May 30

1834  William Sublette and William Anderson arrive at "Laramee's Fork", named for the late Jacque LaRamie, a trapper who had been killed there. The next day they lay the foundation logs for Fort William, which would be come Ft. Laramie..  Attribution:  On This Day.

1854    The territories of Nebraska and Kansas were established.  Wyoming east of the Rocky Mountains was included in the Nebraska Territory.

1862  Companies A, B, C, and D of the First Battalion of the 6th Ohio Volunteer Cavalry arrived at Fort Laramie.

1865  Cheyenne and/or Sioux attack Three Crossings Station.

1871  Wyoming Stock Growers Association, which would have an enormous impact on Wyoming's history, formed.

1901         Memorial Day becomes a national observance.

1903  Theodore Roosevelt visited Cheyenne and Laramie.  He stopped first in Laramie, where he delivered a speech at Old Main.  Invited by Rough Rider veterans to ride to the next stop, Cheyenne, he did so.

1904  Sheep rancher Lincoln Morrison shot in ambush near Kirby Creek, Hot Springs County, Wyo. He survived.  His mother, Lucy Morrison Moore, “The Sheep Queen,” offers a $3,500 reward but the attempted murderer is not discovered.

1908  The commencement of a Evanston to Denver horse race.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1916   Memorial Day, 1916
 

So, on Memorial Day, 2016, let's look back a century at Memorial Day, 1916.

Armored car in a parade in New York City.  Mounted policemen, on the left edge of the photo, truly look a lot more mobile and effective than this armored car.

This had to be a really somber Memorial Day.  World War One was raging in Europe. Ships were going down in the North Atlantic.  American soldiers were chasing Villa in Mexico. All that must have hung over the heads of the citizenry like a dark cloud.

Still, usually something goes on for this holiday. And some of it ends up on the front page of the news in anticipation of the day.  Let's see what we can find around the state and nation.  We've put one up above, a parade was held in New York City that featured a rather martial, if rather antiquated looking even then, armored vehicle.

One of the Casper papers didn't see fit to really announce anything on the front page for the day.

One of the Sheridan papers urged honoring veterans.

Another Sheridan paper did honor veterans, and of the conflict with Mexico.  Memorial Day festivities were also noted.

Interestingly, the death of Confederate John Singleton Mosby was also noted.

And Colorado National Guard officials were resigning in the wake of the Ludlow strife.  Quite a paper, all in all.

An important death figured on the front page of the Cheyenne Leader. By that time, that paper was summarizing "the War", meaning the war in Europe, on a regular basis.  Memorial Day was noted in the context of the Grand Army of the Republic, i.e., the Union troops who had fought in the Civil War (although not all joined the GAR of course).

Scandal, war and violence figured on cover of the Wyoming Semi-Weekly Tribune.

 

War and the "draft Roosevelt" movement took pride of place on the cover of The Wyoming Tribune, which also noted Memorial Day in the context of the Civil  War, which after all is what it commemorated.

1997  The USS Wyoming, SSBN 742,  successfully launched one Trident II missile during the ship's Demonstration and Shakedown Operation.

2007  Laramie's post office named after the late Senator Gale McGee.

January 27

1878  General Philip H. Sheridan recommended the removal of the garrison at Camp Stambaugh.

1880     Thomas Edison received a patent for his electric incandescent lamp.  The concept for the invention first came to Edison while he was in Wyoming on a trip to view an eclipse.

1888   The National Geographic Society founded.

1917   The Punitive Expedtion: The withdrawal commences. January 27, 1917
 

U.S. forces begin their withdrawal from Mexico., thereby starting the process of leaving the country that they first entered in March, 1916.

While I've already commented on the decision to withdraw in an earlier post, and while it doesn't square with the general commentary regarding the U.S. decision to withdraw, positing this in Century Delayed Real Time has made me wonder what the sense of the event was in 1917.  Perhaps the rising specter of American involvement in the Great War greatly overshadowed to the extent it was largely consumed by that, but the news of the past week, with American National Guardsmen engaging Constitutionalist troops in combat on the border (and as we will see, the Utah National Guard actually crossing into Mexico, as well as upcoming events in the next few days, give this story a real Fall of Saigon retrospective feel to it.  It really has the aura, looking back, of collapse.  But perhaps not at the time?

1920   Wyoming ratified the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Women could, of course, already vote in Wyoming so the ratification of the amendment to the United States Constitution providing for the same was no surprise.  There had been a bit of an effort to convene a special session for this purpose in 1919, but Governor Robert Carey declined to do that, so ratification had to wait until Governor Carey ultimately called a special session of the legislature for 1920.

1926  The  Paul Whitman Orchestra played at the University of Wyoming.

1943  Contact was reestablished with Jackson after the town had been isolated due to a snowstorm. The period of no contact was six days.

This was not really an unusual event at the time.  Prior to advancements in 4x4 vehicles, brought about due to World War Two, it was nearly impossible to remove significant amounts of snow from mountain passes, and towns located in mountain valleys were routinely cutoff from contact with the outside for days and even weeks. This was particularly true for Jackson.  Indeed, this was so much the case that a book written in the 1950s, by a screen writer who lived in the town off and on during the 40s and 50s, maintained that the "Cocktail Hour In Jackson Hole" was the entire winter, as the town was completely cutoff from the outside during that time and engaged in one huge party all winter long.  No doubt that was an exaggeration, but there was some truth to the statement.

Less romantic, an irony of the situation is that up until 1970s Jackson was not regarded as a particularly desirable place to live.  This was very much the case prior to 1950.  Prior to 1950 agriculture, together with government agencies, formed the economic base of the town, but even there the homesteads that had been filed there were very late ones and were not the most enviable to have, as the ranches in the valley had to combat the weather and were so extremely isolated.  It is only the modern 4x4 snow plow that has made Jackson the winter vacation spot it is, and by extension the home of many wealthy people.

1976   A small earthquake occurred near Rawlins.

1979  USS Yellowstone AD-41, a destroyer tender, launched.  It was decommissioned in 1996.

USS Yellowstone (the big one) with a destroyer off of Norway.