November 21

1842  Alfred Packer, Colorado cannibal, born in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. 

1860  Tom Horn born in Scotland County Missouri.

1865  Platte Bridge Station renamed Ft. Caspar in honor of the late Caspar Collins, who had lost his life at the Battle of Platte Bridge Station earlier that year.

1877     Inventor Thomas A. Edison unveiled the phonograph.

1887  The Wyoming Central Railway opened its line between Douglas and Glenrock, thereby extending its rail service to the state line.

1895  The Federal District Court, sitting in Cheyenne, held that the Treaty of 1868 exempted Indians from the State's game laws.  The decision would later be reversed.

1910  August Malchow defeated by Peter Jensen of Omaha, the "Battling Dane", in a fight at the Kirby Opera House in Sheridan.  See September 25 for more on Malchow.

1913  Nathaniel Burt, author, born in Moose.

1919  Chasing Carlisle. November 21, 1919

The Hole In the Wall Country, November 2019.

On this day in 1919, the newspapers were reporting that Bill Carlisle was headed for a location that was the archtype of destination for regional bands. . . some twenty years prior.

The Hole In the Wall.

After all, where would a Wyoming train robber on the lam go, other than to the same place that Butch and Sundance had?

Scene from the Red Wall Country, November 2019.

Well, it was a romantic notion.  Wyoming in 1919 wasn't the Wyoming of 1899, or even 1909, no matter how much the thought of a wild flight to the Hole In The Wall might have been fancied the imagination of a people for whom that region had been an impenetrable criminal fortress only a couple of decades prior.

In 1919, the territory was still wild in many ways.  Indeed, the first decade of the 20th Century saw an ongoing range war in the form of a cattlemen v. sheepmen killings.  As late as the latter part of the first decade of the 20th Century a criminal escapee simply disappeared forever.

But by the same token, by 1919 the criminal sanctuary no longer was one. There was no more Hole In The Wall Gang.  Most of the former members of that group were dead, in prison, or reformed.  Following the Tipton train robbery by The Wild Bunch, the authorities were no longer willing to tolerate the lack of law enforcement that allowed it to continue to exist and were willing to expend the resources necessary to penetrate it.  Prior to that happening, the badmen dispersed. Some would return, and as late as the 00s, but they weren't hitting trains.

Carlisle was.

Buffalo Creek Canyon, December 2019.

Indeed, part of the appeal of the Carlisle story is that he was already an anachronism, in his own time.  In 1919, the year after the Great War had ended, a war which had featured aircraft and submarines and mass violence on a mass scale, Carlisle was out on his own, in the vast countryside, raiding trains, badly.

People were sort of rooting for him.

Even as they knew, he'd be caught.

1940  Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn were married in Cheyenne.  The wedding took place at the Union Pacific Depot dining room.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1943  Goshen Vounty's harvest declared a success due to the efforts of immigrant Mexican laborers and Prisoners of War.  Attribution.  Wyoming Historical Society's history calendar.

1950  A DC3 (C-47) airplane crashed into Mount Moran, killing all 21 persons on board.  The plane was flying in poor weather.

1957  The Department of Defense announced that F.E. Warren AFB would be the nation's first ICBM base.

1975  Dick Cheney assumes the position of White House Chief of Staff under Gerald Ford.

November 16

534   A second and final revision of the Codex Justinianus is published.   Compiling Roman law proved to be a difficult chore due to the many different versions of it in regards to any one particular topic.  While Roman law provides comparatively little basis for modern American law, outside of Louisiana, it was not wholly without influence to some degree.  The codification of the Roman law in Roman times provided the basis, later for the codification of French law under Napoleon.

1887  Legendary photographer of Wyoming, Charles Belden, born in California.

 

1878  The Commissary at Fort Fetterman listed the supplies on hand as being: 195 lbs. of turkey, 140 of codfish, and 11 lbs. of cherries. Date: Attribution:  Wyoming Historical Calendar.

 

1917   November 16, 1917: All the Distressing News. US Back in Mexico, in Combat in Europe, flag shaming in Lander, and Temptation in Philadelphia

The Laramie Boomerang correctly noted that the United States had crossed back into Mexico, but just right across the border.  This was something that the US would end up doing in a worried fashion for years, showing that while the Punitive Expedition might be over, armed intervention, to a degree, in Mexico, was not.

At the same time, the press was really overemphasizing US combat action in Europe. The US wouldn't really be fighting much for weeks and weeks.

And the on again, off again, hope that the Japanese would commit to ground action was back on again.

Meanwhile, in Lander, things were getting really ugly.  "German sympathizers" were being made to kiss the flag.

That probably didn't boost their loyalty any.

Villas expanding plans were also being noted. And, also, The Temptation Rag, a film, was being reported on, on the front page, something that takes a true scandal to occur now.

1942   Wyoming Senator Harry H. Schwartz introduced bill to protect Western stockmen from wartime eminent domain losses. 

 

1945  USS Laramie decommissioned. 

 

1973     President Richard M. Nixon signed the Alaska Pipeline measure into law.

 

1982  The Jahnke murder occurred in Cheyenne, in which Richard Janke Jr., aided by his sister, killed his abusive father. The murder was later the basis of a television movie entitled Right to Kill.

 

1993  A magnitude 3.5 earthquake occurred about 65 miles from Sheridan. 

 

2002  Tom Farris, who had been born in Casper Wyoming, and who had played football for three years in the National Football League following World War Two, died.

 

2015  In keeping with a request from President Obama, Governor Mead ordered flags in the state to fly at half mast until sundown, November 19, in honor of the dead of the recent terrorist attack in Paris.

Novmeber 14

1890  Joseph M. Carey elected as the first U.S. Senator for Wyoming. F. E. Warren elected to a second senator for Wyoming.  At this time, the Legislator appointed the Senators, rather than the electorate electing them.

Carey was an 1864 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania College of Law, and became U.S. Attorney for the Territory of Wyoming in 1869.  He was on the Territorial Supreme Court from 1871 to 1876, when he left that field to become a rancher, founding a significant early ranch in Natrona County Wyoming, the CY.   He served as governor from 1890 to 1895, being Wyoming's first state governor, and then again from 1911 to 1915, during which time he supported the Progressive Party campaign for President of Theodore Roosevelt.

Gov. Carey in his second term at the launching of the USS Wyoming.

1897  An earthquake damaged the Grand Central Hotel in Casper.

1917   Back in the headlines. The Wyoming Tribune for November 14, 1917
 

Pancho Villa's forces were back in the headlines. . . with combat right on the US border.

A battle significant enough that it was not only pushing the Carranzaistas out of a disputed town. . . it pushed World War One and the Russian Revolution aside a bit as well.

Not that both didn't also show up.  Include a hopeful headline that the Bolsheviks were going down in defeat.

1918  And the war ends . . . in Africa. Prosperity means abolishing the eight hour day? Kaiser to be "brot" (the German word for bread . . . or a sandwich) to justice? Wilson taking jars? Eh? November 14, 1918.

As odd as it may seem, it was this day, November 14, 1918, when the Germans surrendered in Africa.

It took that long for news to reach British and German forces in Zambia, where they were still engaged in hostilities up until that time.

Paul von Lettow Vorbeck, commander of the German forces in Africa who would return to Germany a hero in March 1919 and actually be allowed to lead his returning troops through the Brandenburg Gate in full German African regalia.  He went on to be an anti Nazi monarchist right wing politician in the Reichtag and was reduced to poverty during the war and lived, for a time after it, on packages from his former enemies Smuts and Meinertzhagen, although is fortunes recovered before he died in 1964.

The same day was one for sort of odd headlines, or at least oddly spelled headlines, in the Casper newspaper.

1921  World Champion wrestler Jack Taylor of Wyoming lost the title in Boise to a Russian wrestler.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

Taylor was actually a Canadian, but he was living in Wyoming at the time.  He had just been defeated noted wrestler Jack Pasek at the Iris in Casper on October 31 in a three-hour match, so he was on a losing streak.

Taylor had originally hailed from Ontario and would return to Canada in later years, retiring to Edmonton, a city which is interestingly frequently compared to Casper, although for reasons that are unclear to me.

1935  The Crook County News reported Montana man killed by flying sheep, according to the Wyoming Historical Society's daily Wyoming post and calendar.  Necessarily, this article requires some explanation, as sheep don't regularly fly.

1969  November 14, 1969. Apollo 12 launched.

It was, of course, a mission to the moon.

Lightening struck the Saturn rocket twice as it was lifting off, taking all three fuel cells offline.  Irrespective of that, it flew normally.

October 8

Today is Columbus Day for 2012, the date this entry was first posted.

At least in my part of the country, Columbus Day has declined to the point of being practically a non entity, as far as observed holidays are concerned.  Nothing happens to note it, other than that I think it is a Federal holiday and Federal services are halted.  Some state ones used to be, but I know that various state offices have, for many years, been given the option of omitting the holiday in exchange for taking the day after Thanksgiving off.

To our south, in Colorado, this day has sometimes been the source or real controversy, however, even in modern times, as American Indians have used it to make a counter observance noting the harm inflicted upon them by European Americans starting in 1492.

The day itself was first observed in Colorado as a state holiday staring in 1906, and became a Federal holiday in 1937.  It's a floating holiday that always occurs on the second Monday of October.

Today is also Canadian Thanksgiving Day, a national holiday in Canada since 1879.  Thanksgiving being a holiday centered on the harvest, the earlier Canadian date, as opposed to the later American date, makes sense.  The current floating holiday was established as the second Monday of October in 1957.

1821  James Long Texas forces surrendered to Mexican forces commanded by Colonel Juan Ignacio Pérez at La Bahía.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1835   John Allen Campbell, Governor of Wyoming Territory from 1869 to 1875, born in Salem Ohio.  As Territorial Governor,. Campbell was a career soldier up until his appointment as Governor, and later became a counsel to Switzerland.  He signed the bill granting Wyoming's women the right to vote.

1838   The Battle Creek Fight, also known as the Surveyor's Fight, occurred between surveyors and Indians at In Navarro County, Texas.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1867  John S. Casement, railroad contractor and Civil War era general, and post war chief engineer for the Union Pacific, appointed Territorial delegate to Congress.

1889  The brewery in Sheridan burned.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1915  The first oil well was drilled in the Elk Basin.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1917   First draft of Owen's Dulce et Decorum Est, October 8, 1917.
 

(A bit off subject here, but;) Today is the anniversary of the first known draft of Wilfred Owen's well known Great War poem, Dulce et Decorum Est.

Dulce et Decorum Est

By Wilfred Owen

 

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

I'll be Frank that Owen isn't my favorite Great War poet, in a war that oddly seemed to produce a lot of poets (or did the war just occur in a time when poetry was more common?).  And contrary to what is commonly believed, Owen's fame came posthumously after the war when his work was actually published, not during it. The sort of gloom and despair attributed found in Owen's poems, while not unique to him alone by any means, was also not a common view amongst English veterans of the Great War or even the UK itself until well after it.

1917:  The Second Liberty Loand Drive Commences. October 8, 1917.

Elyse Robert and Dorothy Kohn putting Second Liberty Loan posters on the side of the Waldorf Astoria in New York City, October 8, 1917.

1918  Countdown on the Great War. October 8, 1918: Sgt. Alvin York and the Battle of Hill 223. The Second Battle of Cambrai. A Scout Gets Through. The Desert Mounted Corps Takes Beirut. The Spanish Flu Closes Everything.

1.  On this day in 1918 Sgt. Alvin York preformed the deeds that would make him a household name in the United States and the most famous American veteran of WWI other than, perhaps, Gen. Pershing.

York was a from the Tennessee hill country and one of eleven children of a very poor family.  With virtually no education at all, he had been supporting his family for some time because of his father's early death.  A devout Evangelical Christian, York was a reformed drinker and fighter who had grown up in a family that depended upon hunting to put food on the table.  He was an extremely skilled woodsman and marksman at the time he reluctantly entered the Army due to conscription. He was also seeking conscientious objector status at that time, but reconsidered his position due to the urging of his military superiors.  He proved to be a good soldier and was assigned to the 82nd Division, seeing combat first in the St. Mihel Offensive.

On October 8 his battalion was assigned to capture Hill 223 north of  Chatel-Chéhéry, France.  During the battle Corporal York took on machinegun positions while the remainder of his party guarded captured prisoners.  York took those positions on first with his rifle, a M1917 Enfield, and then ended up killing six charging Germans with his M1911 pistol after his rifle was empty.  Ultimately a large party of Germans surrendered to York and York and seven other enlisted men marched to the rear with 132 German prisoners.  During the battle York killed 25 Germans.  His Medal of Honor citation reads:

After his platoon suffered heavy casualties and 3 other noncommissioned officers had become casualties, Cpl. York assumed command. Fearlessly leading seven men, he charged with great daring a machine gun nest which was pouring deadly and incessant fire upon his platoon. In this heroic feat the machine gun nest was taken, together with 4 officers and 128 men and several guns.

York would go on to be promoted to the rank of Sergeant before the war was over and he became the most decorated American soldier of World War One.  He was commissioned in the Signal Corps during World War Two and obtained the rank of Major, but his health had declined severely and he was used in a moral boosting role.  In spite of ill health he would remain in the Tennessee National Guard until 1951, retiring at the rank of Colonel.  He was famously the subject of a movie in which Gary Cooper portrayed him.

As noted, York was undoubtedly the most famous enlisted man of World War One, and he was truly heroic.  It's worth noting however that his accomplishments weren't entirely unique and there were several other instances of single American servicemen taking large numbers of prisoners under heroic circumstances, one of which we read about here just the other day.  In some ways the difference with York was that he was of very humble origin and not a career soldier, where as the actions by soldiers like Michael B. Ellis, whom we read about the other day, were accomplishments of men from the Regular Army.  These stories have a common aspect to them, however, in that they were undertaken by men who had extraordinary combat skill nearly singlehandedly, which was admirable but which also tends to show that the American Army was so green at the time that it proved to be necessary for extremely heroic men to undertake actions that were nearly suicidal in order to address the combat situation with which they were faced, rather than relying on coordinated unit actions.  In York's case, a lifetime in the woods had prepared him for battle in a unique way.

2.  On the same day that York's action earned the Medal of Honor, the same could be said of James Dozier.

Dozier started his military career in the South Carolina National Guard and had served on the Mexican boarder with that unit.  When it was called into service for World War One he was commissioned an officer and was a 1st Lieutenant on this day when he took over his company when its commander was wounded, even though he also was.  He commanded the unit over the next several hours, personally rushing one machinegun pit with the aid of a lieutenant.  The men under his command took 470 prisoners.

He stayed in the South Carolina National Guard becoming its AG in the 1920s and retired in 1959 as a Lieutenant General.

3.  On this day in 1918 British Empire forces launched a massive assault on the Germans near Cambrai.  In two days they captured the towns but the over matched Germans nonetheless slowed the advance to the point where it needed to be halted.

That says something about the tenacity of the Germans even at this late stage of the war.  The Germans had 180,000 men committed to the defense in this battle. The British Empire forces numbered 630,000. The British assault was a success, but the Germans none the less managed to require the British advance to halt.

Canadian troops on the Cambrai road, 1918.

4.  Pvt. Abraham Krotoshinsky made his way through enemy lines to inform the American Army of the situation concerning the "Lost Battalion".  He would lead troops back to the besieged soldiers.

Pvt. Krotoshinsky was a Polish Jew who had emigrated to the United States in 1912 to avoid service in the Imperial Russian Army. Following World War One he emigrated to Palestine but failed as a farmer and returned to the United States.  Like Michael Ellis, discussed the other day, he was rescued from unemployment by President Coolige who ordered that he be provided with a job in the United States Postal Service.

5.  The Desert Mounted Corps entered Beirut where they took 600 Ottoman troops without resistance.

6.  Laramie and Casper closed public meeting places of all types:

1919  October 8, 1919 The Sox Take Another, Aviators Take Off. And Wool.

On this day, the Sox won again, and with Cicotte pitching.

This caused real concern among the gamblers.  Prior to the series commencing the common thought that the Sox could win two Series games back to back simply by willing to do so, and now it appeared that was true. The Sox were back in the game and it looked like they might take the series.

As a result, Lefty Williams was visited by an enforcer of the gambler's that night and his family was threatened.  The order was that the Sox were to lose the next game.

While the Sox appeared to be rallying, news of the giant air race, with varied accounts as to the number of aircraft in it, started taking pride of place in the headlines.  The race had already been marred, however, by early loss of life.

Cities on the Lincoln Highway that had only recently hosted the Army Transcontinental Convoy now were getting set to look up and watch the air race.

And there was news of a woolen mill coming to the state, something that would well suit a state that, at that time, had millions of sheep.

The Gasoline Alley gang went golfing.

1944  200 Washakie County students let out of school to help with the wheat harvest in a war time measure.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

September 11

Today is Patriot Day

1842   Mexico sent 12,000 troops to capture San Antonio from Texas, which it refused to recognize as an independent nation.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1890  First election in Wyoming to elect state office holders.  Francis E. Warren elected Governor.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1902  Future Wyoming Governor William Bradford Ross married future Wyoming Governor Nellie Tayloe Ross in Omaha, Nebraska.

1908  Lovell and Kane hit by tornado.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1916

The Sheridan Enterprise for September 11, 1916

 

And in Sheridan too, the Quebec bridge disaster was front page news.

News was traveling fast.

The headline writer for the Sheridan paper had some fun with Greece, noting that it was "being clubbed into love for Entente Allies", which is pretty much correct.

The Sheridan paper had a big article on the Punitive Expedition which noted the American foray into Santa Clara Canyon.  General Pershing was quoted, which he had not been for some time. Quite obviously, in spite of the type of stalemate that was going on in Mexico, the US Army was still operating far afield from its supply base, as the article notes.

The Laramie Republican for September 11, 1916

The Quebec bridge disaster was also reported the day it occurred in Laramie, testament to how quickly news was now able to be reported.

Also in that news was a report of the ongoing failure to capture or corral Pancho Villa.

And the founding of what would become Tie Siding, outside of Laramie, a tie treatment plant and later a major environmental clean up location, was also in the news.  And the crisis in Greece over World War One made front page news in the Gem City.

The Wyoming Tribune for September 11, 1916
 

The bridge disaster in Quebec managed to make the front page the very day it happened, which is truly remarkable.  The big news for Wyoming, however, was the failure of the Stock Raising Homestead Act to pass to pass on its first attempt.  The act, a modification of the series of Homestead Acts dating back to the 1860s, was important for those in Wyoming agriculture and therefore extremely big news.  Particularly as the entire West was in the midst of a homesteading boom at this time.

Something was also going on with a "border patrol", which wouldn't mean the agency we think of when we hear those terms, as it did not yet exist. 

The Quebec Bridge Collapse. September 11, 1916
 

LOC Caption:  Photograph shows the Quebec Bridge across the lower St. Lawrence River. After a collapse of the original design a second design was constructed the center span of the second design collapsed as it was being raised into position on September 11, 1916 killing eighteen workers. (Source: Flickr Commons project)

1918  I'm sure that would have been an illegal order. . .

but at least one order quite similar to that was in fact issued by the American high command during the war, although it wasn't quite what this notes, but it was quite near it.

And trouble was breaking out in the German ranks. . . .

1988  First snows in Yellowstone National Park began to dampen the huge forest fire going on there since July.

2001  The United States is attacked by Al Queda terrorist in an airborne assault in which four aircraft are hijacked. Two are crashed into the World Trade Towers in New York City, causing great loss of life.  A third is crashed into the Pentagon, whose massive construction absorbed a surprising amount of the damage.  Oddly, September 11 was the 60th anniversary of the groundbreaking for the Pentagon.  The passengers of the fourth aircraft learned of the terrorist attacks while in flight, overpowered the hijackers, and the plane crashed in the ensuing struggle.

Contrary to some common assumptions, the Al Queda attack was not the first attack on the United States made by the organization.  It earlier had attacked the US ship the USS Cole, an American Embassy in Kenya, and had attempted to destroy the World Trade Towers through explosives before. This attacked differed in its scale, and that it caused the United States to regard itself as being at war with the organization, although the organization had been engaged in a campaign against the US dating back to the first Gulf War, during which it's leader, Osama  Bin Laden, had become angered over the presence of US forces in the Arabian Peninsula.  Al Queda mistakenly believed that the structures were critical to the US economy and that their destruction would cripple it. 

The resulting military efforts of the US and its Allies have, as a result, been greatly reduced in effectiveness and its leader, Osama Bin Laden, died in a US strike this past year.
 

August 23

1842  John C. Fremont carved his name on Independence Rock.

1868  Episcopal Bishop Randall consecrated St. Mark's Parish in Cheyenne, the first known consecration of a church in Wyoming.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1942  Martha Hanson, age 45, was mauled by a bear at Yellowstone National Park near her tourist cabin. She would die from her injuries on the 27th.

1944 The landing gear of a B-17 collapsed at the Cheyenne Modification Center, but nobody was injured. Cheyenne is significant in the history of the B-17 as the Cheyenne Modification Center developed a special nose turret for the bomber which was known as the Cheyenne Turret.

1949  The Wyoming Stock Growers Association donated a collection of its historic materials to the University of Wyoming.  Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.

1965  State dedicates restored buildings at Ft. Fetterman. This does not mean that the entire post was restored.  Only two restored buildings are present.  They are used to house displays.  The foundations of other buildings are clearly visible, but all down to ground level.

1990 US began to call up of 46,000 reservists to the Persian Gulf.

2012  Governor Mead signs Wyoming Archaeology Awareness Month proclamation.

August 8

International Cat Day

Lex Anteinternet:  Eee gads, I almost missed it.

It's International Cat Day.  August 8.

1854   Smith and Wesson patented a pattern of metallic cartridge.

1902  The first Weston County "Old Timers' Day" held. Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1916   The Cheyenne State Leader for August 8, 1916. The mysterious disappearance of Private Dilley 

Guardsman Pvt. Dilley mysteriously disappeared.

1919  August 8, 1919. Making Cheyenne.

The 1919 transcontinental Motor Transport Convoy entered Wyoming on this day in 1919.

The convoy east of Cheyenne.

Governor Carey was on the road as well, meeting the convoy at Hillsdale, a small Wyoming town that is now a shadow of its former self.  From there they proceeded on to Cheyenne, where Ft. D. A. Russell somewhat ironically provided a cavalry escort through Cheyenne and onto the post.

They were treated to a rodeo at Frontier Park and the town's businesses closed at 4:00 p.m. for the festivities.

Elsewhere, the Third Afghan War came to an end when the warring parties signed the Ango-Afghan Treaty of 1919. The war had been short and fought for limited purposes. The result was the establishment of the current Afghan border and the end of British subsidies to Afghanistan.

In the wreck of the Austrian Empire, the First Hungarian Republic dissolved.  As confusing as the names may be, it was replaced by the Hungarian Republic, a more conservative government.

1929  Major Doyen P. Wardwell of Casper, a World War One veteran of the Lafayette Escadrille and a pioneer Wyoming aviator, dies in an airplane crash.  The Wardwell Addition to the City of Casper would be named after him, and the Casper Municipal Airport was renamed for him. That airport later formed some of the city streets for Bar Nunn Wyoming.

1936  Ernest Hemingway visited Laramie.  Hemingway visited Wyoming and the Rocky Mountain fairly frequently. Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1944 Wyoming has its smallest lamb crop in eight year.  This was likely due to sheep requirements during World War Two, which would have reduced the number of ewes.  Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.

1989  Robert Arthur Harris, the first Wyomingite to become a Major League baseball player, died in North Platte Nebraska.  He was born in Gillette in 1915.

1991  The keel was laid down for SSBN 742, the USS Wyoming.

Sidebar: The British in Wyoming

Some time ago I did an entry here on the Irish in Wyoming, which has turned out to be one of the most popular threads on the blog.  People must research the topic and hit it.  Shortly thereafter I did one on Hispanics in Wyoming.  I've been meaning to follow up with a couple of other ethnicity based threads, but haven't had a chance.

Now, however, everyone in the United States is being bombarded 24 hours around the clock by the news of England's Prince William and Princess Kate having a baby. Why this deserves this level of attention, I have not a clue, but none the less, it's a Big Deal, at least to the press, and apparently some Americans. Given that, perhaps this is a good time to examine the topic of the British in Wyoming.

 Abbotsbury England, ca 1905.

When I used the term "British" here, I use it advisedly. That is, I'm not using the word British as Americans sometimes do to mean English.  I mean, rather, people from Great Britain, but not Ireland, which has already been addressed.  This may be, quite frankly, somewhat unfair, but I don't think it is entirely, and this topic has to be handled this way for reasons I'll detail immediately below.  In order to get to that, however, I have to run very briefly through a very partial and incomplete synopsis of the history of the British, in an extremely brief and unfair fashion, as that story ultimately impacts the history of Wyoming. For those who have an interest of the history of the British themselves, I'd recommend the still good, but dated history by Churchill, A History of the English Speaking Peoples or, for those who read blogs (and of course you are) or why enjoy podcasts, there's Jamie Jeffers entertaining, monumental and ongoing effort The British History Podcast which has its own blog and forum.

 Portland England.

The fact that I have to start which such a disclaimer, let alone address part of the history of the United Kingdom, probably demonstrates that this story is a bit more difficult to address, and subtle, than the story of the Irish in Wyoming (who were, at one time, one of the peoples of the United Kingdom). That is, it's obviously a different story, as I've had to start off with the disclaimer that I'm not dealing with a single culture, like the Irish, but more than one and that I have to cover their history a bit to get there. That's because the influence of the British in general and the English in particular has been overarching in American history; indeed to such an extent that it's difficult to overstate it, even if we don't commonly even notice it all that much.

 Aberystwith, Wales.

It may be best to just start off noting the obvious that the United States had its origin as thirteen states that had been thirteen English colonies.  But that might just be too simplistic. Those thirteen English colonies came about in as part of a colonization policy that was one of the successful examples of three European efforts, the other two being the French effort and the Spanish effort.  Each left their own marks in their own regions.  But even that would be a bit too simplistic, as the efforts sponsored by the English Crown and the British industry resulted in early colonization by two peoples, the English and the Scots, and that itself is part of the story.

The United Kingdom, which colonized the Atlantic seaboard, was the United Kingdom of England, Scotland and Wales at that time.  That was the union of that brought about a single British political entity on a formal basis with presumed finality..  The Act of Union in 1707 ratified what had been the actual fact for some time, which was that England and Scotland were really subject to a singular authority, and in fact their monarchies had been united since 1603.  Union with Ireland didn't come about, as a formal matter (as opposed to the reality of it) until 1801, after the United States had come into being.

 Loch Goil, Scotland/

The peoples subject to that union, while they may have had one singular monarch, were not, and are not, one singular people, which is important to our story here.  The Welsh, Scottish and the English are separate peoples, in terms of their ancient history and culture. The Welsh, it seems well established, were and are descendants of the original British inhabitants of Britain. The Scots, on the other hand, at least partially descend from the Irish, who started to colonize northern Great Britain in their pre Christian era.  The English no doubt descend from the Celts who first inhabited the land, but culturally and at least partially genetically they also descend from the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, Germanic peoples who started immigrating and invading the island in the 5th Century.  And we have some Viking ancestry mixed in, particularly in England, as well, as the Norwegians and Danes in particular were aggressive colonizers themselves in their own era, which was put to an end in 1066 when the descendants of other Scandinavian invaders crossed the English Channel and established themselves as the Norman rulers of England

The English, it seems, have always been the dominant force on Great Britain, since they've been there, and we need not explore how that came to be for our story here. Suffice it to say, the English outnumbered the Scots and the Welsh, and dominated the politics of the island, and even the neighboring island of Ireland, for centuries.   And such was also the case for the culture and ethnicity of the early United States.

The early US, ethnically and culturally, was British.  It wasn't uniformly English, although it certainly was in certain areas, but it was British.  In many regions English immigrants or the descendants of English residents were by far the most numerous colonial inhabitants.  In others, Scots or "Scots-Irish", the descendants of Scottish emigrants settled by the United Kingdom in Ulster between the English and the native Irish, were the majority, as in the Appalachians.  Anyway you look at it, however, in most locations the American populations, save for the native population, was overwhelmingly British.  This meant that, culturally, they looked back to a collective custom of English law and culture and they were overwhelmingly Protestant; being either members of the Episcopal Church or Protestant dissenters from the Church of England in the case of the English, or Calvinist in the case of the Scots or Scots-Irish.

This remained the case well into the early 19th Century and it reflects the makeup of the country at the time the US acquired most of what became Wyoming with the Louisiana Purchase.  It reflected the makeup of the Corps of Discovery, but it also reflected part of the purpose of the Corps of Discovery, as the United States was not only seeking to discover what laid within the new land, but to make a claim to it in an area where the British were already known to be.

In conventional wisdom, the Corps of Discovery was the first time "white", meaning European Americans, stepped foot in the region that would become Wyoming. This, however, was simply not true.  The British had already seen a British explorer cross British North America to the Pacific, and it was feared that British interests were making entries into what had been an unexplored French and Spanish land claim, thereby making it note much of a claim. And the fear was well placed.  The Hudson's Bay Company was already everywhere.

The Hudson's Bay Company was founded on May 2, 1670 and can make a legitimate claim to being the oldest corporation in the world.  Formed as a means of exploiting a vast land grant in British North America, the company's prime interest was in dealing with furs, which it acquired through the use of of French Canadian trappers and Indians who traded with the company.  Occupying an enormous tract of land, in which it built numerous trading posts and forts, it did not content itself with remaining within it, but sent explorers out into neigbhoring lands.  Its exploration efforts took its agents as far south as Texas, and its trappers almost certainly routinely entered Wyoming.

 

Hudson's Bay Company trading post.

Those trappers were French Canadians, where they were not Indians or later Metis, but they were part of a vast English industry which had shareholders extending up to the British monarchy.  It can be legitimately said, therefore, that the first example of British influence in Wyoming came through the Hudson's Bay Company, which sent its trappers into the state.

When the Corps of Discovery reached the Pacific Ocean, it found that a Hudson's Bay Company post was located where its intended camping spot for that winter was, and it had to locate itself in a new location.  But the Hudson's Bay Company's days on American territory were numbered with the arrival of the U.S. Army in the form of Lewis and Clark's expedition.  The first, but not insignificant, era of British presence, in the form of economic interests, was over, but in some ways it would set the pattern, in terms of economics.

Fur trapping remained the primary European American enterprise in Wyoming up until Western migration really commenced in the 1840s.  By that time, the United States itself had begun to change.  The result of the War of 1812 had been that the US was not to be a solely maritime Atlantic seaboard nation, which was confirmed by the great leap westward caused by the Louisiana Purchase.   The great Irish famine and the European revolutions of the 1840s started a process of German and Irish immigration that would forever change the makeup of the nation, and which was already causing significant domestic turmoil in the nation.  Much of that would come to a head, but not be worked out, during the Mexican War and Civil War.  By the time the Union Pacific came into the state in the 1860s, the United States was a much different nation than it had been sixty years prior.  By that time, the country itself was much less English, although the distinctions between various European cultures was much more significant than it is today.

The next major example of British influence in Wyoming came with the European ranching boom in the 1870s.  And a major influence, with permanent impact, it was.  

Ranching got its start in Wyoming partially due to the efforts of pioneers to provide beef to the Union Pacific and U.S. Army.  But the real expansion of ranching, and ranching as we know it, came with the introduction of Texas herds in the late 1860s and early 1870s. Almost coincident with this, however, British owned companies began to invest in Wyoming ranches, and create Wyoming ranches, creating very British ranching companies on the range.  One of the earliest of this was the Frewan ranch which was one of the very first to enter the Big Horn Basin, entering that area in 1876 and claiming the brand "76" as a result.  Others soon followed.

The first waive of British ranches suffered terribly in the killer winter of 1886-1887.  That winter wiped out many of the early big ranches of all types.  But as severe as that experience was, it did not keep British companies from investing in Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota ranches.  Fueled by investors in Great Britain, these ranches could become major ranching operations, such as the VR (Victoria Regina) in central Wyoming.  In northern Wyoming and southern Montana English and Scottish concerns also became significant in horse raising, with one such ranch even today being known as the Polo Ranch, both for the raising of horses and for the fact that it was associated with the game of polo.

At least one British owned operation was associated with the "big cattleman" side of the Johnson County War, but its association with that side of the conflict did not seem to hurt it in its overall operations.  By the early 20th Century many of these operations were well established, and certain communities in Wyoming and Montana had significant English and Scottish ranching populations.  Sheridan County Wyoming was notable in these regards, being a center of horse raising in Wyoming and, not coincidentally, the location of an Army Remount station as late as World War Two.  The British influence lives on today in the form of the still existing Polo Ranch and the Big Horn Polo Club, as well as in the architecture of the very English looking Episcopal Church in that town.  It can't helped be noted that, ironically, Sheridan and Sheridan County are named after the Phillip Sheridan, whose parents were Irish.

St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Sheridan.

Southern Wyoming saw its own share of British influence, of a similar if less pronounced nature, at the same time. Albany County saw the Ivinsons come in, which left the town being the seat, at that time, of the Episcopal Church in Wyoming. 

St. Matthews Episcopal Cathedral in Laramie.

Cheyenne, likewise, saw some similar English and British influence, leaving the town with impressive Episcopal and Presbyterian churches.

 

 Cheyenne's St. Mark's Episcopal Church, from 1888.

The Wind River Reservation was the cite of a significant missionary endeavor, sharing that distinction with the Catholic Church.  The Reverend John Roberts is well remembered for his service in that capacity in Fremont County.

Not all of the British influence of this period came from well funded British corporations.  Some came directly from much less well to do British immigrants as well. Scottish immigrants were present, perhaps not unsurprisingly, in the sheep industry but also in the cattle industry..  Casper apparently had a significant enough Scottish population in the early 20th Century that a Presbyterian minister who had hoped to form a church in Douglas Wyoming was sent, by another Protestant clergyman, to Casper on the basis that Casper was a "Scottish town."   Rock Springs Wyoming, which had an economy based on mining at the time, saw a significant immigration by Welsh and English coal miners, although not in the same numbers as Slavic immigrants to the same area. 

Ties with the United Kingdom were still so strong in some quarters that one ranching family that remained operating in Wyoming in the 1970s sent a member to fight with the Royal Flying Corps in World War One. That young pilot, who had been schooled in Canada, and whose family also gave its name it Irvine California, did not make it back.

 

World War One would be the end notable British enterprises in Wyoming.  The war brought about a boom in horse production, but the end of the war resulted in a crash.  The close ties to the UK seemingly went away, where they had existed.

Even if the influence in the ranching industry and through English immigrants largely ceased following 1918, the impacts have not totally gone away and linger here and there in the form of architecture and individual families.  It also exists, of course, as in every US state save for one in the form of the law.  Indeed, Wyoming formally adopted English Common Law early in its history, where it provided:

8-1-101. Adoption of common law.

The common law of England as modified by judicial decisions, so far as the same is of a general nature and not inapplicable, and all declaratory or remedial acts or statutes made in aid of, or to supply the defects of the common law prior to the fourth year of James the First (excepting the second section of the sixth chapter of forty-third Elizabeth, the eighth chapter of thirteenth Elizabeth and ninth chapter of thirty-seventh Henry Eighth) and which are of a general nature and not local to England, are the rule of decision in this state when not inconsistent with the laws thereof, and are considered as of full force until repealed by legislative authority.