at the Amoco Parkway in Casper, Wyoming.  The Parkway is within the confines of the former Standard Oil Refinery.

What's in a name?  A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Shakespeare

I came across the old nickname for Casper, Oil Capital of the Rockies, a bit by accident the other day and began to ponder it as a nickname for Casper, and then nicknames for Wyoming towns in general.*  Hence the entry.  

We'll start with Casper in this list, as Casper made us ponder it, but then we'll drop back to alphabetical order, to make it a bit easier reading.

Casper

Casper embraced oil production really early in its history and oil production and refining has been a feature of Casper's economy almost from its onset.  It's had a collection of refineries and, while refining isn't what it once was in Casper, it still retains a refinery today, down from the three it had when I was young.  

When I was growing up, the Casper Star Tribune had, on its masthead, the words "Oil Capital of the Rockies", a self proclaimed proud distinction that even the newspaper embraced.  There's no way on earth that the paper would have that on the masthead today, but it did for years.  I can well remember it, but I can't remember when that disappeared.  It was still there at least as late as 1970, when the logo was actually printed at the top of every page.  By 1975 the Tribune was asserting that Casper was the "World's Energy Capital", giving the town a promotion in that category which must have been inspired by the Arab Oil Embargo initiated spike in prices.  By 1980, however, as the bloom was beginning to come off the boom's rose, the Tribune made no reference in its masthead to oil or energy at all.

The embracing of the title is something that predated the masthead and continues on.  A common nickname for Casper is "Oil City", even though Natrona County actually had a town at one time actually called "Oil City", and it wasn't Casper.  The remnant of that town is barely there today.  

There are all sorts of businesses in Casper that use "Oil City" in their names, and one of the electronic news outlets uses it as well.  Oil may be in trouble now days, but the naming habits don't show it.

Casper isn't limited to a single nickname, however.  Another one you see in use is the name "Ghost Town" due to the old cartoon Casper the Friendly Ghost.  As a "ghost town" is a town that is no longer inhabited, the use of the nickname is a bit unfortunate, but it's pretty common.  Users of the nickname presumably simply assume that everyone is familiar with the animated cartoon that was first introduced in 1945.  As the cartoon frankly isn't funny, in my view, I have to wonder if my disdain for the nickname is in part inspired by that.  Be that as it may, it's certainly in widespread use.  The last truck stop on the way out of the town to the west, which actually is several miles beyond the town and actually much closer to Mills, Wyoming, than Casper, is "Ghost Town", for example, which used to have a classic, but now long gone, neon sign that looked like the front of a cabover truck.  Seeing it at night or in snowstorms remains an enduring memory of my youth.

Nobody has combined the two so far, so some opportunity remans.  Oily Ghost Town, or Casper the Oily Ghost Town, or something. . . 

Some time ago, some civic entity or perhaps the City of Casper itself came up with the name WyoCity.  Or perhaps it paid somebody to come up with that.  It hasn't stuck in the public imagination, and no wonder.  WyoCity? What does that mean?

Another unofficial nickname for Casper is Wind City, which nobody who has ever been to Casper need wonder about.  Chicago may call itself the Windy City, but it has nothing on Casper in regard to wind.  As with Oil City, various local businesses have embraced the name and use it.

Big Piney

Big Piney is cold in the winter. Really cold.  Like wind in Casper, residents of Big Piney have embraced that and its nickname is "Icebox of the Nation". They aren't joking.

Cheyenne.

Cheyenne, like Laramie, has an old nickname that probably goes back to early boosterism, with that being the "Emerald City of the Rockies".  Towns on the Union Pacific at the time must have had a gem stone theme going on.  The nickname was used early on and it competed with Denver's, which chose to call itself the "Queen City of the Plains".  Oddly, Denver is really closer to the Rocky Mountains than  Cheyenne, which is actually on the plains.  Anyhow, Emerald City has fallen into disuse, and probably  The Wizard of Oz didn't help that.

At some point the city itself decided it didn't like it, and it changed its nickname officially to the "Magic City of the Plains".  Or, perhaps, the nickname existed simultaneously.  It seems to have been based on the town springing up overnight, as if by magic, when it was built in 1867.  The city still uses that nickname.

Unofficially people sometimes refer to Cheyenne as "Shy Town", using the sound of its first syllable.  The nickname is simply a play on words and infers nothing beyond that.  

Cody

Cody bills itself as the Rodeo Capital of the World, which is frankly bizarre.  I doubt anyone uses the nickname and I've never seen a "Rodeo City" business there.

The name likely stems form the Cody Night Rodeo, which occurs nightly during the summer, but that wouldn't make it the Rodeo Capital.  Cheyenne and Calgary would have better claims to that.

Douglas

Douglas is the "Jackalope Capital of the World", playing on its adoption of the jackalope as its official symbol.  Indeed, the town has embraced the mythical creature and there are several jackalope statutes in town, although the one that used to be in the middle of the main street downtown has been removed as it was determined to be a bit of a traffic hazard.

Douglas has to get credit for embracing something whimsical and just running with it.

Frannie

Frannie, which is in two counties, but which is a really small town, bills itself as the The Biggest Little Town in the Nation.

Gillette.

Gillette calls itself the "Energy Capital of the World", although these days its energy businesses are hurting.  By doing that, it's co-opting a nickname that the Casper Star Tribune had claimed earlier for Casper.

Gillette may have an official nickname, but like Cheyenne and Casper, it has an unofficial one that's a play on its name, that being "Razor City".  Gillette, the company, manufactures shaving razors, and hence the nickname.  Again, it doesn't apply more than that.

Gillette may be a bit fortunate in this regard, as its original name was "Donkey Town", having been named for Donkey Creek.  Razor City isn't a great nickname, but it's better than Donkey Town as an official one.

Jackson

Jackson Wyoming is located in Jackson Hole and residents refer to the town as "The Hole".   The area around Jackson, however, has a lot of nicknames.

Teton Valley, Idaho, which is just next-door to some extent, interestingly has a lot of nicknames. But as this post isn't on that topic, we'll omit them.

Laramie.  

Laramie is the "Gem City of the Plains" for reasons that are unclear to me.  The nickname has been around for a long time, and it was probably part of an early effort at boosterism.  Laramieites know of the nickname, however, and its used in some businesses in Laramie.  The official newsletter of the City of Laramie is the "Gem City Spark", so unlike Casper's government, it's embraced its old nickname.

Some haven't embraced it, however, and those appear to be students.  UW students have taken up calling Laramie "Laradise", something that's come on since I lived there.  Laramie can be a fun town, and students have a sarcastic streak, so the nickname probably embraces both, both implying that Laramie might be a paradise for the young, and that it isn't, at the same time.

Lovell

Lovell, Wyoming asserts that its the Rose City of Wyoming.  This is because an early resident of the town, Dr. William Horsley, was a renowned expert on roses and promoted their growth in the community over a fifty year period.  The nickname is unknown for the most part outside of Lovell, but it has been embraced by the town and businesses in the community use it for their names.

Meeteetse

Meeteetse bills itself as the Ferret Capital of hte World as the endangered black footed ferret, which was believed extinct, was relocated there.  It also calls itself Where Chiefs Meet, which is taken from the meeting of its name in Shoshone, which is reputedly "meeting place", although that translation is disputed.

Riverton

I've heard Riverton occasionally referred to as "River City", probably recalling the fictional town in The Music Man.  It's official nickname, however, is "The Rendezvous City", reflecting that one of the early fur trapping Rendezvous gatherings was held there.

Rock Springs.  

Like Cheyenne, Rock Springs has an unofficial nickname that plays on its actual name, that being "Rocket City".  It has an official one as well, however, that being "Home of 56 Nationalities", reflecting its early mining history when it was indeed very polyglot.

Saratoga 

Saratoga calls itself "Where the Trout Leap in Main Street".   The North Platte River runs right through town and the small town has an outdoorsy nature, so this might help explain this.  Having said that, it might also stem from an early freighter tossing lighted sticks of dynamite off the bridge into town and blasting fish up on to the road, an act he took as he was tired of waiting for help to unload a wagon.

Upton 

Upton calls itself the "Best Town on Earth", which its boosters must feel that it is.

Honorable mention, Interstate 80.

Not a town, but another sort of man made geographic feature, Interstate 80 also has a nickname, at least in part.  The stretch of highway between Wolcott Junction and Laramie along Interstate 80 bears the nickname the "Snow Chi Minh Trail".

That nickname obviously can go no further back than the 1960s and I think it started in the 1970s, when the memory of the North Vietnamese Ho Chi Minh Trail was still fresh. That NVA effort was persistently vexing to the United States and the blizzardy section of the highway is likewise vexing to motorist, hence the nickname.

___________________________________________________________________________________

*For those who might wonder, Tulsa Oklahoma bears the nickname "Oil Capital of the World", although even by contemporary American standards, that nickname would more properly belong to Houston, Texas.  Cognizant of that, Houston is the "Energy Capital of the World".

August 7

1886  Fort Fred Steele deactivated. A town remained behind where the fort had been, and survived for many decades until the Lincoln Highway bypassed it.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1892  The Johnson County invaders plead not guilty, in Cheyenne, to the charges against them. Attribution:  On This Day.

1895  The Buffalo town hall was swept away in a flood. Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1914  Jackson incorporated.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1974  The Garrett Allen Prehistoric site in Carbon County added to the National Registry of Historic Places.

2009  Cmdr. Diego Hernandez relieved Cmdr. Roger Isom as commander of the USS Wyoming SSBN 742  during a change-of-command ceremony at the Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay Chapel.

June 18

1859  Captain W. F. Raynolds' expedition set out from Fort Pierre, SD, to explore the upper Yellowstone, Gallatin, and Madison Rivers. Attribution:  On This Day.

1893  Sheridan Inn opened.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1907  The first train arrives in Centennial, where today there is a train museum.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1916   The Crisis on the Border in 1916: The National Guard Mobilized

 New York National Guardsmen in Texas, 1916.

The National Guard is mobilized due to the ongoing crisis on the Mexican border caused by the Villista raid of Columbus New Mexico.  This included, of course, the somewhat short handed Wyoming National  Guard.

Mobilized New York National Guardsman.

Not all of the National Guard was Federalized at one time.  The entire National Guard had been Federalized prior to the entry of the United States in World War One, but the mobilization came in stages, with various units taking tours of duty along the Mexican border while the crisis with Mexico endured. The mobilization came to be a critical aspect of the United State's preparations for World War One, although accidentally, as it effectively meant that a huge proportion of the American defense establishment was mobilized and effectively training prior to the American entry into the war.

National Guard Camp, Camp Ordway Virginia, 1916.

1918  Huge evening thunderstorms washed out railroad bridges in Central Wyoming on June 17.  Hardest hit was the area between Powder River and Waltman.  The news hit today.

A rail line still runs between the towns today, but there are no bridges.  At the time, there were numerous ones, which shows how different rail bed construction was at the time.

Interestingly, at the time of 2018, this same day was also pretty rainy in Central Wyoming.

The Casper Daily Press for June 18, 1918. Big storms cause big damage.

And not just the storm of war.

We posted about the big storm that wiped out bridges in Central Wyoming yesterday.  Today it hit the press.

And flood waters were becoming a concern on the Sandbar.  This, of course, at a time when only one dam, Pathfinder, was upstream on the Platte.

1976   The J.C. Penney Home in Kemmerer was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1990  The Gap Puche Cabin near Jackson, WY, added to the National Register of Historic Places.  Attribution:  On This Day.

2017   American Father's Day
 

Today is Father's Day in the United States for 2017.

 Almost like a scene out of the Andy Griffith Show, father and son fishing, Jackson County West Virginia.

It's set on the Third Sunday of June, meaning you father's don't get the day off.

I'd have guessed this was some sort of uniquely American holiday, but it isn't.  The US actually came to it late in comparison to Catholic Europe and Latin America, where it was established on conjunction with the Feast of St. Joseph, which is celebrated on March 19.  The separated Coptic Church, interestingly, also makes this connection but celebrates the feast day on July 20. 

 St. Joseph depicted with Jesus as a young boy.  This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or less.

The connection comes due to the obvious role of St. Joseph.  In this connection its also interesting to note that the focus on St. Joseph has increased in recent years in association with his role as the patron saint of workers.  Indeed, he's sometimes called St. Joseph the Worker.

Another depiction of St. Joseph, who made his living as a carpenter and passed that trade on to Jesus.  This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or less.

Those two roles, it occurs to me, are probably more connected than it might at first seem. . . . 

Father's Day as an American holiday was first proposed in the early 20th Century and Woodrow Wilson wanted to make it such. Wilson seems to have experienced his first early troubles with Congress, which would become enormous later on, with holidays as Congress would have none of it.  Note that we just passed Flag Day which didn't become official until after World War One, but which was subject to a Presidential proclamation in 1916.   In regards to Father's Day, Congress feared it would become commercial so they wouldn't go for it. Finally President Johnson made it subject to a proclamation in 1966 and it became an official holiday in 1972.

Based on the advertising found this time of year, Congress may have had a reason to worry about the day's commercialization. . . . 

 It's been a really long time since you could get a plate of anything for .30.

On this day I always see, now that we have so much cyber stuff going on all the time, posted dedications by some to their fathers.  And that's great.  What strikes me, however, is the interesting connection between the example of St. Joseph and the day, and in a way that occurred to me about this day before but not quite in the same context.  If we look at St. Joseph's veneration's, that of father and of a worker, what we're left with is the example of a really dedicated individual who carried his family through some really horrible times, to say the least, and who passed his trade on to his son through direct example.  

We don't know a lot, indeed, about St. Joseph.  We know that he was older than Mary but much is debated beyond that.  Quite a bit of early church attention suggests that he may have been a widower at the time that he became betrothed to Mary and indeed that explains a lot about their relationship that seems to completely baffle modern Americans in particular, given that they think relationships between men and women as portrayed by Friends or The Big Bang Theory are normal, rather than pathologically abnormal in the real and natural sense.  What that means is that a lot of St. Joseph's life was about duty and example.  Indeed, his life, to the extent we know about it, was pretty much about dedication.  He may very well have suffered the tragedy of the loss of his first wife, and may have had children from that union (again, this is maintained by quite a few students of the Gospels and it seems to be a fairly valid argument).  His betrothal to Mary seems likely to have been under circumstances in which he was marrying a young woman (Mary was likely quite young, perhaps about sixteen) who was perhaps a consecrated virgin (again, something argued by some students of the Bible and which seems to be a pretty valid argument) which meant that the marriage was going to be a Josephite Marriage from the onset.  He wasn't making his life easier in any sense by the marriage and right from the very onset it took a turn that made it marketedly worse for him on a real physical level.  And yet, he just kept on keeping on.

Immigrant farm laborer with his sons, the older two of which were already working with their father at the time this photo was taken in the late Great Depression.  Note the depiction in the background which sort of ties into this dicussion.

Which is part of my point.

A lot of fathers today just don't stick around.

Indeed we've grown accustomed to a situation in which they're not even expected to quite often, even by the women they get pregnant.  This has made, to a degree, us accustomed to the concept that fatherhood is somehow optional.  It isn't.  It is, rather, an obligation, and being there is a big part of that obligation.  And, by being there I mean in the sense that St. Joseph was.  

Now most of us won't endure trials such as his.  Most of us won't have to flea for Egypt.  But then most of us wouldn't pass that test and men who just ignore the situation in general have already flunked it.  Women who allow them to are flunking it as well.

But being there means more than being physically present.  It also means being some sort of example.  We all fall short on that, particularly in comparison to a Saint, but a lot of us fall very far short of it. Being an example only in the acquisition of wealth doesn't mean very much at all.  Conveying a value to things that are done means a great deal more, but that's not always easy in a society which measures everything simply by monetary gain.  Very few young men today grow up in a situation in which they see their father's work, and a lot of that work has a value that's somewhat mysterious at best.

Idaho father and son, late l930s, in a cleared field.  Agricultural families today remain really rare examples of families in which children actually see what their parents do and what the value of it is.

And of course there's a lot more of value to life than work, although we seem to have forgotten much of that.

January 17

1882  First session of the Wyoming Academy of Sciences.  Attribution:  On  This Day.

1917   Joint Mexican American Committee Concludes

 

Mexican refugee entering the United States.  In spite of the caption, his wealth is probably all on this horse.  Part of the tragedy that involved both the United States and Mexico for well over a decade.

The Joint Committee between the US and Mexico concluded its business.  With the agreement of December 24, 1916 having been made, with Carranza having refused to sign it, and with events overcoming the United States that would give Carranza the result he wanted anyway, there was no more work to be done.

 

Porfirio Diaz in full military costume.  The collapse of his rule lead to the long civil war in Mexico.

Some have stated that the mere existence of the Joint Committee was a success in and of itself, and there is some truth to that.  The committee worked for months on an agreement and came to one, and even if Carranza would not execute it as it didn't guaranty the withdraw of American forces, the fact that the country was now hurtling towards war with Germany made it necessary for that to occur without American formal assent to Carranza's demand.  By not agreeing to it, the US was not bound not to intervene again, which was one of the points that it had sought in the first place. Events essentially gave both nations what they had been demanding.

 

 Revolutionary, intellectual, and radical. General Carranza.  His government fought Villa and Zapata successfully, but he'd go down in a coup lead by his own general, Obregon some years later. 

Even if that was the case this step, the first in the beginning of the end of the event we have been tracking since March, has to be seen as a Mexican Constitutionalist victory in the midst of the Mexican Revolution.  At the time the Commission came to the United States it represented only one side in a three way (sometimes more) Mexican civil war that was still raging.  Even as Carranza demanded that the United States withdraw his forces were not uniformly doing well against either Villa or Zapata.  Disdaining the United States in general, in spite of the fact that Wilson treated his government as the de facto government, he also knew that he could not be seen to be achieving victory over Villa through the intervention of the United States, nor could he be seen to be allowing a violation of Mexican sovereignty.  His refusal to acquiesce to allowing American troops to cross the border in pursuit of raiders, something that the Mexican and American governments had allowed for both nations since the mid 19th Century, allowed him to be seen as a legitimate defender of Mexican sovereignty and as the legitimate head of a Mexican government.

 

More typically imagined in a sombrero, General Francisco Villa.  The colorful, erratic, and perhaps somewhat mentally unstable Villa would attempt to retire to a ranch he acquired after his surrender to Obregon and Carranza, but he ended up being assassinated under cloudy circumstances in 1923.  His killer would live into the 1950s and declare at the end of his life that he'd rid the world of a "monster".

 Emiliano Zapata and his staff.  Zapata was an agrarian and looked the part, which we in turn tend to confuse with the look of the Mexican Revolution.  As with many leaders of the Mexican Revolution, Zapata was assassinated, although unlike Villa he still commanded an army in the field at the time of his death.

As will be seen, even though the war in Mexico raged on, events were overtaking the US and Mexico very quickly.  The Constitutionalist government was legitimizing itself as a radical Mexican de jure government and would quickly become just that.  Revolutions against it would go on for years, but it was very quickly moving towards full legitimacy.  And the United States, having failed to capture Villa or even defeat the Villistas, and having accepted an effective passive role in Mexico after nearly getting into a full war with the Constitutionalist, now very much had its eye on Europe and could not strategically afford to be bogged down in Mexico.  A silent desire to get out of Mexico had become fully open.  The rough terms of the agreement arrived upon by the Committee, while never ratified by Carranza, would effectively operate anyway and the United States now very quickly turned to withdrawing from Mexico.

 

Alvaro Obregon, whose competence and study of military tactics lead to the defeat of Pancho Villa and his Division del Norte.  He'd ultimately become present of Mexico following his coup against Carranza.  Obregon would serve one term as president of Mexico, and was elected to a second term to follow his successor Calles, but he was assassinated prior to taking office.

1919  January 17, 1919. Fake News

I've been impressed, by and large, by how quickly the papers of a century ago reported the news, and often how accurately.

But that wasn't always the case.

Such was the case regarding the murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht.

We've already touched on this story, but what I didn't realize, and in fact what's contrary to the way the story tends to be reported now, their murder was known have occurred almost immediately after it occurred.  I thought it took a period of days, but not so.

But the story surrounding that murder was completely false.

Their murders did add fuel to the Communist flames, as the Casper paper reported, but it certainly wasn't at the hand of the Berlin populace, as seemingly all papers reported that day.  There was no Berliner storming of the lobby of a hotel where they were staying.  No mob clubbed Liebknecht and lynched Luxemburg (although her body was thrown in a canal).  No, indeed, the story was ludicrous given that Berlin had the reputation of being a far left city at the time. . . Red Berlin.

As we know, they were killed by the Freikorps, under orders of a Freikorps Captain Waldemar Pabst, formerly an officer of the German Imperial Army.  Liebknecht was clubbed to death with a rifle butt.  Luxemburg was shot.  Both were tortured. But not by a crowd of Berliners.

How did the contrary story get started?  I don't know, but I have to suspect it was a planted story to cover up the murder.

1920  January 17, 1920. And then the entire nation was dry forever. . .

or so it seemed.

The Wyoming State Tribune, which was united with the rest of the press in seeing Prohibition as a great advance, counselled that eternal vigilance would be necessary to keep the nation dry.

An article in Colliers already used the term "moonshine" in connection with bootleg liquor, and featured this illustration with a young boy confronting "Revenues".

1930  Kendall Wyoming hits -52F.

1933 A Baggs school-bell was rung in the Bells of Hope Presidential Inauguration celebration.  Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.

1955  The 141st Medium Tank Battalion, Wyoming Army National Guard, which had been mobilized due to the Korean War, but which was not sent overseas, was deactivated.
2010  Small earthquake swarm commences in Yellowstone National Park.