February 11

1805   Sacajawea gives birth to her first child, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau at Fort Mandan, in what is now North Dakota.

It has been claimed that Jean Baptiste lived until 1885 and is buried, along with Sacajawea, on the Wind River Reservation.  The evidence for this, however, is weak on both accounts.  The better evidence is that neither died in Wyoming, and that Jean Baptiste far outlived his mother, but that he died in 1866 due to a sudden illness, brought about by an accidental plunge into icy water, in Oregon.

1842   Texas marines mutinied aboard the schooner San Antonio.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1890   President Benjamin Harrison orders 11 million acres of Sioux Reservation, South Dakota, territory open for settlement. This leads the "Ghost Dance"  and ultimately Wounded Knee.

Note this same item was listed for yesterday so apparently there's some disagreement as to the date.

1904 President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed strict neutrality for the U.S. in the Russo-Japanese War.

1911   Governor Carey signed the "Direct Primary Law", which was part of a general movement towards such primaries throughout the United States.

1917  Commissioner of Labor authorized by legislature.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1917   The Sherdian Enterprise for February 11, 1917; Austrian officers dudes no more, U.S. reestablished diplomatic relations with Mexico.
 

I haven't put too many Sheridan Enterprise up here, but this one I had to because of the great headline about Austrian officers

Wow.  Austrian officers "cease to be dudes".

That probably doesn't quite read the same way now.

In other items, this issue also reported the war news and on the restoration of diplomatic relations with Mexico.  And again, a tragic automobile accident was reported.

Sunday State Leader for February 11, 1917. Diplomatic relations with Mexico restored.
 

Things were changing a bit in our relationship with Mexico, as this paper, and one more I'll put up from this date, shows.

Wyoming's National Guard was still  on the border, but the US was reestablishing relations with Mexico, recognizing the Constitutionalist as the legitimate government of the country.

Also in the news was the crisis with Germany, not surprisingly.  And the legislature was still in session.

Radicalism was popping up in Cuba.

Fatal automobile accident,s, a nearly constant news item of the early automobile era, were also in the news.

1918   Woodrow Wilson's Address to Congress of February 11, 1918.
 

Monday in 1918 was starting off on a serious note, as Monday so often does.  President Wilson addressed Congress regarding our enemies as the war.

Gentlemen of the Congress:

On the eighth of January I had the honor of addressing you on the objects of the war as our people conceive them. The Prime Minister of Great Britain had spoken in similar terms on the fifth of January. To these addresses the German Chancellor replied on the twenty-fourth and Count Czernin, for Austria, on the same day. It is gratifying to have our desire so promptly realized that all exchanges of views on this great matter should be made in the hearing of all the world.

Count Czernin's reply, which is directed chiefly to my own address of the eighth of January, is uttered in a very friendly tone. He finds in my statement a sufficiently encouraging approach to the views of his own Government to justify him in believing that it furnishes a basis for more detailed discussion of purposes by the two Governments. He is represented to have intimated that the views he was expressing had been communicated to me beforehand and that I was aware of them at the time he was uttering them; but in this I am sure he was misunderstood. I had received no intimation of what he intended to say. There was, of course no reason why he should communicate privately with me. I am quite content to be one of his public audience.

Count von Hertling's reply is, I must say, very vague and very confusing. It is full of equivocal phrases and leads it is not clear where. But it is certainly in a very different tone from that of Count Czernin, and apparently of an opposite purpose. It confirms, I am sorry to say, rather than removes, the unfortunate impression made by what we had learned of the conferences at Brest-Litovsk. His discussion and acceptance of our general principles lead him to no practical conclusions. He refuses to apply them to the substantive items which must constitute the body of my final settlement. He is jealous of international action and of international counsel. He accepts, he says, the principle of public diplomacy, but he appears to insist that it be confined, at any rate in this case, to generalities and that the several particular questions of territory and sovereignty, the several questions upon whose settlement must depend the acceptance of peace by the twenty-three states now engaged in the war, must be discussed and settled, not in general council, but severally by the nations most immediately concerned by interest or neighborhood. He agrees that the seas should be free, but looks askance at any limitation to that freedom by international action in the interest of the common order. He would without reserve be glad to see economic barriers resolved between nation and nation, for that could in no way impede the ambitions of the military party with whom he seems constrained to keep on terms. Neither does he raise objection to a limitation of armaments. That matter will be settled of itself, he thinks, by the economic conditions which must follow the war. But the German colonies, he demands, must be returned without debate. He will discuss with no one but the representatives of Russia what disposition shall be made of the people and the lands of the Baltic provinces; with no one but the Government of France the "conditions" under which French territory shall be evacuated; and only with Austria what shall be done with Poland. In the determination of all questions affecting the Balkan states he defers, as I understand him, to Austria and Turkey: and with regard to the agreement to be entered into concerning the non-Turkish peoples of the present Ottoman Empire, to the Turkish authorities themselves. After a settlement all round, effected in this fashion, by individual barter and concession, he would have no objection, if I correctly interpret his statement, to a league of nations which would undertake to hold the new balance of power steady against external disturbance.

It must be evident to everyone who understands that this war has wrought in the opinion and temper of the world that no general peace, no peace worth the infinite sacrifices of these years of tragical suffering, can possibly be arrived at in any such fashion. The method the German Chancellor proposes is the method of the Congress of Vienna. We cannot and will not return to that. What is at at stake now is the peace of the world. What we are striving for is a new international order based upon broad and universal principles of right and justice, -- no mere peace of shreds and patches. Is it possible that Count von Hertling does not see that, does not grasp it, is in fact living in his thought in a world dead and gone? Has he utterly forgotten the Reichstag Resolutions of the nineteenth of July, or does he deliberately ignore them? They spoke of the conditions of general peace, not of national aggrandizement or of arrangements between state and state. The peace of the world depends upon the just settlement of each of the several problems to which I adverted in my recent address to the Congress. I, of course, do not rnean that the peace of the world depends upon the acceptance of any particular set of suggestions as to the way in which those problems are to be dealt with. I mean only that those problems each and all affect the whole world; that unless they are dealt with in a spirit of unselfish and unbiased justice, with a view to the wishes, the natural connections, the racial aspirations, the security, snd the peace of mind of the peoples involved, no permanent peace will have been attained. They cannot be discussed separately or in corners. None of them constitutes a private or separate interest from which the opinion of the world may be shut out. Whatever affects the peace affects mankind, and nothing settled by military force, if settled wrong, is settled at all. It will presently have to be reopened.

Is Count von Hertling not aware that he is speaking in the court of mankind, that all the awakened nations of the world now sit in judgment on what every public man, of whatever nation, may say on the issues of a conflict which has spread to every region of the world? The Reichstag Resolutions of July themselves frankly accepted the decisions of that court. There shall be no annexations, no contributions, no punitive damage. Peoples are not to be handed about from one sovereignty to another by an international conference or an understanding between rivals and antagonists. National aspirations must be respected; peoples may now be dominated and governed only by their own consent. "Self-determination" is not a mere phrase. It is an imperative principle of actions which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril. We cannot have general peace for the asking, or by the mere arrangements of a peace conference. It cannot be pieced together out of individual understandings between powerful states. All the parties to this war must join in the settlement of every issue anywhere involved in it; because what we are seeing is a peace that we can all unite to guarantee and maintain and every item of it must be submitted to the common judgment whether it be right and fair, an act of justice, rather than a bargain between sovereigns.

The United States has no desire to interfere in European affairs or to act as arbiter in European territorial disputes. She would disdain to take advantage of any internal weakness or disorder to impose by own will upon another people. She is quite ready to be shown that the settlements she has suggested are not the best or the most enduring. They are only her own provisional sketch of principles and of the way in which they should be applied. But she entered this war because she was made a partner, whether she would or not, in the sufferings and indignities inflicted by the military masters of Germany, against the peace and security of mankind; and the conditions of peace will touch her as nearly as they will touch any other nation to which is entrusted a leading part in the maintenance of civilization.. She cannot see her way to peace until the causes of this war are removed, its renewal rendered as nearly as may be impossible.

This war had its roots in the disregard of the rights of small nations and of nationalities which lacked the union and the force to make good their claim to determine their own allegiances and their own forms of political life. Covenants must now be entered into which will render such things impossible for the future; and those covenants must be backed by the united force of all the nations that love justice and are willing to maintain it at any cost. If territorial settlements and the political relations of great populations which have not the organized power to resist are to be determined by the contracts of the powerful governments which consider themselves most directly affected, as Count von Hertling proposes, why may not economic questions also? It has come about in the altered world in which we now find ourselves that justice and the rights of peoples affect the whole field of international dealing as much as access to raw materials and fair and equal conditions of trade. Count von Hertling wants the essential bases of commercial and industrial life to be safeguarded by common agreement and guarantees but he cannot expect that to be conceded him if the other matters to be determined by the articles on peace are not handled in the same way as items in the final accounting. He cannot ask the benefit of common agreement in the one field without according it in the other. I take it for granted that he sees that separate and selfish compacts with regard to trade and the essential materials of manufacture would afford no foundation for peace. Neither, he may rest assured, will separate and selfish compacts with regard to provinces and peoples.

Count Czernin seems to see the fundamental elements of peace with clear eyes and does not seek to obscure them. He sees that an independent Poland, made up of all the indisputably Polish peoples who lie contiguous to one another, is a matter of European concern and must of course be conceded; that Belgium must be evacuated and restored, no matter what sacrifices and concessions that may involve; and that national aspirations must be satisfied, even within his own Empire, in the common interest of Europe and mankind. If he is silent about questions which touch the interest and purpose of his allies more nearly than they touch those of Austria only, it must of course be because he feels constrained, I suppose, to defer to Germany and Turkey in the circumstances. Seeing and conceding, as he does, the essential principles involved and the necessity of candidly applying them, he naturally feels that Austria can respond to the purpose of peace as expressed by the United States with less embarrassment than could Germany. He would probably have gone much farther had it not been for the embarrassments of Austria's alliances and of her dependence upon Germany.

After all, the test of whether it is possible for either government to go any further in this comparison of views is simple and obvious. The principles to be applied are these:

First, that each part of the final settlement must be based upon the essential justice of that particular case and upon such adjustments as are most likely to bring a peace that will be permanent;

Second, that peoples and provinces are not to be bartered about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were mere chattels and pawns in a game, even the great game, now forever discredited, of the balance of power; but that

Third, every territorial settlement involved in this war must be made in the interest and for the benefit of the populations concerned, and not as a part of any mere adjustment or compromise of claims amongst rival states; and

Fourth, that all well defined national aspirations shall be accorded the utmost satisfaction that can be accorded them without introducing new or perpetuating old elements of discord and antagonism that would be likely in time to breaks the peace of Europe and consequently of the world. 

A general peace erected upon such foundations can be discussed. Until such a peace can be secured we have no choice but to go on. So far as we can judge, these principles that we regard as fundamental are already everywhere accepted as imperative except among the spokesmen of the military and annexationist party in Germany. If they have anywhere else been rejected, the objectors have not been sufficiently numerous or influential to make their voices audible. The tragical circumstance is that this one party in Germany is apparently willing and able to send millions of men to their death to prevent what all the world now sees to be just.

I would not be a true spokesman of thc people of the United States if I did not say once more that we entered this war upon no small occasion, and that we can never turn back from a course chosen upon principle. Our resources are in part mobilized now, and we shall not pause until they are mobilized in their entirety. Our armies are rapidly going to the fighting front, and will go more and more rapidly. Our whole strength will be put into this war of emancipation, -- emancipation from the threat and attempted mastery of selfish groups of autocratic rulers, -- whatever the difficulties and present partial delays. We are indomitable in our power of independent action and can in no circumstances consent to live in a world governed by intrigue and force. We believe that our own desire for a new international order under which reason and justice and the common interests of mankind shall prevail is the desire of enlightened men everywhere. Without that new order the world will be without peace and human life will lack tolerable conditions of existence and development. Having set our hand to the task of achieving it, we shall not turn back.

I hope that it is not necessary for me to add that no word of what I have said is intended as a threat. That is not the temper of our people. I have spoken thus only that the whole world may know the true spirit of America -- that men everywhere may know that our passion for justice and for self-government is no mere passion of words but a passion which, once set in action, must be satisfied. The power of the United States is a menace to no nation or people. It will never be used in aggression or for the aggrandizement of any selfish interest of our own. lt springs out of freedom and is for the service of freedom.

In other grim news, readers of the Monday paper were learning that the Ukraine had indeed accepted German protectorate status and that Romania  now appeared on the brink of bowing out.  U.S. troops were pouring into Europe, but at the same time, German troops already in Eastern Europe should have been pouring back the other way.

I guess in cheerier news, the weather in Cheyenne was really warm for February, the warmest ever at that time.   And a holiday was coming up.  Readers of the Laramie paper were encouraged that Heatless Days, which were in fact Mondays, might be coming to an end.

1919  February 11, 1919. Looking back, seeing the future, and How Dry I Am.

The news on this day, Lincoln's Birthday and a holiday, was a bit ominous.  And knowing the future to come, it proved a scary look into something that was coming.

But also in an insight as to views of the time.

The Casper paper reported that Japan was about to go to war with China. . . which in fact it was, although not for a bit over a decade from the date of the paper.  That things were brewing, however, was pretty obvious.

And the Germans were already discontent with the Versailles Treaty they hadn't even signed yet.

Stores in Casper were taking half a day off in honor of the late President Lincoln.

All the Wyoming papers were reporting that the amount of alcohol that could legally be in a beverage was now down to 1%.  Down from 2%.  Just yesterday, if you keep track of things here, you would have seen that certain religious leaders were unhappy with the 2% figure.  Perhaps their voice had been heard.

A voice that wanted to be heard, as you can read in the papers above, is Frank Houx's, who was insistent that had done nothing improper regarding land rights acquisitions.

And notable cities in the former Russian Empire were changing hands as the fortunes of the Reds seemed to be reversing on the battlefield.

And France and Britain wished to remain friends with the United States going forward, they both had declared.

And the clothing shortage made both the front news, and the cartoons.

1994  A 5.3 earthquake occurred about 50 miles from Jackson.

2006  The Dick Cheney,  Harry Whittington, accidental shooting incident.

Elsewhere:   1943   General Eisenhower selected to command the allied armies in Europe.

Sidebar: Wyoming and World War One

Recently I did a Sidebar post on Wyoming and World War Two.  So, a followup on Wyoming and World War One is a natural in some ways, although it'd be my guess that many would figure that the impact of the Great War upon Wyoming would have been fairly minor.  Except for the particularly historically minded (which may include most of the folks who view this blog) World War One seems pretty remote in time.  It's no wonder really, as the war was overshadowed in the  American imagination (but not the  European one) a mere 20 or so years after it ended by World War Two, which to Americans has always seemed the much more critical and bigger event.  Indeed, to the American imagination World War One often seems to me not much more than the prolog to World War Two.

And, of course, World War Two defines modern wars.  Every war that's happened since WWII can find some precedent in WWII, and even though technology has enormously advanced since the war, up until extremely recently there's always been a very close precedent in any one weapon  or ground environment in a current war and the Second World War.   Perhaps this is changing just now, in which case, I suppose, World War Two will soon seem to be a much more distant war.  World War One managed to seem distant, somehow, to Americans by 1939, when the Germans invaded Poland.

World War One was actually a much more modern war than we now imagine. And, in actuality, during the war itself, the impact of WWI in the state may have exceeded WWII, while the long-lasting impacts may in fact be less obvious, but potentially greater.  Much of what Wyoming is today, it became in the 20th Century, and even if it started to become what it is today in the late 19th Century, the big changes really started during World War One.

The Great War, for Wyoming, started in 1914 when the Germans entered Belgium.  The same is not true, at least to the same extent, of 1939, when the Germans entered Poland, or even of 1940, when the Germans entered Belgium again.  The reason for this has to do with two prime resources that Wyoming had at that time which were vital to the European war. Those commodities were the horse and petroleum oil.

U.S. Army Remounts, photograph taken in the World War One time frame.

When the war broke out British Remount agents scoured the United States for suitable horses of all type.  And Wyoming was ideally situated to take advantage of this sudden boom in the requirements for horseflesh.  Northern Wyoming and Montana, which had significant English ranching communities, were particularly eager to take part in this trade, which not only provided a ready made market for fine horses, but which also appealed to their English patriotism. But they were not alone in taking advantage in this market. Range horses, that is horses simply gathered off the range, had long been a staple for ranchers, but now they actually commanded the attention of foreign purchasers.  The horse boom was on.

British Remount purchasing agents scoured the state for horses, and Wyoming ranchers were eager to provide the same.  They were joined by  French purchasing agents seeking to do the same thing. Wyoming, of course, wasn't unique in this, but with thousands of available horses, and some fine independent breeding programs, the economic impact of European purchases was vast.

The boom in this agricultural commodity, however, was not isolated.  Every sector of agriculture in North America exploded during the Great War.  From 1914 on the fields of France were strained by fighting and a lack of war workers.  The UK was free of fighting, of course, but it was also free of agricultural workers, as they joined the British Army to fight in the war.  And both of these factors were also true for Russia, a major grain producing region.  Every place where grain could be planted, and many places that never should have had grains planted, received them.  

And, of course, the need to feed a vast number of men also increased the demand for meat, and therefore cattle. And sheep also saw a boom.  This era was in height of Wyoming's sheep era, when sheep numbered in the millions in the state.  The armies of Europe fought in wool and the demand for wool therefore was inexhaustible.

This all started, of course in the 1914 to 1917 time frame, that is before the United States had entered the war.  Wyoming was enjoying a war related economic boom before the country had entered the war.  Starting in 1915 the war actually arrived in another form in Wyoming, but in the form of the Punitive Expedition, which is not commonly regarded as being part of World War One at all, but which was the country's introduction to the fighting in some ways.  The Wyoming National Guard (there was no "Army" National Guard at time, just the National Guard) saw itself Federalized for service on the border just like every other state's Guard.  While service was not continual, the Punitive Expedition was the de facto start of the war for the United States Army, which began to expand at this point, and which began to receive practical field experience for the greater war which was to come. And it saw a the nation's Army reserve, in the form of the National Guard, including the Wyoming National Guard, Federalized for service.  From this point until 1919 the Army was at least partially mobilized and on a war footing.

Wyoming, at the time, was the home to two Army bases, Ft. D. A. Russell and Ft. MacKenzie.  Both were horse centric, as cavalry was stationed at Ft. D. A. Russell and Ft. MacKenzie was a Remount purchasing center.  Wyoming's National Guard was artillery at the time, for the most part, with some other types of units mixed in, but it did not include cavalry.  Nonetheless, as is obvious, the US soon also became a purchaser of horseflesh due to its military requirements. The horse boom, therefore, was compounded.

When war was declared in April, 1917, the United States found itself with the first draft since the Civil War.  Indeed, due to an odd opinion by the Attorney General of the United States, conscription actually applied to the Federalized National Guardsmen.  In a legal oddity, all the Guardsmen were discharged and then instantly conscripted.  But, of course, they weren't alone. The United States Army expanded from a tiny force to one over over 1,000,000 men in next to no time.  Absorbing the influx of men itself was a problem, only partially solved by the Army's solution of dividing itself into two groups, one part being the combined Regular Army and National Guard, and the other, the National Army, being made up of concripts.  Ultimately, the National Army would outnumber the combined Guard and Regular Army.

Recruitment poster in WWI time frame, but outside of the actual war period itself.

Like World War Two, the Great War depleted towns of their entire young male populations.  Young men were so eager to join that they actually crossed the state in some circumstances to volunteer.   Young men from Jackson formed their own unit and traveled to Cheyenne to join, for example.  As the Great War would be the death of private units, and they were no doubt incorporated into another unit, they may have been a bit disappointed.  Nonetheless, the extent of volunteerism was so high that even a relatively small town like Hanna left behind memorials to large numbers of men who volunteered to serve in the war.

 James Montgomery Flagg's famous recruiting poster, used in World War One and World War Two.

Wartime Marine Corps recruiting poster by Flagg.

The drain on agricultural workers was so high, in this largely per-mechanized agricultural era, that the United States, like Britain and Canada before it, were forced to recruit women for labor in the fields.

The era of the war also saw the expansion of military training to schools, something that had not been common prior to the war.  Casper High School, the predecessor to Natrona County High School, fielded an early version of JrROTC. The University of Wyoming incorporated officer training.  Officer training at universities was not invented in this era, but it was widespread during the war.  

The swelling of the Army naturally increased the demand on all of the resources already been produced for the war in Wyoming. Grains, meat, wool, all became even more in demand, just as the labor to produce all of them became more scarce.

Food concerns became so acute, in fact, during t he Great War that a major governmental campaign was launched seeking to conserve certain foods.  This was also done, of course, during World War Two, but the WWI effort had a certain desperate tinge to it.

Indeed the desperate tinge in World War One actually lead to a rationing program in Montana, although there was not nationwide rationing, as there was in World War Two.  Montana actually prosecuted some people under a state anti-sedition law for criticizing its rationing program.

One vital wartime commodity was petroleum oil.  As with horses, oil experienced a boom starting in 1914.  For the first time in history armies were using oil in significant quantities, as motor transportation made its appearance.   Perhaps more significantly, however, the Royal Navy had started the switch to burning oil in 1911, rather than coal, even though the United Kingdom was entirely dependent on oil imports.  The U.S. Navy had started this switch the year prior, in 1910.  The Wyoming had been an oil province since the late 19th Century and the war dramatically boosted production, causing a joint oil and agricultural boom in the state.  Even prior to that Congress, realizing that the switch to petroleum oil by the Navy meant that war could create a shortfall of the strategic resource, had committed some of Wyoming's oil to a Strategic Petroleum Reserve for the U.S. Navy.  This gave Wyoming, somewhat uniquely for a landlocked state, a Navy presence prior to the war.

Grass Creek Field, 1916.

It was the oil boom that caused the most visible change to the state, and perhaps the most long lasting change. With the expansion of oil exploration, came the modernization and expansion of oil production facilities, as well as the explosive build up of towns and cities. The state saw "sky scrapers" built during the war, such as Casper's Oil Exchange Building, which later became the Consolidated Royalty Building.Construction also included housing, streets and sidewalks, as new urban areas developed to house the workforce brought in by the expansion in oil production.  In some ways, the long developing position of the minerals industry as the prime economic mover of the state finally took permanent hold during World War One.  Agriculture remained, of course, important, but there was no denying the greatly increased importance of oil production. 

The war caused a shift, so dramatic that it must have been obvious to those living in the state at the time, from an economy and culture that was primarily focused on cattle ranching to one based on oil exploration. Wyoming had, of course, seen mineral exploration prior to 1914, and some Wyoming towns were entirely dedicated to it in some fashion. But the real intense exploration had really been devoted mostly to coal, giving rise to towns like Hanna.  Otherwise, even if they featured oil exploration as part of their economic base, most Wyoming towns were agricultural in some fashion.  Casper, as an example, may have boosted its fortunes in newspapers as an oil center, but it was cattle and sheep that kept the town going. Staring in 1914, it really did become an oil town, even with the cattle and sheep remaining.

Just as the war sparked a huge economic boom in the state, the end of the war brought a responding crash.  Agriculture hung on, economically, for about a year nationwide after the war ended, with 1919 being the last year in US history in which the standard of living for a family farm met that for the average middle class town dweller.  But that same year the expansion of grain production continued on unabated with near obvious results, and homesteading reached its all time high.  A crash was bound to follow.  The reduction of armies globally, and the cessation of the loss of horses, of course brought about an end to the Remount trade in a big hurry, causing an immediate horse recession for those who had been supplying horses to the various Allied armies.  While the Great Depression would not arrive for another decade, for agriculture the slump started early all across the nation and would only grow worse in the 1930s.  Nonetheless, at the same time, a last gasp of homesteading would continue on until it was stopped by the Federal government in 1933.

Oddly enough, the war directly caused a brief burst of immediate post war homesteading, with some being fairly successful, under a special program to assist returning servicemen in that fashion.  I knew one such homesteader and know of others.  The program was seemingly fairly popular with returning veterans.  Perhaps reflecting a change in society, a similar program at the end of World War Two was largely unsuccessful and underutilized.

Oil carried on as the economic engine of the state following the war, following a slump, reflecting the enormous expansion of automobiles that had commenced the decade prior to the war and which would continue on unabated until the Great Depression. Following World War One, and as a result of it, the Army would experiment with cross country road travel, giving a boost to the highway movement that was already ongoing.  The US began its real conversion to a highway society following the war, although certainly trains remained the dominant means of cross country, and even intrastate, travel.

Just as the war may have given a boost to the travel of humans, it certainly gave a boost to the travel of disease, and Wyoming suffered, along with the rest of the nation, from the 1918 Influenza Epidemic that the war caused and spread.  Calendar entries on this site occasionally note the death toll from this horrific global event, which while global, visited personalized grief upon communities and individuals in the state that year.

In terms of social changes, or perhaps political ones, World War One did not have the massive impacts that World War Two did, but it did have some.  Perhaps the most surprising is the success of Prohibition.  The movement towards Prohibition had been in the country since the late 19th Century, but it was the war that caused the Volstead Act and the amendment to the U.S. Constitution, changes which Wyoming had a role in.  Wyoming's politicians on a town and state level began agitating for Prohibition as soon as the US entered the war.  The Mayor of Cheyenne, for example, urged it as a way of insuring civil conduct in the town in light of the increased numbers of soldiers at Ft. D. A. Russell.  The Governor asked for bars to be closed for the duration of the war.  Politicians expressed a fear that soldiers would return from France drunks, or worse, after having sampled French wine and whatever other illicit offerings France might have in store.  F. E. Warren, seeing which way the wind was blowing, provided the decisive vote in the Senate to push the Volstead Act over the top.  Prohibition arrived in 1919 with the returning veterans, which was not an accident.

All in all, the war probably changed the United States and Wyoming in less massive and obvious ways than World War Two, which isn't to say that it didn't bring about changes. Wyoming was a heavily rural state with a major emphasis on cattle and sheep production before the war, and it was after. Still, there were changes.  The oil industry, which had been in the state since its onset, really got rolling during World War One in a way that we'd recognize today.  It was there prior to the war, and it would have arrived anyhow, but the global demand for oil for vehicles and ships caused the oil industry to leap forward by a decade, if not two decades in just a few years.  With that, the towns and cities dramatically changed in ways that were permanent for all, and still visible in many locations.