Arland, Wyoming.

Depicted above, on a somewhat wintry day, is the Wyoming Highway marker for Arland, Wyoming.  Arland was an incredibly tough frontier town that passed into extinction after a brief, violent existence.  The surviving town of Meeteetse is nearly

The City of Casper ponders closing Fort Casper Museum for the winter.

 I've photographed Ft. Caspar a zillion times, but of course I can't find any of my photos of the post itself right now.  Anyhow, the restoration of the grounds (the post was burned down tot he ground after it was evacuated following Red Cloud's War) is excellent, and it appears much as it did in this drawing.

News has appeared in the Casper Star Tribune that the City of Casper is pondering closing the Fort Casper Museum  for the winter months.

This is, of course, a pondered budgetary move.  The thought is that by closing the museum during the winter months, when attendance is at its lowest, the City will save money on what is a city park. After all, I suppose, various other city facilities, like the swimming pools, are closed during the winter months.

Of course others, like the ski areas, are open.  But then they would be.

Anyhow, this is a potential mistake.

Ft. Caspar has gone from being a really second rate facility with a collection of really first rate restored buildings to being one of the best local museums in the state.  When I was a kid the nicely restored buildings, which had been restored for decades, were filled with collections of absolute junk.  Some buildings had nothing in them at all.  Some had piles of old trash, the donated valuables of people who had thought they were valuable whether they were or not.  Some really were.  Others were trash.

Some were odd.  There was, for example, the bones of an infants hand, probably an Indian infant, that somebody found out in the prairie. Sad, but something that isn't really properly on display next to dishes and kettles and the like, if on display at all.

Then the town built a modern museum and hired a curator.  Things improved massively all the way around. All the buildings were put in the form that they original were in the 1860s.  I.e., infantry barracks were once again displayed as infantry barracks, with infantry items in them as if the infantrymen were still there.  The same for cavalry barracks.  The same for officers quarters, and so on.  It was very well done.

Post cemetery, Fort Caspar.  The graves themselves were moved when the Army consolidated its Frontier cemeteries. . .although bodies still occasionally occur and all of the dead from the nearby Battle of Red Buttes remain missing.

In the museum itself, displays change over time, the way a museum of this type should properly have it.  Themes for displays are had.  Various distinct presentations are made throughout the year on an annual basis.  A book about the fort, a very good one, was commissioned. The museum bookstore is one of the best western bookstores in the state, rivaling the one at Ft. Laramie. 

And now we read, in the Casper Star Tribune:

There may be fewer opportunities to visit Fort Caspar Museum next fall.

City officials are discussing seasonal closures at the facility as part of an ongoing effort to reduce Casper’s spending, said City Manager Carter Napier. Staff members are working on a recommendation for the City Council and plan to present the proposal within the next three months.

I hope that they don't do it.

I haven't commented much on the City of Casper's budget woes or the tasks of the City Council recently as I don't comment much on local politics as a rule.  I don't envy city councilmen their tasks in tough budgetary times.  And I'll freely concede that there isn't a thing that the city does that somebody doesn't have a vested interest in.  People like me, have a vested interest in history.  People who ski, have a vested interest in Hogadon, which the city also owns. And so on.

Oregon Trail markers at Fort Caspar.  The trails were the reason that the post was there.

But, having said that, places that loose their history have really lost something. And Wyoming has a highly transient population that is somewhat disinterested in its history to start with.  Closing the museum for the winter would sooner or later mean the loss of the curator and the decline of the museum.  It'd be inevitable.  And that's a mistake in general.  In an era in which one of the current political candidates maintains that tourism is one leg of the three legged stool of the Wyoming economy, and in which I think it's one of the legs of a four legged stool, its a particularly bad idea.  Casper has to be more than an economic crossroads if it wants to have a semi stable economy.

Indeed, my feeling on this is strong enough that I'd be tempted to suggest that maybe Fort Caspar would be better off as a state park.  But Wyoming in fact closes all of its historical sites for the winter and they all suffer because of it.  Sites like Fort Fetterman or Fort Phil Kearney are great sites, but they are seasonal and they show it. Natrona County would seemingly be a logical candidate to take over, as Fort Casper isn't really a purely Casper site.  Mills Wyoming is on the other side of the river and is where most of the Battle of Platte Bridge Station, and all  of the Battle of Red Buttes (really the same battle) were fought.  The Oregon Trail itself on this location crossed from what's now Casper into Mills.  Richard's Bridge, a small post some miles away is located in what is now Evansville Wyoming.  All of these locations are county sites of historical importance but they are not administered that way.  Nonetheless, Natrona County simply doesn't administer historical parks and I can't see it doing so now.  So it's up to the town.

And the town is short of cash.

Not so short, I suppose, that it didn't construct a big downtown plaza last year, which it is still working on this year.  So money can be found for some things.  I suppose it depends on what is important to you and what you think it achieves.

 

 Rotary clock at the new downtown Casper park.

For people who value history in the state, the Fort Caspar Museum is important.  I hope they keep it open year around.

 

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Blog Mirror: The Aerodrome: Air Subsidies Continue for Cody and Laramie. . . for now

Air Subsidies Continue for Cody and Laramie. .. for now.

 

From Today's Casper Star Tribune, the following headline:

Air service subsidies expected to continue in Cody and Laramie. But larger questions loom.

But that apparently doesn't mean that such subsidies aren't on the firing line still, to some degree. . .

On This Day In Wyoming History. Now available as an Ebook.

Now available as an Ebook:

On This Day In Wyoming's History.

In addition to being the frequent blogger here, as noted on the face page of this blog, I'm also the author of On This Day In Wyoming History, a book cataloging the daily history of Wyoming. 

The book went to press in March, 2014, and can be ordered through its publisher, The History Press, and of course through Amazon.  It's also available at various local bookstores in Wyoming, including Wind City Books in Casper, Hastings in Laramie, and the bookstore of the Wyoming State Archives and Museum in Cheyenne.

The book catalogs interesting and significant events from Wyoming's history.  If you have an interest in Wyoming, I hope you'll consider picking up a copy.

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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.

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Blog Mirror: The Aerodrome: You Can't Fly There From Here

From The Aerodrome:

October 27, 2017

You can't fly there from here.

 

 Over the Laramie Range.

Unfortunate news from the Casper Star Tribune . . .

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Some Gave All: The Sundance, Wyoming Rest Stop Memorials.

Some Gave All: The Sundance, Wyoming Rest Stop Memorials.: 

 Memorials at the Sundance Wyoming Rest Stop.

I usually don't put a bunch of memorials, even at one single spot, in one single post.  Each, I generally feel, deserves its own post as each is its own topic, in terms of what it commemorates.

 Black Hills Sign at the Sundance Wyoming Rest Stop.

I'm making an exception here, however, as these are grouped so nicely, they seem to require a singular treatment. 

The first item we address is the Black Hills sign. This sign discusses the Black Hills, which straddle the Wyoming/South Dakota border.

 Crook County sign.

The second sign discusses Crook County, named after Gen. George Crook, and in which Sundance is situated.

The sign oddly doesn't really go into Crook himself, but then its a memorial for the county, not the general.  Still a controversial general, Crook came into this region in the summer campaign of 1876 which saw him go as far north as southern Montana before meeting the Sioux and Cheyenne at Rosebud several days prior to Custer encountering them at Little Big Horn.  Crook engaged the native forces and then withdrew in a move that's still both praised and condemned.  At the time of the formation of Crook County in 1888 he was sufficiently admired that the county was named after him, at a time at which he was still living.

 Custer Expedition Memorial.

Finally, the Rest Stop is the location of an old monument noting the passage of Custer's 1874 expedition into the Black Hills, which is generally regarded as the precursor of the European American invasion of the Black Hills and the Powder River Expedition of 1876.  Obviously, it's more complicated than that, but its safe to say that the discovery of gold in 1874 gave way to a gold rush which, in turn, made conflict with the Sioux, who had taken over the Black Hills (by force) from the Crow, inevitable.

This memorial is interesting in the super heated atmosphere of today given that the historical view has really changed since 1940, when this roadside monument was dedicated (surprisingly late, I'd note, compared to similar Wyoming monuments). In 1940 Custer was still regarded as a hero.  By the 1970s, however, he was regarded in the opposite fashion, by and large, at least in terms of his popular portrays are concerned.  The 1874 expedition into the Black Hills is not favorably recalled in history now at all.

I have to wonder, however, in terms of the history if this expedition changed history the way it is recalled.  The Black Hills always seem to be an attractant.  They attracted the Sioux who took them (in living memory in 1874) from the Crows and it seems highly likely that they would would have attracted European Americans as well.  Certainly they continued to even after the hopes of gold seekers were dashed.

Lex Anteinternet: Berlin Air Lift Rates

Lex Anteinternet: Berlin Air Lift Rates:

Berlin Air Lift Rates

One plane every minute.

C-54 during the Berlin Air Lift

That was the highest rate achieved for the Berlin Air Lift in 1949.

Today, for the eclipse, the rate is predicted to be one plane every two minutes.

Will that actually occur?

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Some Gave All: The Powder River Country, Braodus Montana

Some Gave All: The Powder River Country, Braodus Montana:

A lot of history in this region of Montana, and in the adjoining part of Wyoming.