Today In Wyoming's History

How To Use This Site

How To Use This Site

This blog was updated on a daily basis for about two years, with those daily entries ceasing on December 31, 2013. The blog is still active, however, and we hope that people stopping in, who find something lacking, will add to the daily entries.

The blog still receives new posts as well, but now it receives them on items of Wyoming history. That has always been a feature of the blog, but Wyoming's history is rich and there are many items that are not fully covered here, if covered at all. Over time, we hope to remedy that.

You can obtain an entire month's listings by hitting on the appropriate month below, or an individual day by hitting on that calendar date. Use 2013 for the search date, as that's the day regular dates were established and fixed.

Alternatively, the months are listed immediately below, with the individual days appearing backwards (oldest first).

We hope you enjoy this site.

Monday, October 7, 2019

From the Wyoming State Library: HISTORICAL RECORDS GRANTS AWARDED

HISTORICAL RECORDS GRANTS AWARDED

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Wyoming Library News

Historical Records Grants Awarded

September 4, 2019posted by SusanThe Wyoming State Historical Records Advisory Board (SHRAB) has awarded grant funds to five Wyoming organizations that are promoting preservation of and access to Wyoming’s historical records.
The Eastern Shoshone Tribe Archives received $2,500 to sponsor a two day record records management workshop from Native American Development Corporation/American Indian Consulting Services. Tribal staff members will learn best practices for managing their current records, as well as how to identify records of historical or legal value for permanent retention.
Hoofprints of the Past Museum in Kaycee will use their $1333.25 grant to convert sixty-seven VHS tapes of oral history interviews and local historical tours to digital format. They will then mount these files on their website for public access.
The Hot Springs County Museum and Cultural Center in Thermopolis will use their $2,500 grant to digitize photographs and other historical records of the coal towns Gebo, Crosby, and Kirby, resulting in a searchable collection on their website.
The Professional Land Surveyors of Wyoming organization will use a grant of $1,685 to digitize and index civil engineering and land survey records, including plans and notebooks, for public access. They are seeking a useful online platform to make these often hidden materials accessible to the general public.
The University of Wyoming Coe Library will use their $2,400 award to convert over 700 stereograph photos of Yellowstone (digitized under a SHRAB grant this year) to 3-D images. This process will allow online viewers to see the images in the lifelike way in which they were first made available.
The grants are available to Wyoming cultural heritage organizations for projects to process, preserve, and provide increased access to historical records. Projects eligible for funding include digitizing historical records, providing access to them online, processing collections of historical records, and attending training that will improve the organization’s ability to complete these types of projects.
The Wyoming SHRAB promotes the identification, preservation and dissemination of the state’s historical records, by encouraging and supporting ongoing training programs for state, triba,l and local governments, local repositories, organizations, and others involved in records care in Wyoming. The program is administered by the Wyoming State Archives, which is part of the Department of State Parks and Cultural Resources. Funding for these projects is made available through a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.

Wednesday, October 2, 2019

Oops. Errors and Omissions.

Occasionally we get things wrong.

And when we do, we appreciate corrections.

We had just such a correction come in, in a comment, which is the best way to draw things to our attention. This came up in an entry here on the the May 16 entries, in which we had the following:

1946 USS Wyoming decomissioned. (This entry is doubly in error, check the comments below).

A Navy veteran pointed out for us:

I'm not sure you intended that image of the ship to be the USS Wyoming. It is not. USS Wyoming has had four incarnations. The one from 1946 was a WWI battleship that was used in WWII as a gunnery training platform. The ship shown is definitely not a battleship. I'm not positive but I think that might be a destroyer escort. Kim Viner CDR U.S. Navy (ret), Laramie, Wyoming.
ReplyDelete
UnknownApril 23, 2019 at 11:36 AM

p.s. USS Wyoming was officially decommissioned on Aug 1, 1947, according to the the U.S. Navy: https://www.navy.mil/navydata/ships/battleships/wyoming/bb32-wyo.html
Kim

The weird thing about this is that I actually had the event correctly noted on the correct date, which was pointed out to us in the comment.

1947 The USS Wyoming, BB-32, is decommissioned.

Even weirder yet, the USS Wyoming, BB-32, shows up on this blog a lot, along with the other ships named Wyoming. The USS Wyoming in question was a pretty important ship at that, playing a significant role in World War One.

I'm going to take the error down here shortly, but I'm leaving it up long enough to acknowledge the correction, which I appreciate.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Recently a reader posted this item on the November 5 entry:

2 comments:

UnknownAugust 28, 2019 at 7:42 AM

You note that Governor Ross was inaugurated on this day in 1925. I believe that actually occurred on January 5, 1925.
ReplyDelete
Replies
1. Pat, Marcus & AlexisAugust 28, 2019 at 9:44 AM
  
  You are correct. I"m not sure what the origin of that error was and why I noted that date, so I'll research it and see what lead to that.
  Delete

The commentor was quite correct. I left this entry in briefly trying to figure out why it was there in the first place, as the event on January 5 was already up and in greater detail, but I never did figure out the reason for the incorrect entry.

Thanks go out to the anonymous poster for pointing out the error.

Friday, September 13, 2019

The Black 14 & the First Amendment

Tuesday, August 20, 2019

Updates for August, 2019

Hot Springs County Homestead

Updates for August, 2019.

Monday, August 12, 2019

The Spring Creek Raid.

Students of Wyoming's history are well familiar with the story of the Spring Creek Raid, which occurred on April 2, 1909, on the Nowood River outside of Ten Sleep, Wyoming. The tragedy has been the subject of at least three well known books, including the excellent A Vast Amount of Trouble, Goodbye Judge Lynch, and Ten Sleep and No Rest, the first two by lawyer and historian John W. Davis and the third, and earlier work, by Jack Gage, a former Governor of Wyoming.

The raid is justifiably famous for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it may be the sheepman murder that most closely fits the way that we imagine the cattlemen v. sheepmen war of the late 19th and early 20th Century being. Of course, the fact that it was an outright cold blooded killing no doubt causes it to be well remembered as well. And then that the killings actually resulted in a trial which convicted the assassins is also worth remembering, as it demonstrated the turn of the tide of the public view on such matters.

The Wyoming historical marker sign that describes the killings does a good job of it, with perhaps the only thing omitted is that one of the ambushing party was armed with a semi automatic Remington Model 8 in .35 Remington, a very distinct arm for the time. In basic terms, the raid occurred as several men connected with cattle raising in the area decided to enforce the "Deadline", a topographic feature of the Big Horn Mountains which meant it was a literal dead line.

The .35 Remington turned out to be critical in the story of the raid as it was an unusual cartridge for what was, at the time, an unusual arm. The Remington 08 had only been introduced in 1905 and was a semi automatic rifle in an era in which the lever action predominated. A lot of .35 Remington cartridges were left at the scene of the murders and investigation very rapidly revealed that a Farney Cole had left his Remington 08 at the home of Bill Keyes, which was quite near the location of the assault. One of the assailants, George Saban, was known to not carry a gun and was also known to have been at the Saban residence the day of the assault. Subsequent investigation matched other cartridges found on the location to rifles and pistols known to have been carried by the attackers.

Arrests soon followed and five of the assailants were ultimately charged with murder. Two turned states' evidence. The trials were not consolidated and only Herbert Brink's case went to trial. To the surprise of some, he was convicted by the jury. Due to prior trials for the killing of sheepmen being both unsuccessful and unpopular, Wyoming took the step of deploying National Guardsmen to Basin to provide security for the trial, which proved unnecessary. The conviction was the first one in the area for a cattleman v. sheepman murder( Tom Horn had earlier been convicted for the 1903 killing of Willie Nickell, but that killing took place in southern Wyoming.

The killings were, quite rankly, uniquely cold blooded and gruesome, involving shooting into the wagons and setting them on fire. Because of that, and the Brink conviction, the remaining four charged men plead guilty, rather than face trial. Two plead guilty to arson, and two to second degree murder.

All were sentenced together, and Brink was sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted, however, and he was released from prison, together with another one of the party, in 1914. Another, George Saban, who was deeply affected by his conviction, escaped while out of the penitentiary and under guard, after being allowed to stay over in Basin in order to allegedly conduct some of his affairs. His escape was successful and he disappeared from the face of the earth.

Saturday, July 20, 2019

The Bates Battle, July 4, 1874

We were fortunately recently to be able to tour one of Wyoming's little known battlefields recently, thanks due to the local landowner who controls the road access letting us on. We very much appreciate their generosity in letting us do so.

Our Jeep, which should have some clever nickname, but which does not. Wrecked twice, and reassembled both times, it gets us where we want to go. But we only go so far. We stopped after awhile and walked in.

The battlefield is the Bates Battlefield, which is on the National Registry of Historic landmarks, but which is little viewed. There's nothing there to tell you that you are at a battlefield. There are no markers or the like, like there is at Little Big Horn. You have to have researched the area before you arrive, to know what happened on July 4, 1874, when the battle was fought. And even at that, accounts are confusing.

Fortunately for the researcher, a really good write up of what is known was done when Historic Site status was applied for. Rather than try to rewrite what was put in that work, we're going to post it here. So we start with the background.

And on to the confusion in the accounts, which we'd note is common even for the best known of Indian battles. Indeed, maybe all of them.

The text goes on to note that the Arapaho raided into country that what was withing the recently established Shoshone Reservation, which we know as the Wind River Indian Reservation. It also notes that this was because territories which the various tribes regarded as their own were fluid, and it suggest that a culture of raiding also played a potential part in that. In any event, the Shoshone found their reservation domains raided by other tribes. Complaints from the Shoshone lead, respectively, to Camp Augur and Camp Brown being established, where are respectively near the modern towns of Lander and Ft. Washakie (which Camp Brown was renamed).

The immediate cause of the raid was the presence of Arapaho, Northern Cheyenne, and Sioux parties in the area in June and July 1874 that had an apparent intent to raid onto the Reservation. Ironically, the Arapaho, who were involved in this battle, had separated themselves from the Cheyenne and the Sioux and had no apparent intent to participate in any such raids. They thereafter placed themselves in the Nowood River area. Indian bands were known to be in the area that summer, and they were outside of those areas designated to them by the treaties of 1868.

Given this, Cpt. Alfred E. Bates, at Camp Brown, had sent scouts, including Shoshone scouts, into the field that summer to attempt to locate the Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho bands. On June 29, Shoshone scouts reported at Camp Brown that they'd sited an Arapaho village. We here pick back up from the text:

The expedition took to the field on July 1, 1874, and remarkably, it traveled at night.

A few days later, they found what they were looking for.

Let's take a look at some of what Bates was seeing:

This is the valley which was below the ridge that Bates was traveling up, the night he found the Arapaho village when he passed it by. It's not clear to me if he backtracked all the way back past this point and came back up this valley, or if he came from another direction. Based upon the description, I suspect he rode all the way back and came up from this direction, but from the high ground, not down here in the valley.

Here's the spot that Bates referenced as being the area where two ravines joined. Not surprisingly, in this wet year, the spot is fairly wet. But to add to that, this area features a spring, known today, and probably dating back to the events of this battle, as Dead Indian Springs. The "gentle slope" from which Cpt. Bates made his survey, is in the background.

And here we look up that second ravine, with its current denizens in view.

And here we see the prominent bluff opposite of where Cpt. Bates reconnoitered. It was prominent indeed.

Bates chose to attack dismounted down the slope of the hill he was on, described above, with thirty troopers and twenty Shoshones. At the same time, Lt. Young, meanwhile, attached down the valley from above it on the watercourse, in an apparent effort to cut the village off and achieve a flanking movement.

The slope down which Bates and his detail attacked, and the draw down which Young attacked.

The draw down which Young attacked.

The slope down which Bates attacked is depicted above.

The fighting was fierce and the Arapaho were surprised. They put up a good account, however, and were even able to at least partially get mounted. Chief Black Coal was wounded in the fighting and lost several fingers when shot while mounted. The Arapaho defended the draw and the attack, quite frankly, rapidly lost the element of surprise and became a close quarters melee.

The slope down which Bates attacked.

The valley down which Young attacked.

High ground opposite from the slope down which Bates attacked.

Fairly quickly, the Arapaho began to execute the very move that Bates feared, and they retrated across the draw and started to move up the high ground opposite the direction that Bates had attacked from. Young's flanking movement had failed.

The high ground.

The opposing bluff.

Bates then withdrew.

Bates' command suffered four dead and five or six wounded, including Lt. Young. His estimates for Arapaho losses were 25 Arapaho dead, but as he abandoned the field of battle, that can't be really verified. Estimates for total Arapaho casualties were 10 to 125. They definitely sustained some losses and, as noted, Chief Black Coal was wounded in the battle.

Bates was upset with the results of the engagement and placed the blame largely on the Shoshone, whom he felt were too noisy in the assault in the Indian fashion. He also felt that they had not carried out his flanking instructions properly, although it was noted that the Shoshone interpreter had a hard time translating Bates English as he spoke so rapidly. Adding to his problems, moreover, the soldiers fired nearly all 80 of their carried .45-70 rifle cartridges during the engagement and were not able to resupply during the battle as the mules were unable to bring ammunition up. This meant that even if they had not disengaged for other reasons, they were at the point where a lock of ammunition would have hampered any further efforts on their part in any event (and of course they would have been attacking uphill).

After the battle the Arapaho returned to the Red Cloud Agency. Seeing how things were going after Little Big Horn, they came onto the Wind River Reservation in 1877 for the winter on what was supposed to be a temporary basis, and they remain there today. They were hoping for their own reservation in Wyoming, but they never received it. Black Coal went on the reservation with him, and portraits of him show him missing two fingers on his right hand. His people soon served on the Reservation as its policemen. He himself lived until 1893.

Alfred E. Bates, who had entered the Army as a private at the start of the Civil War at age 20. Enlisting in the Michigan state forces, he soon attracted the attention of a politician who secured for him an enrollment at West Point, where he graduated in the Class of 1865. He missed service in the Civil War but soon went on to service on the plains. His name appears on two Wyoming geographic localities. He rose to the rank of Major General and became Paymaster of the Army, dying in 1909 of a stroke.

Sunday, July 7, 2019

Updates for July, 2019

July 1. Newspapers added to item on prohibition for July 1, 1919.

July 3. Cheyenne and Casper newspapers added for July 3, 1919.

July 7. 1919 Motor Transport Convoy entry.

Saturday, July 6, 2019

Lex Anteinternet: Some notes on Prohibition on its centennial in Wyo...

Lex Anteinternet: Some notes on Prohibition on its centennial in Wyo...: We've been running some items on prohibition as we've run up to its centennial in the state. In doing that, we noted some of the my...