Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Election

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Election:   Ready or not, here it comes. Back in 2016 I ran a thread, well a series of threads, on the General Election. That election became...

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Legislative Session.

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Legislative Session.: Another one of our trailing posts. It hardly seems possible, but the 2018 Wyoming Legislative session is soon to begin and bills are n...

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Legislative Session.

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Legislative Session.: Another one of our trailing posts. It hardly seems possible, but the 2018 Wyoming Legislative session is soon to begin and bills are n...

Lex Anteinternet: The 1918 Flu Epidemic. How did it impact your fam...

Lex Anteinternet: The 1918 Flu Epidemic. How did it impact your fam...: We noted the start of the 1918 Flu Epidemic yesterday, the date it broke forth at Camp Funston, Kansas. Lex Anteinternet: Today In Wyoming...

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Legislative Session.

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Legislative Session.: Another one of our trailing posts. It hardly seems possible, but the 2018 Wyoming Legislative session is soon to begin and bills are n...

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Election

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Election:   Ready or not, here it comes. Back in 2016 I ran a thread, well a series of threads, on the General Election. That election became...

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Legislative Session.

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Legislative Session.: Another one of our trailing posts. It hardly seems possible, but the 2018 Wyoming Legislative session is soon to begin and bills are n...

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Legislative Session.

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Legislative Session.: Another one of our trailing posts. It hardly seems possible, but the 2018 Wyoming Legislative session is soon to begin and bills are n...

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Election

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Election:   Ready or not, here it comes. Back in 2016 I ran a thread, well a series of threads, on the General Election. That election became...

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Election

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Election:   Ready or not, here it comes. Back in 2016 I ran a thread, well a series of threads, on the General Election. That election became...

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Legislative Session.

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Legislative Session.: Another one of our trailing posts. It hardly seems possible, but the 2018 Wyoming Legislative session is soon to begin and bills are n...

Lex Anteinternet: HB 94 Fails

Lex Anteinternet: HB 94 Fails: Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Legislative Ses... : I'm already running a thread on the 2018 Wyoming Legislative S...

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Legislative Session.

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Legislative Session.: Another one of our trailing posts. It hardly seems possible, but the 2018 Wyoming Legislative session is soon to begin and bills are n...

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Legislative Session.

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Legislative Session.: Another one of our trailing posts. It hardly seems possible, but the 2018 Wyoming Legislative session is soon to begin and bills are n...

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Legislative Session.

Lex Anteinternet: The 2018 Wyoming Legislative Session.: Another one of our trailing posts. It hardly seems possible, but the 2018 Wyoming Legislative session is soon to begin and bills are n...

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.

 

Lex Anteinternet: The Stars and Stripes commences publication. Febr...

Lex Anteinternet: The Stars and Stripes commences publication. Febr...: On this day in 1918 the famous military newspaper, The Stars and Stripes , commenced publication. Some would say it resumed publicatio...

Lex Anteinternet: Wyoming Equality Day/Martin Luther King Day

Lex Anteinternet: Wyoming Equality Day/Martin Luther King Day: Today, for Wyomingites, is both Wyoming Equality Day and Martin Luther King Day for 2018.  A state, and a Federal holiday, both celebrating ...

Churches of the West: Traditionalist Anabaptist In Wyoming?

Churches of the West: Traditionalist Anabaptist In Wyoming?: Starting at some point about six or so years ago, which means its actually probably more like ten years ago as things that occurred about t...

Lex Anteinternet: Attrition and Saving the Bacon. The United States...

Lex Anteinternet: Attrition and Saving the Bacon. The United States...:  January 1918 Coke calendar.  Soon, soft drinks would be about your only option.  World War One gave a big boost to the Prohibition mov...

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.

Lex Anteinternet: Happy Centenary! Things or rather places, that ar...

Lex Anteinternet: Happy Centenary! Things or rather places, that ar...: I've been meaning to post this forever but just wasn't in any big hurry to do it. Then it suddenly dawned on me that if I didn't...

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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