Cattle War Scenes. TA Ranch and Tisdale Draw.

 

Wyoming's Frontier Outlaws

Outlaw Canyon in Johnson County, so named due to its use by the Hole In The Wall Gang.

When I posted my recent item here on the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid I looked for my entry here on Butch and Sundance.

There wasn't one.

It surprised me as I had a mental recollection of having written one.  But I haven't.

Frontier outlaws are a topic that has fascinated the public from nearly day one.  Indeed, the frontier outlaw tales fit into a genera of similar tales that go back, and celebrate, outlaws all the way back to Medieval England.  I don't know if other cultures have the same genera of romanticized criminal as folk hero, but England did and its very much carried on to the United States. When it first appeared here, I can't say, but it was certainly on the scene as the U.S. entered the post Civil War frontier period and it carried on at least as late as the 1930s when contemporary criminals, some of whom were truly horrible people, caught the fascination and even the admiration of some.  And its certainly the case that folk tales in the form of movies continue to oddly glamorize criminals if not crime itself.

At any rate, frontier Wyoming certainly had its share of criminals, including famous ones, and Wyoming remained "frontier" a lot longer than many other parts of the West. We've been remiss in not addressing this, at least a bit.

That omission is likely due to the fact that the author doesn't find stories about crime or criminals interesting.  Indeed, the opposite is true.  I don't follow stories about criminal trials and the like in the press, as so many people do, and I never read novels about crimes.  With the exception of Western movies, I don't want movies about crimes very often either, although there are certain exceptions (Anatomy of a Murder is one of my favorite films).  So in this sense I'm ill equipped to write on the topic.  There are undoubtedly a lot of people who know a lot more about this topic than I do and I'm likely to miss somebody that they think is really important.  With that caveat, we dig in.

Wyoming was settled later than a lot of other areas of the Frontier West, something it shares with Montana to its immediate north.  The state remained largely unsettled, except along the Union Pacific Railroad, until after the U.S. Army's campaign of 1876 made it somewhat safe to penetrate the northern part of the state.  Even at that, it wasn't really until the 1880s when ranchers started to move up into the more northern portions of Wyoming and a plethora of difficult conditions operated against anyone moving into the area.  It took fairly dedicated ranching efforts to really make a go of it, with there being certain really exceptional early efforts that proved to be very much the exception to the rule.

Transportation lagged enormously in all of Wyoming until the turn of the prior century which played into this.  It also all operated to make much of Wyoming truly wild and lawless in the original sense of the word; i.e., without law.  In those early days the application of the law was often done by laymen with no color of right other than a roughly inherited sense of what the law was.  People speak, of course, of "English Common Law" and Wyoming is a common law jurisdiction.  In those very early days, however, the law was in fact very much like the early common law and conditions in some ways hearkened back to Saxon England.  Law was administered roughly and by the people in a lot of circumstances and everyone basically agreed that this was acceptable.  That formed a sense of "taking the law into your own hands" that proved to be very long lasting and difficult to overcome, and to some extent, it never has been.

If those conditions created a necessity for laymen to often administer the law, they were also ideal for criminals, and therefore its not surprising that there were some. What probably is more surprising is that there wasn't a lot more than there were.

In stating that, what we'd note here is that we intend to look at real frontier badmen.  That's a bit more difficult to do than it might seem, as in an era in which, all over the west, the law was fluid, crossing the boundary of the law was somewhat fluid as well.  For that reason, a person can find plenty of examples of somebody who was a criminal of some sort in one territory or state, but who ended up a lawman in another.  They'd crossed the line, but perhaps not so far as to not be able to come back.

Indeed, by modern standards, and even the standards of the day, some of the enforcement of the law or perceived law was pretty dicey, and that puts an author today in a difficult position.  There are lots of modern writers who would regard the ranchers who hung Ella Watson as murderers, and more particularly the principal rancher. But that's not at all how he was regarded at the time and to do so now really is plastering the veneer of modern views upon the old wall of a long past act.  Those who would sanction that would have to wonder how those ancients would regard the numerous actions now routinely regarded as legal which were illegal at the time and, moreover, illegal with wide support of their illegality.*

On a final note, we're not going to really cover, except where its intertwined with the story of badmen, violence that was illegal but of a sort of political nature, which we guess we've already made plain.  For that reason, we're not going to cover the Johnson County War or the Sheep War in any sort of detail, as those stories are really separate from those of dedicated criminals.  No matter what a person might think of the law and those stories, the actions on both sides were of a different nature than those undertaken by people who were primarily motivated by money, which almost all real crimes tend to be.

With those massive caveats, we dive in.

The Wild Bunch

The Wild Bunch as photographed in Ft. Worth, Texas. This photograph would lead to their demise.  Top from the left:  William Carver and Harvey Logan.  Bottom, Harry Longabaugh, Ben Kilpatrick and Robert Parker.

By far the most famous of Wyoming's outlaws are Harry Longabaugh and Robert LeRoy Parker, aka Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  And by extension, their gang, or their criminal circle more properly, The Wild Bunch, are Wyoming's most famous criminal gang.** 

As a gang, we should note, it's exceedingly hard to define.  It was organized, and loosely under the control of Cassidy, but people came and went.  At least one "member", Bob Meeks, participated in a single crime with the gang. Up to nineteen or more individuals wondered in and out of it, although only a handful are consistently associated with it.  It was, moreover, a regional gang, operating out of Johnson County's Hole In The Wall region, but also out of the Robber's Roost region of Utah, and operating as far south as Texas and as far north as Montana.  Indeed Utah, has just as good of claim to this story, should somebody wish to claim it, as Wyoming, and its impossible to talk about the Wild Bunch without intertwining both states.

In some ways, Cassidy (Parker) and Sundance (Longabaugh) are the exceptions to the rule in Western criminals as they come the closest to their popular image of Robin Hood like jovial characters.  They weren't that, but they depart much less than other Western gangs such as the James Gang, which were actually comprised of homicidal unhinged degenerates.

And if Parker and Longabaugh are exceptions to the rule, Parker is more so as he was actually from the region.

Wyoming Territorial Prison mugshot of Robert LeRoy Parker, aka Butch Cassidy.

Parker was born in Beaver Utah, a southern Utah town, to British parents who were converts to Mormonism, having both converted prior to their immigration to the United States with their families. Both parents came into the country as members of English Mormon families, coming over at age 12 and 14 respectively.  They married in 1865. Parker was the first of 13 children of the couple and grew up on his parents ranch in south central Utah.  This makes Parker a Western born criminal and more than that one who was born loosely in the Rocky Mountain region, something that, setting aside Texas which was settled fairly early, is unusual.  All the more unusual he was part of an observant Mormon family.

Parker was born in 1866, just a year after his parents' marriage, and was engaging in petty crime by the time he was 14.  He started to work as a cowboy at the same time, a fact that's often noted but which also means that for some reason he was not set, apparently, to take over his father's ranch even though he was the oldest son, nor was he set to homestead himself. As a cowboy he began to engage in horse theft enterprises and soon moved to Colorado.  During this period he worked as a cowhand in Wyoming, Colorado and Montana, something that would have been typical for the era.

In 1889 he turned to bank robbery hitting a bank in Telluride and fleeting to Robber's Roost in Utah.  The year after that, however, he turned towards the legitimate and bought a ranch, which proved to be unsuccessful, near Dubois.  Four years after that, however, he fell into the circle of the Bassett sisters through dealings with her rancher father.

I'm not going to blame Ann Bassett for Parker's descent into crime.  He was clearly set to head in that direction anyhow and he in fact may never have given it up.  Association with Bassett, who was just fifteen years old when she and Parker first started dating, was unfortunate however as something about the Bassett family was uniquely amoral.  It was a bad development.  Parker and Bassett became romantically involved and the Bassett sisters were unique for their era due to their easy association and participation in crime.

In 1896 he was arrested for horse theft but he may have been involved in more sinister crimes.  That sent him to the Territorial Prison in Laramie where he served 18 months out of a two year sentence before being oddly pardoned by Governor Richards.  Out of the pokey, he took up with Josie Bassett and then went back to Ann.  Out of prison he also went quickly back to crime and entered an association with a group of criminal associates and pals that included Elzy Lay, Kid Curry Logan, Ben Kilpatrick, Harry Tracy, News Caver, Laura Bullion and Flat Nose Curry.  They named themselves after another criminal gang active in Oklahoma, The Wild Bunch.  Their early specialty was bank robbery.  Soon after forming, Longabaugh was recruited to the gang.  By 1897 the gang had expanded to include Ann Basset and Maude Davis, something usually omitted from the treatments on the criminals which instead focuses on the male members.  By 1897 three of the gang were in fact female.

They operated widely including into Idaho and Utah.  In 1899 they turned to train robbery, however, which would prove to be their downfall.  They then became the target of the Pinkerton Detective Agency.  Nonetheless they expanded their train robbing activities all the way to New Mexico.  With the heat growing, however, they attempted to secure a pardon through the Governor of Utah, which failed as while waiting for the result, they infamously robbed a train near Tipton Wyoming on August 29, 1900.  In December of the same year they stupidly posed for their famous portrait in Ft. Worth, Texas, which was soon in use by the Pinkertons in aid of their efforts to arrest them.  Following this, they robbed a final train near Wagner Montana, after which the gang split up and Parker and Longabaugh fled first to New York, then to Argentina, and then to Bolivia.  The fact that they could undertake such a dramatic flight says something about the degree of their criminal enterprises and how profitable it had been.  

Their flight to Argentina was known to the Pinkertons which pursued them there after a time.  Engaged first as ranchers, they returned to bank robbery by 1905 and were in Bolivia by 1908.  They were gunned down by Bolivian authorities at a residence (not robbing a bank, as portrayed in the film) on November 6, 1908, a few days after robbing a mine courier (a scene inaccurately portrayed in the film as well).

As I've kept saying "they", and as the story of Longabaugh is so tied up with Parker's, I should pick him back up here before carrying on with Parker, which indeed a person must do to complete the story.

Harry Longabaugh was born in Pennsylvania in 1867 and came west at age 15 with a cousin.  He turned to crime by age 20 when he robbed a horse, saddle and rifle from a ranch outside of Sundance, Wyoming.  That resulted in an 18 month jail sentence in Sundance itself, which is why he adopted the Sundance Kid moniker.  After his release he worked as a cowboy in Alberta, showing the fluid nature of the border in the period.  By 1892 he returned to crime and is suspected of having participated in a train robbery.  In 1897 he participated in a bank robbery.  Shortly after that he was in the Wild Bunch.

Longabaugh was fast with a gun, but he is unknown to have killed anyone until his final gun battle in Bolivia.  Parker is unknown to have every killed anyone.  This is in part why the two remain celebrated.  They were violent men who traveled in very violent company, but they didn't actually take anyone lives themselves except, in Longabaugh's case, the very end.  Of course traveling in violent company abets violence, something that is routinely forgotten.  Just because they weren't the killers doesn't mean that people weren't killed in association with their criminal enterprises.

As already noted, Longabaugh and Parker were regional criminals, not just Wyoming ones, and in the end they fled to South America, first to Argentina, and then to Bolivia, where they resumed the life that had put them on the run.  Given as their criminal activities in the West gave them the spending power of millionaires today, you have to wonder what happened to the money, but then generally people of this character aren't really good at financial sustainability.  In the end they were both gunned down in Bolivia, which seems to be the end point for ne'er do wells from elsewhere who make their living from the gun.

Or were they?

Ever since 1908 there's been persistent rumors that both men survived.  How they evaded death in a hail of Bolivian bullets is rarely discussed with these theories, but it'd have to fall to something like mistaken identity for those who met their end in 1908.

Parker's rumored return is the most circulated story, at least in Wyoming.  At least as early as the 1930s Dr. Francis Smith, who treated Cassidy for a bullet wound and who had treated Etta Place as a patient as well, claimed to have talked to Cassidy after his claimed death and that he'd had his face surgically altered in France, something that given the state of plastic surgery at the time seems rather absurd.  Josie Bassett, one of the infamous Bassett sisters that we'll discuss below, claimed in the 1960s that Cassidy visited her in the 1920s and ultimately died in Nevada.  Residents of his hometown in Utah likewise claimed that he returned and lived in Nevada.  One of his female siblings claimed that he returned home and visited the family homestead in 1925 and then lived out his life in Washington, a story circulated by some other family members in later years, who claimed that he lived under the name Philips.  Some claim his family buried him after his death on the family ranch and have kept his burial place a secret.  The better stories all have a mid 1920s element to them.

In Wyoming there were and remain persistent rumors of his return.  He's claimed to have visited Baggs in 1925, prior to returning to Circleville Utah in 1925.  I personally heard a rumor related to me from Fremont County of his having more than once visited a female friend of his in that county.  That story came to me second hand, of course, but he person who heard it first hand had it related to him by an old resident of the county.

There are many fewer rumors regarding Harry Longabaugh, but one is that he returned and lived out his life in Utah.  A person claimed to be him in these rumors was actually exhumed recently and his DNA did not relate to Longabaugh's family's.

They're almost certainly in a busy grave in some Bolivian cemetery having met a fate they deserved.

They were, of course, the two most famous of a prolific criminal enterprise.  We should at least list the other more notable members of the same gang.

William Ellsworth (Elzy) Lay was a member from Mount Pleasant, Ohio who was taken to Colorado with his family as an infant.  He left home at age 18 and was running with Cassidy by the time he was 20.  He dated Josie Basset at the same time that Cassidy was dating Ann Bassett. . . those girls again.

Lay actually married and had a child, although his wife was not one of the Bassett's, and he refused her demands that he give up being an outlaw.  Lay was also a killer, being responsible for the deaths of several lawmen.  In 1899 he was captured, convicted of his crimes, and surprisingly sentenced to life in prison, showing that Western law was more lenient than supposed.  His wife divorced him.  In 1906 he was paroled.  He worked in Baggs for awhile, remarried and then moved to California where he lived out the rest of his life, dying in 1934 at age 65.

Kilpatrick, seated bottom right, with other Wild Bunch members.

Ben Kilpatrick was known as the "Tall Texan".  He was from Texas and participated in the gang, but not that much is really known about him.  He was captured and sentenced to prison in St. Louis Missouri in 1901 and received a fifteen year sentence for his crimes there.

He returned to crime upon his early release in 1912 and attempted a train robbery soon thereafter. During the robbery an express messenger beat his brains out, literally, with an ice mallet.  He was 38 years old at the time.

William "News" Carver was a member who acquired his nickname as he liked to read his name in the paper.  Carver was part of the infamous Wild Bunch 1900 train robbery of a train near Tipton Wyoming in which they famously ended up accidentally blowing up a rail car.  The gang split up to make their arrest by law enforcement more difficult after that.  Carver robbed a train in Montana the following year and then fled to Texas.  He was shot in a bakery in Sonora Texas the following year when they were arresting him on suspicion of a murder he didn't commit.  A companion appeared to be going for a gun.  Carver's didn't clear his holster before he was shot six time.

Carver had been in various other gangs before he took up with The Wild Bunch. He's also been married early in his life but his wife had died shortly after their marriage.  He's yet another member of this gang associated with the Bassett sisters, dating Josie Bassett, although not surprisingly his relationship with her would not prove to be permanent.

Orlando Camillia ("O.C" or "Deaf Charlie") Hanks was a barely known member.  He was arrested for his part in a bank robbery in Texas in 1894 and released in 1901.  He robbed a train in Texas the following year and was shot upon being run down while resisting arrest.

George Curry.

George "Flat Nose" Curry (Currie) is a well known member of the gang.  He was a Canadian by birth who relocated with his family to Nebraska when he was a child.  He was killed in 1900 by a Sheriff in Utah when being pursued for rustling.

Harvey Logan, aka "Kid Curry".

Harvey Logan was perhaps the most violent member of the gang and was responsible for the revenge killing of the Utah sheriff who killed George Curry.  He'd earlier committed another revenge killing upon a rancher who had killed his brother.  He may have killed up to nine men in his criminal career before killing himself in 1904 when he was run down by a posse in Colorado.

Logan was a prolific and early criminal.  He was, as noted, violent, but he was none the less popular.  Oddly, his popularity was such that it was common at one time, while he lived, for prostitutes to claim him as the father of their children, irrespective of their actual parentage.

Three women, including one associated strongly with Logan, were members of the gang at various times. The one associated with Logan was Laura Bullion.

Laura Bullion

Bullion was also a girlfriend of Kilpatrick's and perhaps fell into the gang naturally as Kilpatrick was a friend of her father's and he himself had been an outlaw.  She'd also been involved with Carver as early as age 15.  She was arrested in 1901 for her role in passing bank notes from a Montana train robbery undertaken by the gang.  She served only three years of a twenty years sentence, showing the surprising leniency of the time, and moved to Memphis in 1918, claiming to be a war widow. She worked as a domestic after her release from prison.

We should note before moving on that Matilda Maude Davis enters the story here in some fashion as she was uniquely one of a handful of women who were allowed into The Wild Bunch's criminal sanctuaries.  Photos show here to be a petite attractive woman.  Little is really known about her but she did marry Elzy Lay and was obviously aware of his profession, if we wish to call it that.  After she became pregnant and gave birth to a daughter, she unsuccessfully insisted that Lay give up a life of crime and ultimately she divorced him.  She later remarried and lived in Utah.  She passed away in 1958 at age 83. Their daughter, Marvel, also lived out her life in Utah and died in Vernal at age 86 in 1983.

As a side note, this may make the extended story of Lay and his family the happiest one here, although its not happy.  None of them died at the end of a rope or gun and they all lived out natural lives.

The most famous female members of the Wild Bunch, if we don't include Etta Place as a member, and if we regard them as members, are the Bassett sisters who are strongly intertwined with it and its various members.  Associated with various gang members from their teenage years, they were the daughters of a rancher, and later ranchers in their own right.  Their father Herb, twenty years senior to his wife, was sympathetic to the gang and the family appears to be uniquely amoral.

Ann Bassett, 1904.

The Bassett family ranch straddled Utah and Wyoming and their father received stolen horses as part of his enterprise. The father himself was eclectic.  He was a civil war veteran and well known local musician who actually relocated to Utah with his wife as he was afflicted with asthma.  Locating in Brown's Hole, he seems to have taken up the fairly loose association with the law that was common there at the time. That exposed the Bassett sister to criminals and they obviously had no compunctions about taking up with them.  This was reinforced when the girls stepped into the family ranching operation on their own and came under pressure to sell their interests to larger ranches. 

The Bassett girls were well educated for the time.  Their mother sent them to high school in Craig, Colorado and then to a Catholic boarding school in Salt Lake.  Ann was asked not to return to the boarding school and was subsequently sent to a boarding school on the East Coast. Their formal educations ended when their mother, who was twenty years younger than their father, died in 1892.

The Sisters Bassett provide an interesting example of the blurring of lines between legality and illegality in Wyoming and the West at the time.  Their father was a rancher dealing in legitimate and illegitimate livestock and they stepped into the position, occupying what would normally be a male role in the family.  They became highly active in ranching in their own right, crossing the same boundaries that their father did. They were also under illegitimate pressure to sell from well monied outside interests, and in that position they resorted to protection from criminal elements and also to rustling themselves.  Their activities were sufficiently aggravating that they became the target of another infamous Wyoming criminal, Tom Horn, who was brought in to address tensions in the area, although Horn never took action against the Bassetts.  Ann Bassett came to figure so prominently that she became known as "Queen Ann Bassett".

By most accounts, the Bassetts were sent home by the Wild Bunch in 1897 so that the gang could focus on its criminal activities. By any account, the Bassetts were of a higher class than Bullion.  Following that, Ann Bassett married rancher Hyrum Bernard in 1903.  She was arrested, but acquitted, of rustling in Utah that year. The marriage did not last and the couple divorced six years later, although Bernard continued to help the girls with their ranching efforts after that.  She married again in 1928 at which time she was middle aged to another rancher. That marriage was long lasting and indeed when she died in 1956 her surviving husband was crushed by her loss.  She lived until 1956, passing away at age 77.

Harry Longabaugh and Etta Place. . . maybe.

On Ann Bassett, and enduring legend has maintained that she was the actual Etta Place, the final enigmatic girlfriend of Harry Longabaugh, and indeed there is evidence for that.  Place is surrounded in mystery and her origins are not known.  She bore a strong resemblance to the only verified period photograph of Ann Bassett and at least one effort of scientific photo analysis concluded that they are the same person.  However, details of Place's presence contradict known activities of Bassett's, including her 1903 marriage and arrest for cattle rustling.  At least from my prospective, the two look alike but not identical, with the interesting fact that the efforts of contract a common law marriage or near common law marriage by the senior members of the gang involved exceptionally attractive women.

Josie Bassett was the older of the two Bassett sisters and arguably the wilder.  While she was born first, she also lived longer.  Her associations where nearly identical, as were her activities.  She was actually married shortly after her mother's death in what would be the first of five marriages, which must have ended soon as she was shortly after that in the Wild Bunch orbit.

Like Ann, her association wit the Wild Bunch dropped off after 1897, although she'd engage in bootlegging during the Depression.  She lived an entire life as an outdoorsman and lived frugally in a cabin after loosing her ranch in her later years.  She married five times as noted.  She had three children, all by her first husband.

Well what about Etta Place?

Place is by far the best known of the Wild Bunch damsels, but she's also the one that the least is known about.  Even her real name is not known.  Nor is her ultimate fate.

Place appears out of nowhere in this story right at about 1900, at which time she was somewhere in her 20s (like Ann Bassett at the time).  She was uniformly regarded as a pretty woman, and indeed bore a remarkable resemblance to Bassett.  When she appeared, she appeared as Longabaugh's girlfriend/paramour/common law wife.  Indeed, under the common law, they would have been married, assuming no impediments to marriage, as she would hold herself out as his wife.

The Pinkerton Agency listed her origin as being in Texas but she claimed to be from the East.  Interestingly, Ann Bassett was adept at affecting a New England accent due to her stint in the East as as student.  She went with Longabaugh and Parker to Argentina, and indeed she went back and forth from Argentina to the United States apparently with Longabaugh on at least two occasions, once in 1902 and once in 1904, showing the depth of the resources they had.  She participated in a robbery in Argentina in 1905 and fled into Chile with the gang thereafter.

She was apparently much effected by the loss of their ranch in Argentina and is believed to have grown weary of leading a criminal life.  In 1905, after their fleeting to Chile, she returned to the United States, this time to San Francisco, that year.  Longabaugh came with her.   They are not known to have seen each other again, although she was believed to be in San Francisco as late as 1907.  A woman matching her description inquired after Longabaugh's, death of the U.S. Envoy to Chile about obtaining a death certificate for him, a curios thing to do in 1909 if she was not in fact his common law widow.

After that last 1909 appearance she simply disappeared.  She's subject to numerous intriguing rumors, but none of them have any kind of adequate factual support to back them up, particularly given the nature of the evidence at the time. She was a striking beauty, but that alone was not a sufficiently  unique distinguisher to lead to any real knowledge of her later whereabouts.

We should wrap up the Wild Bunch in some fashion as they really are the most unique and well known of Wyoming's criminal gangs, and perhaps they're the only one that oddly reflects Wyoming's status as "the Equality State", given female participation in it.  It was a highly effective criminal gang until it overstepped itself with the Tipton train robbery which really lead to its end.  The money it took in robberies, in the context of the time, was frankly vast, which is perhaps best demonstrated by the amount of post Tipton travelling Parker and Longabaugh did.  The members were much more violent, however, than people like to imagine, and indeed quite a few members of the gang ultimately met violent deaths.  Very few managed to disassociate themselves with crime later on. 

The female members are a real oddity and individually can't be neatly summed up.  At least Bullion appears to be a sad character who had fallen into a low state in life but who was attractive to the male members of the gang who consorted with that element.  Maude Davis is a mystery as to how she ended up in its orbit but she clearly saw the defects in their existence and pulled out for a more conventional life early on, with her ex husband ultimately being one of the few male members of the gang who also did so later.  The Bassett's are recognizable to those who spend a lot of time on ranches today as fitting the sometimes free spirited female rural personalities that aren't uncommon today, and they likely never saw themselves as aiding and abetting criminals. While not to draw excessively feminist analogies, they are unique early on for rejecting conventional female roles, but then that was true of nearly every woman allowed into the Wild Bunch except for Davis. 

Etta Place is simply a mystery, having arrived from somewhere and disappeared into somewhere as well.  Perhaps she can be summed up by her photos, in which she's pretty, but looks profoundly sad. We don't really know what caused her to take up with Longabaugh and her early origins are all speculative.  What we can say is that due to their crimes, Longabaugh and Parker were quite rich and spent freely, and that is always attractive to some.

The Hole In The Wall Gang

What?  Didn't we just cover that?

Well yes and no.  The problem here is that sometimes in referring to the Wild Bunch, people call them The Hole In The Wall Gang, not realizing that they actually weren't the same thing.

The Hole In The Wall Gang were those criminals who hung out at the Hole In The Wall, which included the Wild Bunch.  It included others who didn't run with the Wild Bunch however.  Basically, the Hole In The Wall Gang wasn't a gang at all, but a loose association of criminals who took refuge in the Hole In The Wall Country of Johnson County.  Given that the Wild Bunch was a pretty loose group in and of itself, that makes the Hole In The Wall Gang really loose.

Given as we've covered the Wild Bunch, we've covered most of the more famous members of the Hole In The Wall Gang. There were, however, others.  The unifying factor however was the Hole In The Wall itself, which featured protection from all sides and facilities within in it in the form of cabins and a corral.

Indeed, that alone is part of the story that's very hard for moderns to grasp.  Refuge to the Hole In The Wall and Outlaw Canyon started early on in Wyoming after the Powder River country opened up and it continued on all the way into the very early 20th Century.  Today the region is easily accessible to people living in Buffalo, Sheridan and Casper and lots of fisherman venture down the canyon every summer.  But at the time, before automobiles, the country was so vast that this region was essentially ceded to criminals.  It remained a criminal refuge even after statehood and the entire Johnson County War was fought around it without penetrating it or ending its status.  As a natural fortress it was impenetrable, keeping in mind that law enforcement in Wyoming was extremely thinly manned.  No Sheriff could possibly mount a sufficient expedition to even think of entering it.  It was only time and the narrowing of the world that the technology of the early 20th Century introduced that ended that.

The gangs that operated out of the Hole In The Wall formed a sort of alliance and traveled in each others company, sometimes according to a loose set of rules that had been formed in order to keep the alliance active.  In the 1880s and 1890s they were highly active.  The Tipton raid however operated to put the focus on the Wild Bunch and caused it to disperse.  That event in and of itself changed the nature of the toleration for crime in the state.  The 1909 Spring Creek Raid would show that the support for it had evaporated.

The use of the hideout declined steadily after the Tipton Raid and was basically over by 1910.

Tom Horn

The next individual we'll mention here has already been mentioned, and some wouldn't consider him an outlaw at all.  Once again, this demonstrates the blurred lines that existed between the law and the outlaw at the time.

Tom Horn was just about the same age as Longabaugh and Parker, having been born in 1860.  He'd been born in Missouri and was already working as a scout and packer for the U.S. Army by 1876, the same year that the Battle of the Little Big Horn was fought.   He served in the Southwest under the legendary scout Al Sieber and was himself a Chief of Scouts by 1885.  He served with distinction in the wars against the Apaches. During this period he became acclimated to violence and had already killed in a man in what amounted to a type of duel, that being with a Mexican Army lieutenant over a prostitute.

After the Apache wars he became a rancher briefly but was cleaned out by thieves, an event that left a lasting impact on him.  He wondered into being a stock detective by title, but in reality was an assassin for large livestock interests, a position that tended to have the cover of law.  He reentered the Army during the Spanish American War but upon coming back out went to work as a killer for the the large livestock interests during the Wyoming stock wars period.

Horn was distinctly different than figures like Parker and Longabaugh as he did operate, albeit barely, under the cover of law. That ran out for him with the murder of Willie Nickell, which is still disputed as to who did it. No matter who did the killing, it was likely a mistake as Nickell was a teenage boy and likely not the intended target of the killing.  Horn was none the less convicted of the murder and executed for it.  In some ways, given Horn's undoubted role in many other extra judicial killings, it hardly even matters if he was guilty of the Nickell murder or not.

Horn was active in Wyoming in the 1890s and early 1900s, and had various employers, some of whom are only suspected.  He is rumored to have been at significant Johnson County War events although his presence can't really be established.  He was a Pinkerton agent for a time, although they ultimately asked him to resign.  His execution fell in 1903 meaning that he died an earlier death than some of his outright criminal adversaries.

His 1903 execution also demonstrated that the era of lawlessness was really ending.  We've already noted that above, but prior to his killing Nickell there'd been no effort to arrest Horn even though he was complicit in a lot of killings for hire.  Much of that was because powerful parties sanctioned the killings and thought them justified, even if fully illegal.  Nickell's killing was shocking, but prior murders had also been shocking.  The arrest of Horn for the Albany County murder showed what the Spring Creek arrests would demonstrate in Big Horn County shortly thereafter.  Toleration for criminal violence for any cause had ended.

The Red Sash Gang

This entry will be a brief one as nobody is certain if a Red Sash Gang really existed or what it consisted of.

Rumors and stories of a violent Red Sash Gang circulated following the Johnson County War and are somewhat tied up in its aftermath. 

Stories of a group of violent rustlers who stole cattle, threatened people, and committed murder, while wearing red sashes, a popular cowboy affectation at the time, circulated in the early 1890s.  The murder of Marshal George Wellman in May, 1892, while he was out in prairie to investigate the events of the prior month's raid into Johnson County, was attributed to them.

The existence of the gang was widely held to be true at the time, but the lack of any real definition to them, other than some sinister activities at the time, has caused people to wonder if they really existed.  If they did, it was only briefly.  And the sashes may have meant nothing at all.  At this particularity period in time it was very common for cowboys for some reason, including those on the Northern Plains.  Frontier artist Charlie Russell, for example, routinely wore one.

William L. Carlisle

Bill Carlisle started his criminal career, brief though it was, the decade following the end of Longabaugh, Parker and Horn's, making him arguably the last of Wyoming's frontier criminals. 

Carlisle robbed a series of trains in 1916 after reaching a state of absolute destitution.  Twenty six years old at the time, he'd lived a hard life prior to those events, but was none the less noted to be a polite robber who eschewed taking money from women and children.

Sentenced to a long prison sentence, he escaped from prison in 1919 and took up train robbery one more time.  However, his attempt failed as the train he targeted was full of servicemen he could not bring himself to rob, and instead it merely ended up in his flight.  He was shot when a posse caught up with him near Glendo and returned to prison.  In prison for the second time he underwent a profound religious conversion and converted to Catholicism and became a model prisoner.  He was released from prison in 1936.  He lived for many years in Laramie before returning to his native Pennsylvania in his old age.

Carlisle is a unique criminal in that he seems to have been poorly constituted for it from the very first.  His early life as a near orphan had seemingly left him without a really strong moral compass, but it wasn't completely absent.  He proved to be more willing to die committing a crime than he was willing to kill committing one. He couldn't bring himself to rob anyone except men, and he exempted servicemen.  Even in his arrest and trial photos he's smiling and his captors appeared to have no concern that he'd flee once caught.  Once he found some guidance, he permanently corrected his direction.

Earl Durand

If Carlisle is not the last of Wyoming's frontier era outlaws, assuming that even he is, than Earl Durand has to be.  Or at least he wanted to be. 

Durand was born three years prior to Carlisle's first train robberies and was active as an odd criminal in a brief 1930s episode.

From a Mormon family in Park County, Durand lived an outdoor life seemingly calculated to ignore the law, including poaching.  He had a strangely willful streak in which he refused to comport his lifestyle to the realities of the modern world, seemingly believing that he personally could live more as if it was 1839, rather than 1939.  Arrested in 1939 for poaching, as he refused to buy a license, he escaped from jail and killed several law enforcement officers in his flight.  This lead in turn to a man hunt which became absurdly overblown.

Escaping first to the hills, he came down into Powell and died from a self inflicted gunshot wound during a failed attempted bank robbery.  Durand, in fairness, likely fits into the violent 1930s more than the frontier era, however.  I  note it here as he seems to have wished to act as if he lived in a much earlier frontier era at a time at which it wasn't completely impossible to imagine doing so.

What about Frank and Jesse James?

I'm going to call bull on this one.

Frank and Jesse James are so famous that it seems there's no region of the West in which it isn't claimed that they were there.  The oddity of that is that they were Southern criminals, not Western ones, and there's simply no evidence of it.

Jesse James, the leader of the James Gang, was a generation older than the youngest of the criminals we've been writing about here.  So was his brother Frank. Both men had been acclimated to a blistering level of violence by the Civil War and they fit into a unique category of American criminal that came out of that war and whose era lasted into the 1930s.  They were regional criminals and as their raid into Northfield Minnesota demonstrated, they were inept out of it.

They're so famous, and they were active in the immediate post Civil War period we associate with the West, that people adopt them into any scenario.  I've heard it claimed that they took refuge in The Hole In The Wall at one point, that they had a cabin in the Big Horns, and that a high point I know of in the foothills of the Big Horns was used as a lookout spot by Jesse to evade pursuers.

It's all myth.

The James Gang was broken by the 1876 Northfield Minnesota Raid and it never really returned to any sort of significant activity after that, although they did attempt to.  Frank James sundered to authorities in 1882 with a promise that he would not be extradited to Minnesota.  Jesse James met with a bullet to the back of a head fired by a cousin that same year.

Most of Wyoming's criminals of the era weren't even active at the time that Jesse died and Frank surrendered.  The Big Horn Basin where they took refuge had barely been opened up at the time and use of the Hole In The Wall was just about to start.  The James weren't frontiersmen and they were cowboys. They were Missouri smallholding farmers who were introduced to horrific violence during the Civil War and kept it up, where they lived, and where there was sympathy for them, after it.

So What Can We Say?

Well, perhaps we have already said it. But what is clear is that, in looking at it, Wyoming never really had any criminals who were really Wyomingites per se in the frontier era.  The territory and state were too new for it.  The vastness of the country attracted some by the 1880s to a life of crime, but it also wan't really until then that the state had anything to steal.  With a widely dispersed population, the West was ideal for criminals hiding from the law, but at the same time that same condition meant that dedicated criminals had to act over a vast swath of territory.  Most criminals operating out of Wyoming also hit targets in other Western states.  The Wild Bunch ranged north to Montana and south to Texas, and operated out of Utah as much as Wyoming.

Those criminals are romantic only in the romanticized portrayals of the. Even the Wild Bunch, with its attractive young men and women, included members who were outright killers.  All of the more notorious criminals risked death at the hands of lawmen who were not shy about using firearms and who were free to do so almost without question, and many met their end that way. At the same time, societal tolerance for criminals was remarkably high during the 1880s and 1890s and only started to end in the 1900s.  Those caught in the 19th Century were actually quite unlikely to meet with the severest of penalties upon being tried and often severed very light sentences even for really horrific crimes.  Again, starting in the 20th Century this began to change and those caught risked severe sentences after that.

Much of the wilder era of crime in Wyoming overlapped with the stress of the cattle conflicts and the cattle/sheep conflict which seemingly operated to support it being ongoing.  The Johnson County War amazingly managed to take place in and around the Hole In The Wall without impacting its status at all.  Men and women loosely associated with the small livestock side of the conflict had interaction with some criminals that tainted that side of the conflict in reputation but which also created a seeming high degree of tolerance for those living outside of the law.

By 1900 almost all of the underlying conditions that gave rise to the era of criminal ranging were coming to an end.  The railroads had penetrated everywhere in the state by that time.  The cattle war ended and the small rancher was established.  The sheep war was ongoing but winding down.  Frontier towns had yielded to being small towns and residents didn't want their banks and trains robbed.  The first automobiles came in during that decade in numbers allowing people to cover distances in hours that had once taken days, and which rendered a place like the Hole In The Wall to a fishing hole, rather than a thieve's fortress.

Or perhaps we should say returning it, thankfully, to that former status.

_________________________________________________________________________________

*The comparisons that tend to be made in this area tend to run only one way, but in reality there are plenty of things that are illegal now which those in the 19th Century would regard as flat out bizarre in legal terms while there are a lot of  social topics in which the law was much different than now and our ancestors would find  the evolution of the law to be disappointing in its results at best.

**The latter name, The Wild Bunch, has become confusing over time due to Sam Peckinpah's use of that title for his fictional 1969 movie about 1910s Western outlaws, a movie that set new standards in cinematic violence.  Peckinpah's film is not set in Wyoming and it is not about the Hole In The Wall Gang. The title, however, may in fact be intended to recall them, as Peckinpah's movie intentionally sought to smash the image of the Robin Hood Western criminal, which the Hole In The Wall Gang symbolizes, with the violent reality of frontier crime.

December 8

1868  Crook County created out of portions of Albany and Laramie counties.

1869  Territorial Governor Campbell approved measures to ask Congress to establish a prison at Laramie and to acquire the location for the prison.  The prison still remains in Laramie but as a tourist site.  For a while in the late 20th Century it was used as the University of Wyoming's sheep barn.

1869 Louis Riel issues the Declaration of the People of Rupert's Land and the North West declaring that the sale to Canada of Rupert's Land without their consent entitles people to set up their own government. Riel's view is not without sympathy in Canada, including that of Militia Minister George-Etienne Cartier.  Nonetheless, events would soon lead to armed conflict in Canada.

Riel was a Metis, and in that era Metis traveled routinely into Wyoming.  There are even some who believe that there were some Metis in the Sioux camp during the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Montana.

The Declaration of the People of Rupert's Land and the North West stated:

Proclamation by the Provisional Government, Dec. 8, 1869.

Whereas, it is admitted by all men, as a fundamental principle, that the public authority commands the obedience and respect of its subjects. It is also admitted, that a people, when it has no Government, is free to adopt one form of Government, in preference to another, to give or to refuse allegiance to that which is proposed. In accordance with the above first principle the people of this country had obeyed and respected the authority to which the circumstances which surrounded its infancy compelled it to be subject.

A company of adventurers known as the "Hudson Bay Company," and invested with certain powers, granted by His Majesty (Charles II), established itself in Rupert's Land, and in the North-West Territory, for trading purposes only. This Company, consisting of many persons, required a certain constitution. But as there was a question of commerce only, their constitution was framed in reference thereto. Yet, since there was at that time no Government to see to the interest of a people already existing in the country, it became necessary for judicial affairs to have recourse to the officers of the Hudson Bay Company. This inaugurated that species of government which, slightly modified by subsequent circumstances, ruled this country up to recent date.

Whereas, that Government, thus accepted, was far from answering to the wants of the people, and became more and more so, as the population increased in numbers, and as the country was developed, and commerce extended, until the present day, when it commands a place amongst the colonies; and this people, ever actuated by the above-mentioned principles, had generously supported the aforesaid Government, and gave to it a faithful allegiance, when, contrary to the law of nations, in March, 1869, that said Government surrendered and transferred to Canada all the rights which it had, or pretended to have, in this Territory, by transactions with which the people were considered unworthy to be made acquainted.

And, whereas, it is also generally admitted that a people is at liberty to establish any form of government it may consider suited to its wants, as soon as the power to which it was subject abandons it, or attempts to subjugate it, without its consent to a foreign power; and maintain that no right can be transferred to such foreign power. Now, therefore, first, we, the representatives of the people, in Council assembled in Upper Fort Garry, on the 24th day of November, 1869, after having invoked the God of Nations, relying on these fundamental moral principles, solemnly declare, in the name of our constituents, and in our own names, before God and man, that, from the day on which the Government we had always respected abandoned us, by transferring to a strange power the sacred authority confided to it, the people of Rupert's Land and the North-West became free and exempt from all allegiance to the said Government. Second. That we refuse to recognize the authority of Canada, which pretends to have a right to coerce us, and impose upon us a despotic form of government still more contrary to our rights and interests as British subjects, than was that Government to which we had subjected our-selves, through necessity up to recent date. Thirdly. That, by sending an expedition on the 1st November, ult., charged to drive back Mr. William McDougall and his companions, coming in the name of Canada, to rule us with the rod of despotism, without previous notification to that effect, we have acted conformably to that sacred right which commands every citizen to offer energetic opposition to pre-vent this country from being enslaved. Fourth. That we continue, and shall continue, to oppose, with all our strength, the establishing of the 'Canadian authority in our country, under the announced form; and, in case of persistence on the part of the Canadian Government to enforce its obnoxious policy upon us by force of arms, we protest before-hand against such an unjust and unlawful course; and we declare the said Canadian Government responsible, before God and men, for the innumerable evils which may be caused by so unwarrantable a course. Be it known, therefore, to the world in general and to the Canadian Government in particular, that, as we have always heretofore successfully defended our country in frequent wars with the neighbouring tribes of Indians, who are now on friendly relations with us, we are firmly resolved in future, not less than in the past, to repel all invasions from whatsoever quarter they may come; and, further more, we do declare and proclaim, in the name of the people of Rupert's Land and the North-West, that we have, on the said 24th day of November, 1869, above mentioned, established a Provisional Government, and hold it to be the only and lawful authority now in existence in Rupert's Land and the North-West which claims the obedience and respect of the people; that, meanwhile, we hold our-selves in readiness to enter in such negotiations with the Canadian Government as may be favourable for the good government and prosperity of this people. In support of this declaration, relying on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge ourselves, on oath, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor, to each other.

Issued at Fort Garry, this Eighth day of December, in the year of our Lord, One thousand eight hundred and sixty-nine.

John Bruce, Pres. Louis Riel, Sec.

1873  A bill was introduced in the Territorial Legislature to move the capital to Evanston.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1875  Territorial Governor Thayer approves an act creating Pease County, which was later renamed Johnson County.

1902  USS Wyoming, BM-10, commissioned.

1941  The FBI warned Japanese residents of Rawlins to be discreet.

1941 Japan released its Declaration of War against the United States and the UK, which stated:

By the grace of Heaven, Emperor of Japan, seated on the throne occupied by the same dynasty from time immemorial, enjoin upon ye, Our loyal and brave subjects:

We hereby declare War on the United States of America and the British Empire. The men and officers of Our Army and Navy shall do their utmost in prosecuting the war. Our public servants of various departments shall perform faithfully and diligently their respective duties; the entire nation with a united will shall mobilize their total strength so that nothing will miscarry in the attainment of Our war aims.

To ensure the stability of East Asia and to contribute to world peace is the far-sighted policy which was formulated by Our Great Illustrious Imperial Grandsire and Our Great Imperial Sire succeeding Him, and which We lay constantly to heart. To cultivate friendship among nations and to enjoy prosperity in common with all nations, has always been the guiding principle of Our Empire's foreign policy. It has been truly unavoidable and far from Our wishes that Our Empire has been brought to cross swords with America and Britain. More than four years have passed since China, failing to comprehend the true intentions of Our Empire, and recklessly courting trouble, disturbed the peace of East Asia and compelled Our Empire to take up arms. Although there has been reestablished the National Government of China, with which Japan had effected neighborly intercourse and cooperation, the regime which has survived in Chungking, relying upon American and British protection, still continues its fratricidal opposition. Eager for the realization of their inordinate ambition to dominate the Orient, both America and Britain, giving support to the Chungking regime, have aggravated the disturbances in East Asia. Moreover these two Powers, inducing other countries to follow suit, increased military preparations on all sides of Our Empire to challenge Us. They have obstructed by every means Our peaceful commerce and finally resorted to a direct severance of economic relations, menacing gravely the existence of Our Empire. Patiently have We waited and long have We endured, in the hope that Our government might retrieve the situation in peace. But Our adversaries, showing not the least spirit of conciliation, have unduly delayed a settlement; and in the meantime they have intensified the economic and political pressure to compel thereby Our Empire to submission. This trend of affairs, would, if left unchecked, not only nullify Our Empire's efforts of many years for the sake of the stabilization of East Asia, but also endanger the very existence of Our nation. The situation being such as it is, Our Empire, for its existence and self-defense has no other recourse but to appeal to arms and to crush every obstacle in its path.

The hallowed spirits of Our Imperial Ancestors guarding Us from above, We rely upon the loyalty and courage of Our subjects in Our confident expectation that the task bequeathed by Our forefathers will be carried forward and that the sources of evil will be speedily eradicated and an enduring peace immutably established in East Asia, preserving thereby the glory of Our Empire.

In witness whereof, we have hereunto set our hand and caused the Grand Seal of the Empire to be affixed at the Imperial Palace, Tokyo, this seventh day of the 12th month of the 15th year of Shōwa, corresponding to the 2,602nd year from the accession to the throne of Emperor Jimmu.

 The UK declared war on Japan.

Sir,
On the evening of December 7th His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom learned that Japanese forces without previous warning either in the form of a declaration of war or of an ultimatum with a conditional declaration of war had attempted a landing on the coast of Malaya and bombed Singapore and Hong Kong.
In view of these wanton acts of unprovoked aggression committed in flagrant violation of International Law and particularly of Article I of the Third Hague Convention relative to the opening of hostilities, to which both Japan and the United Kingdom are parties, His Majesty's Ambassador at Tokyo has been instructed to inform the Imperial Japanese Government in the name of His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom that a state of war exists between our two countries.
I have the honour to be, with high consideration,

Sir,

Your obedient servant,

Winston S. Churchill

 The US declared war on Japan, with President Roosevelt declaring the following:

Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, members of the Senate and the House of Representatives:
Yesterday, December 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

The United States was at peace with that nation, and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its Emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific.

Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American island of Oahu, the Japanese Ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. And, while this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or of armed attack.

It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time the Japanese Government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.

The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition, American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.

Yesterday the Japanese Government also launched an attack against Malaya.

Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong.

Last night Japanese forces attacked Guam.

Last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands.

Last night the Japanese attacked Wake Island.

And this morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island.

Japan has therefore undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation.

As Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense, that always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us.

No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people, in their righteous might, will win through to absolute victory.

I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.

Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger.

With confidence in our armed forces, with the un-bounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph. So help us God.

I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.

1944 Bryant B. Brooks, governor from January 1905 to January 1911, died in Casper.  Brooks was a true pioneering figure in Wyoming, having come to the state in 1880 and having been, at first, a trapper and rancher.  He reflects a class that isn't often discussed, however, in early Western history in that he was well educated (but not a lawyer), having attended Business College in Chicago Illinois.  Nonetheless, he was only 19 years old at the time he moved to Wyoming.  He was highly energetic and was successful in ranching.  After his term in office expired he was also very active in the early oil industry and was partially responsible for the construction of one of Casper's first "skyscraper" buildings, the Oil Exchange Building, which was built in 1917, during one of the region's earliest oil booms, this one due to World War One. The building remains in use today, with its name having been changed to the Consolidated Royalty Building.

1953 President Eisenhower delivered his "Atoms for Peace" address to the UN.

1967  Artist Hans Kiebler died at his home in Dayton.

1972  4.1 magnitude earth quake felt in Theromopolis.  On the same day, Sheridan experiences a record low of -30F.

December 2

1875  Strike at Rock Springs mines, the first for that location, settled.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1892  John E. Osborne takes the oath of office under strained circumstances, given Republican claims of voting irregularities following Amos Barber's defeat following the Johnson County War.   Osborne's election was valid in spite of such protestations.  He served one term as Governor and declined renomination.  He subsequently served a single terms as Wyoming's Congressman, and then served as Assistant Secretary of State in the Wilson Administration.

Osborne was a physician, and is principally remembered in Wyoming for having had a pair of shoes made from the skin of George "Big Nose" Parrot, an executed murderer.  He was a major sheep rancher during his time in Wyoming as well.  He later occupied a position in the Wilson Administration.

1905   Diamondville mine explosion killed 18 men.

1914  The Fremont Lake Irrigation Company completed its canal for irrigation at Pinedale.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1916  The Cheyenne State Leader for December 2, 1916. American Troops Ready to Stop Bandit Villa.

Things were starting to look increasingly dangerous on the border.

The Laramie Republican for December 2, 1916: Maybe there's nothing to worry about on the border.

Residents of Laramie would have been less disturbed by border news today than those in Cheyenne would have been.

1918 December 2, 1918. Wilson speaks, the Papers Comment, Some Troops Come Home, Some go to their Final Resting Place, the Post War World National and Local starts to emerge.

This day, which was a Monday in 1918.  Woodrow Wilson gave his fist post war State of the Union address.

It's interesting to note that Wilson, in spite of serving a full eight years during which the world was at war for four of which, and during which the United States teetered close to war for nearly the entire time, he only delivered one address while the nation was actually at war.

The address was a significant one dealing with the post war world, how Wilson envisioned it, and the peace.

The address:

GENTLEMEN OF THE CONGRESS:

The year that has elapsed since I last stood before you to fulfill my constitutional duty to give to the Congress from time to time information on the state of the Union has been so crowded with great events, great processes, and great results that I cannot hope to give you an adequate picture of its transactions or of the far-reaching changes which have been wrought of our nation and of the world. You have yourselves witnessed these things, as I have. It is too soon to assess them; and we who stand in the midst of them and are part of them are less qualified than men of another generation will be to say what they mean, or even what they have been. But some great outstanding facts are unmistakable and constitute, in a sense, part of the public business with which it is our duty to deal. To state them is to set the stage for the legislative and executive action which must grow out of them and which we have yet to shape and determine.

A year ago we had sent 145,918 men overseas. Since then we have sent 1,950,513, an average of 162,542 each month, the number in fact rising, in May last, to 245,951, in June to 278,760, in July to 307,182, and continuing to reach similar figures in August and September, in August 289,570 and in September 257,438. No such movement of troops ever took place before, across three thousand miles of sea, followed by adequate equipment and supplies, and carried safely through extraordinary dangers of attack,-dangers which were alike strange and infinitely difficult to guard against. In all this movement only seven hundred and fifty-eight men were lost by enemy attack, six hundred and thirty of whom were upon a single English transport which was sunk near the Orkney Islands.

I need not tell you what lay back of this great movement of men and material. It is not invidious to say that back of it lay a supporting organization of the industries of the country and of all its productive activities more complete, more thorough in method and effective in result, more spirited and unanimous in purpose and effort than any other great belligerent had been able to effect. We profited greatly by the experience of the nations which had already been engaged for nearly three years in the exigent and exacting business, their every resource and every executive proficiency taxed to the utmost. We were their pupils. But we learned quickly and acted with a promptness and a readiness of cooperation that justify our great pride that we were able to serve the world with unparalleled energy and quick accomplishment.

But it is not the physical scale and executive efficiency of preparation, supply, equipment and despatch that I would dwell upon, but the mettle and quality of the officers and men we sent over and of the sailors who kept the seas, and the spirit of the nation that stood behind them. No soldiers or sailors ever proved themselves more quickly ready for the test of battle or acquitted themselves with more splendid courage and achievement when put to the test. Those of us who played some part in directing the great processes by which the war was pushed irresistibly forward to the final triumph may now forget all that and delight our thoughts with the story of what our men did. Their officers understood the grim and exacting task they had undertaken and performed it with an audacity, efficiency, and unhesitating courage that touch the story of convoy and battle with imperishable distinction at every turn, whether the enterprise were great or small, from their great chiefs, Pershing and Sims, down to the youngest lieutenant; and their men were worthy of them,-such men as hardly need to be commanded, and go to their terrible adventure blithely and with the quick intelligence of those who know just what it is they would accomplish. I am proud to be the fellow-countryman of men of such stuff and valor. Those of us who stayed at home did our duty; the war could not have been won or the gallant men who fought it given their opportunity to win it otherwise; but for many a long day we shall think ourselves "accurs'd we were not there, and hold our manhoods cheap while any speaks that fought" with these at St. Mihiel or Thierry. The memory of those days of triumphant battle will go with these fortunate men to their graves; and each will have his favorite memory. "Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot, but hell remember with advantages what feats he did that day!"

What we all thank God for with deepest gratitude is that our men went in force into the line of battle just at the critical moment when the whole fate of the world seemed to hang in the balance and threw their fresh strength into the ranks of freedom in time to turn the whole tide and sweep of the fateful struggle,-turn it once for all, so that thenceforth it was back, back, back for their enemies, always back, never again forward! After that it was only a scant four months before the commanders of the Central Empires knew themselves beaten; and now their very empires are in liquidation!

And throughout it all how fine the spirit of the nation was: what unity of purpose, what untiring zeal! What elevation of purpose ran through all its splendid display of strength, its untiring accomplishment! I have said that those of us who stayed at home to do the work of organization and supply will always wish that we had been with the men whom we sustained by our labor; but we can never be ashamed. It has been an inspiring thing to be here in the midst of fine men who had turned aside from every private interest of their own and devoted the whole of their trained capacity to the tasks that supplied the sinews of the whole great undertaking! The patriotism, the unselfishness, the thoroughgoing devotion and distinguished capacity that marked their toilsome labors, day after day, month after month, have made them fit mates and comrades of the men in the trenches and on the sea. And not the men here in Washington only. They have but directed the vast achievement. Throughout innumerable factories, upon innumerable farms, in the depths of coal mines and iron mines and copper mines, wherever the stuffs of industry were to be obtained and prepared, in the shipyards, on the railways, at the docks, on the sea, in every labor that was needed to sustain the battle lines, men have vied with each other to do their part and do it well. They can look any man-at-arms in the face, and say, We also strove to win and gave the best that was in us to make our fleets and armies sure of their triumph!

And what shall we say of the women,-of their instant intelligence, quickening every task that they touched; their capacity for organization and cooperation, which gave their action discipline and enhanced the effectiveness of everything they attempted; their aptitude at tasks to which they had never before set their hands; their utter self-sacrifice alike in what they did and in what they gave? Their contribution to the great result is beyond appraisal. They have added a new lustre to the annals of American womanhood.
The least tribute we can pay them is to make them the equals of men in political rights as they have proved themselves their equals in every field of practical work they have entered, whether for themselves or for their country. These great days of completed achievement would be sadly marred were we to omit that act of justice. Besides the immense practical services they have rendered the women of the country have been the moving spirits in the systematic economies by which our people have voluntarily assisted to supply the suffering peoples of the world and the armies upon every front with food and everything else that we had that might serve the common cause. The details of such a story can never be fully written, but we carry them at our hearts and thank God that we can say that we are the kinsmen of such.

And now we are sure of the great triumph for which every sacrifice was made. It has come, come in its completeness, and with the pride and inspiration of these days of achievement quick within us, we turn to the tasks of peace again,-a peace secure against the violence of irresponsible monarchs and ambitious military coteries and made ready for a new order, for new foundations of justice and fair dealing.

We are about to give order and organization to this peace not only for ourselves but for the other peoples of the world as well, so far as they will suffer us to serve them. It is international justice that we seek, not domestic safety merely. Our thoughts have dwelt of late upon Europe, upon Asia, upon the near and the far East, very little upon the acts of peace and accommodation that wait to be performed at our own doors. While we are adjusting our relations with the rest of the world is it not of capital importance that we should clear away all grounds of misunderstanding with our immediate neighbors and give proof of the friendship we really feel? I hope that the members of the Senate will permit me to speak once more of the unratified treaty of friendship and adjustment with the Republic of Colombia. I very earnestly urge upon them an early and favorable action upon that vital matter. I believe that they will feel, with me, that the stage of affairs is now set for such action as will be not only just but generous and in the spirit of the new age upon which we have so happily entered.

So far as our domestic affairs are concerned the problem of our return to peace is a problem of economic and industrial readjustment. That problem is less serious for us than it may turn out too he for the nations which have suffered the disarrangements and the losses of war longer than we. Our people, moreover, do not wait to be coached and led. They know their own business, are quick and resourceful at every readjustment, definite in purpose, and self-reliant in action. Any leading strings we might seek to put them in would speedily become hopelessly tangled because they would pay no attention to them and go their own way. All that we can do as their legislative and executive servants is to mediate the process of change here, there, and elsewhere as we may. I have heard much counsel as to the plans that should be formed and personally conducted to a happy consummation, but from no quarter have I seen any general scheme of "reconstruction" emerge which I thought it likely we could force our spirited business men and self-reliant laborers to accept with due pliancy and obedience.

While the war lasted we set up many agencies by which to direct the industries of the country in the services it was necessary for them to render, by which to make sure of an abundant supply of the materials needed, by which to check undertakings that could for the time be dispensed with and stimulate those that were most serviceable in war, by which to gain for the purchasing departments of the Government a certain control over the prices of essential articles and materials, by which to restrain trade with alien enemies, make the most of the available shipping, and systematize financial transactions, both public and private, so that there would be no unnecessary conflict or confusion,-by which, in short, to put every material energy of the country in harness to draw the common load and make of us one team in the accomplishment of a great task. But the moment we knew the armistice to have been signed we took the harness off. Raw materials upon which the Government had kept its hand for fear there should not be enough for the industries that supplied the armies have been released and put into the general market again. Great industrial plants whose whole output and machinery had been taken over for the uses of the Government have been set free to return to the uses to which they were put before the war. It has not been possible to remove so readily or so quickly the control of foodstuffs and of shipping, because the world has still to be fed from our granaries and the ships are still needed to send supplies to our men overseas and to bring the men back as fast as the disturbed conditions on the other side of the water permit; but even there restraints are being relaxed as much as possible and more and more as the weeks go by.

Never before have there been agencies in existence in this country which knew so much of the field of supply, of labor, and of industry as the War Industries Board, the War Trade Board, the Labor Department, the Food Administration, and the Fuel Administration have known since their labors became thoroughly systematized; and they have not been isolated agencies; they have been directed by men who represented the permanent Departments of the Government and so have been the centres of unified and cooperative action. It has been the policy of the Executive, therefore, since the armistice was assured (which is in effect a complete submission of the enemy) to put the knowledge of these bodies at the disposal of the business men of the country and to offer their intelligent mediation at every point and in every matter where it was desired. It is surprising how fast the process of return to a peace footing has moved in the three weeks since the fighting stopped. It promises to outrun any inquiry that may be instituted and any aid that may be offered. It will not be easy to direct it any better than it will direct itself. The American business man is of quick initiative.

The ordinary and normal processes of private initiative will not, however, provide immediate employment for all of the men of our returning armies. Those who are of trained capacity, those who are skilled workmen, those who have acquired familiarity with established businesses, those who are ready and willing to go to the farms, all those whose aptitudes are known or will be sought out by employers will find no difficulty, it is safe to say, in finding place and employment. But there will be others who will be at a loss where to gain a livelihood unless pains are taken to guide them and put them in the way of work. There will be a large floating residuum of labor which should not be left wholly to shift for itself. It seems to me important, therefore, that the development of public works of every sort should be promptly resumed, in order that opportunities should be created for unskilled labor in particular, and that plans should be made for such developments of our unused lands and our natural resources as we have hitherto lacked stimulation to undertake.

I particularly direct your attention to the very practical plans which the Secretary of the Interior has developed in his annual report and before your Committees for the reclamation of arid, swamp, and cutover lands which might, if the States were willing and able to cooperate, redeem some three hundred million acres of land for cultivation. There are said to be fifteen or twenty million acres of land in the West, at present arid, for whose reclamation water is available, if properly conserved. There are about two hundred and thirty million acres from which the forests have been cut but which have never yet been cleared for the plow and which lie waste and desolate. These lie scattered all over the Union. And there are nearly eighty million acres of land that lie under swamps or subject to periodical overflow or too wet for anything but grazing, which it is perfectly feasible to drain and protect and redeem. The Congress can at once direct thousands of the returning soldiers to the reclamation of the arid lands which it has already undertaken, if it will but enlarge the plans and appropriations which it has entrusted to the Department of the Interior. It is possible in dealing with our unused land to effect a great rural and agricultural development which will afford the best sort of opportunity to men who want to help themselves and the Secretary of the Interior has thought the possible methods out in a way which is worthy of your most friendly attention.

I have spoken of the control which must yet for a while, perhaps for a long long while, be exercised over shipping because of the priority of service to which our forces overseas are entitled and which should also be accorded the shipments which are to save recently liberated peoples from starvation and many devastated regions from permanent ruin. May I not say a special word about the needs of Belgium and northern France? No sums of money paid by way of indemnity will serve of themselves to save them from hopeless disadvantage for years to come. Something more must be done than merely find the money. If they had money and raw materials in abundance to-morrow they could not resume their place in the industry of the world to-morrow,-the very important place they held before the flame of war swept across them. Many of their factories are razed to the ground. Much of their machinery is destroyed or has been taken away. Their people are scattered and many of their best workmen are dead. Their markets will be taken by others, if they are not in some special way assisted to rebuild their factories and replace their lost instruments of manufacture. They should not be left to the vicissitudes of the sharp competition for materials and for industrial facilities which is now to set in. I hope, therefore, that the Congress will not be unwilling, if it should become necessary, to grant to some such agency as the War Trade Board the right to establish priorities of export and supply for the benefit of these people whom we have been so happy to assist in saving from the German terror and whom we must not now thoughtlessly leave to shift for themselves in a pitiless competitive market.

For the steadying, and facilitation of our own domestic business readjustments nothing is more important than the immediate determination of the taxes that are to be levied for 1918, 1919, and 1920. As much of the burden of taxation must be lifted from business as sound methods of financing the Government will permit, and those who conduct the great essential industries of the country must be told as exactly as possible what obligations to the Government they will be expected to meet in the years immediately ahead of them. It will be of serious consequence to the country to delay removing all uncertainties in this matter a single day longer than the right processes of debate justify. It is idle to talk of successful and confident business reconstruction before those uncertainties are resolved.

If the war had continued it would have been necessary to raise at least eight billion dollars by taxation payable in the year 1919; but the war has ended and I agree with the Secretary of the Treasury that it will be safe to reduce the amount to six billions. An immediate rapid decline in the expenses of the Government is not to be looked for. Contracts made for war supplies will, indeed, be rapidly cancelled and liquidated, but their immediate liquidation will make heavy drains on the Treasury for the months just ahead of us. The maintenance of our forces on the other side of the sea is still necessary. A considerable proportion of those forces must remain in Europe during the period of occupation, and those which are brought home will be transported and demobilized at heavy expense for months to come. The interest on our war debt must of course be paid and provision made for the retirement of the obligations of the Government which represent it. But these demands will of course fall much below what a continuation of military operations would have entailed and six billions should suffice to supply a sound foundation for the financial operations of the year.

I entirely concur with the Secretary of the Treasury in recommending that the two billions needed in addition to the four billions provided by existing law be obtained from the profits which have accrued and shall accrue from war contracts and distinctively war business, but that these taxes be confined to the war profits accruing in 1918, or in 1919 from business originating in war contracts. I urge your acceptance of his recommendation that provision be made now, not subsequently, that the taxes to be paid in 1920 should be reduced from six to four billions. Any arrangements less definite than these would add elements of doubt and confusion to the critical period of industrial readjustment through which the country must now immediately pass, and which no true friend of the nation's essential business interests can afford to be responsible for creating or prolonging. Clearly determined conditions, clearly and simply charted, are indispensable to the economic revival and rapid industrial development which may confidently be expected if we act now and sweep all interrogation points away.

I take it for granted that the Congress will carry out the naval programme which was undertaken before we entered the war. The Secretary of the Navy has submitted to your Committees for authorization that part of the programme which covers the building plans of the next three years. These plans have been prepared along the lines and in accordance with the policy which the Congress established, not under the exceptional conditions of the war, but with the intention of adhering to a definite method of development for the navy. I earnestly recommend the uninterrupted pursuit of that policy. It would clearly be unwise for us to attempt to adjust our programmes to a future world policy as yet undetermined.

The question which causes me the greatest concern is the question of the policy to be adopted towards the railroads. I frankly turn to you for counsel upon it. I have no confident judgment of my own. I do not see how any thoughtful man can have who knows anything of the complexity of the problem. It is a problem which must be studied, studied immediately, and studied without bias or prejudice. Nothing can be gained by becoming partisans of any particular plan of settlement.

It was necessary that the administration of the railways should be taken over by the Government so long as the war lasted. It would have been impossible otherwise to establish and carry through under a single direction the necessary priorities of shipment. It would have been impossible otherwise to combine maximum production at the factories and mines and farms with the maximum possible car supply to take the products to the ports and markets; impossible to route troop shipments and freight shipments without regard to the advantage or-disadvantage of the roads employed; impossible to subordinate, when necessary, all questions of convenience to the public necessity; impossible to give the necessary financial support to the roads from the public treasury. But all these necessities have now been served, and the question is, What is best for the railroads and for the public in the future?

Exceptional circumstances and exceptional methods of administration were not needed to convince us that the railroads were not equal to the immense tasks of transportation imposed upon them by the rapid and continuous development of the industries of the country. We knew that already. And we knew that they were unequal to it partly because their full cooperation was rendered impossible by law and their competition made obligatory, so that it has been impossible to assign to them severally the traffic which could best be carried by their respective lines in the interest of expedition and national economy.

We may hope, I believe, for the formal conclusion of the war by treaty by the time Spring has come. The twenty-one months to which the present control of the railways is limited after formal proclamation of peace shall have been made will run at the farthest, I take it for granted, only to the January of 1921. The full equipment of the railways which the federal administration had planned could not be completed within any such period. The present law does not permit the use of the revenues of the several roads for the execution of such plans except by formal contract with their directors, some of whom will consent while some will not, and therefore does not afford sufficient authority to undertake improvements upon the scale upon which it would be necessary to undertake them. Every approach to this difficult subject-matter of decision brings us face to face, therefore, with this unanswered question: What is it right that we should do with the railroads, in the interest of the public and in fairness to their owners?

Let me say at once that I have no answer ready. The only thing that is perfectly clear to me is that it is not fair either to the public or to the owners of the railroads to leave the question unanswered and that it will presently become my duty to relinquish control of the roads, even before the expiration of the statutory period, unless there should appear some clear prospect in the meantime of a legislative solution. Their release would at least produce one element of a solution, namely certainty and a quick stimulation of private initiative.

I believe that it will be serviceable for me to set forth as explicitly as possible the alternative courses that lie open to our choice. We can simply release the roads and go back to the old conditions of private management, unrestricted competition, and multiform regulation by both state and federal authorities; or we can go to the opposite extreme and establish complete government control, accompanied, if necessary, by actual government ownership; or we can adopt an intermediate course of modified private control, under a more unified and affirmative public regulation and under such alterations of the law as will permit wasteful competition to be avoided and a considerable degree of unification of administration to be effected, as, for example, by regional corporations under which the railways of definable areas would be in effect combined in single systems.

The one conclusion that I am ready to state with confidence is that it would be a disservice alike to the country and to the owners of the railroads to return to the old conditions unmodified. Those are conditions of restraint without development. There is nothing affirmative or helpful about them. What the country chiefly needs is that all its means of transportation should be developed, its railways, its waterways, its highways, and its countryside roads. Some new element of policy, therefore, is absolutely necessary—necessary for the service of the public, necessary for the release of credit to those who are administering the railways, necessary for the protection of their security holders. The old policy may be changed much or little, but surely it cannot wisely be left as it was. I hope that the Con will have a complete and impartial study of the whole problem instituted at once and prosecuted as rapidly as possible. I stand ready and anxious to release the roads from the present control and I must do so at a very early date if by waiting until the statutory limit of time is reached I shall be merely prolonging the period of doubt and uncertainty which is hurtful to every interest concerned.

I welcome this occasion to announce to the Congress my purpose to join in Paris the representatives of the governments with which we have been associated in the war against the Central Empires for the purpose of discussing with them the main features of the treaty of peace. I realize the great inconveniences that will attend my leaving the country, particularly at this time, but the conclusion that it was my paramount duty to go has been forced upon me by considerations which I hope will seem as conclusive to you as they have seemed to me.

The Allied governments have accepted the bases of peace which I outlined to the Congress on the eighth of January last, as the Central Empires also have, and very reasonably desire my personal counsel in their interpretation and application, and it is highly desirable that I should give it in order that the sincere desire of our Government to contribute without selfish purpose of any kind to settlements that will be of common benefit to all the nations concerned may be made fully manifest. The peace settlements which are now to be agreed upon are of transcendent importance both to us and to the rest of the world, and I know of no business or interest which should take precedence of them. The gallant men of our armed forces on land and sea have consciously fought for the ideals which they knew to be the ideals of their country; I have sought to express those ideals; they have accepted my statements of them as the substance of their own thought and purpose, as the associated governments have accepted them; I owe it to them to see to it, so far as in me lies, that no false or mistaken interpretation is put upon them, and no possible effort omitted to realize them. It is now my duty to play my full part in making good what they offered their life's blood to obtain. I can think of no call to service which could transcend this.

I shall be in close touch with you and with affairs on this side the water, and you will know all that I do. At my request, the French and English governments have absolutely removed the censorship of cable news which until within a fortnight they had maintained and there is now no censorship whatever exercised at this end except upon attempted trade communications with enemy countries. It has been necessary to keep an open wire constantly available between Paris and the Department of State and another between France and the Department of War. In order that this might be done with the least possible interference with the other uses of the cables, I have temporarily taken over the control of both cables in order that they may be used as a single system. I did so at the advice of the most experienced cable officials, and I hope that the results will justify my hope that the news of the next few months may pass with the utmost freedom and with the least possible delay from each side of the sea to the other.

May I not hope, Gentlemen of the Congress, that in the delicate tasks I shall have to perform on the other side of the sea, in my efforts truly and faithfully to interpret the principles and purposes of the country we love, I may have the encouragement and the added strength of your united support? I realize the magnitude and difficulty of the duty I am undertaking; I am poignantly aware of its grave responsibilities. I am the servant of the nation. I can have no private thought or purpose of my own in performing such an errand. I go to give the best that is in me to the common settlements which I must now assist in arriving at in conference with the other working heads of the associated governments. I shall count upon your friendly countenance and encouragement. I shall not be inaccessible. The cables and the wireless will render me available for any counsel or service you may desire of me, and I shall be happy in the thought that I am constantly in touch with the weighty matters of domestic policy with which we shall have to deal. I shall make my absence as brief as possible and shall hope to return with the happy assurance that it has been possible to translate into action the great ideals for which America has striven.

The importance of the speech wasn't lost on the press, which reported on it that very day.  Not surprisingly, in a railroad town like Laramie, the press noted that Wilson wasn't in favor of relinquishing government control of the railroads.  This had been a major feature of the war and in fact the country had nationalized the lines during the war, something it didn't have to do during World War Two. That rationalized rail transport and kept labor demands in check, but it wasn't universally popular and had some odd collateral impacts.

Colorado Midland advertisement. The Colorado Midland had seen its business dramatically expand, and then collapse, under government control.  It went bankrupt in 1918 as a result.

The Boomerang was late on U.S. troops arriving in Germany.  They'd already done that.

Cold and snow as in the forecast, just like the day on which I'm writing this.

The Cheyenne paper reported on the speech as well, but it was also noting the shopping frenzy of the season in a cartoon, once again giving evidence to the popular concept of the commercialization of Christmas being a recent phenomenon to be in error.

The Cheyenne paper was reporting on a royalist plot in Germany.  I'm not familiar with that event, but then I'm not familiar in detail with all of the chaotic events of the immediate post war world in Germany.

Can anyone recommend a book on that?

Anyhow, this event was mentioned in a lot of newspapers at the time, and in fact the upper ranks of the German military never really lost their royalist views.  Indeed, one of the often missed features of the Nazi militarization of the 1930s was a dedicated effort to wrestle control of the military away from the German aristocratic class, something that would have an overall negative impact on world events as the new officers very often indeed had Nazi loyalties, where as the old officer class was loyal principally to its own class.  Neither situation was great, obviously, but Nazi loyalties were obviously worse.

The paper in Cheyenne also reported that the Bolsheviks in Russia were up to no good, which indeed was true.

The Casper paper also reported on the plot in Germany but a preview of coming attractions was given in the report of a shooting at the Midwest Hotel in Casper.  Casper's population had exploded during the war and an old red light district had expanded into a major feature of the town, the legendary Sand Bar district. The Midwest Hotel was literally right on the boundary of the district.

The papers at that time typically wrote headlines in this frankly racist fashion.  Violence in the Sand Bar was hardly confined to one race, but when African Americans were involved in it, their race was featured, as here, in the headline all too often.

Of course, with the war now over (save for in Russia) a lot was going on elsewhere. . .

 RMS Mauretania in New York City with American aviators and other troops returning from Europe after World War I on December 2, 1918.

The rather shocking speed at which the United States demobilized in 1918-1919 is demonstrated by the above.  The RMS Mauretania brought home more than aviators, it also brought home ground troops, who disembarked in New York.  The U.S. was already bringing soldiers home.  Indeed, the American military was clearing out of the United Kingdom as quickly as possible.

There are a lot of reasons that this was the case, but it shows the old line about the Vietnam War, often said about World War Two, may not be fully informed.  That classic assertion is that at the end of the Second World War there was a long stay in Europe or Asia followed by a long sea voyage home where as during the Vietnam War you were just brought home and dumped off.  There's something to that, but at least at the end of World War One the U.S. was speeding some troops home. These guys would not be in uniform long.  

Of course, that says nothing really about what happened during the second war.  There were a lot of U.S. mistakes made in regard to everything in World War One, and things may very well have been different some twenty plus years later.

Graves Registration Service This skirmish line (detail of Company A, 321 Labor Battalion) is searching for bodies along the south bank of the Vesle River, near Bazoches. The stretchers are used to transport the bodies to the cemetery. December 2, 1918

Not everyone was coming right home, of course.  Over 1,000,000 U.S. troops in France were going into Germany for occupation duty.

And some American soldiers were never coming home.  These photographs show the grim details of a Grave Registration unit at work.  Note that this unit is all black, showing how the inclination to assign black troops to service units was there during World War One.  More black troops served in service units than in combat units in the Great War, a trend that would continue on into World War Two when almost all black troops were in service units until the end of the war, when that policy in the still segregated Army was reversed (the Marines didn't take in black enlistees at all until mid World War Two).  During WWI there were black combat units including some state units with mostly black officers, however, so things actually were somewhat more equitable in WWI than they became by WWII.

 One of the trenches ready for the reception of the bodies at the cemetery at Fère-en-Tardenois / Signal Corps, U.S.A.

Some of those troops who would be coming home were convalescing in England and France.  Here, some of those in the UK put on a show for local residents, who seemed to enjoy it, but must have found it odd after their own sons and daughters had been serving for a full four years in many instances.

This soldier in a wheelchair is supposed to be a tank. Note he's holding a M1917 revolver, no doubt removed from the holster of the soldier who is pushing him.

1919  December 2, 1919. Bill Carlisle's luck runs out. Wilson sends a message.

It had actually run out some time ago.

He hadn't made to the Hole in the Wall, as people had been speculating, but he had made it relatively far from Medicine Bow.  Indeed, he must have fled on something like the Fetterman Road or the down Sybille Canyon or something to end up where he did, the mountains outside of Glendo Wyoming.

He'd been wounded in the hand his last train robbery when he disarmed a young man who attempted to shoot him.  That was minor in comparison to what happened this time.  A member of the posse that arrested him shot him in the chest on this occasion, causing him to have to be taken to Douglas on a pack mule.  He'd spend nearly a month there following surgery that saved his life.

That posse had been pursuing him so his last days of freedom weren't enjoyable ones.  His next month obviously wouldn't be either.  Following his recovery he was sent back to the penitentiary in Rawlins to serve another sixteen years.

The Union Pacific came out ahead, compared to 1916, when it had spent $15,000 searching for him. Relying on this occasion on local law enforcement, even though it complained about it, it came out cost ahead.

As the mystery of Carlisle's whereabouts was resolved, another one developed elsewhere, that being the mysterious disappearance of Canadian theatre magnate Ambrose Small and his secretary Jack Doughty.  Ambrose had sold his theatre holdings earlier that day and simply disappeared, never to be found.

Doughty was and was extradited for having stolen bonds that he cashed and deposited that same day. But there was no evidence that he was connected with Small's disappearance or that he knew anything about it.  Indeed, Small's predilections, which included gambling and affairs with actresses, and disappearances for brief periods of time, made determining what happened to him difficult.

Also on this day, Woodrow Wilson sent his State of the Union message to Congress. Still recovering from his stroke, he could not deliver it in person.  It was the first written State of the Union Message to Congress since 1800.

TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

I sincerely regret that I cannot be present at the opening of this session of the Congress. I am thus prevented from presenting in as direct a way as I could wish the many questions that are pressing for solution at this time. Happily, I have had the advantage of the advice of the heads of the several executive departments who have kept in close touch with affairs in their detail and whose thoughtful recommendations I earnestly second.

In the matter of the railroads and the readjustment of their affairs growing out of Federal control, I shall take the liberty at a later date of addressing you.

I hope that Congress will bring to a conclusion at this session legislation looking to the establishment of a budget system. That there should be one single authority responsible for the making of all appropriations and that appropriations should be made not independently of each other, but with reference to one single comprehensive plan of expenditure properly related to the nation's income, there can be no doubtI believe the burden of preparing the budget must, in the nature of' the case, if the work is to be properly done and responsibility concentrated instead of divided, rest upon the executive. The budget so prepared should be submitted to and approved or amended by a single committee of each House of Congress and no single appropriation should be made by the Congress, except such as may have been included in the budget prepared by the executive or added by the particular committee of Congress charged with the budget legislation.

Another and not less important aspect of the problem is the ascertainment of the economy and efficiency with which the moneys appropriated are expended. Under existing law the only audit is for the purpose of ascertaining whether expenditures have been lawfully made within the appropriations. No one is authorized or equipped to ascertain whether the money has been spent wisely, economically and effectively. The auditors should be highly trained officials with permanent tenure in the Treasury Department, free of obligations to or motives of consideration for this or any subsequent administration, and authorized and empowered to examine into and make report upon the methods employed and the results obtained by the executive departments of the Government. Their reports should be made to the Congress and to the Secretary of the Treasury.

I trust that the Congress will give its immediate consideration to the problem of future taxation. Simplification of the income and profits taxes has become an immediate necessity. These taxes performed indispensable service during the war. They must, however, be simplified, not only to save the taxpayer inconvenience and expense, but in order that his liability may be made certain and definite.

With reference to the details of the Revenue Law, the Secretary of the Treasury and the Commissioner of Internal Revenue will lay before you for your consideration certain amendments necessary or desirable in connection with the administration of the law-recommendations which have my approval and support. It is of the utmost importance that in dealing with this matter the present law should not be disturbed so far as regards taxes for the calendar year 1920 payable in the calendar year 1921. The Congress might well consider whether the higher rates of income and profits taxes can in peace times be effectively productive of revenue, and whether they may not, on the contrary, be destructive of business activity and productive of waste and inefficiency. There is a point at which in peace times high rates of income and profits taxes discourage energy, remove the incentive to new enterprises, encourage extravagant expenditures and produce industrial stagnation with consequent unemployment and other attendant evils.

The problem is not an easy one. A fundamental change has taken place with reference to the position of America in the world's affairs. The prejudice and passions engendered by decades of controversy between two schools of political and economic thought,-the one believers in protection of American industries, the other believers in tariff for revenue only,-must be sbordinated to the single consideration of the public interest in the light of utterly changed conditions. Before the war America was heavily the debtor of the rest of the world and the interest payments she had to make to foreign countries on American securities held abroad, the expenditures of American travelers abroad and the ocean freight charges she had to pay to others, about balanced the value of her pre-war favorable balance of trade. During the war America's exports nave been greatly stimulated, and increased prices have increased their value. On the other hand, she has purchased a large proportion of the American securities previously held abroad, has loaned some $9,000,000,000 to foreign governments, and has built her own ships. Our favorable balance of trade has thus been greatly increased and Europe has been deprived of the means of meeting it heretofore existing. Europe can have only three ways of meeting the favorable balance of trade in peace times: by imports into this country of gold or of goods, or by establishing new credits. Europe is in no position at the present time to ship gold to us nor could we contemplate large further imports of gold into this country without concern. The time has nearly passed for international governmental loans and it will take time to develop in this country a market for foreign securities. Anything, therefore, which would tend to prevent foreign countries from settling for our exports by shipments of goods into this country could only have the effect of preventing them from paying for our exports and therefore of preventing the exports from being made. The productivity of the country, greatly stimulated by the war, must find an outlet by exports to foreign countries, and any measures taken to prevent imports will inevitably curtail exports, force curtailment of production, load the banking machinery of the country with credits to carry unsold products and produce industrial stagnation and unemployment. If we want to sell, we must be prepared to buy. Whatever, therefore, may have been our views during the period of growth of American business concerning tariff legislation, we must now adjust our own economic life to a changed condition growing out of the fact that American business is full grown and that America is the greatest capitalist in the world.

No policy of isolation will satisfy the growing needs and opportunities of America. The provincial standards and policies of the past, which have held American business as if in a strait-jacket, must yield and give way to the needs and exigencies of the new day in which we live, a day full of hope and promise for American business, if we will but take advantage of the opportunities that are ours for the asking. The recent war has ended our isolation and thrown upon us a great duty and responsibility. The United States must share the expanding world market. The United States desires for itself only equal opportunity with the other nations of the world, and that through the process of friendly cooperation and fair competition the legitimate interests of the nations concerned may be successfully and equitably adjusted.

There are other matters of importance upon which I urged action at the last session of Congress which are still pressing for solution. I am sure it is not necessary for me again to remind you -that there is one immediate and very practicable question resulting from the war which we should meet in the most liberal spirit. It is a matter of recognition and relief to our soldiers. I can do no better than to quote from my last message urging this very action:

"We must see to it that our returning soldiers are assisted in every practicable way to find the places for which they are fitted in the daily work of the country. This can be done by developing and maintaining upon an adequate scale the admirable organization created by the Department of Labor for placing men seeking work; and it can also be done, in at least one very great field, by creating new opportunities for individual enterprise. The Secretary of the Interior has pointed out the way by which returning soldiers may be helped to find and take up land in the hitherto undeveloped regions of the country which the Federal Government has already prepared, or can readily prepare, for cultivation and also on many of the cutover or neglected areas which lie within the limits of the older states; and I once more take the liberty of recommending very urgently that his plans shall receive the immediate and substantial support of the Congress."

In the matter of tariff legislation, I beg to call your attention to the statements contained in my last message urging legislation with reference to the establishment of the chemical and dyestuffs industry in America:

"Among the industries to which special consideration should be given is that of the manufacture of dyestuffs and related chemicals. Our complete dependence upon German supplies before the war made the interruption of trade a cause of exceptional economic disturbance. The close relation between the manufacture of dyestuffs, on the one hand, and of explosive and poisonous gases, on the other, moreover, has given the industry an exceptional significance and value. Although the United States will gladly and unhesitatingly join in the programme of international disarmament, it will, nevertheless, be a policy of obvious prudence to make certain of the successful maintenance of many strong and well-equipped chemical plants. The German chemical industry, with which we will be brought into competition, was -and may well be again, a thoroughly knit monopoly capable of exercising a competition of a peculiarly insidious and dangerous kind."

During the war the farmer performed a vital and willing service to the nation. By materially increasing the production of his land, he supplied America and the Allies with the increased amounts of food necessary to keep their immense armies in the field. He indispensably helped to win the war. But there is now scarcely less need of increasing the production in food -and the necessaries of life. I ask the Congress to consider means of encouraging effort along these lines. The importance of doing everything possible to promote production along economical lines, to improve marketing, and to make rural life more attractive and healthful, is obvious. I would urge approval of the plans already proposed to the Congress by the Secretary of Agriculture, to secure the essential facts required for the proper study of this question, through the proposed enlarged programmes for farm management studies and crop estimates. I would urge, also, the continuance of Federal participation in the building of good roads, under the terms of existing law and under the direction of present agencies; the need of further action on the part of the States and the Federal Government to preserve and develop our forest resources, especially through the practice of better forestry methods on private holdings and the extension of the publicly owned forests; better support for country schools and the more definite direction of their courses of study along lines related to rural problems; and fuller provision for sanitation in rural districts and the building up of needed hospital and medical facilities in these localities. Perhaps the way might be cleared for many of these desirable reforms by a fresh, comprehensive survey made of rural conditions by a conference composed of representatives of the farmers and of the agricultural agencies responsible for leadership.

I would call your attention to the widespread condition of political restlessness in our body politic. The causes of this unrest, while various and complicated, are superficial rather than deep-seated. Broadly, they arise from or are connected with the failure on the part of our Government to arrive speedily at a just and permanent peace permitting return to normal conditions, from the transfusion of radical theories from seething European centers pending such delay, from heartless profiteering resulting in the increase of the cost of living, and lastly from the machinations of passionate and malevolent agitators. With the return to normal conditions, this unrest will rapidly disappear. In the meantime, it does much evil. It seems to me that in dealing with this situation Congress should not be impatient or drastic but should seek rather to remove the causes. It should endeavor to bring our country back speedily to a peace basis, with ameliorated living conditions under the minimum of restrictions upon personal liberty that is consistent with our reconstruction problems. And it should arm the Federal Government with power to deal in its criminal courts with those persons who by violent methods would abrogate our time-tested institutions. With the free expression of opinion and with the advocacy of orderly political change, however fundamental, there must be no interference, but towards passion and malevolence tendine to incite crime and insurrection under guise of political evolution there should be no leniency. Legislation to this end has been recommended by the Attorney General and should be enacted. In this direct connection, I would call your attention to my recommendations on August 8th, pointing out legislative measures which wouldbe effective in controlling and bringing down the present cost of living, which contributes so largely to this unrest. On only one of these recommendations has the Congress acted. If the Government's campaign is to be effective, it is necessary that the other steps suggested should be acted on at once.

I renew and strongly urge the necessity of the extension of the present Food Control Act as to the period of time in which it shall remain in operation. The Attorney General has submitted a bill providing for an extension of this Act for a period of six months. As it now stands, it is limited in operation to the period of the war and becomes inoperative upon the formal proclamation of peace. It is imperative that it should be extended at once. The Department of justice has built up extensive machinery for the purpose of enforcing its provisions; all of which must be abandoned upon the conclusion of peace unless the provisions of this Act are extended.

During this period the Congress will have an opportunity to make similar permanent provisions and regulations with regard to all goods destined for interstate commerce and to exclude them from interstate shipment, if the requirements of the law are not compiled with. Some such regulation is imperatively necessary. The abuses that have grown up in the manipulation of prices by the withholding of foodstuffs and other necessaries of life cannot otherwise be effectively prevented. There can be no doubt of either the necessity of the legitimacy of such measures.

As I pointed out in my last message, publicity can accomplish a great deal in this campaign. The aims of the Government must be clearly brought to the attention of the consuming public, civic organizations and state officials, who are in a position to lend their assistance to our efforts. You have made available funds with which to carry on this campaign, but there is no provision in the law authorizing their expenditure for the purpose of making the public fully informed about the efforts of the Government. Specific recommendation has been made by the Attorney General in this regard. I would strongly urge upon you its immediate adoption, as it constitutes one of the preliminary steps to this campaign.

I also renew my recommendation that the Congress pass a law regulating cold storage as it is regulated, for example, by the laws of the State of New Jersey, which limit the time during which goods may be kept in storage, prescribe the method of disposing of them if kept beyond the permitted period, and require that goods released from storage shall in all cases bear the date of their receipt. It would materially add to the serviceability of the law, for the purpose we now have in view, if it were also prescribed that all goods released from storage for interstate shipment should have plainly marked upon each package the selling or market price at which they went into storage. By this means the purchaser would always be able to learn what profits stood between him and the producer or the wholesale dealer.

I would also renew my recommendation that all goods destined for interstate commerce should in every case, where their form or package makes it possible, be plainly marked with the price at which they left the hands of the producer.

We should formulate a law requiring a Federal license of all corporations engaged in interstate commerce and embodying in the license or in the conditions under which it is to be issued, specific regulations designed to secure competitive selling and prevent unconscionable profits in the method of marketing. Such a law would afford a welcome opportunity to effect other much needed reforms in the business of interstate shipment and in the methods of corporations which are engaged in it; but for the moment I confine my recommendations to the object immediately in hand, which is to lower the cost of living.

No one who has observed the march of events in the last year can fail to note the absolute need of a definite programme to bring about an improvement in the conditions of labor. There can be no settled conditions leading to increased production and a reduction in the cost of living if labor and capital are to be antagonists instead of partners. Sound thinking and an honest desire to serve the interests of the whole nation, as distinguished from the interests of a class, must be applied to the solution of this great and pressing problem. The failure of other nations to consider this matter in a vigorous way has produced bitterness and jealousies and antagonisms, the food of radicalism. The only way to keep men from agitating against grievances is to remove the grievances. An unwillingness even to discuss these matters produces only dissatisfaction and gives comfort to the extreme elements in our country which endeavor to stir up disturbances in order to provoke governments to embark upon a course of retaliation and repression. The seed of revolution is repression. The remedy for these things must not be negative in character. It must be constructive. It must comprehend the general interest. The real antidote for the unrest which manifests itself is not suppression, but a deep consideration of the wrongs that beset our national life and the application of a remedy.

Congress has already shown its willingness to deal with these industrial wrongs by establishing the eight-hour day as the standard in every field of labor. It has sought to find a way to prevent child labor. It has served the whole country by leading the way in developing the means of preserving and safeguarding lives and health in dangerous industries. It must now help in the difficult task of finding a method that will bring about a genuine democratization of industry, based upon the full recognition of the right of those who work, in whatever rank, to participate in some organic way in every decision which directly affects their welfare. It is with this purpose in mind that I called a conference to meet in Washington on December 1st, to consider these problems in all their broad aspects, with the idea of bringing about a better understanding between these two interests.

The great unrest throughout the world, out of which has emerged a demand for an immediate consideration of the difficulties between capital and labor, bids us put our own house in order. Frankly, there can be no permanent and lasting settlements between capital and labor which do not recognize the fundamental concepts for which labor has been struggling through the years. The whole world gave its recognition and endorsement to these fundamental purposes in the League of Nations. The statesmen gathered at Versailles recognized the fact that world stability could not be had by reverting to industrial standards and conditions against which the average workman of the world had revolted. It is, therefore, the task of the statesmen of this new day of change and readjustment to recognize world conditions and to seek to bring about, through legislation, conditions that will mean the ending of age-long antagonisms between capital and labor and that will hopefully lead to the building up of a comradeship which will result not only in greater contentment among the mass of workmen but also bring about a greater production and a greater prosperity to business itself.

To analyze the particulars in the demands of labor is to admit the justice of their complaint in many matters that lie at their basis. The workman demands an adequate wage, sufficient to permit him to live in comfort, unhampered by the fear of poverty and want in his old age. He demands the right to live and the right to work amidst sanitary surroundings, both in home and in workshop, surroundings that develop and do not retard his own health and wellbeing; and the right to provide for his children's wants in the matter of health and education. In other words, it is his desire to make the conditions of his life and the lives of those dear to him tolerable and easy to bear.

The establishment of the principles regarding labor laid down in the covenant of the League of Nations offers us the way to industrial peace and conciliation. No other road lies open to us. Not to pursue this one is longer to invite enmities, bitterness, and antagonisms which in the end only lead to industrial and social disaster. The unwilling workman is not a profitable servant. An employee whose industrial life is hedged about by hard and unjust conditions, which he did not create and over which he has no control, lacks that fine spirit of enthusiasm and volunteer effort which are the necessary ingredients of a great producing entity. Let us be frank about this solemn matter. The evidences of world-wide unrest which manifest themselves in violence throughout the world bid us pause and consider the means to be found to stop the spread of this contagious thing before it saps the very vitality of the nation itself. Do we gain strength by withholding the remedy? Or is it not the business of statesmen to treat these manifestations of unrest which meet us on every hand as evidences of an economic disorder and to apply constructive remedies wherever necessary, being sure that in the application of the remedy we touch not the vital tissues of our industrial and economic life? There can be no recession of the tide of unrest until constructive instrumentalities are set up to stem that tide.

Governments must recognize the right of men collectively to bargain for humane objects that have at their base the mutual protection and welfare of those engaged in all industries. Labor must not be longer treated as a commodity. It must be regarded as the activity of human beings, possessed of deep yearnings and desires. The busi ness man gives his best thought to the repair and replenishment of his machinery, so that its usefulness will not be impaired and its power to produce may always be at its height and kept in full vigor and motion. No less regard ought to be paid to the human machine, which after all propels the machinery of the world and is the great dynamic force that lies back of all industry and progress. Return to the old standards of wage and industry in employment are unthinkable. The terrible tragedy of war which has just ended and which has brought the world to the verge of chaos and disaster would be in vain if there should ensue a return to the conditions of the past. Europe itself, whence has come the unrest which now holds the world at bay, is an example of standpatism in these vital human matters which America might well accept as an example, not to be followed but studiously to be avoided. Europe made labor the differential, and the price of it all is enmity and antagonism and prostrated industry, The right of labor to live in peace and comfort must be recognized by governments and America should be the first to lay the foundation stones upon which industrial peace shall be built.

Labor not only is entitled to an adequate wage, but capital should receive a reasonable return upon its investment and is entitled to protection at the hands of the Government in every emergency. No Government worthy of the name can "play" these elements against each other, for there is a mutuality of interest between them which the Government must seek to express and to safeguard at all cost.

The right of individuals to strike is inviolate and ought not to be interfered with by any process of Government, but there is a predominant right and that is the right of the Government to protect all of its people and to assert its power and majesty against the challenge of any class. The Government, when it asserts that right, seeks not to antagonize a class but simply to defend the right of the whole people as against the irreparable harm and injury that might be done by the attempt by any class to usurp a power that only Government itself has a right to exercise as a protection to all.

In the matter of international disputes which have led to war, statesmen have sought to set up as a remedy arbitration for war. Does this not point the way for the settlement of industrial disputes, by the establishment of a tribunal, fair and just alike to all, which will settle industrial disputes which in the past have led to war and disaster? America, witnessing the evil consequences which have followed out of such disputes between these contending forces, must not admit itself impotent to deal with these matters by means of peaceful processes. Surely, there must be some method of bringing together in a council of peace and amity these two great interests, out of which will come a happier day of peace and cooperation, a day that will make men more hopeful and enthusiastic in their various tasks, that will make for more comfort and happiness in living and a more tolerable condition among all classes of men. Certainly human intelligence can devise some acceptable tribunal for adjusting the differences between capital and labor.

This is the hour of test and trial for America. By her prowess and strength, and the indomitable courage of her soldiers, she demonstrated her power to vindicate on foreign battlefields her conceptions of liberty and justice. Let not her influence as a mediator between capital and labor be weakened and her own failure to settle matters of purely domestic concern be proclaimed to the world. There are those in this country who threaten direct action to force their will, upon a majority. Russia today, with its blood and terror, is a painful object lesson of the power of minorities. It makes little difference what minority it is; whether capital or labor, or any other class; no sort of privilege will ever be permitted to dominate this country. We are a partnership or nothing that is worth while. We are a democracy, where the majority are the masters, or all the hopes and purposes of the men who founded this government have been defeated and forgotten. In America there is but one way by which great reforms can be accomplished and the relief sought by classes obtained, and that is through the orderly processes of representative government. Those who would propose any other method of reform are enemies of this country. America will not be daunted by threats nor lose her composure or calmness in these distressing times. We can afford, in the midst of this day of passion and unrest, to be self - contained and sure. The instrument of all reform in America is the ballot. The road to economic and social reform in America is the straight road of justice to all classes and conditions of men. Men have but to follow this road to realize the full fruition of their objects and purposes. Let those beware who would take the shorter road of disorder and revolution. The right road is the road of justice and orderly process.

1927 Ford Motor Company unveils the Ford Model A.

1935  Governor Leslie A. Miller delivered a speech to the "Coordinating Committee of Federal Departments and Agencies in Wyoming." in which he stated, "Now the word I would like to leave here is this -- that you people have a very solemn duty in the management of the affairs which have been entrusted to your hand, [to] try to do everything in your power to encourage and enhance this improvement in general agriculture and industrial conditions to the end that these appropriations by the federal government may be reduced . . . . It has been the thought of many of us for some time that the federal government could not possibly go on making these huge appropriations for work relief and general relief for the country will not stand it interminably.. . .It is contrary to our conception of government, for example, that our government should compete with private industry for the production of food . . . the quicker these agencies for relief find that they have no work to do, then the quicker we will know that our country has gotten back to that state that the Administration considered it should get back to when it began all these activities."

1941  As of this date, on the eve of Pearl Harbor,  Wyoming has 5,600 men in the armed forces.


Elsewhere, of interest, on this date:

1933 Newfoundland, a self governing British Dominion, went bankrupt and ceased to be self governing.    This Great Depression caused crisis was not only unique, as far as I'm aware, in the history of the British Commonwealth, but the sole instance of a self governing dominion essentially choosing to resume being governed from London.

This has low, or perhaps no, direct connection with Wyoming, but it is interesting in that it shows how severe the Great Depression had become in North America.