Some Gave All: Wyoming Veterans Museum, Natrona County Internatio...

Some Gave All: Wyoming Veterans Museum, Natrona County Internatio...: This is the Wyoming Veterans Museum in Natrona County, which is located in the former Enlisted Mens Club of the U.S. Army Air Corps base wh...

April 21

1519         Cortes lands in Mexico.

1836     Texans defeat the Mexican forces at San Jacinto leading to the independence of Texas.  While Mexican cauldillo Santa Ana did execute the document providing for Texas' independence following the battle, subsequent Mexican governments refused to acknowledge the validity of the act, noting that Santa Ana was a captive at the time.

 San Jacinto Monument, San Jacinto Battleground State Park, Texas
 

San Jacinto Monument as viewed from the USS Texas.

These are photographs of the San Jacinto Monument, erected at the location of the Battle of San Jacinto in Harris County, Texas. The monument is the largest masonry column in the world.

The monument commemorates the April 21, 1836 Battle of San Jacinto, which occurred on this location, and which secured Texas' independence from Mexico. It was built from 1936 to 1939 and includes inscriptions which relate the story of Texas obtaining independence.

 Fossils in the monument's limestone.

 Reflecting pool.

1871  Convicted murderer John Boyer hanged in Laramie, the first Wyomingite to be legally hanged.

1890   Newcastle Mayor Frank Mondell in leg by attacker.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1894  Norway adopts the Krag Jorgensen action for rifles and carbines, one of four countries, including the US, ultimately to do so.

1898  The U.S. North Atlantic Fleet ordered to blockade Cuba.

1906  Britain and US sign convention fixing the Canada-Alaska boundary at the 141st meridian.

1913 Former Territorial Governor John Osborne takes office as Assistant Secretary of State.

1914   U.S. Marines occupied Vera Cruz, Mexico.

1916  Bill Carlisle robs passengers on the Union Pacific train near Walcott, Wyo.  Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.

The Casper Weekly Press for Good Friday, April 21, 1916
 

1929  A fish from the Shoshoni consignment was used for President Hoover's breakfast. What sort of fish, or why, is left unexplained. Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1942   Anne Gorsuch Burford, first female administrator of the Federal Environmental Protection Agency, born in Casper.

1973  A 4.8 magnitude earthquake occurred between Lander and Jeffrey City.

2001  A 5.4 magnitude earthquake occurred about 50 miles from Jackson.

2011   Frank Ellis gave an interview to Casper College Students.

2012:

Today is Record Store Day for 2012.

 1960s themed Record Store Day poster, commemorating the 20th Anniversary of the store, Sonic Rainbow, in Casper.

Record Store Day is the third Saturday in April and commemorates independent record stores.

 2017  Wyoming became the 45th state to recognize the Armenian Genocide. 

April 20

1890  The last soldiers leave Ft. Laramie.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1903  Rawlins Police Lieutenant Kling and Officer John Baxter killed responding to a shots fired at a store.  The shots were fired by the store owner, who had terrorized his neighbors and police and who setup an ambush for the officers. The perpeatrator received a sentence of four years for manslaughter, to the court must of thought he was suffering from a mental disability.

1914  Colorado National Guard strikes miners camp during the Ludlow strike, resulting in numerous miner deaths.

1916   Casper Daily Press for April 20, 1916
 

1919  A pipeline was completed between Lost Soldier and the site of the former Ft. Fred Steele. Ft. Fred Steele was a railhead on the Union Pacific Railroad at this time. Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1920  Caroline Lockhart, attorney Ernest J. Goppert, Sr. Princeton educated dude rancher Irving H. “Larry” Larom, Sid Eldred,Clarence Williams and William Loewert meet to organize the Cody Stampede rodeo.  The use of the term "rodeo" was intentionally avoided, as the group thought it sounded too much like a dude word, which was some what ironic as at least Lockhart and Larom were transplants who had profited from Western romanticism.  Goppert was an attorney who would practice in Cody for many decades and who was active in Cody affairs. Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.

1939  Robert Frost visited the University of Wyoming.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1943  Two pilots from Fremont County decorated.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

April 19

1859  Camp Walbach, in present day Laramie County Wyoming, abandoned.  It had been occupied by two companies of the 4th Artillery.

1865  The 11th Kansas Cavalry established temporary quarters six miles from Platte Bridge Station, Wyoming, at Camp Dodge, which was a tent camp.  They had arrived in order to relieve Companies A, B, C, and D of the 11th Ohio Volunteer Cavalry, which was mustering out.  Other companies of the 11th Ohio Volunteer Cavalry were to remain.

1877. Crazy Horse (Tȟašúŋke Witkó) and his followers, numbering 2000 warriors, surrender.  Crazy Horse had spent much, probably the overwhelming majority, of his free life in Wyoming, although he widely ranged, as would be expected, throughout the region.  He was present at the Grattan "Massacre" in 1854, at which time he would have been about 14 years old.  He is believed to have participated in the Fetterman Fight and the Wagon Box Fight.  He was a notable figure at Little Big Horn, fought in 1876.  His 1877 surrender shows how far Sioux and Cheyenne fortunes had declined in less than a year.

1916:   Casper Daily Press for April 19, 1916. Mexico, Germany and the early campaign for Henry Ford, yes that Ford, for President
 

This edition has a note about something we have largely forgotten.

Henry Ford, the founder of Ford Motors, was a candidate for the Presidency in 1916.  He ran on the GOP ticket, and he took Nebraska's and Michigan's delegates that year.

That's all he took, but for a time Ford, who was of course a well known businessman (and of course that calls to mind Trump invariably) and an opponent of entry into World War One to such an extent that he opposed military preparation, which was a big ongoing deal at the time, did well in those two states and was a sort of serious contender.

 

1917: 

 I have no idea what "Wake Up America Day" was, but somebody was commemorating it in 1917.

1918  When Wyoming Registered, and then Confiscated, Firearms
 

Gun registration and then confiscation, in Wyoming?

Yes, as part of the vast nationwide overreaction to all things German during World War One.

It's largely been forgotten, but prior to the Great War Germans in the United States were quite proud of their heritage and stood out, almost, but not quite, uniquely as an immigrant group that strove to retain their traditions and identity.  In many places shooting matches, a strong German sport in rural Germany, remained one in the rural German areas of the United States.  Many communities that had been originally settled by German immigrants retained German as the primary language, including for example Dyersville Iowa where my grandfather had been born.  

But the Great War changed much of that.

A real wave of anti German prejudice swept the nation and German communities reacted by shutting down much of the outward cultural attributes they had exhibited. Still people remained strongly suspicious of Germans and, oddly Eastern Europeans.  Those sorts of feelings lead to the item we saw recently accusing breweries of being money pipes to Germany.  And, in Wyoming, they lead to the 1917 act of the legislature requiring aliens to register their firearms.

Many apparently didn't, as this article notes, because they were simply unaware of the law.  And on this day the news hit that the state, using the Game and Fish Department as state police, raided a mining camp and confiscated the arms found there.  Clemency was granted to those aliens who simply surrendered them and plead ignorance, prosecution awaited for those who objected.  This amounted to a haul of seventeen firearms, not exactly a large number.

There are lessons here of all sorts, and people will draw their own, I suppose.  I suspect, although I don't know, that all the miners who found their arms taken were German, Austrian or Eastern European.  This occurred in the Sheridan area which had a large ex-patriot British community but somehow I doubt they found their arms taken.  I'll bet not.

Miners, it might be noted, were rural people and this wasn't necessarily a minor matter for them.  T he article notes that the 17 arms included a Sharps rifle, a large 19th Century rifle best recalled for use by frontier buffalo hunters. That was likely that miners hunting rifle and he likely was then going without a means of augmenting the dinner table.  Other arms may have been for self protection. Mining communities were not dens of passivity.

For what its worth, there was some armed opposition to the American role in World War One within the United States, or perhaps more accurately to conscription. We've already covered one such incident. Those incidents were, however, ones in which rural Americans took up arms against the government.  Not armed fifth column actions by immigrant aliens.

1919  Pipeline completed between Lost Soldier and Ft. Steele, which was a major railhead.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1922  Hell's Half Acre withdraw from homesteading, although its difficult to imagine anyone homesteading it.  Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.

1998  Manges Cabin in Grand Teton National Park added to the National Registry of Historic Places.

April 18

1847     American troops under General Winfield Scott defeated Mexican forces under General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna at the Battle of Cerro Gordo during the Mexican War. Scott's engineers, including future Civil War generals R.E. Lee, G.B. McClellan, J.E. Johnston, and U.S. Grant, were instrumental in locating a flanking mountain trail, which Scott used to bring up his main force.

1875  Rain In The Face, with the aid of a sympathetic soldier, escaped from the stockade at Ft. Abraham Lincoln, Dakota Territory.

1887   Shakespearean actor Edwin Booth appeared in "Hamlet," in Cheyenne.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1890  The National Land & Livestock Co., incorporated with capital of $250,000, a massive amount at that time, given the value of the 1890 dollar.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1898  The U. S. House of Representatives passed the following resolution:

 1. That the people of the Island of Cuba are, and of right ought to be, free and independent.
2. That it is the duty of the United States to demand, and the Government of the United States does demand, that the Government of Spain at once relinquish its authority and government in the Island of Cuba, and withdraw its land and naval forces from Cuba and Cuban waters.
3. That the president of the United States be, and he hereby is, directed and empowered to use the entire land and naval forces of the United States, and to call into the actual service of the United States the militia of the several states to such an extent as may be necessary to carry these resolutions into effect.
4. That the United States hereby disclaims any disposition or intention to exercise sovereignty, jurisdiction or control over said island, except for the pacification thereof, and asserts its determination when that is accomplished to leave the government and control of the island to its people.

1916   Casper Daily Press for April 18, 1916
 

The following evening, the paper was doubting the news of Villa's demise the day prior, and in a whimsical fashion.

A civil war in China, amazingly enough, managed to make the front page, in spite of the nearer strife.

1919  Apostol post office established.  Apostol would become Osage in 1920.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Library.

1920  Pilot Butte oil field abandoned.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1924  Harry Jackson, an artist heavily associated with Wyoming, born in Chicago.

1934     The U.S. Army stops officially issuing sabers to the cavalry.  Sabers would continue on, unofficially, in at least some National Guard units.  Unit returns of the Wyoming National Guard's 115th Cavalry Regiment demonstrated that it was still issuing them as late as 1940.

Elsewhere:

 1923     The first baseball game was played at Yankee Stadium in New York City.  The Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox 4 to 1.  Babe Ruth hit a home run in the inaugural game.

1942     B-25s from the USS Hornet raided Tokyo and other Japanese cities.

April 17

1492     Christopher Columbus received a commission from King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to seek a westward ocean passage to Asia.

1859  Willis Van Devanter, Chief Judge of the Wyoming Territorial Supreme Court, first Chief Justice of the Wyoming Supreme Court (for four days) and Justice of the United States Supreme Court, born in Marion, Indiana.

1878  A tornado was reported in Wyoming for the first time, west of Laramie.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1888  The Sunrise mines were purchased by an English company. Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1916   Casper Daily Press for April 17, 1916

The Casper paper, printing on Monday after a Sunday off, reports a rumor that turns out, as we know, to be in error.

If this seems odd, let's consider all the similar rumors about Osama Bin Laden  before he was ultimately killed in Pakistan.

 

1918  Larry Birleffi, the "voice of the University of Wyoming Cowboys," born in Hartville.

1919  Wyoming was ranked sixth in the nation in the number of banks, on a per capita basis.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society. 

1922  Natrona County's second American Legion Post, the  Denny O. Wyatt Post, No. 57, was organized.

1944  Wyoming's legislature considered a bill to allow servicemen serving overseas to vote in the general election.  Bills of this type were significant enough that Bill Mauldin, author of the famous WWII Stars and Stripes Cartoon "Up Front" drew a cartoon regarding it.

1999  The Jack Bull, a movie with a historically inaccurate plot but which features Wyoming's pending statehood as an element, is released.

2013  A major blizzard, and the fourth snowstorm in four weeks, results in the cancellation of Natrona County's schools, closures of roads, and general disruption.

April 16

1818   U.S. Senate ratified the Rush-Bagot amendment to form an unarmed U.S.-Canada border.

1851  Clarence D. Clark born in Sandy Creek, New York.  He was a lawyer who practiced law in Iowa from 1874 to 1881, when he thereafter moved to Wyoming and practiced law in Evanston.  He served two terms as Wyoming's Congressman, staring in 1890, and then served as Senator from 1895 to 1917. 

1864  Tom Harris plants near Ft. Owen, Montana, and becomes Montana's first full time farmer.

1890  Discovery of new oil and gas deposits south of Rawlins.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1922  The Teapot Dome scandal discovered by Senate investigators.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1948  The Oil Producing Exporting Countries (OPEC) cartel is founded.

1969  Medicine Wheel designated as a National Historic Place.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1969  Miller Cabin, near Jackson, added as a National Historic Place.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1969  Ft. Bridger added as a National Historic Places.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1969  Ft. Steele added to the National Registry of Historic Places.

1969  Menor's Ferry added to the National Registry of Historic Places.

1969  Union Pass added to the National Registry of Historic Places.

1969  Expedition Island, near Green River, added to the National Registry of Historic Places.

1969  Names Hill near Green River added to the National Registry of Historic Places.

1969  Ft. Fetterman added to the National Registry of Historic Places.

1991  Wyoming Mercantile in Aladdin added to the National Registry of Historic Places.

1995  SSN-773, USS Cheyenne, a Los Angeles class submarine, launched. 

2013  Historian David McCullough speaks at the University of Wyoming on "Leadership and the History You Don’t Know."

April 15

Today is the Federal Income Tax payment deadline in the United States. 

1861     President Abraham Lincoln declared a state of insurrection and called out Union troops Following the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, South Carolina.  He calls for 75,000 volunteers for Federal service, somewhat countering the often stated claim that nobody expected a long or major war.

1869  John Campbell, Wyoming's first Territorial Governor, took the oath of office.

1890  Laramie passed an anti gambling ordinance: Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society. 

1892  Governor Barber  requested that Colonel Van Horn of the U.S. Army "obtain the custody of and take to Fort McKinney and there give protection to the men belonging to the invading party who were arrested before the surrender, and who are now confined in the county-jail at Buffalo."

1905  Tennis played for the first time in Saratoga. Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1916  The Casper Daily Press: April 15, 1916
 

In this edition we're reminded that Easter of 1916 was in mid April, unlike this year when it was in mid March.

1917  The Sunday State Leader for April 15, 1917: A plot against Pathfinder.
 

I've stopped the frequent updates of Wyoming newspapers here as the story I was really tracking, the Punitive Expedition, has closed out as a day to day item of concern.  Not that Mexico doesn't keep appearing, as this paper demonstrates.  But by mid April it finally seemed evident to everyone that the US was not going to be fighting Mexico as a stand in for Germany. We were really going to fight Germany.

Not that the papers don't remain interesting, and here's an example.

As far as I know, there was never a serious attempt to blow up Pathfinder Dam, but a story about a belief that there was hit the front page of this Cheyenne newspaper.  Lots of panicky stories like this were going around as people saw German agents everywhere.

As is also evident here, the war was giving a boost to prohibitionist.

U.S. Army issues corrected manuals, April 15, 1917

 

Showing how things were going, and of course with fresh experience from the Punitive Expedition in hand, the U.S. Army issued a set of corrected manuals just in time for training the greatly expanded Army that it was creating.  These included:

Infantry drill regulations, United States army, 1911 : corrected to April 15, 1917 (changes nos. 1 to 19).

Rules of Land Warfare, 1914. Corrected to April 15, 1917 (Changes Nos. 1 and 2). War Department Document No. 467

Details about Small Arms Firing Manual, 1913:  Corrected to April 15, 1917 (Changes Nos 1-18)

Manual of Interior Guard Duty, 1914:  Corrected to April 15, 1917 

Regulations for the Army of the United States, 1913, corrected to April 15, 1917 (Changes nos. 1 to 55) 

Field service regulations, United States Army, 1914 : corrected to April 15, 1917 (changes nos. 1-6) 

A Manuel For Courts-Martial, U S Army, Corrected to April 15, 1917

There were most likely additional manuals in this corrected set.

1922  Wyoming Democratic Senator John Kendrick introduced a resolution to investigate oil sales at Teapot Dome, Wyoming (the Naval Petroleum Oil Reserve).

Saturday, April 15, 1922. The Teapot Dome Scandal Breaks.

The Saturday Evening Post decided to grace the cover of its Easter issue, with Easter being April 16 that year, with a Leyendecker portrait of a woman looking at her Easter bonnet.

Country Gentleman, however, went with a different theme.

Some in Washington, D. C. took time to play polo on this day.

Horses were much in evidence on that Holy Saturday in Washington, D. C., as a Junior Horse Show was also held.

The White House received visitors.

Which included a party of Camp Fire Girls.

Not everyone was taking the day off, however.

Today In Wyoming's History: April 15: 1922  1922  Wyoming Democratic Senator John Kendrick introduced a resolution to investigate oil sales at Teapot Dome, Wyoming (the Naval Petroleum Oil Reserve).

As the U.S. Senate's history site notes:

Senate Investigates the "Teapot Dome" Scandal

---

April 15, 1922

On April 15, 1922, Wyoming Democratic senator John Kendrick introduced a resolution that set in motion one of the most significant investigations in Senate history. On the previous day, the Wall Street Journal had reported an unprecedented secret arrangement in which the secretary of the Interior, without competitive bidding, had leased the U.S. naval petroleum reserve at Wyoming's Teapot Dome to a private oil company. Wisconsin Republican senator Robert La Follette arranged for the Senate Committee on Public Lands to investigate the matter. His suspicions deepened after someone ransacked his quarters in the Senate Office Building.

Expecting this to be a tedious and probably futile inquiry, the committee's Republican leadership allowed the panel's most junior minority member, Montana Democrat Thomas Walsh, to chair the panel. Preeminent among the many difficult questions facing him was, "How did Interior Secretary Albert Fall get so rich so quickly?"

Eventually, the investigation uncovered Secretary Fall's shady dealings, and Senator Walsh became a national hero. Fall would end up as the first former cabinet officer to go to prison. This and a subsequent Senate inquiry triggered several court cases testing the extent of the Senate's investigative powers. One of those cases resulted in the landmark 1927 Supreme Court decision McGrain v. Daugherty that, for the first time, explicitly established Congress's right to compel witnesses to testify before its committees.

Not unexpectedly, the Teapot Dome story, which was just breaking, and had been broken in the East the day prior, was big news in Wyoming.

1946  End of Special Session of the Legislature concerning funding of the University of Wyoming.

Elsewhere:

1207     St. Francis of Assisi renounces worldly goods.

1947   Jackie Robinson debuts for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

1952   The maiden flight of the B-52 Stratofortress.

April 14

1846  The Donner Party departs Springfield, Illinois, for California.

1860  The first Pony Express rider with west bound mail arrived in San Francisco.

1865 President Lincoln shot by John Wilkes Booth as part of a deluded conspiracy by a small group of Confederate sympathizers.

1881  The Oregon Short Line, a Union Pacific subsidiary, organized.   The railroad ran from Granger to Huntington Oregon.

1892  Sheriff Angus asks the Commander of Ft. McKinney to turn over the Johnson County invaders to his custody.  The New York Times ran Gov. Barbers plea for Federal troops on its first page.

1902  J. C. Penny, and partners, opened his first store, in Kemmerer.  It was a Golden Rule store.

1916:  Casper Weekly Press: April 14, 1916
 

The Friday Casper paper, oil taking its place besides the Punitive Expedition and the slow march of the US towards entering World War One.

1922  The Tea Pot Dome scandal breaks in the Wall Street Journal.  Attribution:  On This Day.

1923  Saturday, April 14, 1923. Waiting Dates, Young Couples, Racist Organizations Where You Wouldn't Expect Them.

It was Saturday, and the Saturday Evening Post chose to run an illustration of a woman waiting, presumably on a date.

The Country Gentleman illustration depicted a young couple applying for a marriage license, with a caption below that would be regarded as racist today, but which was still common for complete independence when I was young.

The Lansing-Ishii Agreement which had defined Japanese and American spheres of influence in China was abrogated after six years of being in effect due to Chinese objections regarding the agreement.

The Tribune reported on a tidal wave in Japan, and Irish plots against the British, but the really shocking news was the visitation of the Ku Klux Klan to the Emmanuel Baptist Church in Casper at 15th and Popular Streets.  There is no church there today, that location featuring a gas station, two apartment buildings, and a traffic island..

An Emmanuel Baptist Church still exists in Casper, but it's in North Casper today.  I have no idea of there being any connection between the two or not.

Emmanuel Baptist Church, Casper Wyoming

Not the best photograph, by any means, we admit.

Emmanuel Baptist Church in North Casper, Wyoming.

Apparently the same group had visited the Baptist church located at 5th and Beech street earlier.  That Church structure is no longer there either, but a subsequent structure built in 1949 remains, however it is no longer a Baptist Church.

First Baptist Church, Casper Wyoming

This is the First Baptist Church in Casper, Wyoming. It's one of the Downtown churches in Casper, in an area that sees approximately one church per block for a several block area.

This particular church was built in 1949, and sits on the same block as Our Savior's Lutheran Church.

Changes in Downtown Casper. First Presbyterian becomes City Park Church, the former First Baptist Church.

I debated on whether to put this entry here or on our companion blog, Lex Anteinternet.  In the end, I decided to put it up here first and then link it over. This will be one of a couple of posts of this type which explore changes, this one with a local expression, that have bigger implications.

When we started this blog, some of the first entries here were on churches in downtown Casper.  These included the First Presbyterian Church and the First Baptist Church, with buildings dating to 1913 and 1949 respectively.  First Baptist, it should be noted, has occupied their present location, if not their present church, for a century.

Indeed, while I wasn't able to get it to ever upload, I have somewhere a video of the centennial of the First Presbyterian Church from 2013, featuring, as a church that originally had a heavy Scots representation ought to, a bagpipe band.  Our original entry on that church building is right below:

First Presbyterian Church, Casper Wyoming

This Presbyterian Church is located one block away from St. Mark's Episcopal Church and St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church, all of which are separated from each other by City Park.

The corner stone of the church gives the dates 1913 1926. I'm not sure why there are two dates, but the church must have been completed in 1926.

Well, since that centennial, First Presbyterian has been going through a constant set of changes, as noted in our entry here:

Grace Reformed at City Park, formerly First Presbyterian Church, Casper Wyoming

This isn't a new addition to the roll of churches here, but rather news about one of them.  We formerly posted on this church here some time ago:

Churches of the West: First Presbyterian Church, Casper Wyoming: This Presbyterian Church is located one block away from St. Mark's Episcopal Church and St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church, all of whi...

People who have followed it would be aware that the Presbyterian churches in the United States are undergoing a period of rift, and this church has reflected that.  The Presbyterian Church, starting in the 1980s, saw conflict develop between liberal and more conservative elements within it which lead to the formation of the "moderate conservative" EPC.  As I'm not greatly familiar with this, I'll only note that the EPC is associated with "New School Presbyterianism" rather than "Old School" and it has adopted the motto  "In Essentials, Unity; In Non-Essentials, Liberty; In All Things, Charity. Truth in Love.".

The change in name here is confusing to an outsider in that this church is a member of the EPC, but it's no longer using its original name.  As it just passed the centennial of its construction, that's a bit unfortunate in some ways. 

We'd also note that the sought set of stairs is now chained off.  We're not sure why, but those stairs must no longer be used for access.

The changes apparently didn't serve to arrest whatever was going on, as there's a sign out in front of the old First Presbyterian, later Grace Reformed, that starting on February 23, it'll be City Park Church.

City Park Church, it turns out, is the name that the congregation that presently occupies another nearby church, First Baptist Church, will call its new church building, which is actually a much older building than the one it now occupies, which is depicted here:

First Baptist Church, Casper Wyoming

This is the First Baptist Church in Casper, Wyoming. It's one of the Downtown churches in Casper, in an area that sees approximately one church per block for a several block area.

This particular church was built in 1949, and sits on the same block as Our Savior's Lutheran Church.

What's going on?

Well, it's hard to say from the outside, which we are, but what is pretty clear is that the rifts in the Presbyterian Church broke out, in some form, in the city's oldest Presbyterian Church to the point where it ended up changing its name, and then either moving out of its large church, and accompanying grounds, or closing altogether.  I've never been in the building but I'm told that its basement looked rough a couple of years ago and perhaps the current congregation has other plans or the grounds and church are just too much for it.  At any rate, the 1949 vintage building that First Baptist occupies is apparently a bit too small for its needs and it had taken the opportunity to acquire and relocate into the older, but larger, church.  It can't help but be noted that both churches have pretty large outbuildings as well. Also, while they are both downtown, the 1913 building is one of the three very centrally located old downtown Casper churches, so if church buildings have pride of place, the Baptist congregation is moving into a location which has a little bit more of one.

While it will be dealt with more in another spot, or perhaps on Lex Anteinternet, the entire thing would seem to be potentially emblematic of the loss that Christian churches that have undergone a rift like the Presbyterian Church in the United States has sustained when they openly split between liberal and conservative camps.  The Presbyterian Church was traditionally a fairly conservative church, albeit with theology that was quite radical at the time of its creation.  In recent years some branches of that church have kept their conservatism while others have not and there's been an open split.  As noted elsewhere this has lead in part to a defection from those churches in a lot of localities, and a person has to wonder if something like that may have happened here, as well as wondering if the obvious fact that a split has occurred would naturally lead to a reduction in the congregation as some of its members went with the other side.  We've noted here before that the Anglican Community locally not only has its two Episcopal Churches in town, but that there are also two additional Anglican Churches of a much more theologically conservative bent, both of which are outside of the Episcopal Diocese of Wyoming.

A person can't really opine, from the outside, if something like this is "sad" or not, but it's certainly a remarkable event.  We've noted church buildings that have changed denominations of use before, but this is the first one where we've actually witnessed it.  And in this case, the departing denomination had occupied their building for a century.

In both instances, the small KKK group was there for the odd purpose of noting something they approved of.  

On the changes in the linked in article, while I'm not completely certain, I believe that no congregation is presently using the old First Baptist Church, and the old Presbyterian Church continued to undergo denominational changes.  It's something affiliated with Presbyterianism in some fashion, but I don't know how.

Amalgamated Bank, the largest union owned bank, forms.

The National League of Women's Voters voted against endorsing the League of Nations while simultaneously urging the US to associate with other nations to help prevent war, a mixed message.

1975  The Moreton Frewan house in Cheyenne added to the National Registry of Historic places.

1994  The final Environmental Impact Statement leading to the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park published.

Soldiers at Soda Butte Creek Patrol Station with wolf in 1905.

2016   And now Peabody

 

In the 1970s John Prine released a song that continued to irritate the giant Peabody Coal Company ever after.  It's chorus lamented the disappearance of a town due to mining, laying that at the feet of Peabody in the chorus:

And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
Well, I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in asking
Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away.

Well, now it's Peabody that seems to be disappearing, at least in terms of being the giant it once was.  Yesterday it took Chapter 11 (reorganization) bankruptcy.

Peabody is the largest coal producer in the world.  And yet its fortunes have fallen so far and so quickly that over just a few years its value has been estimated to have declined from billions to millions, and now its in bankruptcy. It's coal trains, or rather those of railroads serving Wyoming, heavily laden with Campbell County coal were a common site in parts of Wyoming, but now I'm told that you can find idled locomotives reflecting the decline and a once proposed rail line has now been dropped.  Signs that are hard to ignore.