1774 Meriwether Lewis born.
1848 Congress created the Oregon Territory, which included parts of Wyoming. Unlike the later state maps, the eastern and western edges of the territory were based on topographic features.
1864 Ft. Collins, Colorado, established.
1865 Camp Connor becomes Ft. Connor.
1878 A plot to derail a train and rob it was foiled by alert Union Pacific laborers who detected the damage to the tracks while working nearby, out side of Rawlins.
1894 Not a Wyoming item, but perhaps somewhat related, Elliot Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt's brother and father of Elanor Roosevelt, died at age 34 from complications of alcoholism.
1897 Road agents dressed as cavalrymen stopped 15 stagecoaches in Yellowstone National Park, robbing items from most of them. The victims included an Army paymaster and his escort, who mistook the agents for soldiers.
1918 Casper Home Guard To Muster. The Casper Record: August 14, 1918.
It turns out that Casper's Home Guard unit was the only one in the state, and it was going to muster the Monday after this issue of the Casper Record.
Patriots were expected to "turn out and witness".
1894 Not a Wyoming item, but perhaps somewhat related, Elliot Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt's brother and father of Elanor Roosevelt, died at age 34 from complications of alcoholism.
1897 Road agents dressed as cavalrymen stopped 15 stagecoaches in Yellowstone National Park, robbing items from most of them. The victims included an Army paymaster and his escort, who mistook the agents for soldiers.
1918 Casper Home Guard To Muster. The Casper Record: August 14, 1918.
It turns out that Casper's Home Guard unit was the only one in the state, and it was going to muster the Monday after this issue of the Casper Record.
Patriots were expected to "turn out and witness".
1919 August 14, 1919. The Red Desert "exerting a depressing influence" on the personnel of the 1919 Motor Transport Convoy.
1923 An explosion at the Frontier Mine in Kemmerer killed 99 people.
On this day in 1919, the diarist for the 1919 Motor Transport Convoy reported that parched landscape of the Red Desert was exhibiting a "depressing influence on personnel".
And they had a fair amount of trouble including a breakdown that required an Indian motorcycle to be loaded into the Militor.
You'd see a lot of motorcycles on the same stretch of lonely highway today. The highway itself is unyielding busy but the desert is still a long stretch in Wyoming. People either love it or find it dispiriting even now.
Oddly, Rock Springs hardly obtained mention in today's entry, even though it is now a larger city than nearby Green River, which is the county seat. But it is remarkable to note that the convoy was able to stop, grind a valve, and get back on the road, which is what they did, having the valve ground (or probably grinding it themselves, in Rock Springs.
The final destination that day was Green River, which they arrived in relatively late in the evening, in comparison with other days reported in the diary, after a 13.5 hour day.
Rawlins was the last substantial town that the convoy had passed through prior to this day, and its paper memorialized their stay in the and through the town with a series of photographs in the paper that was issued on this day.
The Casper paper mentioned another momentous event, the transfer of 14,000 acres from the Wind River Indian Reservation to be open for homesteading, a post World War One effort to find homesteads for returning soldiers.
That act was part of a series of similar ones that had chipped away at the size of the Reservation since its founding in the 1860s. While the Reservation remains large, it was once larger until events like this slowly reduced its overall extent.
14,000 acres is actually not that much acreage, but what this further indicates is an appreciation on the part of the government that the land around Riverton Wyoming was suitable for farming, as opposed to grazing. The various homestead acts remained fully in effect in 1919 and indeed 1919 was not surprisingly the peak year for homesteading in the United States, as well as the last year in American history in which farmers had economic parity with urban dwellers. But the land remaining in the West that was suitable for farming, as opposed to grazing, was now quite limited. Some of that land was opening up with irrigation projects, however.
None of this took into mind, really, what was just for the native residents of the Reservation and that lead to the protests in Chicago. Interestingly, those protests do not seem to have been undertaken by Arapaho and Shoshone tribal members, who indeed would have been a long way from home, but rather from Indians who were living in those areas, showing how the the efficient development of the spreading of news was impacting things.
Locally Judge Winters was stepping down as he felt that private practice would be more lucrative and he'd be better able to support his family Judge Winter was a legendary local judge and his son also entered the practice of law. While I may be mistaken, Judge Winter came back on the bench later, perhaps after his children were older. His son was a great University of Wyoming track and field athlete and graduated from the University of Wyoming's law school in the 1930s. Because of the Great Depression, he was unable to find work at first and therefore only took up practicing law after the Depression eased. He was still practicing, at nearly 100 years old, when I first was practicing law and he had an office in our building. He and his wife never had any children.
You'd see a lot of motorcycles on the same stretch of lonely highway today. The highway itself is unyielding busy but the desert is still a long stretch in Wyoming. People either love it or find it dispiriting even now.
Classic, retired, Union Pacific Depot in Rock Springs, Wyoming.
Union Pacific freight station, Rock Springs.
Oddly, Rock Springs hardly obtained mention in today's entry, even though it is now a larger city than nearby Green River, which is the county seat. But it is remarkable to note that the convoy was able to stop, grind a valve, and get back on the road, which is what they did, having the valve ground (or probably grinding it themselves, in Rock Springs.
Rawlins was the last substantial town that the convoy had passed through prior to this day, and its paper memorialized their stay in the and through the town with a series of photographs in the paper that was issued on this day.
The Casper paper mentioned another momentous event, the transfer of 14,000 acres from the Wind River Indian Reservation to be open for homesteading, a post World War One effort to find homesteads for returning soldiers.
That act was part of a series of similar ones that had chipped away at the size of the Reservation since its founding in the 1860s. While the Reservation remains large, it was once larger until events like this slowly reduced its overall extent.
14,000 acres is actually not that much acreage, but what this further indicates is an appreciation on the part of the government that the land around Riverton Wyoming was suitable for farming, as opposed to grazing. The various homestead acts remained fully in effect in 1919 and indeed 1919 was not surprisingly the peak year for homesteading in the United States, as well as the last year in American history in which farmers had economic parity with urban dwellers. But the land remaining in the West that was suitable for farming, as opposed to grazing, was now quite limited. Some of that land was opening up with irrigation projects, however.
None of this took into mind, really, what was just for the native residents of the Reservation and that lead to the protests in Chicago. Interestingly, those protests do not seem to have been undertaken by Arapaho and Shoshone tribal members, who indeed would have been a long way from home, but rather from Indians who were living in those areas, showing how the the efficient development of the spreading of news was impacting things.
Locally Judge Winters was stepping down as he felt that private practice would be more lucrative and he'd be better able to support his family Judge Winter was a legendary local judge and his son also entered the practice of law. While I may be mistaken, Judge Winter came back on the bench later, perhaps after his children were older. His son was a great University of Wyoming track and field athlete and graduated from the University of Wyoming's law school in the 1930s. Because of the Great Depression, he was unable to find work at first and therefore only took up practicing law after the Depression eased. He was still practicing, at nearly 100 years old, when I first was practicing law and he had an office in our building. He and his wife never had any children.
1923 An explosion at the Frontier Mine in Kemmerer killed 99 people.
1935 Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law.
1943 New US conscription regulations come into force with a revised list of reserved occupations and a feature that having dependents are deciding factors in deferments.
1945 Harry S. Truman announced that Japan had surrendered unconditionally, ending World War II. On the same day, in the last air raid of the war US B-29 Superfortress bombers strike Kumagaya and Isezaki, northwest of Tokyo, and the Akita-Aradi oil refinery. The American War Production Board removes all restrictions on the production of automobiles in the United States. General Douglas MacArthur is appointed supreme Allied commander to accept the Japanese surrender. An immediate suspension of hostilities is ordered and Japan is ordered to end fighting by all its forces on all fronts immediately. Attempted coup by the Imperial Guard is put down.
1981 A camera allowed for the first time in a Wyoming Supreme Court session. They are not generally allowed at the present time. Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.
