November 23

1888 The Casper Weekly Mail newspaper established.

1903  Colorado Gov. Peabody calls up the Colorado National Guard and sends them to Cripple Creek on strike breaking duty, one of the duties most detested by the National Guard of this era.

1914  The last of U.S. forces withdraw from Veracruz, occupied seven months earlier in response to the Tampico Affair.  The crisis in Mexico would continue, and spill over the border early the following year, an event which would cause the Federalization of the National Guard, including Wyoming's.

1918  November 23, 1918. Marching into turmoil

American troops entering Metz by truck.

American troops marching into Thionville on foot.

Opening of  an American Red Cross canteen in Paris.

Army Air Service School, Rockwell Field, San Diego.  Trained pilots who wouldn't be going to Europe.

1921  An earthquake shook Sheridan County.  Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.

Wednesday, November 23, 1921. Geology in Sheridan County, Welfare in the United States, Murder in Ukraine

Charles Russell illustrated letter of today's date.

On this date, we're reminded that Wyoming is tectonically active:

Today In Wyoming's History: November 23, 1921:

1921  An earthquake shook Sheridan County.  Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.

Earthquakes in Wyoming are not at all uncommon.

The Sheppard-Towner Act, which we dealt with earlier, that provided funding for maternity and child care, as signed into law by Republican President, Warren G. Harding.

Harding knew a little about childcare. At this point his illegitimate daughter, Elizabeth Ann Britton was a little over two years old.  She was not acknowledged, and the public had no idea.

In Bazar, Ukraine, the Red Army executed 359 Ukrainian soldiers who had surrendered to them.

1925   The USS Wyoming commences an overhaul at the New York Navy Yard.

1934  Moderate earthquake felt in Lander, Atlantic City, Riverton and Rock Springs.

1936  Work began on Wheatland Reservoir #1.  Dam construction was a popular Depression Era activity across the Western United States not only because of the work it provided, and the benefit to agriculture, but because of a belief that projects of this type would help directly beneficially impact the climate.

1939  President Franklin Roosevelt carved the turkey at Warm Springs in the first of several Thanksgivings that were celebrated on two separate dates, this date being a week earlier than the traditional date. It had been moved up to increase the shopping time between Thanksgiving and Christmas in the hopes of boosting sales during the Depression.  The move was unpopular and Congress restored the traditional date in 1941.

1945     World War Two meat and butter rationing ends in US.

1947   The southwestern portion of Montana was struck by a magnitude 6 1/4 earthquake whcih was also felt in northwestern Wyoming.

2000 Buffalo records its coldest Thanksgiving Day Temperature, 12F.  It's been colder than that this year (2011), so perhaps we'll break the record.

November 13

1806  Pike's Peak Colorado observed by Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomery Pike during an expedition to locate the source of the Mississippi.

1835  Texas officially proclaimed Independence from Mexico, and called itself the Lone Star Republic.  The very south east most slice of the state was within the Mexican province of Mexico, and therefore within the newly proclaimed republic, although it was not inhabited by European Americans or Mexicans at the time.  Borders in northern Mexico were more than a little theoretical.

1854  The Horse Creek Skirmish when the Sioux attacked a mail stage near the present location of Torrington.

1867  The first passenger train, a Union Pacific train, arrived in Cheyenne, WY.

1890  Fire damaged a saloon in Rawlins, Wyoming (Courtesy the Wyoming Historical Society).

1895  Floyd Taliaferro  Alderson born in Sheridon.  Alderson grew up on a ranch near Sheridan and served in World War One before becoming an actor in the silent movie era.  He acted in 22 silent films and was able to transition into talking pictures. He retired from acting in the 1950s and returned to the family ranch where he painted in his retirement. During his acting years he acted under a variety of names, including most notably Wally Wales,but also as Hal Taliaferro and Floyd Taliaferro.

1901 First CB&Q passenger train arrives in Cody, Wyoming.

1916:   The Laramie Republican for Monday, November 13, 1916. Record Cold.
 

The weather a century ago definitely isn't what we're experiencing this year.

1917

The USS Wyoming becomes  Rear Admiral Hugh Rodman's, Commander Battleship Division 9, flagship. Attribution:  On This Day.

 

Dust storm in Colorado, 1935.

1918 Pondering the Post War World. . .hit and miss. . . the news of November 13, 1918.

On this mid week of 1918 (this paper was published on a Wednesday) the Wyoming State Tribune was pondering the post war world with some optimism.

Not all of which would prove warranted.

First we'll note, however, that the depiction of Germany's new borders was spot on, showing once again how remarkably accurate these World War One papers tended to be.  They weren't always, and this past week with rumors of the armistice arriving prematurely, and with additional rumors that Red German sailors who had in fact sabotaged their ships to some degree were going to come out fighting, they were off the mark more than a little. But by and large, they appear to be on in just about the same degree as modern papers tend to be.

But as to a post war economic boom. .  not so much.

In fact the end of the war brought on a mild recession that started this very year; 1918. That recession would continue on into 1919, when a recovery would be staged, but following that a severe recession hit in 1920 and lasted until 1921.  

Overall, both periods of recession were brief, and there were some oddities to them. The American recession of 1918 actually started in August, which is flat out bizarre when it is considered that the United States was really just getting fully committed to combat in the Great War at that time and that it was conscripting all the way through the end of the war, thereby creating labor shortages that were growing worse.  That a recession would hit should have been expected, but a rational expectation should have been that it would have hit in early 1919.  It didn't, and overall the first recession only lasted seven months.

The second much worse one hit in January 1920 and lasted until 1921. That one makes much more sense if we keep in mind that while the fighting ended, the war technically went on into 1919 and the United States continued to maintain and supply a large overseas army that was on occupation duty that entire time.  Indeed, combat troops finally left Europe in September 1919 but an occupation force of 16,000 U.S. troops based out of Coblenz remained in Germany until 1923.  And somewhat forgotten, while the fighting had ended in France and Belgium, it continued on in Russia where a U.S. commitment remained until fully withdrawn on April 1, 1920. 

Of course, this has an expression in what we was called the Jazz Age.  No era of any kind every has a clean break from one to another, but in this case the effects of the war in various ways lingered through the first recession until the lid really came off and the post war world set in which gave us the Roaring Twenties/Jazz Age, which continued on until the crash of October 1929.  The Jazz Age, in a lot of ways, was the preamble to the 1960s, brought to an abrupt end by the economic realities of the Great War.

In Wyoming, as is so often the case, the national economy didn't really follow the path of the national one.  The oil boom of the Great War came to a screeching halt with the end of the war.  Oil production and refining of course went on, and the conversion of Casper Wyoming from a minor oil town into a significant oil city, was permanent.  But a local recession was inevitable with the end of the war.

Amplifying that recession was a general recession in the agricultural sector as a whole.  Massive demands for meat, wool, leather, and grain came to a rapid end, and with it came an agricultural depression that lasted through the economic recovery and on into the next recession.  1919, in fact, was the last year in American history in which farm families shared economic parity with urban families.

So the paper got that one wrong.  But its map of post war Germany was quite right.  The rest of the new European map had yet to be worked out through the process of the Versailles Treaty and local effort in new nations, to include the effort of new wears that erupted following the collapse of empires in the Great War, but that process was going on at the very time this paper was printed.

Holland didn't really treat the deposed Kaiser Wilhelm II like any other interned German officer.  He became a permanent exiled resident who never did come to see his removal as justified or his actions as questionable.  He'd die there during World War Two.

And while the paper gave a positive prognosis on the news that Theodore Roosevelt was in the hospital but would recover, the old lion wasn't himself anymore.

1933   "(MONDAY)  UNITED STATES: The first dust storm of the great dust bowl era of the 1930s occurs. The dust storm, which has spread from Montana to the Ohio Valley yesterday, prevails from Georgia to Maine resulting in a black rain over New York and a brown snow in Vermont. Parts of South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa reported zero visibility yesterday. Today, dust reduces the visibility to half a mile (805 meters) in Tennessee. (Jack McKillop)"  Attribution:  The WWII History List.

1941  The United States Congress amends the Neutrality Act of 1935 to allow American merchant ships access to war zones.

1942     The minimum draft age was lowered from 21 to 18.

1943  The state penitentiary receives a contract for 8,000 U.S. Army blankets.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

November 4

1804  Lewis and Clark record in their journal that Sacagawea was the wife of Toussaint Charbonneau.  In fact, she was one of two wives that Charbonneau had married either at the same time or close in time, with both of them being in their mid teens at the time.  He'd marry three more times during his life, with his last marriage coming at age 70. All of his wives were Native Americans and none of them were older than sixteen years old at the time of the marriage.

1835  Texas forces defeat Mexican forces at the Battle of Lipantitlán in San Patricio County.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1856  The Mormon Martin's Handcart Company, attempting a late crossing of the Oregon Trail, and having run into trouble with the weather, seeks shelter in the Martin's Cove area near Independence Rock, along with a rescue party having sent to find them.  They had not embarked on their efforts until August 27, making an attempt to cross extraordinary late in the year.

1856  James Buchanan was elected US president.

1868  Red Cloud arrived at Ft. Laramie to execute a treaty that gave him victory in Red Cloud's War.  The treaty had been negotiated that prior April.

1879. Will Rogers was born in Oologah, Okla.  Sometimes forgotten, Rogers' career as a humorist and political commentator commenced when he started doing a monologue while doing rope tricks.  He was, at first, a cowboy and trick roper.

1884 Grover Cleveland elected President.

1889  A meeting regarding the ratification of Wyoming's Constitution was held in Rawlins.

1924 Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming was elected the nation's first woman governor, when she was elected in a special election to fill the term of her late husband, who had been governor. She would serve until 1927, when she would leave office after having narrowly lost the 1926 election. She refused to campaign in either election, but remained popular nonetheless. Her 1926 loss is likely attributable to her refusal to campaign, which her opponent did do, and her strong support for Prohibition. She would later serve in Franklin Roosevelt's administration and Truman administration as the head of the United States Mint.

 

1924  Calvin Coolidge elected President.

Coolidge took 52% of the Wyoming vote, but showing a strong remaining progressive/populist streak, Robert LaFollette of the Progressive Party took second place with 32%.  The Democratic candidate, the forgotten John Davis, took the balance.

1930  The USS Wyoming became the flagship of Rear Admiral Harley H. Christy, Commander Training Squadron, Scouting Fleet.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1952     Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower elected president.

The popular Eisenhower took 63% of the Wyoming vote.

1952  Frank A. Barrett, Republican from Lusk, was elected to the Senate.

 

The Republican Barrett concluded a term of Governor upon his election and he had been a Congressman from Wyoming previously.

1980  Ronald Reagan elected President.

Reagan took 63% of the Wyoming vote.  Third party candidate Anderson took 7% and the balance went to the unpopular incumbent Jimmy Carter.

2008  Barack Obama elected President.

John McCain took 65% of the Wyoming vote.

2008  Cynthia Lummis elected to Congress from Wyoming.

October 30

1866  A grand pass and review was held at recently established, and semi beseiged, Fort Phil Kearny.

1889:  CB&Q RR entered Wyoming. Attribution: Wyoming State Archives via the Wyoming Historical Calendar, published by the Wyoming State Historical Society and the American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

1913  Superior approved an ordinance declaring animals and livestock at large to be a nuisance. 

1916   The Wyoming Tribune for October 30, 1916. War in Europe and a special on outrages in Mexico
 

The Tribune, which always angled towards the sensational, was in peak form for its Monday October 30, 1916, edition.
1937  Officials started to move into the new Waskakie County Courthouse.

1945  Shoe rationing ends.

1947  The decommissioned USS Wyoming was sold for scrap.It was a World War One era battleship, but had been used as a training ship after the Washington Naval Treaty caused it to be deprived of its main armament.

 

 The USS Wyoming in April 1945.

1959  Wyoming's 4th uranium  mill began production in the Gas Hills.

October 18

1854 Reciprocity Treaty between the US and Canada comes into effect.

1868 Vigilantes hanged three members of the Asa Moore Gang in Bosler, where some of the gang members owned a bar. One of the gang members, Big Steve Long, asked to leave his boots on, stating:  "My mother always said I'd die with my boots on".  He was lynched with his boots off.

1871  A gunpowder explosion on the Colorado Central saw 600 kegs of powder explode, but with no injuries.

1919  Robert Russin's statute of Lincoln on the Interstate Highway between Laramie and Cheyenne dedicated.  That route was part of the Lincoln Highway at the time, hence the dedication.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1929   The Historical Landmark Commission of Wyoming set up an advisory committee to explore acquiring  the grounds of Ft. Laramie. Attribution:  On This Day.

1931  A Pony Express Historical marker was dedicated at Independence Rock.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1969  The football game between the University of Wyoming and BYU that sparked the protest of the Black 14 occurred.  Wyoming won the game.

1973  Thursday, October 18, 1973. Creeping embargo.

The IDF recrossing the Suez Canal.  The artillery pieces are M107's, a heavy US artillery piece much loved by the IDF. Amos1947, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Saudi Arabia cut its oil production by 10% and threatened to halt all of its oil shipments to the United States unless the US halt aid to Israel.  The United Arab Emirates completely stopped shipments to the U.S.

1984  A 5.5 earthquake occurred about 50 miles from Casper, WY.

1989  The Contract to build  SSBN 742, an Ohio Class nuclear submarine, was awarded to General Dynamic's Electric Boat Division.

September 25

1066  Harold II of England defeats an invasion by Harald Hardrada of Norway, at Stamford Bridge near York.  Amongst the dead were King Harald, who had lead an adventurous Viking life, and Tostig, King Harold's brother who had sided with the Norwegians.  This battle is overshadowed by the Battle of Hastings, but in this battle, just a few weeks earlier, King Harold Godwinson defeated King Harald Haardaada, the King of Norway

King Harald was a tall man for the era, and when he asked King Harold "How much of England will you give me." Harold famously replied "Six feet, as you are bigger than other men.".  That's what he got.

What's this have to do with anything, you might ask?  Well, Harold's forced march to Stamford bridge with Saxon levies, followed by the battle, is sometimes cited as fatiguing his troops, who then had to turn around shortly thereafter and march to Hastings.  Some recent scholarship has questioned that, but that assertion has been made.  The Norman victory lead to the introduction of feudalism in England, which produced the Common Law as we know it, including the Common Law as used in Wyoming's courts.

1493     Christopher Columbus set sail from Cadiz, Spain, with a flotilla of 17 ships on his second voyage to the Western Hemisphere.

1789     The first United States Congress adopted 12 amendments to the Constitution and sent them to the states for ratification. (Ten of the amendments became the Bill of Rights.)

1909  August Malchow, the "Wisconsin Kid", of Havre Montana defended his world welterweight crown at the Methany Hall in Thermopolis.  The fight was against "Kid Erne" of Lewistown.  In  his professional career Malchow would go on to fight three more bouts, two of them also in the Methany Hall, with both of those being victories (one being a technicality, as it was a draw).  He would go on to loose in Sheridan in 1910 and he died in 1915 at age 30.

1912  USS Wyoming, BB-32, commissioned.

1916   Wyoming Tribune for September 25, 1916: Villa seeking alibi for Columbus Raid. Guard to go to San Antonio.
 

A dramatic Monday newspaper.

Villa looking for an alibi for Columbus.

The Guard to go to San Antonio.

Austria was without bread, and prohibitionist were submitting a bill to the Legislature to deprive the populace of booze.

1918  The Flu shares pride of place with the Great War and Villa, September 25, 1918.

The Spanish Flu, which would kill more Americans in 1918/19 than combat in Europe would, was now sufficiently newsworthy that it was making the front page day after day.  On this day, readers of the Casper paper woke up to find that as many as 30,000 cases of the particularly deadly and virulent flu strain had run through Army camps.

They also learned that Villa had returned to full violence in his war against Carranza.

In more positive news, Germany appeared to be collapsing.

Cheyenne's readers had equally disturbing news, including a claim that the Germans had returned to worshiping pagan gods in their desperation, a rather extreme claim to say the least.

1933  Memorial to June Downey, important early professor with widely varying interests, unveiled at the University of Wyoming.  In addition to writing poetry, teaching English, later psychology, and being a department head, she wrote the schools Alma Mater.

 Where the western lights' long shadows
Over the boundless prairies fling
And the mountain winds are vocal
With thy dear name, Wyoming.
There it is brown and yellow
Floats in loving loyalty,
And the College throws its portals
Open wide to all men free.

Refrain:
And so our songs we bring.
Our Alma Mater sing,
To her our hearts shall cling,
Shall cling forever more.

Yonder we can see it standing,
Circled by purple hills,
While the flaming fire of sunset
Every Western window fills;
'Tis the College! Ah, we know it!
Shrine of many joys and tears,
And the rays that light upon it
Are prophetic of its years.

1956     The first trans-Atlantic telephone cable went into service.

1963  John F. Kennedy spoke at the University of Wyoming.  His address:

Senator McGee--my old colleague in the Senate, Gale McGee--Governor, Mr. President, Senator Mansfield, Senator Metcalf, Secretary Udall, ladies and gentlemen:

I want to express my appreciation to you for your warm welcome, to you, Governor, to the President of the University, to Senator McGee, and others. I am particularly glad to come on this conservation trip and have an opportunity to speak at this distinguished university, because what we are attempting to do is to develop the talents in our country which require, of course, education which will permit us in our time, when the conservation of our resources requires entirely different techniques than were required 50 years ago, when the great conservation movement began under Theodore Roosevelt--and these talents, scientific and social talents, must be developed at our universities.

I hope that all of you who are students here will recognize the great opportunity that lies before you in this decade, and in the decades to come, to be of service to our country. The Greeks once defined happiness as full use of your powers along lines of excellence, and I can assure you that there is no area of life where you will have an opportunity to use whatever powers you have, and to use them along more excellent lines, bringing ultimately, I think, happiness to you and those whom you serve.

What I think we must realize is that the problems which now face us and their solution are far more complex, far more difficult, far more subtle, require a far greater skill and discretion of judgment, than any of the problems that this country has faced in its comparatively short history, or any, really, that the world has faced in its long history. The fact is that almost in the last 30 years the world of knowledge has exploded. You remember that Robert Oppenheimer said that 8 or 9 out of 10 of all the scientists who ever lived, live today. This last generation has produced nearly all of the scientific breakthroughs, at least relatively, that this world of ours has ever experienced. We are alive, all of us, while this tremendous explosion of knowledge, which has expanded the horizon of our experience, so far has all taken 'place in the last 30 years.

If you realize that when Queen Victoria sent for Robert Peel to be Prime Minister-he was in Rome--the journey which he took from Rome to London took him the same amount of time, to the day, that it had taken the Emperor Hadrian to go from Rome to England nearly 1900 years before. There had been comparatively little progress made in almost 1900 years in the field of knowledge. Now, suddenly, in the last 100 years, but most particularly in the last 30 years, all that is changed, and all of this knowledge is brought to bear, and can be brought to bear, in improving our lives and making the life of our people more happy, or destroying them. And that problem is the one, of course, which this generation of Americans and the next must face: how to use that knowledge, how to make a social discipline out of it.

There is really not much use in having science and its knowledge confined to the laboratory unless it comes out into the mainstream of American and world life, and only those who are trained and educated to handle knowledge and the disciplines of knowledge can be expected to play a significant part in the life of their country. So, quite obviously, this university is not maintained by the people of Wyoming merely to help all of the graduates enjoy a prosperous life. That may come, that may be a byproduct, but the people of Wyoming contribute their taxes to the maintenance of this school in order that the graduates of this school may, themselves, return to the society which helped develop them some of the talents which that society has made available, and what is true in this State is true across the United States.

The reason why, at the height of the Civil War, when the preservation of the Union was in doubt, Abraham Lincoln signed the Land Grant College Act, which has built up the most extraordinary educational system in the world, was because he knew that a nation could not exist and be ignorant and free; and what was true 100 years ago is more true today. So what we have to decide is how we are going to manage the complicated social and economic and world problems which come across our desks-my desk, as President of the United States; the desk of the Senators, as representatives of the States; the Members of the House, as representatives of the people.

But most importantly, as the final power is held by a majority of the people, how the majority of the people are going to make their judgment on the wise use of our resources, on the correct monetary and fiscal policy, what steps we should take in space, what steps we should take to develop the resources of the ocean, what steps we should take to manage our balance of payments, what we should do in the Congo or Viet-Nam, or in Latin America, all these areas which come to rest upon the United States as the leading great power of the world, with the determination and the understanding to recognize what is at stake in the world--all these are problems far more complicated than any group of citizens ever had to deal with in the history of the world, or any group of Members of Congress had to deal with.

If you feel that the Members of Congress were more talented 100 years ago, and certainly the Senators in the years before the Civil War included the brightest figures, probably, that ever sat in the Senate--Benton, Clay, Webster, Calhoun, and all the rest-they talked, and at least three of them stayed in the Congress 40 years--they talked for 40 years about four or five things: tariffs and the development of the West, land, the rights of the States and slavery, Mexico. Now we talk about problems in one summer which dwarf in complexity all of those matters, and we must deal with them or we will perish.

So I think the chance for an educated graduate of this school to serve his State and country is bright. I can assure you that you are needed.

This trip that I have taken is now about 24 hours old, but it is a rewarding 24 hours because there is nothing more encouraging than for those of us to leave the rather artificial city of Washington and come and travel across the United States and realize what is here, the beauty, the diversity, the wealth, and the vigor of the people.

Last Friday I spoke to delegates from all over the world at the United Nations. It is an unfortunate fact that nearly every delegate comes to the United States from all around the world and they make a judgment on the United States based on an experience in New York or Washington; and rarely do they come West beyond the Mississippi, and rarely do they go to California, or to Hawaii, or to Alaska. Therefore, they do not understand the United States, and those of us who stay only in Washington sometimes lose our comprehension of the national problems which require a national solution.

This country has become rich because nature was good to us, and because the people who came from Europe, predominantly, also were among the most vigorous. The basic resources were used skillfully and economically, and because of the wise work done by Theodore Roosevelt and others, significant progress was made in conserving these resources.
The problem, of course, now is that the whole concept of conservation must change in the 1960's if we are going to pass on to the 350 million Americans who will live in this country in 40 years where 180 million Americans now live--if we are going to pass on a country which is even richer.

The fact of the matter is that the management of our natural resources instead of being primarily a problem of conserving them, of saving them, now requires the scientific application of knowledge to develop new resources. We have come to. realize to a large extent that resources are not passive. Resources are not merely something that was here, put by nature. Research tells us that previously valueless materials, which 10 years ago were useless, now can be among the most valuable natural resources of the United States. And that is the most significant fact in conservation now since the early 1900's when Theodore Roosevelt started his work. A conservationist's first reaction in those days was to preserve, to hoard, to protect every non-renewable resource. It was the fear of resource exhaustion which caused the great conservation movement of the 1900's. And this fear was reflected in the speeches and attitudes of our political leaders and their writers.

This is not surprising in the light of the technology of that time, but today that approach is out of date, and I think this is an important fact for the State of Wyoming and the Rocky Mountain States. It is both too pessimistic and too optimistic. We need no longer fear that our resources and energy supplies are a fixed quantity that can be exhausted in accordance with a particular rate of consumption. On the other hand, it is not enough to put barbed wire around a forest or a lake, or put in stockpiles of minerals, or restrictive laws and regulations on the exploitation of resources. That was the old way of doing it.

Our primary task now is to increase our understanding of our environment to a point where we can enjoy it without defacing it, use its bounty without detracting permanently from its value, and, above all, maintain a living balance between man's actions and nature's reactions, for this Nation's great resources are as elastic and productive as our ingenuity can make them. For example, soda ash is a multimillion dollar industry in this State. A few years ago there was no use for it. It was wasted. People were unaware of it. And even if it had been sought, it could not be found--not because it wasn't here, but because effective prospecting techniques had not been developed. Now soda ash is a necessary ingredient in the production of glass, steel, and other products. As a result of a series of experiments, of a harnessing of science to the use of man, this great new industry has opened up. In short, conservation is no longer protection and conserving and restricting. The balance between our needs and the availability of our resources, between our aspirations and our environment, is constantly changing.

One of the great resources which we are going to find in the next 40 years is not going to be the land; it will be the ocean. We are going to find untold wealth in the oceans of the world which will be used to make a better life for our people. Science is changing all of our natural environment. It can change it for good; it can change it for bad. We are pursuing, for example, new opportunities in coal, which have been largely neglected--examining the feasibility of transporting coal by water through pipelines, of gasification at the mines, of liquefaction of coal into gasoline, and of transmitting electric power directly from the mouth of the mine. The economic feasibility of some of these techniques has not been determined, but it will be in the next decade. At the same time, we are engaged in active research on better means of using low grade coal, to meet the tremendous increase in the demand for coal we are going to find in the rest of this century. This is, in effect, using science to increase our supply of a resource of which the people of the United States were totally unaware 50 years ago.

Another research undertaking of special concern to this Nation and this State is the continuing effort to develop practical and feasible techniques of converting oil shale into usable petroleum fuels. The higher grade deposits in Wyoming alone are equivalent to 30 billion barrels of oil, and 200 billion barrels in the case of lower grade development. This could not be used, there was nothing to conserve, and now science is going to make it possible.

Investigation is going on to assure at the same time an adequate water supply so that when we develop this great new industry we will be able to use it and have sufficient water. Resource development, therefore, requires not only the coordination of all branches of science, it requires the joint effort of scientists, government--State, national, and local--and members of other professional disciplines. For example, we are now examining in the United States today the mixed economic-technical question of whether very large-scale nuclear reactors can produce unexpected savings in the simultaneous desalinization of water and the generation of electricity. We will have, before this decade is out or sooner, a tremendous nuclear reactor which makes electricity and at the same time gets fresh water from salt water at a competitive price. What a difference this can make to the Western United States. And, indeed, not only the United States, but all around the globe where there are so many deserts on the ocean's edge.

It is in efforts, I think, such as this, where the National Government can play a significant role, where the scale of public investment or the nationwide scope of the problem, the national significance of the results are too great to ignore or which cannot always be carried out by private research. Federal funds and stimulation can help make the most imaginative and productive use of our manpower and facilities. The use of science and technology in these fields has gained understanding and support in the Congress. Senator Gale McGee has proposed an energetic study of the technology of electrometallurgy--the words are getting longer as the months go on, and more complicated-an area of considerable importance to the Rocky Mountains.

All this, I think, is going to change the life of Wyoming and going to change the life of the United States. What we regard now as relative well-being, 30 years from now will be regarded as poverty. When you realize that 30 years ago r out of 10 farms had electricity, and yet some farmers thought that they were living reasonably well, now for a farm not to have electricity, we regard them as living in the depths of poverty. That is how great a change has come in 30 years. In the short space of 18 years, really, or almost 20 years, the wealth of this country has gone up 300 percent.

In 1970, 1980, 1990, this country will be, can be, must be--if we make the proper decisions, if we manage our resources, both human and material, wisely, if we make wise decisions in the Nation, in the State, in the community, and individually, if we maintain a vigorous and hopeful 'pursuit of life and knowledge--the resources of this country are so unlimited and science is expanding them so greatly that all those people who thought 40 years ago that this country would be exhausted in the middle of the century have been proven wrong. It is going to be richer than ever, providing we make the wise decisions and we recognize that the future belongs to those who seize it.

Knowledge is power, a saying 500 years old, but knowledge is power today as never before, not only here in the United States, but the future of the free world depends in the final analysis upon the United States and upon our willingness to reach those decisions on these complicated matters which face us with courage and clarity. And the graduates of this school will, as they have in the past, play their proper role.

I express my thanks to you. This building which 15 years ago was just a matter of conversation is now a reality. So those things that we talk about today, which seem unreal, where so many people doubt that they can be done--the fact of the matter is, it has been true all through our history--they will be done, and Wyoming, in doing it, will play its proper role.

Thank you.

1997   Guernsey State Park designated a National Historic Landmark.  Attribution:  On This Day.

September 16

1620  September 16, 1620. The day the "Pilgrims" . . .

 set sail for the New World.

It was at sea for ten weeks, putting in near Cape Cod on November 11, 1620.

1810  Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costillo and several hundred of his parishioners seized the prison at Dolores, Mexico marking the beginning of the first significant Mexican rebellion against Spain.

1811 The  Astorians renamed Seeds-Kee-Dee-Agie (Praire Hen River) the Spanish River.  It would later be renamed the Green River. 

1875  J. C. Penney Jr, founder of J. C. Penny's, which first opened its doors in Kemmerer, born in Hamilton Missouri.

1920  While it didn't occur in Wyoming, and event which impacted the entire nation:

September 16, 1920. The Wall Street Bombing.

On this day, at 12:01 p.m., terrorist widely believed to be Galleanist anarchists, set off a bomb in New York's Wall Street district which killed thirty-eight people and injured hundreds more.

The bomb, designed to deploy shrapnel, killed mostly young workers in the district at a time at which young workers were very young.  It was left in a horse drawn wagon, with horse still attached, and went off at the busy noon hour.

The direct perpetrators of the act were never discovered.

On the same day, a Polish artillery regiment was destroyed, with some prisoners and wounded, by a Red Army cavalry unit that outnumbered it after it expended all of its ammunition during the Battle of Dytiatyn.  The Red Army unit was itself destroyed by Polish forces a few days latter.

The battle became a famous one for the Poles who established a military cemetery there.  That was later destroyed by the Soviets following World War Two and the location is now inside of Ukraine.

1924  A coal mine explosion at Kemmerer kills 55.

1940 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Selective Training and Service Act, which set up the first peacetime military draft in U.S. history.

1940 President Franklin Roosevelt orders the Army to begin mobilizing the entire National Guard for one year’s training. The National Guard's horsed cavalry regiments, would go into Federal service for the last time. Horse mechanized units, such as Wyoming's 115th Cavalry Regiment (Horse-Mechanized) would go into service for the first and last time.

More on the last two items:

Today In Wyoming's History: September 16, 1940. Conscription starts and the National Guard mobilized.

Some of those conscripted men in 1945.

On this day in 1940, a couple of monumental events occurred in the history of the US and the state. These were:

Today In Wyoming's History: September 16: 1940 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Selective Training and Service Act, which set up the first peacetime military draft in U.S. history.

1940 President Franklin Roosevelt orders the Army to begin mobilizing the entire National Guard for one year’s training. The National Guard's horsed cavalry regiments, would go into Federal service for the last time. Horse mechanized units, such as Wyoming's 115th Cavalry Regiment (Horse-Mechanized) would go into service for the first and last time.

The story is always told a little inaccurately, and even the way we posted it on our companion blog slightly is.  The 1940 Selective Training and Service Act, reviving a conscription process started during World War One, was the first "peacetime draft" only if we omit the story of state mandatory military service which had existed from the earliest colonial times (recognizing the colonies as precursors to the state) up until after the Civil War, when it petered out.  Indeed, this history is why the National Guard, not the Army or Navy, is the senior service, dating back to December 13, 1636.  People didn't "join" the militia, they, or rather men, were compelled to be in the militia.  Only when the Frontier period caused populations to be so transient did this really change and even today many states define all men of sixteen years to sixty to be in the militia.

But Federal conscription itself was an anomaly and had only existed twice before, once during the Civil War and then again during World War One.  It had never been in existence in peacetime. And for that matter, hardly any Americans in 1940 had a living memory of mandatory militia duty, although there would have been those had been alive when it still existed.

Also of huge significance was the mobilization of the National Guard.

The mobilization of the Guard in 1940 is well known, but underappreciated.  The U.S. Army would have been incapable of fighting World War One or World War Two without the National Guard. During the Great War the reorganized Guard, reorganized as its state determined peacetime branches did not all comport with the Army's needs for a largescale European war, constituted a large percentage of the actual fighting force throughout the war.  It's peacetime establishment was reorganized again in the 1920s to match needs upon mobilization and accordingly many of the Army units that fought in the Army's early campaigns, all the way into 1943, were made up of Guard units.  Indeed, to at least some extent the Army simply used up Guard units until it could deploy newly trained men.

The significant story of the National Guard in both world wars was downplayed by the Army as, in spite of its absolute reliance on the Guard, the Regular Army always looked down on it in this period and tended to ignore its contributions.  Those contributions were enormous, and the Army's treatment of the National Guard's history unfair, and the wartime treatment of its officers shameful.

Conscription would soon start a labor shortly and ultimately start a series of social crises, conflicts and changes that permanently changed the United States and its culture.  One year of service, as had originally been passed into law, would not have done that, but when that service extended into years and ultimately into the largest war fought in modern times, it certainly did.  World War One, coming in an era of more privative transpiration, even though it was only twenty years prior, had not resulted in the transcontinental mixing of races and cultures the way World War Two did, and of course the Great War was shorter.  Those conflicts certain arose, but many of them arose afterwards, as reflected in the Red Summer of 1919.  The Great War changed the country as well but those changes really bloomed during World War Two, for lasting good and lasting ill.  The Civil Rights movement that started with the integration of the Armed Forces in 1948 really had its roots in the war during which there was a lot of dissatisfaction on the part of segregated blacks in regard to segregation, both in the military and in society itself. By wars end that segregation was going to be on the way out, even if that wasn't appreciated at the time.

The war also started the process of dismantling the strong ethnic neighborhoods in the country's majority white population and to at least some degree turned the temperature up on the melting pot.  At the same time, the war encouraged a period of loose morals that would begin to reflect back on the country after the war, really starting off when Hugh Hefner took the wartime image of the town girl that had adorned American bomber after bomber and put her in glossy centerfolds.  Much of what the war brought is still being sorted out, and the full impact of it will likely take another half century or more to really appreciate.

And that process, for the United States, began today, eighty years ago.

1947  BB-32, the USS Wyoming, stricken from the Navy rolls.

1950  War Memorial Stadium opened.   Attribution:  On This Day.

1988 Casper native Tom Browning, Cincinnati Reds pitcher, pitched a perfect game against the Los Angeles Dodgers.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

September 8

1829  George Crook was born on a farm near Taylorsville Ohio. The career Army officer was notably successful during the Indian Wars.  Crook County is named after him.

1833   Eliza Stewart Boyd born in Crawford County, Pennsylvania.. She became the first woman in the US to be selected to serve on a jury, with that jury being a Grand Jury.in Laramie in 1870.  She was a recently married teacher teacher at the time.  She was nominated to Territorial Legislature in 1873 and was probably the first woman in the US to hold that distinction.

She was also an organizer of the Wyoming Literary and Library Association.  She became a charter member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union in 1883.  She was a Wyoming delegate to the Prohibition Party national convention in 1888.

1851  Negotiations that would lead to the Horse Creek Treaty of 1851 between Plains Indians and the US begin on Horse Creek, 30 miles east of Fort Laramie.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1867  Army post located on Crow Creek near Cheyenne named Ft. D. A. Russell.

1900  USS Wyoming, BM-10, launched.

1920  September 8, 1920. The start of Air Mail

On this day in 1920, the U.S. Post Office inaugurated Air Mail in the United STates with early morning flights taking off from New Jersey and San Francisco, ultimately bound for the other location, and with distribution stops and refueling stops along the way.  Cheyenne was one of the cities on their flight path.

As the Cheyenne paper noted, unusually spelling it out, the reason for the numerous stops was that the Airco DH4 airplanes dedicated to the project didn't carry sufficient fuel not to make numerous stops.  The DH4 was a British designed World War One bomber which the US had ordered in sufficient numbers to make the United States the largest customer for the aircraft. After the war they were placed into mail service, which they'd continue to perform up until 1932.  Indeed, as late as that year the US seriously considered purchasing an updated variant.

1943  The first woman lookout was assigned in the Medicine Bow National Forest.  Perhaps it is coincidence, but this event occurred during World War Two when women were occupying many traditional male occupations due to labor shortages.   Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1978  Yellowstone National Park designated a United Nations World Heritage Site.  Attribution:  On This Day.

2015  In a controversial move, the Casper City Counsel reinstated a tavern and restaurant smoking ban following the decision of the Wyoming Supreme Court that signatures on an earlier referendum petition had been, in some cases, improperly discarded from counting.  The vote was not unanimous and it certainly set the stage for further debate.