Trails Memorial, Big Horns

 

New Mexicans In Wyoming

 

 The oldest house in the United States, in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  New Mexico very much has its own distinct cultures that have been in the region for a very long time.

This blog has a sidebar entitled Hispanics In Wyoming.  It's one of several that deal with important Wyoming ethnicities.

One of the nice things about blogs is that you can correct and expand on topics as you learn about errors or omissions, and that's what we're doing here, thanks to a recently issue of the Annals of Wyoming. We really missed the important story of New Mexicans in Wyoming.

It was a huge omission.

I don't know that we can really fully correct it, quite frankly, as our omission was so vast, but we'll at least mention it here in hopes of getting this part of the story inserted here.  We'd first note, however, that finding a copy of the issue and reading it is highly recommended, even if a couple of the articles in it fit into social theory that's really outside of the main theme of the issue, which deals with Hispanics in Wyoming.

One of the things the issue really focuses on in is the story of New Mexicans in Wyoming, which I only knew a little about.  It was fascinating.  

What that story reveals is that Wyoming once had a vibrant New Mexican population that maintained direct links to Hispanic New Mexico.  Largely made up of men with experience in sheep tending, they came up to work on Wyoming's sheep ranches and then ultimately went into available blue collar jobs, mostly in southern Wyoming.  For a long time these communities traveled back and forth between Wyoming and New Mexico, but they stopped doing that around World War Two and permanently located in Wyoming, mostly in southern Wyoming.  They were a significant minority community all along the Union Pacific, and their presence as a community that lived in Wyoming but had immediate roots in New Mexico continued well into the mid 20th Century.  Indeed, I know one retired fellow whose parents, it turned out, lived this very story.

I didn't deal much with this in my earlier sidebar, and indeed I really haven't dealt with it much here.  But it is important to recall that a term like "Hispanic" is a very broad one and it may be used unfairly in an overly broad fashion.  New Mexicans in Wyoming, while Hispanics, have their own story.  I missed that.  That story remains, but it's slowly being lost as the New Mexican community, now well into its third and fourth generation here, and now removed from its original distinct occupations, is less identifiable as that than it was when it first located here.  Indeed, the article referenced above credited the Catholic Church with allowing the identify to go forward, given that they were Catholic, an aspect of Hispanic culture I did mention previously.

Red Dirt In My Soul: Ranchlife In Wyoming: Help!

In case somebody can help:

Help!

Posted on March 27, 2017 by Carol

A while back I had a reader comment with this:
“Carol, I am 92 and my father, William H. Small, owned two ranches near Ten Sleep . . .

2015 In Review

It hasn't been my habit here to do end of the year reviews, and indeed there are no doubt more items on Medieval history on this site than there are on the year 2015.  So, this is an exception and departure from the norm.  Perhaps it will become the custom, or perhaps not.  We will see.

This year I'm doing one, however, as this year has really been an exceptional year for Wyoming, and not at all in a good way, but in a way that has been somewhat predictable.  We entered an oil crash.

Early Wyoming oil field.

Now, oil crashes aren't new to Wyoming, but this one may prove to be unique and a watershed.  Only time will tell, but the evidence sort of eerily suggests that it might be.

Our prior oil crashes, to the extent I'm aware of them, came in 1919, 1946, 1964 or so, 1981 or 82, with a mini crash in 2008. 2008 gets tossed around a lot in reference to this, but it was actually a fairly small downturn. A lot of Wyomingites truly did not notice it at all or just viewed it as background noise to the larger Great Recession which was threatening to take the country into a Depression for the first time since the 1930s.

The 1919 crash was caused by the end of World War One, which caused almost all of Wyoming's industries to enter into a downturn.  Likewise, the 1946 downturn followed the end of World War Two.  I'm not sure what caused  the downturn of the 1960s, although I do know that from the way my folks spoke of it, things were tight.  The 1981 crash was simply a cyclical crash in the industry following the overheated 1970s, which had been overheated due to the real arrival of OPEC as an industry force.

Every time these things happen there's a lot of introspection and regret, and we ponder "diversifying" the economy.  But we never actually do.  And while we tried to do that some in the 1980s and 1990s, once oil came back on strong again, brought about by high prices and huge advances in drilling technology, we forgot about that.  Now, maybe, we're set to pay the price.

The number of rigs operating in Wyoming fell last year from 60 in 2014 to a present 10.  That's a stunning drop off.  There have been a lot of oil industry layoffs nationwide.  The price at the pump has dramatically fallen. Yesterday I saw gasoline for sale in Casper for $1.68, and diesel for sale at $2.09.  It drops a little almost every day.  Oil is at $37.00 bbl.

All of this has been brought about by Saudi Arabia taking the stops off of Saudi production and not allowing OPEC limits to be set.  There's some debate as to their intent, but it now seems clear that the goal was to crush increasing North American production.  North American production had increased so much that, with other things added in, the US once again became an energy exporter.  Beyond that, however, there's the question as to why Saudi Arabia would so desire to do that.  It only makes sense, really, if they have a definitive goal in mind, which would seem to be to dominate production for the next twenty years.  If that's the case, that's because they themselves figure that they'll either be out of the market in that time or that petroleum will no longer be the global transportation fuel it now is.  My guess is that they've calculated the latter, and therefore they need to maximize their return until they can shift their economy to something new.  They are working on that.

However, they aren't actually crushing North American production.  Rather, they're crushing new exploration.  American production, oddly enough, hasn't dropped at all.  It's keeping on keeping on.  And that means that Saudi Arabia is now in giant game of chicken.

Nobody quite expected this, or the remainder of the things that seem to go along with it.  Production hasn't declined.  Prices are dropping.  Consumption isn't rising.  It may simply be that the new world arrived sooner than anyone anticipated.

And as part of that new world, Coal is in the ICU, and the prognosis isn't good.  If petroleum is in trouble right now, coal look like it's just checking out entirely.  Ironically, one of Wyoming's other principal extractive industries, natural gas, is largely responsible for that.  If people would get over their entirely irrational fear of nuclear power, uranium would undoubtedly show up for the coup de grace.

 

Coal truck in a static display in Wright Wyoming.

So what, exactly, is going on?  Well, it would seem that we're in a new era in terms of fossil fuel demand.  Coal is out of favor, and even though Wyoming has continued to hope for a "clean coal" technology that would change that it appears unlikely that this is going to occur any time soon.  Indeed, concerns over global warming have all but put coal on the terminal list.

While that's been occurring, natural gas has been on the rise, but there's a lot of it. So, not only is it a cleaner fuel than coal, and perhaps just an easier one to use in general, its very abundant.  This has depressed the cost here and indeed gas remains so abundant that the state continues to allow it to be flared, which is something that the state may come to regret at some point in the future.

Gasoline, jet fuel, and diesel fuel are, of course, all transportation fuels, which coal has long since ceased to be.  But here, even though they are now in surplus and the price has dropped production isn't decreasing and demand isn't rising. That's the first time that's every occurred.  And it appears to be occurring as Americans have sort of moved on from being real fans of automobiles.  They're switching to other means of transportation and they're comfortable with automobiles that are fueled by other means.  So, the Petroleum Age may actually be on the way out.

Of course, as I write this, Saudi Arabia has severed relations with Iran, so we may be on the cusp of a big fuel price jump, and the state's worries will be partially over. We'll see.  Having said that, on the first business day of the crisis, the price of oil went down, not up.

The decline of fossil fuel production here puts the state's workforce really in jeopardy.  The fact that things haven't gotten any worse than they have, and that the state's economy has basically remained stable during this period, is due to two other primary industries in the state doing well last year, with those industries being construction and agriculture. Things are not as well situated, however, for 2016.

Large scale construction has kept on keeping on as there were some huge projects that were funded earlier, and begun earlier, that are keeping the construction industry going.  Massive school construction, often started as much as three years ago, keeps on keeping on, and will for the next couple of years.  After that, however, it will drop off on its own and, beyond that, as its funded by coal severance taxes the means of starting new projects is severely imperiled. 

Highway construction has also been going on, and at least that is funded in part by the Federal Government, as is Abandoned Mine recovery.  So some of that will at least continue.

The irony of all of that, of course can't help but be noted as Wyoming has never been a state that has been very keen on the government boosting the economy through projects, but that sort of thing kept our economy from collapsing last year.  Therefore, we're in the ironic situation of having a sort of New Deal type of economy going on here, even though we'd be loath to intentionally cause that to occur. This is something that the legislature should ponder in the upcoming budget session for a number of reasons. For one thing, it's been a major factor in keeping the state's economy from collapsing. Secondly, since Wyoming no longer funds school construction locally, and perhaps can't given the Wyoming Supreme Court's decisions on school equality over the past couple of decades, some other source of school income is going to have to be found.

Agriculture and tourism were the other elements of our economy that kept the state afloat last year.  High cattle prices for most of the year combined with lower fuel prices boosted agricultural income in the state. And tourism did well as well.

Indeed, I tend to think of tourism and agriculture as part of the same land based section of the economy.  I don't know that they fully appreciate that they're part and parcel of the same larger section of the economy, but they really are.  Without the type of agriculture we have, the state would be much less attractive to tourist.  And people who come in to hunt and fish wouldn't to the same degree.  This is something that should be kept in mind by those in the legislature who boost land "reversal" schemes against the Federal government.

 

Agriculture did well in 2015, but whether this continues on into 2016, with cattle prices very much fallen, is an open question.

Speaking (or reading) of the legislature, that body is about to go into its biannual budget session and it has a lot on its hands.  Indeed, all governmental bodies presently do.  The state appears set to dip into the "rainy day fund" for the first time ever, in spite of a reduced budget.  A  hiring freeze in on in state government.  The counties are hurting, and the City of Casper is running a deficit.  Things will have to be addressed.

Part of what will ultimately have to be addressed is where money is going to come from in the future.  Coal does not appear to be set to return, so severance taxes appear to be a poor future bet for school funding.  The state's resistant to any sort of personal taxation.  Something is going to have to give on the money raising, or money spending, end, and new ways to generate revenue are ultimately going to have to be explored.

If there's a positive legislative side to this, what it would appear to be so far is that people appear to be fairly realistic, and extreme positions such as those backed by some recent libertarian groups do not seem to be getting much traction so far in advance of the upcoming sessions.  Bold ideas to get the Federal government out of this or that no longer appear to matter much.  It's clear that its the Saudi government, not the US government, that's impacting the price of oil and the ship has sailed on the concept that but for the Federal government coal would be doing fine, so we need to get the government out of this our that.  People are more worried about just working.

Indeed it might be a time that the state could actually look towards the two sections of our economy that are working and ponder if some state intervention in that category might be warranted.  We've been loath to follow the Depression Era examples of North and South Dakota, which started state owned flour and cement mills, but the fact remains that we don't do anything to do produce our raw products.  We have no packing houses, woolen mills, etc.  Perhaps the state ought to consider the example of North Dakota Mill (which actually started in 1922, prior to the Great Depression but in a farm depression) and see if there's a way to recapture some of that processing money.

So much for the grim economic news of 2015.

Other things did happen, of course.  

Casper endured a big fire just outside of town.

 

New state officials took office, following a quite contentious election in 2014.  That election saw libertarian elements, which seriously challenged the GOP establishment, do poorly.  The extremely controversial Cindy Hill failed in her bid to unseat Governor Mead in the primaries and a new head of State Education took her place, leaving that office in a state of present low controversy.

One Federal office holder, the recently widowed Cynthia Loomis, announced that she was stepping down at the end of term as Congressman.  

A couple of interesting things happened in the Courts.  One is that Federal District Court Judge Skavdahl held that the 10th Circuit's ruling anticipating the Supreme Court's ruling on same gender marriage was the law in Wyoming.  His opinion struck at least me as harsh in some respects and he drew some criticism on the opinion.  The Federal judiciary nationwide has not had a good year in my opinion, as its most notable opinion was so blatently devoid of a sustainable concept of legal reasoning, no matter what you think of the issue at hand, so this fits into that mix, a mix which seems to have created an increased degree of contempt for the Federal Government.

Locally, the charade of a CLE being part of the Uniform Bar Exam was dropped and the State Bar's total surrender to any element of Wyoming law as part of the process of being admitted to practice law in the state was complete.  Over the year, as predicated, out of state admissions increased steadily in a trend that does not bode well for the state's lawyers or its population.  So here too we suffer an economic detriment.  Law, which was long a career option for Wyomingites who had been dropped out of the mineral industry while young, or who had no place on the family ranch, or who were from a Wyoming town or city and they desired to stay here, will  no longer be as much of a realistic option.  The new "Wyoming" lawyers are increasingly located in Denver Colorado, so while the mineral industry sustains an economic disaster due to Saudi Arabia, law starts to suffer an economic downturn due to the Wyoming Supreme Court's insistence on adopting the UBE.

Where all of this leaves us, of course, is unknown.  Human beings are notoriously unable to predict the future.  But to take a stab at it, it appears that the Petroleum Age may have entered a new phase, and combined with the demise of coal, we may have entered a new economic age in Wyoming.  That age might feature somewhat of a return of agriculture to center stage.  What that means in the towns and cities is yet to be determined, but a long term gravitational pull of Denver and Salt Lake City is becoming stronger due to modern economic forces and, in the case of the law, the push of the state's bar south.

2016 should be interesting.

Joel Hurt – Sheepman - Mayor- Senator – Murderer

Joel Hurt – Sheepman - Mayor- Senator – Murderer

Note that the amount of the initial investment in the sheep ranch, $200,000, was truly a huge sum, if the effects of inflation are considered. Well into the millions in today's money.

December 29

1845 Texas admitted into the Union. While its borders would soon shrink, at first a small portion of Wyoming, previously claimed by Spain, and then Mexico, and then Texas, was within the boundaries of the new state.  None of these political entities had actually ever controlled the region, so to some degree the claim was more theoretical than real.

1879  Wyoming's Territorial Governor John Hoyt plans Wyoming's first official New Year's party by a governor at Interocean Hotel, Cheyenne, Wyoming.

1879  J. S. Nason takes office as Territorial Auditor.

1890.  The Battle Wounded Knee occurs in South Dakota.

The battle followed a period of rising tensions on Western reservations during which various tribes began to become adherents of a spiritual movement which held that participation in a Ghost Dance would cause departed ancestors to return along with the buffalo, and the European Americans to depart.  Ghost Dance movements created great nervousness amongst the American administration of the Reservations upon which they were occurring, including the Pine Ridge Reservation, where Wounded Knee took place.  Tensions increased when Sitting Bull was killed in a gun fight with Indian Police on December 15 and troops were sent to the reservation thereafter after tensions increased amongst Sitting Bull's tribe, the Hunkpapa Sioux.  When troops arrived,  200 Hunkpapa-Miniconjou Sioux fled the reservation towards the  Cheyenne River.  They were joined by a further 400 Sioux, who then reconsidered and turned themselves in at Ft. Bennett South Dakota.

The remaining 400 or so Sioux were set to surrender themselves at Wounded Knee but were delayed in doing so as their leader, Big Foot, was sick with pneumonia. When the Army arrived at Wounded Knee, it commenced to disarm the tribesmen on December 28, which was an unwelcome action on their part, and greatly increased tensions in the camp, which were made further tense by the upsetting of the camp by the soldiers, which included women and children. A militant medicine man further agitated the matter by reminding the tribesmen that their Ghost shirts were regarded as making them invulnerable to bullets.  During this event, the rifle of Black Coyote, regarded by some of his tribesmen as crazy, went off accidentally while he was struggling to retain it.  The medicine man gave the sign for retaliation and some Sioux leveled their rifles at the soldiers, and some may have fired them.  In any event, the soldiers were soon firing at the Sioux, and Hotckiss cannons fired into the village.  Of  230 Indian women and children and 120 men at the camp, 153 were known to be killed and 44 known to be wounded with many probable wounded likely escaping and relatives quickly removing many of the dead. Army casualties were 25 dead and 39 wounded  Six Congressional Medals of Honor were issued for the action, which was a two day action by military calculations, which is typically a surprise to those not familiar with the battle.  An inaccurate myth holds that the Army retracted the Medals of Honor in recent years, but this is not true.   The battle aroused the ardor of the Brules and Oglalas on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Reservations with some leaving those reservations as a result, but by January 16, 1891, the Army had rounded up the last of them who had come to acknowledge the hopelessness of the situation.

The tragic event is often noted as the closing battle of the Indian Wars, which it really is not.  Various other actions would continue on throughout the 1890s, although they were always minor.  At least one military pursuit occurred in the first decade of the 20th Century.  Actions by Bronco Apaches, essentially renegades, would occur in northern Mexico, and spill over the border, as late as 1936.  Perhaps it has this status, however as the presence of the 7th Cavalry at the action, and the location, make it a bit of a bookend to the Indian Wars in the popular imagination, contrasting with Little Big Horn, which is generally regarded as the largest Army defeat of the post Civil War, Indian Wars, period.  Even that, of course, came well into the period of the Plains Indian Wars, so just as Wounded Knee was not the end of the actual conflict, Little Big Horn was not that near to the beginning.

Nonetheless, being such a singular defeat, it has come to stand for the end of the era for Native Americans, which probably is a generally correct view in some ways.  After Wounded Knee, no Indian action would ever be regarded as seriously challenging US authority.

 Big Foot's Camp three weeks after the battle.

1916   The Casper Weekly Tribune for December 29, 1916: Carranza official arrives in Washington, land for St. Anthony's purchased, and the Ohio Oil Co. increases its capital.
 

While a protocol had been signed, a Carranza delegate was still arriving to review it.  Keep in mind, Carranza had not signed it himself.

Also in the news, and no doubt of interest to Wyomingites whose relatives were serving in the National Guard on the border, Kentucky Guardsmen exchanged shots with Mexicans, but the circumstances were not clearly reported on.

In very local news two locals bought the real property on North Center Street where St. Anthony's Catholic Church is located today.  The boom that the oil industry, and World War One, was causing in Casper was expressing itself in all sorts of substantial building. As we've discussed here before, part of that saw the construction of three very substantial churches all in this time frame, within one block of each other.

St. Anthony's Catholic Church in Casper Wyoming.

The news about the Ohio Oil Company, at one time part of the Standard family but a stand alone entity after Standard was busted up in 1911, was not small news.  Ohio Oil was a major player in the Natrona County oilfields at the time and would be for decades.  It would contribute a major office building to Casper in later years which is still in use. At one time it was the largest oil company in the United States.  In the 1960s it changed its name to Marathon and in the 1980s moved its headquarters from Casper to Cody Wyoming.  At some point it began to have a major presence in the Houston area and in recent years it sold its Wyoming assets, including the Cody headquarters, and it now no longer has a presence of the same type in the state.

1916:

 

Abandoned post Wold War One Stock Raising Homestead Act homestead.

1916  The Stock Raising Homestead Act of 1916 becomes law.  It  allowed for 640 acres for ranching purposes, but severed the surface ownership from the mineral ownership, which remained in the hands of the United States.

The Stock Raising Homestead Act of 1916 recognized the reality of  Western homesteading which was that smaller parcels of property were not sufficient for Western agricultural conditions.  It was not the only  such homestead act, however, and other acts likewise provided larger  parcels than the original act, whose anniversary is rapidly coming up.   The act also recognized that homesteading not only remained popular, but the 1916 act came in the decade that would see the greatest number of  homesteads filed nationally.

Perhaps most significant, in some ways, was that the 1916 act also  recognized the split estate, which showed that the United States was  interested in being the mineral interest owner henceforth, a change from prior policies.  1916 was also a boom year in oil and gas production,  due to World War One, and the US was effectively keeping an interest in  that production.  The split estate remains a major feature of western  mineral law today.

1921  Thursday December 29, 1921. The Raid hits the news.

 

We reported on this item yesterday.  It hit the news across the state today, receiving front page treatment in both Casper and Cheyenne.

Cheyenne's paper also noted that Governor Short of Illinois was going to appear in front of a grand jury, but the way the headline was written must have caused Gov. Carey in Wyoming to gasp.  Early example of "click bait"?

Mackenzie King became the Prime Minister of Canada.  He'd serve in that role off and on, mostly on, until 1948.  An intellectual with good writing but poor oral skills, he'd become a dominant Canadian political figure for a generation.

1931   Sheep Creek stages rabbit hunt to reduce rabbit numbers and feed the hungry.

1941  All German, Italian and Japanese aliens in California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Washington and are ordered to surrender contraband. (WWII List).

1941  Sunge Yoshimoto, age nineteen, killed in the Lincoln-Star Coal Company tipple south of Kemmerer.  He was a Japanese American war worker.

1943  Wartime quotas of new adult bicycles for January cut in half with 40 being allotted to Wyoming.Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1944 USS Lincoln County, a landing ship tank, commissioned.

2008  Third day of Yellowstone earthquake swarm.

2014  The Special Master issues his report on Tongue River allocations in Montana v. Wyoming. Wyoming newspapers report this as a victory for Wyoming, but Montana papers report that both states won some points in the decision, which now goes to the Supreme Court for approval or rejection.

November 29

Today is Nellie Tayloe Ross Day

 Ross in 1938 at her Maryland tobacco farm.

Nellie Tayloe Ross Day is a state holiday in Wyoming, although it is little observed. 

1847   Missionaries Dr. Marcus Whitman, his wife Narcissa, and 15 others are killed by Cayuse and Umatilla Indians in what is today southeastern Washington, causing the Cayuse War.  The Whitmans conducted the first Protestant religious service in Wyoming.

1864         Sand Creek Massacre in which Colorado militia attack Black Kettle's Cheyenne band in Colorado.  Black Kettle was at peace, and the attack was unwarranted.  The unit would muster out shortly thereafter.  The attack would drive many Cheyenne north into Wyoming and western Nebraska, where they would link up with Sioux who were already trending towards hostility with the United States.  This would result in ongoing unbroken armed conflict between these tribes and the United States up through the conclusion of Red Cloud's War.

Today the Cheyenne trek north is memorialized in the Sand Creek Massacre Trail, a highway designation for the combination Interstate Highways and State highways that lead to the Wind River Indian Reservation. The Wind River is not a Cheyenne Reservation, but it is an Arapaho and Shoshone reservation, and the Arapahos were allied to the Cheyenne and Sioux in this period. 

Black Kettle had the added misfortune of having his camp attacked later by the 7th Cavalry, under Custer, at Washita, in 1868.  He was killed in that attack, which likewise was a surprise and found his band at peace with the US, although others in the area were not.

 Cheyenne prisoners, in artist's depiction, following Washita.

1873  Laramie County Stockgrowers Association forms in Cheyenne.The organization was one of the precursors of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association.

1876  Nellie Tayloe Ross born in Missouri.

1888  Territorial Governor Moonlight proclaimed the day one of Thanksgiving, Prayer and Praise.

1901  Mildred Harris, movie actress, born in Cheyenne.  She was a significant actress in the silent film era, having gone from being a child actor to a major adult actress, but had difficulty making the transition to talking pictures.

Harris is also evidence that, in spite of my notation of changes in moral standards elsewhere, the lives of movie stars has often been as torrid as they are presently.  Harris married Charlie Chaplin in 1918, at which time she was 17 years old and the couple thought, incorrectly, that  she was pregnant.  She did later give birth during their brief marriage to a boy who was severely disabled, and who died only three days after being born.  The marriage was not a happy one.  They divorced after two years of marriage, and she would marry twice more and was married to former professional football player William P. Fleckenstein at the time of her death, a union that had lasted ten years.  Ironically, she appeared in three films in 1920, the year of her divorce, as Mildred Harris Chaplin, the only films in which she was billed under that name. While an actress probably mostly known to silent film buffs today, she lived in some ways a life that touched upon many remembered personalities of the era, and which was also somewhat stereotypically Hollywood.  She introduced Edward to Wallis Simpson.

She died in 1944 at age 42 of pneumonia following surgery.  She has a star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame.  A significant number of her 134 films are lost or destroyed due to film deterioration.  Her appearances in the last eight years of her life were minor, and unaccredited, showing the decline of her star power in the talking era.

Stories like hers, however, demonstrate that the often held concept of great isolation of Wyomingites was never true.  Harris was one of at least three actors and actresses who were born in Wyoming and who had roles in the early silent screen era.  Of those, she was arguably the most famous having risen to the height of being a major actress by age 16.

1908   Major Harry Coupland Benson appointed acting Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park.

1916:   The Wyoming Tribune for November 29, 1916: Villa in the headlines
 

Scary headlines in the Tribune, which reported that Juarez, on the Mexican border, might be Villa's next target.

The Cheyenne State Leader for November 29, 1916: Chihuahua in Villa's hands = Carranza agreeing to Protocol?
 

The Leader made the curious assumption that Villa taking Chihuahua would cause Carranza to agree tot he draft protocol with the US that was designed to bring about an American withdrawal.

Now, why would that be the case? Carranza had been opposed to American intervention, but as it was, the American expeditionary force amounted to a large block of troops in Villas way if he really intended to move north.

A curious assumption.

And the US acting on behalf of besieged Belgium was also in the news.

1917   Thanksgiving 1917
 

Given the news of the day, it couldn't have been a cheery one.

President Wilson issued a proclamation, as was the custom:

 

By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation
 It has long been the honored custom of our people to turn in the fruitful autumn of the year in praise and thanksgiving to Almighty God for His many blessings and mercies to us as a nation. That custom we can follow now even in the midst of the tragedy of a world shaken by war and immeasurable disaster, in the midst of sorrow and great peril, because even amidst the darkness that has gathered about us we can see the great blessings God has bestowed upon us, blessings that are better than mere peace of mind and prosperity of enterprise.

We have been given the opportunity to serve mankind as we once served ourselves in the great day of our Declaration of Independence, by taking up arms against a tyranny that threatened to master and debase men everywhere and joining with other free peoples in demanding for all the nations of the world what we then demanded and obtained for ourselves. In this day of the revelation of our duty not only to defend our own rights as nation but to defend also the rights of free men throughout the world, there has been vouchsafed us in full and inspiring measure the resolution and spirit of united action. We have been brought to one mind and purpose. A new vigor of common counsel and common action has been revealed in us. We should especially thank God that in such circumstances, in the midst of the greatest enterprise the spirits of men have ever entered upon, we have, if we but observe a reasonable and practicable economy, abundance with which to supply the needs of those associated with us as well as our own. A new light shines about us. The great duties of a new day awaken a new and greater national spirit in us. We shall never again be divided or wonder what stuff we are made of.

And while we render thanks for these things let us pray Almighty God that in all humbleness of spirit we may look always to Him for guidance; that we may be kept constant in the spirit and purpose of service; that by His grace our minds may be directed and our hands strengthened; and that in His good time liberty and security and peace and the comradeship of a common justice may be vouchsafed all the nations of the earth.

Wherefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate Thursday, the twenty-ninth day of November next as a day of thanksgiving and prayer, and invite the people throughout the land to cease upon that day from their ordinary occupations and in their several homes and places of worship to render thanks to God, the great ruler of nations.
In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done in the District of Columbia this 7th day of November in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and seventeen and of the independence of the United States of America the one hundred and forty-second.

WOODROW WILSON

 The news, overall, was pretty grim:

The concern of what was going on with Russia, as can be seen, was mounting.

So what was Thanksgiving like in 1917 for average Americans?  This item from A Hundred Years Ago gives us a glimpse/  This ran on A Hundred Years Ago prior to the 2017 Thanksgiving.  I'm linking it in now, as the 1917 Thanksgiving was on this day, rather than the slightly earlier day in November we now celebrate it on.  An interesting look at earlier Thanksgivings:

Grandma’s 1914 Thanksgiving

Interesting that goose was the meat of choice.

1919  A four week coal strike causes as serious coal shortage in Cokeville, Wyoming. Attribution, Wyoming Historical Society.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1931  An Oregon Trail marker was dedicated at Torrington. The decade of the 1930s saw an increased interest in Wyoming in marking the state's early history which was coincident with the pioneer generation passing away.

1942   Coffee
 

Coffee rationing began in on this day in 1942.

Smiling soldier.  I think he's drinking coffee.  I may have had to volunteer for service (which I likely would have done anyway) just in order to get a cup of coffee.

I would not have liked that.  Coffee roasters were already restricted to 75% of their war time prior average.  This resulted not due to fewer beans being produced during the war.  Not hardly. Rather, it resulted from the fact that this import crop is shipped to the continental United States

I think that's something that we tend not to ponder much. Coffee is a huge American drink, just like tea is a huge British drink, but in neither case do these consuming nations produce the elemental crop locally.  Given that, it's really amazing that either drink has such a hold in the consuming nation.  Indeed, by and large, with some slight exception, its not even grown in the Norther Hemisphere.  Kona coffee, grown in Hawaii, is the only coffee actually grown in the United States, in so far as I'm aware.

Just consider it for a moment.  The bean that is roasted to produce the crop is grown thousands of miles from the continental United States, roasted (often) in the US, and then packaged for sale here.  It's pretty amazing that there's more than a couple of varieties of it, frankly, or that its even affordable.

The Coffee Bearer, by John Frederick Lewis, Orientalist painter.  The same figure was a figure in his painting The Armenian Lady, whose servant she is portrayed as being.

As an aside, the second biggest coffee bean producer in the world (the first is Brazil) is. . . . Vietnam.

One more reason that not having prevailed in the Vietnam War is unfortunate, to say the least.

Well, anyhow, it's not cheap, as any coffee drinker will tell you. But it's not terribly pricey either.

And somehow, it's gone from a few basic brands to a wide variety of specialty brands and brews of every imaginable type and variety.

Coffee varieties have of course always existed.  Interestingly, one of the contenders for oldest coffee brand sold in the United States is Lion Brand which is Kona coffee.  Lion was first sold in the United States, as green coffee beans, in 1864.  Pretty darned early.  Hawaii wasn't an American territory at the time.  Folgers has them beat, however, dating back to 1850.  Hills Brothers dates to 1878.  Maxwell House to 1892.

Arbuckle Coffee, for some reason, was a huge item in the West in the late 1800s, showing how brands come and go.  I've never seen Arbuckles sold today, although it apparently still exists.  The owners of the company, John and Charles Arbuckle, owned a ranch near Cheyenne, although I don't know if that explains the connection with the West, or if perhaps that connection worked the other way around.

Now there's a zillion brands of coffee, many of which I don't recognize, and many which have pretensions towards coffee greatness.  This seems to have come about due to the rise of coffee houses, lead in a major way by Starbucks.  There's a Starbucks on every street corner now, it seems.  I'll be frank that I don't like their coffee much at all.  Too strong, and I like strong coffee.  Anyhow, the many specialty brews that Starbucks makes has spawned many various specialty coffees, or at least different coffees, to the extent to which a person can hardly keep track of it.  Over the weekend I was in City Brew, one of the local coffee houses, as well as Albertsons, where a Starbucks is located, and they both had "Christmas Blends".  How can there be a Christmas blend of coffee?

Chock full o' Nuts, a brand that, as the can indicates, has been around since 1932.  That was the date the company founder changed his nut shops into lunch counters, figuring that they were a better bet during the Great Depression.  I used to drink Chock full o' Nuts when I was in college but stopped as it seemed to have way too much caffeine.

Not that I'm complaining.  I frankly like the vast variety in coffee. And while I'm not inclined to buy something like Starbucks Free Range Easter Island Coffee Licked Gently By Baby Yaks, I will buy peculiar roasts just because the sound interesting. And I tend towards those dark roasts even if I sometimes wish I'd gotten something milder.

And it is interesting to see how coffee houses, following in Starbuck's wake, have popped up everywhere.  Just the other day I bought a sack of Boyer's coffee in the grocery store.  I was aware of Boyers, as they're a Denver brand with a Denver coffee house, but I wasn't aware that you could buy it up here.  Quasi local, as it were.  A great Denver coffee, with some good coffee houses is Dazbog, which plays up the Russian origin of the founders.  One of the independent local coffee houses here sells Dazbog, and its good stuff.  City Brew has outlets here in town, and apparently they're originally from Montana, which they play up with some of their roasts, even though we all know coffee isn't grown in Montana.  I'm told that Blue Ridge Coffee, another local coffee house that sells sacked coffee, is purely local.

And that doesn't cover every coffee house in town.  Quite the evolution when just a decade or so ago you'd have had to go to a conventional cafe and just have ordered the house coffee, whatever that was.  No special roasts or blends.  Just a up of joe.

And I prefer to buy from the locals as well.  Subsidarity in action, I suppose.  Indeed, I'm not told that I can buy Mystic Monk sacked coffee at the Parish Office, and I likely will.

In the grocery store, for the most part, you bought the major brands.  Most of those are still around,  but now you can buy any number of major and minor brands.  I even have a coffee grinder, although that certainly isn't a new invention, although most of the time I buy pre ground coffee.  Indeed, I got the grinder as I bought whole bean coffee by mistake, which I've done from time to time, and I don't want to waste it.

Using coffee grinders, of course, is an odd return to the past. Everything old is new again, sort of.  But the huge variety, of course, is wholly new.

Industrial strength coffee grinder.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Related threads:

Coffee

The Science Behind Coffee and Why it's Actually Good for Your Health

Blog Mirror. A Hundred Years Ago: Keep Coffee Warm with a Thermos

National Coffee Day.

The Joy of Field Rations: Roasting Coffee in the Field

November 18

1832  William Hale born in New London Iowa.  He would serve as Territorial Governor from July 1882 until his death in 1885.

1869  Governor John A. Campbell proclaimed the day "a day of Thanksgiving and Praise."

1883  John (Manual Felipe) Phillips (Cardoso) died in Cheyenne Wyoming.  He is famously remembered as the civilian who rode 236 miles from Ft. Phil Kearny to Ft. Laramie following the Fetterman Fight.  Phillips is an interesting character and was born in the Azores in 1832, which he left at age 18 on a whaler bound for California in order to pan for gold.  He was a gold prospector across the West for 15 year.  He was actually at Ft. Phil Kearny as a party of miners he was left had pulled into the fort in September of 1866.His famous ride is somewhat inaccurately remembered, as he did not make the entire ride alone, as often imagined, but instead rode with Daniel Dixon.  Both men were paid $300.00 for their effort.  After this event Phillips switched occupations to that of mail courier, and then he became a tie hack in Elk Mountain Wyoming, supplying rails to the Union Pacific.  In 1870 he married and founded a ranch at Chugwater, Wyoming.  He and his wife sold the ranch in 1878, and he moved to Cheyenne where he lived until his death.

1883     The United States and Canada adopted a system of standard time zones.

1886 Chester A. Arthur, the 21st president of the United States, died in New York at age 56.

1889  The first train to arrive in Newcastle arrives.  Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.

1890  Francis E. Warren assumes the office of U.S. Senator from Wyoming.  He was Wyoming's first Senator.

1902   Frederick Remington drew pictures of dedication of Irma Hotel, Cody.  Courtesy of Wyoming State Archives via the Wyoming State Historical Society's calendar.

1918  November 18, 1918. Allies March on the Rhine and the Impact of the Loss of the War Stars More Fully In Germany

Photograph taken on November 18, 1918.

Particularly if you hang out in areas of the net where the things are somewhat pedantic, you'll see the claim that World War One "didn't end" on November 11, 1918, because the Versailles Treaty was signed in May, 1919.

Cheyenne newspaper noting the American and Allied march into Germany and the surrender of the German fleet.  This paper also notes the horrible death toll of the Spanish Flu Epidemic.

Well, dear reader, armies don't march into the "heart" of a nation that isn't defeated.  Nor does a non defeated nation, in a time of war, turn its ships over to the enemy.

Laramie newspaper noting much the same, but also noting one of the ways in which wars change things. . . air mail was expanding following the close of the war. . . and of course the war had changed airplanes much.

No, while you'll occasionally see that, it's clear German was not only on its knees in November 1918, it was a defeated nation in Revolution.

The Casper paper ran as its headline the reunification of Alsace with France. . .something that a defeated nation does is give up territory.

And Germany was getting smaller, as this headline noted.

1921 Friday November 18, 1921. No small beers, no new ships.

The U.S. Senate passed the Willis-Campbell Act on this day in 1921 prohibiting physicians from proscribing beer as a medical remedy. They could still prescribe hard alcohol and wine.

On the same day, the British suspended new ship construction in light of progress at the Washington Naval Conference talks.   And Roscoe Arbuckle's trial was proceeding.

Arbuckle with his defense team and brother.

Marshall Foch visited New York City's statue of Joan d'Arc.

Marshal Ferdinand Jean Marie Foch with mineralogist George Frederick Kunz at a ceremony held at the Joan of Arc statue in New York City. Standing at the right, is Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington, sculptor of the Joan of Arc statue, and Jacqueline Vernot holding flowers.

The Soviet Union, which was going to have an economy based on pure ownership by the proletariat of the means of production, figured out that banks were a necessity and crated a state bank.  The Soviet economy was collapsing.

1943  The Wyoming Department of Education released the results of a survey revealing that the state was short 70 teachers, no doubt the result of teachers having joined the armed forces during World War Two.  Attribution. Wyoming History Calendar.

2023.  Pine Ridge Reservation declared a state of emergency due to a rise in crime, with the same to last until January 1, 2025.

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.