Ft. Casper Program

This last Wednesday, Joe and I attended our first Ft. Caspar program of the new year.  The museum offers a series of lectures/programs presented free of charge throughout the summer months and we've always enjoyed attending them.

The program that night was presented by Candy Moulton.  Her subject was the many trails used int he state of Wyoming.  Her lecture was based on one of her books entitled "Forts, Fights and Historical Sites".  The book explores some of the lesser known historical sites in Wyoming. She documents scores of Wyoming way stations, military establishments, battlefields, Pony Express stations, Oregon and Overland Trail sites, military expeditions--even ferries and hog ranches.   It sounded so intriguing that we bought a copy and she even autographed it for us.

Here is Joe with the author - Candy Moulton

Heart Mountain War Relocation Center: Remembering an Untold Story

Joe and I attended a presentation offered through Ft. Caspar about Heart Mountain which was an internment camp. It was named after nearby Heart Mountain Butte and was one of ten internment camps used to incarcerate Japanese Americans excluded from the West Coast during World War II under the provisions of Executive Order 9066 signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The location for the center was selected because it was remote and yet convenient. The land was managed by the federal Bureau of Reclamation, which before the war had initiated a major irrigation project in the area and had already constructed canals, buildings, and some infrastructure. The site was adjacent to a railroad spur and depot where internees could be off-loaded and processed.

The little lady in the middle was the presenter who was very knowledgeable about the subject. We're planning on visiting the site sometime during the month of August.

Arthur Jacob Miller and The Pony Express

Joe and I went to a free lecture at Ft. Caspar entitled "Alfred Jacob Miller and the 1837 Rendezvous". And as an added bonus, we found out that the Pony Express rider would be stopping by the Ft. Caspar museum. So, even though we'd left the Interpretive Trails thinking we'd miss the rider, we got lucky - the lecture and the rider!

Alfred Jacob Miller was one of the first artists to document in his work the adventures of mountain men and Native Americans in the American West in the early nineteenth century. It was in New Orleans where Scottish nobleman, Capt. William Drummond Stewart, recently retired from the British Army, visited with Miller.

Steward, who sought his own adventure in the American West, asked Miller to accompany him on an expedition in 1837. Steward wanted the artist to document one of the American frontier’s most exciting gatherings of white and native people; the annual Fur Trade Rendezvous, which in 1837 was located on the Green River in present day western Wyoming. Subsequently, Miller became famous for his depictions of western inhabitants in the early nineteenth century. Miller captured in his paintings a realistic yet romantic vision of Mountain men and Native Americans interacting at the Rendezvous on the Green River. There are very few journals or diaries of participants who attended the 1837 Rendezvous; Miller’s sketches and paintings are a valuable contribution that document one of the last Fur Trade gatherings in the American history.

and they finally arrived...

Tonight Joe and I went to another lecture sponsored by the Ft. Caspar Museum. It was part of their summer lecture series which is free to the public. This was the description for tonight's presentation:

Jukeboxes and Jackalopes: A Wyoming Bar Journey" by Julianne Couch

Julianne Couch will explore bars as places of storytelling and community. Couch is an Associate Lecturer of English at the University of Wyoming. Her book, “Jukeboxes and Jackalopes: A Wyoming Bar Journey” recently won a Western Horizon award from Wyoming Writers, Inc.

Somehow along the way I never caught the part that said "A Wyoming Bar Journey". That might have changed whether Joe and I went tonight. However, if was a very fun and informative free 1 hour in the middle of the week.

This husband and wife team had a grant to visit primarily small towns which had only one bar. Bars that might be the central meeting place for the entire town. Some of the names of the bars visited were:

• Rowdy's Spirits & Bait (guess you can get drunk before fishing or after fishing and I'll bet the fish tales would get to be real whoppers!)


• Brite Spot


• Longbranch Saloon


• Double Shot


• Spotted Horse


• The (yep, that's all the name of the bar since the second word fell off years ago)


• Bill's Yacht Club. (This place is out in the middle of nowhere near no water. Why the name? Apparently years ago a truck carrying carnival rides came through town and a little metal boat for a child's ride fell off. Hence the yacht).


• Tumble Inn

There were even a couple of strange bars:

• One located in a mining town had a urinal trough that was attached to the bar. That way the bar attendees never had to leave to go to the men's room.


• One located in a hunting area was called the Bear In Bar. If you were a hunter and shot a bear, you brought the bear into the bar, had your picture taken and the bear hung out while you finished drinking.

See, you can learn something new every day. I doubt this is something I'd be speaking about in a future church talk though.

And, when they were showing pictures and they came to the town of Kaycee, I recognized one of the bartenders. She now works out at the oilfield in the lower office. Just goes to show that even out here after only 7 months, you'd better watch out cause you never know what someone may catch you doing! So Sue is now published in this book and may not even know it...yet.

Oh, and the reason for the title of the book? It seems that every bar in Wyoming has a jukebox and a whole jackalope or the head of a jackalope.

Ft. Caspar Lecture Series #1

This evening while Joe went home teaching, I attended a lecture sponsored by the Ft. Caspar Museum. It was entitled "Women Homesteaders" and was very informative. The presenters name was Marcia Meredith Hensley and she is the author of a book "Staking Her Claim: Women Homesteading the West". This is a picture of me with the author and yes, I bought a copy of her book. Hey, it sounds like a great read.

Some of the facts I found out tonight were:

• 12% of homesteaders in the west were single women who were 21-35 years of age;


• over 200,000 single women may have attempted homesteading;


• 42% of the single women "proved up" which meant they had to live on their homesteaded land for 7 out of 12 months for a total of five years; they had to build some type of house; and they had to make their land productive by growing crops or trees or irrigating the land;


• they had to be 21 years old to file for land. The oldest woman known to have filed was 63 years old in 1908.


• if a woman married before "proving" her land, it belonged to her new husband. What a bummer!!!

In Wyoming, out of 660 single women who homesteaded, 455 remained single, 192 married after filing and 13 widows did not marry. And, these were the approximate costs incurred by a new woman homesteader:

• Land filing fee - $14.00;


• $4.00 per acre to hire someone to break sod on their new land;


• $50.00 to have a shack built;


• $21.75 for a stove, furniture and tools; and


• $15.00 travel money from Minnesota to North Dakota.

Interesting, huh? I really can't wait to read her book which is filled with pictures, letters, newspaper articles, etc.

I also need to google, yahoo and/or bling the following ladies whom she mentioned:

• Elinore Pruitt Steward
• Alice Newberry
• Julia Erickson
• Ida Garvin
• Alice Hildreth Zehm
• Geraldine Lucas;
• Cecelia Weiss who wrote her adventures in "Homesteading Without a Chaperone" and;
• Florence Blake Smith who wrote about her homesteading adventure entitled "Cow Chips and Cactus".

In some ways, I almost feel like a homesteader since we've moved to Casper. Everything is new. Everything is different. Every day is an adventure it seems. When the author signed my book, she wrote..."To Carol, A modern day homesteader in Wyoming". So here I am "proving" myself and hoping I make it the five years plus.