How To Use This Site




How To Use This Site


This blog was updated on a daily basis for about two years, with those daily entries ceasing on December 31, 2013. The blog is still active, however, and we hope that people stopping in, who find something lacking, will add to the daily entries.

The blog still receives new posts as well, but now it receives them on items of Wyoming history. That has always been a feature of the blog, but Wyoming's history is rich and there are many items that are not fully covered here, if covered at all. Over time, we hope to remedy that.

You can obtain an entire month's listings by hitting on the appropriate month below, or an individual day by hitting on that calendar date.
Use 2013 for the search date, as that's the day regular dates were established and fixed.

Alternatively, the months are listed immediately below, with the individual days appearing backwards (oldest first).

We hope you enjoy this site.
Showing posts with label Sublette County. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sublette County. Show all posts

Saturday, July 6, 2013

July 6

1836   Narcissa Whitman and Eliza Spalding at the 1836 Rendezvous
 



This entry more likely belongs at our Today In Wyoming's History blog, as it isn't so much of a church item (well maybe it is) as a history item.  Note how particularly early this Oregon Trail event was, 1836.  Well before the big flood of travelers starting going over the trail in the late 1840s.

1863  John Bozeman leaves Ft. Laramie to scout a trail to the Yellowstone Valley. The trail would become the Bozeman Trail.

1876  The Army commences to inform the widows of the Little Big Horn Battle of the loss of their husbands at Ft. Abraham Lincoln.

1890  The streetcar line in Cheyenne running from Capitol Ave. to Lake Minnehaha completed.  Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.

1899  The Wyoming Battalion received its orders in the Philippines to return to the U.S. Attribution:  On This Day.

1918  Because the Germans doing it seemed like such a good idea? Now the Allies opt for intervening in Russia.
And Woodrow Wilson decided that the U.S. would participate in it, over the objections of Army which advised against it.


Everything about Russia during World War One has a certain pipe dream quality to it.  The Western Allies had hoped from day one that the giant nation would prove to be a vital and decisive ally. It did turn out to be a handful for the Germans, who ultimately defeated it, but the German hopes for what they had defeated and their greed meant that the fruits of that victory were never realized.


Following Russia's collapse into civil war the Allies hoped that the situation could be restored and a new republican government would rejoin the war, a hope that was folly at best.  Ultimately that hope lead to the decision to intervene in Russian affairs, putting the Allies into the extraordinary position of fielding expeditionary forces that would deploy direction into a civil war when, at that very time, the Allies were on the verge of loosing the war themselves on the Western Front.


Perhaps it is somewhat understandable, but only somewhat.  There was really no earthly way that Russia was coming back into World War One.  Moreover, the force needed to insure a quick White Victory, which is what would have been necessary to achieve that result, just wasn't there. . . which suggests that the Allies thought the Reds weren't really as powerful in 1918 as they were.  Not that they were not challenged, to be sure.  The Whites were also powerful at that time and the Communist government had seen an uprising on July 6 and 7 from the left, in the form of an attempted seizure of the government by the Left Socialist Revolutionaries.  Russia was a mess.

But the Allies, in the midst of the largest war since the Napoleonic Wars, weren't going to be able to reverse that.

Indeed, in the American Army's case, they weren't even going to be given a clear mission.

1922 Seven gamblers were arrested in Yoder, in the garage of a deputy sheriff.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1922.  Thursday, July 6, 1922. Casper and Oil

The big news in Casper was that the Texas Company, generally referred to as Texaco, was coming to Casper.  It would build a refinery on the edge of what became Evansville, referred to in these articles as the lands belonging to the Evans Holding Company.


The refinery was one of three in operation here when I was young, including the giant Standard Oil Refinery and the Sinclair Refinery, the latter of which had been built originally by Husky Petroleum.  Only the Sinclair Refinery remains in operation.  The Texaco refinery closed in 1982.  The Standard Oil Refinery closed for good in 1991.

1976  Frederic Hutchinson Porter, an architect responsible for the design of several important buildings in Cheyenne and a Cheyenne resident, died.

Saturday, March 23, 2013

March 23


National Puppy Day



Apparently today is National Puppy Day.

Our new puppy.
1806  Corps of Discovery leaves Fort Clatsop, Oregon.

1882  Oscar Wilde delivered a short speech on the Union Pacific Depot platform in Cheyenne. The UP depot there remains, and is self declared to be the most beautiful depot in the world. Whether or not that is true, it is undoubtedly a beautiful structure.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical sociey

1888  Ella Watson, remembered as Cattle Kate, filed for the patent on her homestead located on the Sweetwater, near the homestead of Jim Averell.

1911 The first insurance company in the state founded.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1916  Teno Roncalio, Wyoming Congressman, born in Rock Springs.  The son of Italian immigrants, he was a decorated veteran of World War Two who graduated with a law degree from the University of Wyoming in 1947.  He served as the prosecuting attorney for Laramie County for many years before entering politics. 

1916   The Punitive Expedition: The Casper Daily Press, March 23, 1916
 
Let's look at the entire evening paper this go around.


This is the first issue of the Casper evening paper in which a story about the troops in Mexico is not on the first page, since the raid on Columbus.



The editor was casting doubts on the distance between Villa and Carranza.


I've never even heard of Wyoming Light Lager.


1918  March 23, 1918. The news of the breakthrough at St. Quentin
 

The news the prior day had been optimistic. The news on March 23 was decidedly not.

And, surprisingly, Casper was reported to be favoring prohibition.
1923 The start of thirteen minor shocks that were felt  at Kelly from March 23 to April 12, 1923.

1935  The first grazing district formed under the Taylor Grazing Act created, that being Wyoming Grazing District Number 1.

1942     The U.S. government began moving Japanese-Americans from their West Coast homes to detention centers which would ultimately include Heart Mountain, near Cody.

2016  Governor Mead directs the Attorney General of Wyoming to start proceedings to remove the Sublette County Sheriff after the Sublette County Commission requests the same.  Wyoming's governors have this power, but its use is extraordinarily rare.  The most pronounced examples came during Prohibition and a current use of this power is almost unheard of.  The Sublette County Sheriff has been the subject of controversy surrounded some expenditures associated with his office that were incurred for the department but prior to his being officially in office.


2016.  Perhaps showing how contested the election season really is this year, former President Bill Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders both planned whistle stop tours in Wyoming on this day, but both had to cancel due to the massive spring storm that shut down the Interstate and which closed the Denver airport for most of the day.  Clinton was to have campaigned for his wife in Cheyenne, which by early morning was impossible to get in and out of, and Sanders was to have campaigned in Casper and Laramie.  At least Sanders has indicated an intent to return to the state prior to the Democratic Convention taking place.

2016  For the first time since 2000, Wyoming's unemployment rate is higher than the national average.

The unemployment rate only comes in a little above 5%, which shows how high the rate of employment is statistically in the country right now.   This is high enough nationwide that we fit into what used to be regarded as technical full employment.  It's never possible to have 100% employment.  In recent years, however, figures in this area have been regarded in a negative light and some claim the actual nationwide rate of employment is higher.

At any rate, the real unemployment rate in Wyoming is undoubtedly higher.  Natrona County has a 7.2% unemployment rate and Carbon County has a 6% unemployment rate.  Both counties are energy dependent for their economies, as is of course the state generally.  Given as Wyoming had a high migrant employment rate in recent years the high unemployment rate now probably reflects a significant degree of reverse migration, so the actual rate is likely much higher than what we're now seeing reported.

Friday, February 15, 2013

February 15

1812   The Astorians reached the mouth of the Columbia River.  They traveled overland with one horse for each two men.

1869  Laramie's first school opened.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1879   President Rutherford B. Hayes signs a bill allowing female attorneys to argue cases before the United States Supreme Court.

1887  Reports from Montana start to place the state's cattle deaths from this disastrous winter at 60%.

1898 The U.S.S Maine blew up in Havana Harbor.  This event would lead in short order to the Spanish American War, the first US war that Wyoming would participate in as a state.

 Wreckage of the USS Maine.

1909  Park County formed.

1917  The Natrona County Tribune for February 15, 1917: Casper Man Witnesses Return of Pershing's Expedition
 

An eyewitness Wyoming Guardsman reported on what he saw on the return of the Punitive Expedition from Mexico.

In other local news, a German-Hibernian bank was being formed.
The Cheyenne State Leader for February 15, 1917: Villistas threaten U.S. "Line".
 

Using terms now familiar to the readers to due the news on the Great War, Villistas were reported to be threatening the U.S. "line".

The news, in regards to Mexico, had nearly returned to the state of the year prior.

Otherwise, the news was much as noted in the paper below.  Gas leases, horse thieves, and the German U-boot campaign.

And Cuba again.
The Wyoming Tribune for February 15, 1917: Five Americans Shot by Mexican Raiders.
 

The border with Mexico was fully back on headlines, recalling the year prior, with news of a deadly Mexican raid into the US.

In other news, the crisis with Germany loomed large, but so did the capture of horse thieves.

1918    German Greed and Trotsky Goofs. . . and the Allies

Horseless Age, volume 43, number 4, February 15, 1918, page 50.
Four horse transport at No.4 Remount Depot in Boulogne, 15 February, 1918

Kipling, February 15, 1918.

If you will allow me, 1 will tell you a story.

1919  February 15, 1919. Wyoming passes its own Prohibition Act. . .
which would take effect on June 30 of 1919.

And for no good reason either.

You've read all about it, leading up to this date, but on this date.  It was signed into law.


New Governor Robert Carey signed the bill with three pens, which he then gave to the Friends Of Dry Wyoming.  The bill featured an unusual Saturday morning singing.

The Wyoming Star Tribune reported, in noting it, that; "The prohibition question is a closed question in Wyoming."

1919  A selection of non career U.S. Army officers serving in France were assembled, under the orders of Gen. Pershing, to work on the formation of an organization that would become the American Legion.

1921 Teton County formed.

1921  Sublette County formed.

1925  Fire in Shoshoni destroyed twelve buildings.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1933     President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt escaped an assassination attempt in Miami but which claimed the life of Chicago Mayor Anton J. Cermak.

The attempted assassin in this matter was Giuseppe Zangara, an Italian veteran of World War One who was fairly clearly in poor health and increasingly suffering from delusions to some extent.  The wounded Mayor Cermak survived until March 6, 1933.  By that time, Zangara had already been sentenced for four counts of attempted murder, and was given 20 years for each count.

That is, he had been sentenced in less than a month.

He was charged with homicide on March 8, 1933, due to Cermak's death.  He plead guilty and was executed on March 20, 1933.

Cermak never contested his responsibility for the crimes.  He was increasingly ill and suffering from delusions, but his statements made it fairly clear that he conceived of his actions as some sort of radical anti-capitalist action.  What strikes me as amazing, however, is that he went from arrest to execution in a little over a month.  Indeed, he went from arrest for homicide to execution in 14 days.

I am not noting this in order to make a comment about the death penalty.  That's an entirely different topic and frankly addressing it in the context of 2012 in comparison to 1933 isn't really even possible.  But what is really striking is that the criminal process played itself out so very rapidly.  Now I would have expected a process of examination to determine if Zangara was sane or even competent to make a confession, and there's no way on earth that the process would have occurred so very rapidly.

1955 "Wyoming" adopted as the official song of Wyoming.

The lyrics are:
In the far and mighty West, Where the crimson sun seeks rest, There's a growing splendid State that lies above, On the breast of this great land; Where the massive Rockies stand, There's Wyoming young and strong, the State I love!

Chorus:  Wyoming, Wyoming! Land of the sunlight clear! Wyoming, Wyoming! Land that we hold so dear! Wyoming, Wyoming! Precious art thou and thine! Wyoming, Wyoming! Beloved State of mine!


In the flowers wild and sweet, Colors rare and perfumes meet; There's the columbine so pure, the daisy too, Wild the rose and red it springs, White the button and its rings, Thou art loyal for they're red and white and blue,


Where thy peaks with crowned head, Rising till the sky they wed, Sit like snow queens ruling wood and stream and plain; 'Neath thy granite bases deep, 'Neath thy bosom's broadened sweep, Lie the riches that have gained and brought thee fame.


Other treasures thou dost hold, Men and women thou dost mould, True and earnest are the lives that thou dost raise, Strengthen thy children though dost teach, Nature's truth thou givest to each, Free and noble are thy workings and thy ways.


In the nation's banner free There's one star that has for me A radiance pure and splendor like the sun; Mine it is, Wyoming's star, Home it leads me near or far; O Wyoming! All my heart and love you've won!
1961  Laramie County Sheriff Norbert E. Tuck was killed in a railroad crossing accident in Iowa while returning a prisoner to Wyoming.

2006  Cheyenne's Union Pacific depot declared a National Historic Landmark.