Bullets splintered the wagon box. Arrows shredded the wagon’s canvas cover. Two pregnant women huddled together in the wagon, trying to make their toddlers lie down. The travelers in this 12-wagon train, circled against their Lakota Sioux attackers, were outnumbered 20 to one and losing fast.

Then, from the meager protection of the wagons, one of the women, eight months pregnant and impeded by her bulk, strode out into the midst of the battle. She had recognized some of the attackers—she knew them personally. She shouted at the Indians to stop their attack or her brother, their own Hunkpapa Sioux war chief, Gall, would take vengeance.

Woman Dress Lamoreaux and her relatives

At the time of the attack, the travelers were near Split Rock on the Oregon Trail, about a day’s travel west of Devil’s Gate in what’s now central Wyoming.

How did one of their attackers’ own people, Woman Dress Lamoreaux, come to be in this wagon train on the way from Fort Laramie to the South Pass area in March and April 1868? It was an atypical group: Of the 26-member party, about half were American Indians, mixed-bloods or white men who had married Indians.

In the early and mid-1800s, many white traders—often French-speaking, with roots in French Canada or the Mississippi Valley—married Cheyenne, Sioux and Shoshone women, gaining important business alliances by these unions. At least three such extended families were traveling in this wagon train.

The most prosperous member of the wagon train was Fort Laramie trader Jules Lamoreaux; five of the 12 wagons were his. Lamoreaux was born in Canada at Hyacinthe, Quebec, in 1836. He worked at Fort Laramie for James Bordeaux before opening his own store there, marrying Woman Dress in 1862. At the time of the 1868 journey to South Pass, they had two children, Lizzie and Richard, ages about 5 and 3.

The Lajeunesses

The largest group was the clan of Charles Lajeunesse, also known as Seminoe, who operated a trading post at Devil’s Gate from 1852 to 1856, and at other times and points along the Oregon Trail. Lajeunesse's grown, half-Shoshone sons, Mich, Noel and Ed, were escorting their pregnant younger sister, Louisa Lajeunesse Boyd, along with her husband, William Henry Harrison Boyd, and their daughter, Martha, approximately 3 years old. Boyd was from Tennessee and had come west in about 1859 where he worked for and was educated by Charles Lajeunesse, eventually becoming his partner, and marrying his daughter about 1864.

Mich and Noel had fought at the July 1865 Battle of Platte Bridge near present Casper, Wyo., where Mich killed High Backed Wolf, a Cheyenne chief. High Backed Wolf had killed their father a few weeks previously, and Louisa and the other Shoshone women at Platte Bridge celebrated this revenge by dancing and singing, wearing High Backed Wolf's scalp-decorated, bloodstained shirt.

The Ecoffeys

Yet another mixed-blood couple, Julia Bissonette Ecoffey, a half-Sioux, and her husband Frank Ecoffey, were also with this expedition. Julia's father, Joseph Bissonette, was a trader, government interpreter and partner of Charles Lajeunesse and William Boyd on Deer Creek about 1864. Bissonette had been in the trading business along the trails at least since 1842, when he had accompanied the explorer John C. Fremont as an interpreter from Fort Laramie to Red Buttes near present Casper. Ecoffey, a French-Swiss, arrived at Fort Laramie in 1855, clerking for Bissonette and Lajeunesse in the early 1860s. In 1865, about two years before he married Julia, he had a store at Platte Bridge and helped defend it during the battle that July.

Survival in a fast-changing world

All of these mixed-blood families had been established at Fort Laramie before deciding to move to the area of South Pass, planning to set up business near the soon-to-be-booming gold camps where significant finds had been made in 1867. Once-profitable trade with Indians and with white emigrants was waning.

The Union Pacific Railroad, building west, spawned towns and stores filled with cheap manufactured goods that cut into the traders' business. As buffalo herds dwindled, many Indians had become impoverished and were settling on the reservations, or were increasingly hostile—especially the Sioux and Cheyenne—as they chose to defend their lands. These were the years of Red Cloud’s War along the Bozeman Trail to the northeast, and of many raids and skirmishes along the Oregon and Overland trails across what’s now Wyoming.

Along with vanishing economic opportunities, mixed-race people faced a decline in their social status. At the peak of trading between whites and Indians, mixed-bloods connected the two cultures, facilitating commerce and political ties.

But more and more white newcomers despised the white men who married Indians as "squaw men" and their children as mongrels; their children belonged wholly to neither one world nor the other. These people had limited options: They could settle on a reservation, continue the losing battle for the American West alongside their full-blood Indian relatives or assimilate into white culture.

The attack on the 1868 wagon train exacerbated the uneasy situation of these mixed-blood people, so it was perhaps all the more remarkable that a full-blood Indian woman stopped it. The Lakota Sioux ceased firing and called to Woman Dress that they would talk to her if the men of the wagon train also stopped shooting. The Indians became cowed and respectful, escorting the wagon train farther along the trail before dispersing to warn off other bands of marauding Sioux.

Into the 20th century

At the end of their 300-mile, six-week journey from Fort Laramie, the Lamoreaux, Lajeunesse, Boyd and Ecoffey families camped in willows where the Oregon Trail crossed Willow Creek, a few miles east of South Pass City. The night they arrived, April 25, 1868, Woman Dress Lamoreaux gave birth to her son, named Willow.

Mich and Noel Lajeunesse, having escorted their sister Louisa and her family to their destination, returned by prior plan to Fort Laramie and their own wives and children. They lived for the rest of their lives in the Platte Valley near Fort Fetterman, on the river about 50 miles east of Platte Bridge. Their brother Ed worked as a teamster near the South Pass mines.

The Lamoreaux, Lajeunesse and Ecoffey families settled for a time in Atlantic City, four miles north of South Pass City, where feeling against Native people was high in the wake of Sioux and Arapaho attacks on the South Pass miners. Eventually they all moved to the new town of Lander, successfully integrating themselves into white culture there.

Frank Ecoffey, one of the founding fathers of Lander, became the U.S. Army beef contractor for Camp Stambaugh and Fort Brown (later Fort Washakie). Eventually he and his family moved to the Pine Ridge reservation for Sioux in South Dakota to join Julia's people.

Jules Lamoreaux was elected the second mayor of Lander, and Woman Dress, in the midst of bearing and raising their 17 children, worked to improve the town. She was so respected that when she died in 1908, at about 63, Lander businesses closed in her honor. Their eldest, Lizzie, was voted the most popular girl in Lander five years after Crazy Horse and the ferocious Gall, her uncle, defeated Custer at the Little Bighorn in 1876. Lizzie married Ed Farlow, a local cowboy, and became president of the Pioneer Association, which built and operated the Pioneer Museum, now at 1443 Main Street in Lander. In 1913, Lizzie and Ed’s mixed-blood son, Stub, was photographed riding a bucking bronc, and this image was at least one of the models for the well-known Wyoming cowboy design on automobile license plates.

Will and Louisa Lajeunesse Boyd were legally married on Feb. 15, 1873, in Atlantic City, thus conforming to the mores of white culture. Will established a large ranch and also operated a business on Main Street in Lander. The Boyds built a house in Lander and hosted the town's first interdenominational Sunday school there. Nine of their children survived infancy, and in 1908 their son Will, Jr., traveled to Washington, D.C., as part of an official Shoshone/Arapaho delegation to defend tribal property against the U.S. government. Other Boyd children became active in tribal politics. Louisa who, in her late teens, had danced in High Backed Wolf's bloody shirt, was honored as the oldest Wind River valley pioneer before she died in 1927, at approximately age 79.

Thus, these three prominent mixed-blood families gained acceptance by their dual cultures and became leaders for both; a fitting conclusion to a dangerous journey of a small wagon train, rescued by a courageous Sioux woman.

Resources

• Guenther, Todd. "Pioneers Extraordinaire: A Most Unusual Wagon Train,"Overland Journal, 18:4, (Winter 2000-2001): 3-17. Guenther's sources for the account include books, letters, manuscripts, oral histories, memoirs, and journal and newspaper articles. Guenther teaches history, anthropology and museum studies at Central Wyoming College in Riverton, Wyo., and serves on the advisory board for WyoHistory.org.
• Rea, Tom. Devil’s Gate: Owning the Land, Owning the Story. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006, pp. 39, 64-77, 100.

Illustrations

• All photos are from the collections of the Lander Pioneer Museum. Used with permission and thanks.

The trapper and mountain man Kit Carson traversed what’s now Wyoming dozens of times. Little is known of most of those trips. But of one year we have a close account—1842, when Carson guided a young Lt. John C. Frémont of the U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers up the old fur-trade caravan route to South Pass, around to the west side of the Wind River Mountains and back east by the same route.

Neither Carson nor Frémont was famous yet. Carson was in his early thirties, well known in the Rocky Mountains but unknown otherwise. Frémont, too, was little known, but already had big connections.

He had recently married 18-year-old Jessie Benton, daughter of U.S. Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri. The senator was intent on seeing the United States expand across the continent. He saw the young, ambitious Frémont, historians agree, as a tool to realize his plans. And Frémont needed Carson’s wilderness skills to get him where he needed to go.

Early life and the beaver trade

Christopher “Kit” Carson was born in Kentucky in December 1809 and moved with his family about two years later to Cooper’s Fort, near Boone’s Lick, Mo. His father died when he was 8 years old. It was a frontier life: Nearly all white adult males belonged to local militias, violence between Euro- and Native Americans was well known and stories about it were told and retold.

In 1824, Carson’s mother apprenticed him to a saddlemaker in Franklin, Missouri, near what then was the east end of the Santa Fe Trail. In August 1826, not yet 17 years old, Carson ran away from his apprenticeship and joined a trading caravan heading for Santa Fe, then still part of Mexico.

From Santa Fe he soon went to Taos, 60 miles north in the mountains, a town of 3,500 with a mix of Indian, Hispanic and a smattering of Anglo culture. Taos was a center for the beaver trade and, as it was far from Mexican customs agents, for making illegal whiskey. After three years doing odd jobs Carson joined a California-bound trapping and trading expedition led by trapper Ewing Young of Taos. They took a southern route, and after two years were back in Taos by April 1831.

Henry Inman, who knew Carson on this trip, described him in a memoir years later as “brave but not reckless . . . Under the average stature, and rather delicate-looking . . . nevertheless a quick, wiry man, with nerves of steel and possessing an indomitable will . . . full of caution, but show[ing] a coolness in the moment of supreme danger that was good to witness.”

In the fall of 1831, Carson made his first beaver hunt to the northern Rockies with a Rocky Mountain Fur Company trapping brigade led by Tom Fitzpatrick. The trip marks the beginning of Carson’s life as a full-time trapper and mountain man.

From the parks of Colorado to the headwaters of the Missouri, he worked sometimes with the big brigades and sometimes with small parties of so-called free trappers. An account of his life that Carson dictated in the mid-1850s—Carson himself could sign his name but was otherwise illiterate—is full of fights, scrapes, hard traveling and close calls from his beaver-trapping years. Around the edges, too—and unmentioned by him in the autobiography—there appears to have been a love story.

The Rocky Mountain fur-trade rendezvous in 1835 was held near the confluence of Horse Creek and the Green River in today’s Sublette County, Wyo. Here, a dispute arose between Carson and a camp bully named Chouinard. Some biographers speculate that the affections of an Arapaho girl, Waa-nibe—Singing Grass—may have been behind the friction. After Chouinard had severely beaten two or three other men, Carson confronted him. Both men mounted horses and armed themselves, Carson with a pistol and Chouinard with a rifle. At close range both guns went off. Carson’s ball hit Chouinard in the arm; Chouinard’s cut through Carson’s hair and the powder burned his eye.

Carson the family man

Carson married Waa-nibe about this time and their daughter, Adaline, was born about 1837. In the fall of 1838, Carson came down to winter in Brown’s Hole, on the Green River at the present Wyoming-Colorado-Utah border, and his biographers assume Waa-nibe and Adaline were with him.

At least one biographer believes their second baby—no name has survived for that child—was born in 1839 while Carson was traveling north to the Salmon and Yellowstone Rivers. Waa-nibe died not long afterward, probably in Brown’s Hole, most likely from difficulty connected with the birth.

On hand in 1840 at the last rendezvous, again at Horse Creek—a depressing affair as it was clear to everyone that beaver supply and prices were both collapsing—was Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, the Roman Catholic missionary. Carson recalled in his dictation that the priest baptized “forty odd children” at the event; some biographers, again without confirmation from the trapper himself, have speculated that Carson’s two daughters were among them.

In any case, Carson needed a mother for the girls. In 1841 he took a job for wages as a hunter at Bent’s Fort, on the Santa Fe Trail in present southeast Colorado, where he had long been acquainted with the proprietors and with the polyglot community there. Here he married a new wife, Making Out Road, a Cheyenne woman, on whom he appears to have depended to take care of Adaline and her sister.

Around this time Carson was still making regular trips back to Taos, and he seems to have fallen there for Josefa Jaramillo, of a prominent family herself and sister-in-law of Charles Bent, governor of New Mexico, still at the time a part of Mexico. In January 1842, Carson was baptized a Catholic at Taos, almost certainly a sign of his intentions toward Josefa. That spring, at Bent’s Fort, Making Out Road divorced him in the Cheyenne fashion, by placing all his belongings outside her tipi. Leaving the younger child with friends in Taos, he took Adaline with him to Missouri to live with his sisters and go to school.

In February 1843, he married Josefa at the parish church in Taos. She was not yet 15; he was 33. She was by some accounts taller than he, and quite beautiful. They eventually had eight children.

Frémont’s first expedition

Between the time of his trip to Missouri with Adaline and his wedding to Josefa, Carson made what he afterward regarded as the most important meeting of his life—on board the steamboat Rowena, heading back west across Missouri on the Missouri River. There he met Frémont, on the first of five exploring expeditions to the West. Frémont hired Carson on the spot to guide his expedition to the Rocky Mountains. Carson according to nearly all accounts was cautious, modest, competent and cool-headed, and in those traits quite different from the reckless, fame-seeking and erratic Frémont.

The young lieutenant’s orders were to explore the familiar fur-trade route up the Platte, North Platte and Sweetwater rivers to South Pass, taking scientific observations with an eye toward making a good map. The party included Frémont, Carson, two dozen frontiersmen and voyageurs from St. Louis and a German-born cartographer, Charles Preuss.

Near Chimney Rock on the North Platte, they met frontiersman Jim Bridger, who warned them that groups of Cheyenne and Oglala Sioux were out for retribution. These same warriors had been defeated the year before by a band of trappers and Shoshone led by Henry Fraeb, on the Little Snake River near present Baggs, Wyo. Fraeb had been killed, but the Sioux and Cheyenne had been driven off and some of them killed as well.

Carson agreed with Bridger that the threat was serious, and, at Fort Laramie, dictated a will—an action that made the voyageurs nervous. Frémont, however, chose to ignore the warning and press onward. He made a speech to some Sioux at the fort, declaring that when U.S. Army officers were ordered to do a job, they did it.

They continued up the North Platte and the Sweetwater to South Pass—a route that soon would become better known as the Oregon Trail. Ignoring his orders, Frémont continued west, across the Continental Divide—at this point he was leaving the United States and entering the Oregon country—and around to the west side of the Wind River Mountains.

He decided to climb the highest peak they could see, convinced, incorrectly, that it was the highest in the Rockies. They set up a base camp near a lake. Carson led Frémont and a smaller party upward. Frémont was stricken with dizziness and headaches—probably altitude sickness—and they had to stop.

Preuss, the cartographer, whose skeptical account always makes a useful alternative to Frémont’s romantic one, mentions a quarrel. Frémont thought Carson was walking too fast, and sent him back down to stay with the mules while naming another of the voyageurs as guide up the mountain. The rest of the party completed the climb though they had to go without food for a day or two to do so, Frémont and Carson patched up their differences and the expedition headed for home.

At Independence Rock on the Sweetwater, they inflated and launched an India rubber boat they had carried the entire trip. The Sweetwater was too shallow; they pushed, dragged and hauled the boat several miles before deflating it, loading it back onto the mules and carrying it several miles more down to the North Platte.

They found more than enough current there. Frémont proposed to take Preuss and seven other men, the choicest food, the journals and all the scientific instruments with him in the boat, and send the rest of the party overland—with Carson. Beforehand, all camped where the Sweetwater joined the North Platte. Below, they could hear the roar of the rapids.

In the canyon the next day—now called Fremont Canyon and much of it under Alcova Reservoir—the boat hit a rock and flipped; fortunately no one drowned. Many of the notebooks and most of the instruments were lost; the rock tore a hole in the boat and ruined it. The fact that Frémont sent Carson with the other party may show the quarrel had lingered—or it may show that Carson was the one he trusted best. The two parties joined up downstream from where Alcova Dam stands today, and continued down the trail.

They reached Fort Laramie in safety on August 31. Frémont and the rest continued back to Missouri, and Frémont and Preuss to Washington, D.C. Carson turned south to Taos. Frémont wrote his report that winter with substantial help from his wife, Jessie, and, together with a map drawn by Preuss of the corridor the expedition had traveled, it was delivered to the Senate in March 1843. Soon, the Senate ordered 1,000 copies printed for sale to the public.

Fame

Frémont’s exploits, combined with the vivid government reports he and Jessie wrote together, would within the next decade make him as famous as any man in America. The reports made Carson famous too, showing the scout as unfailingly heroic.

At one point on the first expedition, along the Blue River in what’s now Nebraska, the party received a report of a large band of Pawnee nearby; Carson rode off to see what was up. It turned out to be six elk, not the 27 warriors reported, but Frémont’s portrayal of the horseback Carson is a good example of the explorer’s attitude toward his friend. “Mounted on a fine horse,” Frémont wrote, “without a saddle, and scouring bareheaded over the prairies, Kit was one of the finest pictures of a horseman I have ever seen.”

Frémont’s reports also showed Carson as a man who knew American Indians well and was unafraid, when he thought it necessary, to fight them.

Descriptions like these, notes Carson biographer Tom Dunlay, “mark the real beginnings” of Carson’s fame as a frontier hero. With publication of Frémont’s reports, the scout’s fame spread quickly. Suddenly, he was more famous than any of his mountain-man peers—men like Jim Bridger and Tom Fitzpatrick, for example—who had been brigade leaders and company partners in the mountain fur trade, a status Carson never attained.

Dime novel writers latched on to Carson’s fame, churning out titles like Kit Carson, The Prince of the Gold Hunters, or, the Adventures of the Sacramento and Kiowa Charley, the White Mustanger or Kit’s Last Scalp Hunt. These accounts aimed to thrill, and were entirely fictional. In 1856 the illiterate Carson, wanting to insert some fact and truth into the equation, dictated the story of his life to a clerk. The resulting 1858 book, Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rockies, from Facts Narrated by Himself, also charges relentlessly from conflict to conflict.

The second and third expeditions

In 1843, Frémont started west again, this time on the Santa Fe Trail. Carson caught up with the expedition near present Pueblo, Colo. After exploring fruitlessly for a new pass up the Cache la Poudre River above present Fort Collins, Colo., they headed northwest, roughly following the route of modern U.S. Highway 287, through what are now Laramie and Rawlins, Wyo., and north to the Sweetwater.

From South Pass they took the route to the Columbia River already beginning to be called the Oregon Trail. But instead of heading back east as he’d been ordered, Frémont turned south along the east front of the Sierras, crossing them in winter. He may have been under secret orders to spy on California, still at the time part of Mexico. Weak and starving, the party arrived at Sutter’s Fort in March. From here they continued south through California’ central valley and turned home near present Bakersfield. They traveled northeast across deserts and mountains to Brown’s Hole and were back at Bent’s Fort in July 1844. As before, Frémont continued east; Carson returned to Taos.

After this trip, Frémont and Preuss reported to the world the existence of the Great Basin, a vast stretch of the West covering most of what are now Utah and Nevada whose waters drain neither east nor west but disappear in sinks or evaporate from salty lakes. On this trip, Frémont had risked his men’s lives more dangerously and more often than he had even on the first expedition. Carson’s competence, knowledge of the country and steady temper were crucial to their survival.

Carson met Frémont a third time in August 1845. From Bent’s Fort they headed up the Arkansas and crossed the Colorado and Green Rivers to Salt Lake—avoiding what’s now Wyoming entirely. War with Mexico was approaching; Frémont’s orders were secret and it’s still unclear what they were, but once in California his actions became steadily more military. The men of the expedition clashed with Indians on the Sacramento River and later at Klamath Lake, killing scores of tribespeople. He took part in the so-called Bear Flag revolt of Anglo settlers against Mexican authorities and eventually linked up with Commodore Robert Stockton, in charge of U.S. forces in California.

Dispatch carrier, guide, stockman

In July 1846, Stockton proclaimed California a U.S. territory and Frémont its so-called military governor. They chose Carson to carry dispatches from San Diego to Washington, D.C. In the next few years, Carson crossed the continent twice more. In Washington in the spring of 1847, he stayed with Jessie Benton Frémont at the Benton household, and visited President Polk. He visited his daughter Adaline in Missouri on his way west again and was back in California by October, in time to learn Frémont had been arrested by Gen. Stephen Watts Kearny for insubordination. Spring 1848 saw Carson traveling east from Los Angeles via Taos, again with letters for Washington. In August he stood up with Jessie Frémont at her son’s baptism. By October he was back in Taos, this time for a longer visit.

Meanwhile, the war with Mexico ended and California, New Mexico, what are now Arizona and Utah and parts of Wyoming and Colorado all were annexed by the United States. War continued, however, between New Mexican authorities and the region’s native people. In the winter of 1849, Carson guided a Taos-based detachment of dragoons against the Jicarilla Apache.

By this time Carson had established a ranch at Rayado, east of Taos, where the plains meet the mountains. In the spring of 1850, he and an old trapping friend, Tim Goodale, drove three or four dozen mules and horses north to Fort Laramie to sell. The fort was then booming with the emigrant trade—mostly men without families traveling to the gold fields of California.

Carson and Goodale drove and grazed the animals slowly along the Front Range in what’s now Colorado so they would be sleek and strong when they arrived. “We disposed of our animals to good advantage,” Carson told his interviewer in 1856.

At the fort, an old-timer or perhaps only another of tens of thousands of men bound that year for California, walked up to him and asked Carson if he was, in fact, Kit Carson.

“Well, sir. I reckon I am,” was the reply, as Carson biographer David Remley tells the story.

The man looked him carefully up and down.

“You cain’t come that over on me,” the traveler said. This plain-looking, bowlegged little man, stoop-shouldered and smaller than most, was too much of a disappointment, too different from the dime-novel hero that Carson had already become. “You ain’t the kind of Kit Carson I’m a-looking for,” the man said.

A final trapping expedition

In the spring of 1852, apparently as much for nostalgia as for profit, Carson and his longtime Taos friend Lucien Maxwell assembled a group of 18 trapper comrades from the old days for a long beaver hunt. The northern end of their route, at least, took them into what’s now Wyoming. Carson told his interviewer a few years later that they traveled and trapped north from Taos through the parks of Colorado, then down the South Platte to the plains, north to the Laramie Plains and back south to North Park, Colorado, to Middle and South parks, down the Arkansas and then turned further south, home to Rayado over Raton Pass. This was the only trapping expedition Carson ever led.

Carson’s account gives no more detail than that, and none of the names of the other trappers. But decades later, the longtime mountain man Jim Baker told the Denver Republican in 1893 that he, too, had been on the trip, as had Jim Bridger. From the Laramie Plains or perhaps from North Park, they traveled down the North Platte, according to Baker, up the Sweetwater, over to the Wind River drainage and finally wintered on the Green River. Whether they wintered at the old rendezvous grounds at Horse Creek, at Brown’s Hole or somewhere else, Baker didn’t say. In the spring they trapped along the Yampa and Little Snake Rivers, according to Baker, before returning to Rayado.

Trailing sheep

In the spring of 1853, Carson, Maxwell and another partner borrowed money and traveled to the lower Rio Grande, where they bought 6,500 churro sheep—a breed descended from Spanish stock and bred in the Southwest by the Navajo and Hopi. They trailed them north to Rayado, then along the Front Range to Fort Laramie, where they turned west to South Pass and then over the California Trail to California. Moving slowly with the grazing animals, they took six months to make the trip.

Supposedly they bought the sheep for 50 cents per head and sold them for $5.50 each—enough for Carson to buy a ranch in California for his daughter Adaline and her husband, and, once he got home, to buy Josefa a new, treadle-powered Singer sewing machine. By way of the southern route, he was back in Taos by Christmas Day, 1853.

Ute agent and soldier

He lived 15 more years, most of that time based in Taos, spending time when he could with his growing family. But his career took a modern turn: The beaver trapper and guide became a longtime government employee, first as the United States agent to the Moache Ute tribe, and then as a soldier—not an army scout, but a uniformed officer. He led Union troops against the Texas Confederate invasion of New Mexico in 1862. Later he led troops against the Navajo, and finally, in 1867, against the Kiowa and Comanche.

Carson’s campaign against the Navajo has complicated his reputation ever since. He and his troops in 1864 began rounding the people up in their heartland around Canyon de Chelly and driving them east 400 miles to a reservation on the Bosque Redondo, in eastern New Mexico. The operation took years. It was called the Long Walk—a Navajo Trail of Tears. Around a quarter of the people died on the way or in captivity.

Late in 1867, the Army asked one more task, that Carson accompany a Ute delegation to Washington, D.C. to sign a treaty taking away most of their lands in exchange for a reservation on Colorado’s western slope. By this time, his family was living at Fort Lyon, in southeastern Colorado territory. He traveled east via the new Kansas Pacific Railroad. From Washington, where he visited Frémont, the delegation continued on to New York, where Carson visited Jessie Frémont, and to Boston.

Failing fast, he was back in Colorado in time for the birth of his and Josefa’s eighth child, a daughter they named Josefita, in April 1868. Forty-year-old Josefa died two weeks later. Carson died May 28, 1868, at Fort Lyon. He was 58.

The trip with the sheep, however, appears to have been the last time Carson crossed what’s now Wyoming. Like many in his lines of work—beaver trappers, army scouts, guides, stockmen, soldiers and Indian agents—Carson was on the move in a constantly changing West.

Resources

Primary Sources

• Frémont, John Charles. Narratives of Exploration and Adventure. Allan Nevins, ed. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1956.
• ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­___________________. Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 1842, and to Oregon and North California in the Years 1843-1844. Washington, D.C.: Gale and Seaton, Printers, 1845. Accessed Nov. 11, 2015, at https://books.google.com/books?id=5TI5AQAAMAAJ&source=gbs_book_similarbook.
• Preuss, Charles. Exploring with Frémont: The Private Diaries of Charles Preuss, Cartographer for John C. Frémont, on his First, Second and Fourth Expeditions to the Far West. Translated and Edited by Erwin G. and Elisabeth K. Gudde. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1958.

Secondary Sources

• Dunlay, Tom. Kit Carson and the Indians. Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 2000.
• Rea, Tom. Devil’s Gate: Owning the Land, Owning the Story. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006. Chapter 3, “The Pathfinder’s Lost Instruments,” 34-52.
• Remley, David. Kit Carson: Life of an American Border Man. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 2011.
• Van Pelt, Lori. Dreamers and Schemers: Profiles from Carbon County, Wyoming’s Past. Glendo, Wyo.: High Plains Press, 1999. 19, 21. In her biographical sketch of Jim Baker, Van Pelt cites “Jim Baker in Town,” Denver Republican, June 8, 1893 as a source for Baker’s account of the long beaver hunt led by Carson in 1852.

Illustrations

• The photos of Horse Creek and South Pass are by Tom Rea. The dime novel cover is from the Library of Congress, used with thanks. The 1849 Wilkins sketch of Fort Laramie is item number WHS-3935 from the Wisconsin Historical Society, used with permission and thanks. The rest of the photos are from Wikipedia, with thanks.

Late one afternoon in July 1864, a party of American Indians rode up to a small wagon train on the Oregon Trail and, using signs, asked in a friendly way for something to eat. The emigrant party consisted of only 11 people in five wagons. They gave the Indians bread, sugar and tobacco, which seemed to please them, and the tribesmen joined the pioneers on their journey.

As sundown neared, the emigrants discovered the party had grown: Now there were 80 or 100 Indians among them. The Indians asked for supper and indicated they would leave afterwards. The emigrants complied and when they found a likely campsite near Little Box Elder Creek, pulled in for the night. They were on the trail about 120 miles northwest of Fort Laramie, in what’s now Converse County, Wyoming.

These emigrants were extremely well supplied. They were, primarily, two families, the Kellys and the Larimers, who had known each other well in eastern Kansas and were headed now for the new gold camps of western Montana Territory—Virginia City and Bannack.

According to a damage claim filed later, the Kelly family alone was carrying 2,500 pounds of flour, 500 pounds of coffee, 500 pounds of dried fruit, dry goods, “ready made clothing” and three 15-gallon kegs of liquor. They planned to stock a store or hotel to cater to the Montana miners. They also planned to start a dairy, and were driving, in addition to the oxen that pulled their wagons, 50 milk cows and 25 calves.

Josiah and Fanny Kelly were traveling with their adopted daughter, Mary, 7 years old; two hired men, Andy and Franklin Sullivan, father and son, African-Americans and ex-Cherokee slaves; a single man named Gardner Wakefield and “the Rev. Mr. Sharp,” as Fanny Kelly described him later. Andrew Sharp was an aged Methodist pastor, nearly blind but with his own wagon. The Kellys had met him on the trail a few weeks before.

Traveling with the Kellys were William and Sarah Larimer, their son Frank, 8, and a hired wagon driver, Noah Daniel Taylor. Both families had left Kansas in mid-May. The Larimers had traveled for two weeks with a much larger train, and then joined the Kellys on the trail. Sarah Larimer was a commercial photographer; the Larimers were carrying photographic equipment apparently in hopes of setting up a studio in the mining camps.

Stage and freight traffic bound for Oregon, Utah or California by this time moved primarily on the Overland Trail across what’s now southern Wyoming; much of the Euro-American traffic on the older so-called Oregon Trail across what’s now central Wyoming that year was, like the Kellys and Larimers, headed for Montana.

The Bridger and Bozeman trails left the Oregon Trail and headed northwest toward Montana through Indian lands. The tribes were incensed about these new developments. No one had consulted them. Relations with whites were bad and before the year was out would get much worse.

The warriors who joined the Larimers and Kellys that afternoon were mostly Oglala Sioux, with a scattering also from Hunkpapa, Yankton and Blackfoot Sioux bands. The Oglala, especially, would oppose white travel along the Bozeman route and the U.S. Army soldiers sent to protect it in the coming years, in what came to be called Red Cloud’s War.

But the Kellys and Larimers appear to have been unaware of these tensions. At road ranches and trading posts farther east along the trail, they had heard only ridicule of the Indians’ war-making abilities and assurances the road was safe. “We have not had any trouble with the Indians yet,” Noah Taylor, the wagon driver, had written home from Fort Laramie a week earlier. “They appear to be friendly.”

So on that ill-fated evening in July 1864, the Larimers, the Kellys and their hired men busied themselves unhitching teams, building fires, pulling food from wagons and gathering wood.

The attack

No one was looking when the warriors raised their guns and bows. The Rev. Sharp, Taylor the wagon driver, and Franklin the younger ex-slave fell dead at the first volley.

Wounded, William Larimer and Wakefield, the single man, hobbled off as quickly as they could. Josiah Kelly, unarmed and cut off from his family, dove into the brush in a nearby ravine, and the warriors did not go after him.

Just then, another wagon appeared over the ridge from the east. The Indians killed an outrider; the man and woman in the wagon managed to turn the team quickly and, with their small child, escaped back the way they had come.

In camp, the warriors began plundering the Kelly and Larimer wagons, leaving “flower sacs & feather beds riped open & all emptied out on the ground to gather trunks & boxes thrown out of the wagons & broken open & robed & what they could not carry off destroyed there on the ground then they packed their ponies …” Fanny Kelly wrote later. She and her adopted daughter Mary were placed on one horse, Sarah Larimer and her son Frank on another, and the whole party started off for a large village to the north, in the Powder River country.

That night, with her mother’s help, little Mary as she is called in the accounts, managed to slip away. Fanny Kelly, too, escaped, but the Indians found her and angrily brought her back into the group. In the darkness, they continued north and crossed the North Platte, perhaps about where the Dave Johnston Power Plant, east of Glenrock, Wyo., is now.

Little Mary made her way back a short way along the trail, and probably slept by the creek that night. In the morning, she was seen on distant bluffs by three soldiers traveling the trail. Having passed the scene of the attack, the soldiers were nervous. They feared she was being shown to them as decoy for an ambush, and so took a roundabout route and lost sight of her. Four Indians dashed up; the soldiers dismounted and fired, and the Indians kept their distance after that. Mary was found dead on the trail the next day by a party of emigrants. She had been shot with arrows, tomahawked and scalped.

The aftermath

After just two nights, Sarah Larimer and young Frank escaped their captors with the help of a friendly Indian in the band and made their way back to the trading post at Deer Creek, site of present Glenrock.

Fanny Kelly, however, was in captivity five more months, “enduring,” writes trails historian and retired schoolteacher Randy Brown, “many hardships.” Josiah Kelly commissioned various Indian men to go out solo to the villages to find her, but with no luck.

Fanny’s release was finally arranged by some of the Blackfoot Sioux, who were looking to make a separate peace. She was turned over in December to the Army at Fort Sully on the Missouri River in what’s now South Dakota, and Josiah rejoined her there in February 1865.

Gardner Wakefield, meanwhile, lingered at the Deer Creek post in steadily failing health, and finally died of his wounds eight months after the attack.

Josiah and Fanny returned to eastern Kansas and started a hotel in Ellsworth. He died there of cholera in July 1867. Fanny gave birth to a son the following month. Nearly penniless, she made her way to the new railroad town of Sherman Station, on the Union Pacific Railroad at the summit of the Laramie Range between Cheyenne and Laramie. There, the Larimers had set up a photography studio.

Fanny and Sarah Larimer agreed that they would jointly write a book about the attack and their experiences in captivity; Fanny by this point apparently had already written a manuscript of some length. Sarah took that manuscript with her to Philadelphia, where she found a publisher and published the book under her name alone. Fanny sued the Larimers and in 1874 won a judgment of $285.50. The Larimers appealed, and finally settled for an undisclosed amount.

In the intervening years, however, Fanny continued working to advance her interests. She published an account of her own, Narrative of My Captivity among the Sioux Indians, which sold very well. She traveled to Washington, D.C., to press Congress to pass a bill compensating her for her losses in the attack. Congress eventually granted her $10,000. She invested in Washington real estate, married again in 1880, bought a mansion in Maryland in 1893 and died a wealthy woman in 1904, at the age of 59.

The graves

The day after the attack, the bodies of the Rev. Sharp, Noah Taylor, the hired man Franklin and the rider who came late to the scene of the attack were buried on the west side of Little Box Elder Creek by members of an wagon train that had been traveling a day or so behind the Kellys and Larimers.

The travelers placed a buffalo robe over the four corpses and, and, after some discussion about whether it was proper to bury a black man together with the white men, buried them all in a single, wide grave.

“Poor Franklin had shared death with our companions,” Fanny Kelly wrote years later, “and was not deemed unworthy to share the common grave of his fellow victims.” The emigrants mounded the grave with dirt and rocks. Sometime later the grave was marked with wooden markers identifying the dead.

West of the crossing, near the crest of the divide between Little Box Elder and Box Elder creeks, Mary was buried just south of the trail. Her father marked the grave with a wooden headboard. The wooden markers did not last long, and the graves were more or less forgotten.

In 1945, trails enthusiast W.W. Morrison of Cheyenne became interested in the events of the attack and with his daughter, Wanda, began spending part of each summer researching on Little Box Elder Creek. He found the larger grave near the crossing in the creek bottom. Near the crest of the next rise to the west, he found what he thought must be Mary’s grave. Morrison marked both spots with wooden markers and for many years returned each summer to make sure they were in good shape.

In 1954, a small dam, which would flood the trail crossing and the grave of the four men, was built across Little Box Elder Creek about 100 yards below the crossing. L.C. Bishop, Wyoming state engineer—that is, the state’s chief water-law officer—arranged to move the remains of the four men. Bishop had grown up on a ranch on nearby La Prele Creek and knew the area well. The remains of the men—parts of four skulls, a lower jaw, and miscellaneous other bones—were wrapped in a blanket, tied with baling wire and reburied near what Morrison believed to be Mary Kelly’s grave. All were marked with new markers; Bishop and Morrison spoke at a dedication ceremony May 30, 1954.

Late in 1954, the Wyoming Historical Landmark Commission put up a stone marker on U.S. Highway 20-26 a few miles north of the gravesites, naming the emigrants and the date of their deaths. When Interstate 25 was built in the early 1960s, the monument was removed and spent nearly 25 years in so-called storage under a tree in Guernsey State Park.

In 1966, members of the Wyoming State Historical Society together with Chicago businessman John H. Wiggins, a first cousin of Mary Kelly, erected a chain-link fence around the graves.

Finally, thanks to the efforts of Randy Brown of the Oregon-California Trails Association and Bruce Nichols of the Wyoming State Historic Preservation Office, the monument was re-erected at a turnout on I-25 about two miles west of the Natural Bridge exit, where it remains today.

By the mid-2000s, the 1960s fence around the graves was falling down. With the help of local trail enthusiasts and two of his students, Brown replaced the fence.

Resources

• Brown, Randy. “Attack on the Kelly-Larimer Wagon Train.” Overland Journal 5, no. 1 (Winter 1987): 16-40.
• ­­____________. Email to WyoHistory.org, Jan. 13, 2016.
• Wyoming State Historic Preservation Office. “Kelley Larimer Massacre Site and the Mary Hurley Grave.” Emigrant Trails throughout Wyoming. Accessed Jan. 15, 2016 at http://wyoshpo.state.wy.us/trailsdemo/kelly-larimer.htm.

For further reading and research:

• Kelly, Fanny. Narrative of My Captivity Among the Sioux Indians. Chicago: R. R. Donelley and Sons, 1891. First published 1871. Accessed Jan. 12, 2016, at https://books.google.com/books?id=wn8TAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Illustrations

The portrait of Fanny Kelly and the illustration of the wagon train attack are both from her book, Narrative ofMy Captivity Among the Sioux Indians, first published in 1871. The portrait came to us via Find A Grave, and the attack scene via Historynet. Used with thanks.

In December 1892, a tug-of-war between Wyoming Democrats and Republicans resulted in a tense standoff in the governor’s office. Two men claimed to be the state’s top official. The deep-seated conflict carried over into the state’s legislative session. The divide between lawmakers that year was so great that they failed to elect a U.S. Senator, leaving Wyoming with only one senator for the next two years.

The effects of the Johnson County War the previous April, when vigilantes invaded Johnson County and murdered two men in an ill-fated attempt to put a stop to cattle rustling, still resonated with the public. The events occurred in the spring, but became the significant issue during the fall campaign. Would that conflict and its aftermath lead to violence in the capital city?

A Dec. 6, 1892, report in the Cheyenne Daily Sun showed the strain:

No proclamations yesterday. Armed men on both sides of the big hallway at the state house. Armed men in the ‘office’ of the pseudo governor. Armed men with Private Secretary Repath in the office of the acting governor. Armed men with Chief Clerk Meldrum in the office of the secretary of state. No trouble. No sign of trouble. No loud talking. Plenty of quiet, earnest consultation.

Democrat John E. Osborne of Rawlins, elected on Nov. 8, 1892, to fill the vacancy in the office created when the first elected governor of Wyoming, Francis E. Warren, resigned to become U.S. Senator, engaged a notary public to give him the oath of office on Dec. 2, 1892. Osborne issued a proclamation that he was now the governor and set up shop in the governor’s office.

However, Acting Governor Amos W. Barber, a Republican, who had been ill that day, issued a proclamation on December 3 asserting that Osborne had “by stealth and force effected an entrance into the capitol building at Cheyenne” and had attempted to declare himself elected and assume the powers of the office of governor, in “direct violation of the constitution and laws of the state.” Barber, as secretary of state, had become the acting governor in 1890, when Warren resigned from the position.

The Sun reported that Osborne had snuck into the office through a window that had been forced open. Modern-day historians doubt the likelihood of this version of events, attributing it to Republican propaganda. Osborne, the Republican-leaning Sun stated, had been “provided with a pistol and ammunition,” and Barber had allowed a bed to be taken in to him.

Barber’s private secretary, R.H. Repath, made sure the office remained locked and kept the keys. The crowd that night “swelled to enormous proportions,” according to the Sun, and officials and lawmen remained on hand. But by 2 a.m., the “scene wore a decidedly peaceful aspect.”

Post-invasion politics

Violence did not break out in Cheyenne, but the Johnson County War continued to generate newspaper headlines because the trial of the invaders was yet to be scheduled. And in 1892 and 1893, the political stakes were high.

The invasion was “the major issue in the 1892 election,” according to historian T.A. Larson, and while it “was not a Republican project,” he explains, “many citizens associated the big cattlemen with the Republican party.” Democratic newspapers often referred to “The Republican Ring Gang of Cattle Barons of Cheyenne.”

That perception certainly plagued Sen. Warren, whose term would expire in March 1893. He wanted to continue representing Wyoming in Washington, but his arid-lands bill had also been a campaign issue in the state, where Democrats opposed a policy they felt would “permit a ‘land steal’ by large corporations,” according to Larson.

Republican U.S. Sen. Joseph Carey’s term would not expire until 1895. Osborne, a Democrat, could sway members of the Legislature to elect a Democrat to Warren’s senatorial post, especially likely if the Legislature contained more Democrats than Republicans. During the campaign, Democrats had “fused” with Populists, at that time reaching the peak of their power across the nation. Populists supported the free coinage of silver and the interests of small farmers and opposed the power of banks and railroads. Although the Populists weren’t a large force in Wyoming politics, there were enough in the Legislature to make a significant difference that year.

In his book Wyoming Range War, historian and attorney John W. Davis states that the “most important responsibility” of the Legislature was to elect a U.S. Senator, but writes, “As noble as the prize might be, the attempts to obtain it were correspondingly ignoble.” Davis explains, “The effort to select a Wyoming senator in 1893 was a travesty, surely one of the lowest points in the state’s political history. The Republicans did everything they could to undercut the selection of a senator, but they would never have succeeded without the thoroughgoing political incompetence of the Democrats and Populists.”

Distrust, delays and decisions

Osborne originally hailed from Vermont and, after earning his medical degree at the University of Vermont, came to Rawlins in 1881 as a Union Pacific surgeon and practiced with local physician Thomas Maghee. A couple of years later, Osborne had been elected to the Territorial Assembly but did not serve because he had to leave the territory. He did serve as Rawlins’ mayor in 1888 after being elected to that position.

He owned a pharmacy and raised sheep, as well as participating in other businesses, and these enterprises made him wealthy. In July 1892, delegates to the contentious Democratic convention in Rock Springs, Wyo., finally chose him as their nominee for governor on the 37^th ballot. At one point, he had withdrawn his name, but delegates convinced him to stay the course. The party platform condemned the actions of the invaders of Johnson County and supported the policy of fusion with Populists.

During the campaign, Osborne traveled thousands of miles throughout the state by buckboard. He defeated Laramie banker Edward Ivinson, a Republican, in the November 1892, election by a vote of 9,290 to 7,509. Wyoming historian Phil Roberts says, “Ivinson did not have the taint of Warren’s operations nor was he close to Carey and apparently believed that he would be able to escape ‘punishment’ in the polls by those facts.” But it did not work that way.

Osborne attempted to assume the duties of governor a month before the constitutionally set time—the first Monday in January following a general election—because Democrats were concerned that Republicans would try to sway election results in their favor so that the Legislature would elect Warren to another term as U.S. Senator. Osborne argued that no state canvassing board was authorized to decide the gubernatorial election and the county canvassing boards showed that he had been elected to the office and was “duly qualified,” and thus, could take office. He accused Amos Barber of being guilty of usurpation of the office.

But as historian Larson notes, Osborne “had a comic-opera time of it.” Legal haggling continued during the months of November and December 1892, and the questions soon came before the Wyoming Supreme Court. Among them were concerns about the assumption of offices after special elections held to fill vacancies—as opposed to after general elections—and the accuracy of decisions by canvassing boards. Attorney Willis Van Devanter, as the state chairman of the Republican Party and an ally of Warren’s, interceded in county canvasses that had questionable results and could affect the political balance of the Legislature. According to historian Lewis Gould, Van Devanter’s plan was to “make the opposition decidedly weary” of all the litigation.

Races were contested in Converse, Fremont and Carbon counties. In Carbon County, the Hanna returns stood out: The precinct was not listed and the polling list had not been signed. If the clerk did not accept the returns, two Democrats would not be elected to the House. Republican County Clerk S.B. Ross canvassed the returns with two justices of the peace, one Republican and one Democrat. They voted two to one accept the Hanna returns. Van Devanter, though, argued that the clerk should have more power than the other two men on the board.

A vote canvass and an appeal

Osborne set Dec. 5, 1892, as the date that a state canvassing board would convene to review all the county votes, but when he arrived at the secretary of state’s office, the doors were locked. The other members of the state canvassing board of officers elected by voters statewide—state auditor, state treasurer and secretary of state—were all Republicans. Acting Governor Barber was also acting as secretary of state in this capacity, and Democrats distrusted him and viewed him as a sympathizer with the Johnson County invaders. He had set a Dec. 8, 1892, date for the canvass.

On that day, members of all three parties—Republicans, Democrats and Populists—were present. Davis writes, “The all-Republican canvassing board accepted every one of Willis Van Devanter’s arguments; the only delay was so that the board was sure of getting Francis Warren’s instructions right.” The board accepted the Carbon County results without the Hanna returns included and ruled that only Acting Governor Barber could issue certificates of election—something that the Democrats had hoped to avoid by having Osborne assume the gubernatorial position.

The Democrats sought a ruling by the Wyoming Supreme Court, which took the case on an expedited basis. Justices listened to oral arguments in mid-December and issued a decision on Dec. 31, 1892. The all-Republican court gave equal power to the three men on the Carbon County canvassing board and allowed the Hanna returns to be included in the final count. Democrats S.B. Bennett and Harry Chapman were elected to the House from Carbon County.

In the decision the justices noted, “The rights of the people in choosing their officers are certainly safer in the hands of three persons, of different political parties when practicable, than in the hands of one man.” The other questionable elections—in Converse and Fremont counties—the court left to the Legislature to decide.

Acting Governor Amos W. Barber issued a pardon to state penitentiary inmate James Moore on Dec. 28, 1892. The question of its validity brought another case before the Wyoming Supreme Court.

An unusual inauguration

John E. Osborne’s Jan. 2, 1893, inauguration was “exceedingly unostentatious,” according to a report in the Cheyenne Daily Sun. Osborne named Democrat Charles P. Hill, a Rawlins attorney, as his private secretary. Hill had been one of the men who served on the Carbon County canvassing board. The Leader reported that Barber officially transferred the office to Osborne at 2 p.m.

While the inaugural formalities were perhaps simple in nature and the newspaper articles did not mention his attire, Osborne apparently wore shoes made from the skin of outlaw Big Nose George, who had been lynched in Rawlins in 1881 after murdering a deputy. Osborne and another local physician, Thomas Maghee, had claimed the outlaw’s body for medical study and skinned the corpse, giving the skullcap to Maghee’s young protégée, Lillian Heath. Osborne had the shoes and a medical bag made from the hide.

The Wyoming Supreme Court ruled on Jan. 17, 1893, that Osborne’s attempt to assume his official duties in December was “premature and invalid.” The pardon of James Moore, which had been issued by Acting Governor Barber, was deemed valid and Moore was set free. The justices debated various constitutional issues including the timing of the governor taking office after an election, whether a special or general election, and the determination of the state canvassing board.

The men who decided the case—Herman V.S. Groesbeck, chief justice; Asbury B. Conaway, associate justice; and Jesse Knight, district judge of the Third Judicial District—were all Republicans. Conaway and Knight had served as members of the Constitutional Convention in 1889. The justices asked Knight to hear the case and help determine the outcome because newly elected Justice Gibson Clark, a Democrat, whose term began in January 1893, had excused himself. He had been nominated for the court at the Democratic convention when John Osborne was nominated as a gubernatorial candidate, and he had served as attorney for A.L. New, the state Democratic chairman.

Second Wyoming Legislature: “a dismal failure”

After this inauspicious start, Osborne, a bachelor who was in his early 30s and acknowledged as the nation’s youngest governor in some press reports, endured a term with a deadlocked legislature. The members decided the Converse and Fremont county races in favor of the Democrats. State Sen. John N. Tisdale, Johnson County Republican, Johnson County invader and by now a resident of Salt Lake City, was removed by a majority vote. The Legislature now totaled 48: Republicans 22, Democrats 21 and Populists 5.

The legislative session was, according to historian Gould, “bitter, faction-ridden and indecisive.” Thirty-one attempts to elect a U.S. Senator failed. Warren realized early on that the votes were too fragmented for him to win the seat. During one ballot, Democrat John Charles Thompson, Sr., a Cheyenne attorney fell one vote short of earning election. Democrats accused Republicans of bribing the man who refused to vote for Thompson. Other “intrigues” occurred, including the alleged poisoning of a Sen. James Kime’s cocktail—he sickened, but did not die—and the censure of Sen. L. Kabis, accused of tampering with the drink.

Gov. Osborne decided not to attend the inauguration of President Grover Cleveland in Washington, D.C., a Democrat, because Republican Amos Barber, who had returned to his original position as Wyoming’s secretary of state, would again serve as acting governor during Osborne’s absence. The risk that Barber might appoint a Republican to the Senate was too great for Osborne feel safe leaving the state.

The Democratic Cheyenne Daily Leader labeled the state’s second legislative session “a dismal failure.” A bill to eliminate the Wyoming Live Stock Commission did not pass, and $23,000 appropriated by the senators for prosecution expenses for the trial of the cattlemen did not reach the House before its adjournment, so that did not become law either. However, Osborne used his veto power to strike down a $12,000 appropriation for the Wyoming Live Stock Commission, which angered cattlemen “offended by suffering real consequences for their actions,” according to Davis.

Two years without a senator

A few days after the Wyoming legislative session ended, Osborne, under the powers granted him by the state’s constitution, appointed a Democrat, A.C. Beckwith to the U.S. Senate. Gould explains that Osborne thus hoped to placate A.L. New, state Democratic Party chairman, who had sought the seat, and John Charles Thompson, who had come near to being elected.

The U.S. Senate met in special session in March that year, but tabled a resolution that would have begun the confirmation process. Historian Gould explains, “The Senate questioned the power of a governor to fill a vacancy left by the failure of the legislature to act, and Beckwith’s case, like that of several other senators appointed from western states, was referred to a committee for investigation.”

After several months without action taken, Beckwith submitted his resignation in July 1893, apparently mostly over patronage issues with New. New convinced Osborne to appoint him, but the governor was understandably reluctant to call a special joint session of the Wyoming Legislature to decide the matter.

According to the 1974 edition of the Wyoming Blue Book, the U.S. Senate convened in regular session in early August, and Beckwith’s resignation was received before the resolution about his appointment was to be considered. Had had the resignation not been submitted before the resolution, the Senate might have confirmed Beckwith. Instead, during the years 1893-1895, Wyoming had only one U.S. senator, Joseph Carey, instead of the two allowed for the state.

Osborne’s later political career

In 1896, Osborne declined the nomination for governor, accepting instead the opportunity to run instead for Congress. He won, defeating Republican Frank W. Mondell by just 266 votes. In 1897-1899, Osborne served as Wyoming’s lone congressional representative with Republican U.S. senators Francis E. Warren and Clarence D. Clark.

In 1898, Osborne tried for a U.S. Senate seat, but lost to Clark. Warren and Clark continued to represent Wyoming in that capacity.

However, Osborne remained active in politics on the national level for many years. From 1900 to 1920, he served as a member of the Democratic National Committee. He enjoyed traveling and while visiting the eastern Mediterranean in 1906, he met Selina Smith of Princeton, Ky., and was immediately smitten.

On his passport application the previous year, he had listed his date of birth as June 19, 1860, although many sources report he was born in 1858. She was more than 20 years younger than he, but they were engaged soon after they met.

They were married Nov. 2, 1907, at Selina’s parents’ house. They honeymooned in New York, Tahiti and Denver before returning to Rawlins. The couple had a daughter, Jean Curtis, in 1908.

In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Osborne as first assistant secretary of state under William Jennings Bryan, a longtime friend of Osborne’s. Bryan resigned in 1915 because he disagreed with Wilson’s war policy. Osborne served until December 1915.

In 1918, Osborne once again ran for the U.S. Senate against Francis E. Warren. By this time, the U.S. Constitution had been amended to allow voters rather than state legislators to choose senators. Historian Hugh Ridenour explains that Warren, 75, had planned to retire, but when two Republican candidates, John W. Hay and Frank Mondell, campaigned extensively and then decided Warren’s experience was needed instead, Warren entered the race and they withdrew.

Democrats nominated Osborne. Ridenour states the campaign was “typically acrimonious” and Republicans hounded Osborne about his premature attempt to become Wyoming’s governor in 1892. Osborne lost by more than 6,400 votes.

Traveling and business interests in Rawlins kept Osborne busy after that. Selina Osborne died March 2, 1942, at 59. John Osborne died April 24, 1943, in Rawlins, after having suffered a heart attack. He had served for many years as chairman of the board of the Rawlins National Bank, which closed for a half day to honor him when his funeral was held. Both Osborne and his wife were buried in the family mausoleum in Cedar Hill Cemetery in Princeton, Ky. Their daughter died in 1951.

Osborne had served as Wyoming’s top officer during one of its most tumultuous and least productive legislative terms. His eagerness to take the gubernatorial office is perhaps the most remembered aspect of his political career, but despite that controversial move, he continued to represent the state on the national level in highly respected positions for many years.

Resources

Primary sources

• Newspapers found at Wyoming Newspapers online:
  Carbon County Journal, “Governor Osborne.” Dec. 10, 1892, 3.
  Carbon County Journal, “The Winners Named,” July 30, 1892, 2.
  Cheyenne Daily Sun,“Has Been No Change,” Dec. 6, 1892, 3.
  Cheyenne Daily Sun,“Usurpation--John E. Osborne Boldly Attempts to Seize the Office of Governor,” Dec. 3, 1892, 3.
  Cheyenne Daily Sun,“Pretender on Deck,” Dec. 4, 1892, 3.
  Cheyenne Daily Sun,“As Ordained at the Polls” Jan. 3, 1893, 3.
  Cheyenne Daily Leader, “Under Difficulty—Conversations Carried on Through a Door,” Dec. 6, 1892, 3.
  Cheyenne Daily Leader, “Again Inaugurated,” Jan. 3, 1893, 3.
  Cheyenne Daily Leader,“Peculiar Conduct, “Jan. 3, 1893, 2.
  Cheyenne Daily Leader, Feb. 19, 1893, “End of the Session,” 2.
  Above listed newspapers found at Wyoming Newspapers. Accessed throughout January 2016, at http://newspapers.wyo.gov.)
• “Dr. John E. Osborne Buried This Morning,” Carbon County News, April 29, 1943.
• “Dr. John E. Osborne Dies in Memorial Hospital,” Rawlins Republican-Bulletin, April 27, 1943.
• Hill, C. P. Public Papers, Messages and Proclamations of Hon. John E. Osborne, Governor of Wyoming 1893-4, Together with Some Public Addresses and Correspondence of Interest. Cheyenne: 1894. Osborne Collection, Carbon County Museum, Rawlins, Wyo.
• House Journal of the State Legislature of Wyoming. 1899, 119. Accessed Jan. 26, 2106, at https://books.google.com.
• “In Memoriam—John Eugene Osborne 1858-1943.” Annals of Wyoming 15, no. 3, (July 1943), 279-280. Accessed Jan. 23, 2016, at https://archive.org/details/annalsofwyom15141943wyom.
• “Mrs. John E. Osborne Dies in Kentucky,” Rawlins Republican-Bulletin, March 4, 1942.
• McBride, J.F. “John E. Osborne, Governor of Wyoming.” Typewritten manuscript, 1894. Osborne Collection, Carbon County Museum, Rawlins, Wyo.
• Osborne Collection, Carbon County Museum. Collection includes a massive 200-page scrapbook filled with newspaper clippings about Osborne’s political career, the shoes, the brand, medical items, a desk and a curio cabinet as well as some correspondence and photographs.
• U.S. Passport Applications, 1795-1925, record for John E. Osborne, from Ancestry.com. Application No. 97972, dated Jan. 30, 1905. Osborne Collection, Carbon County Museum, Rawlins, Wyo.
• Wyoming Constitution, Art. 6, Sec. 17. “Time of holding general and special elections; when elected officers to enter upon duties.” Accessed Jan. 26, 2016, at http://www.uwyo.edu/robertshistory/wyoming_constitution_full_text.htm.
• ­­­­­­_________________, Art. 6, Sec. 16. “When officers to hold over; suspension of officers.” Accessed Jan. 26, 2016, at http://www.uwyo.edu/robertshistory/wyoming_constitution_full_text.htm.
• Wyoming Reports, In Re Moore 1892, 113. Accessed Jan. 14, 2016, at https://books.google.com.
• Wyoming Reports, State ex rel Bennett v. Barber 1892, 78. Accessed Jan. 23, 2016, at https://books.google.com.

Secondary sources

• Davis, John W. Wyoming Range War. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010, 227-246, 255-270.
• Drake, Kerry. Francis E. Warren: A Massachusetts Farm Boy Who Changed Wyoming. WyoHistory.org. Accessed Jan. 20, 2016, at http://www.wyohistory.org/essays/francis-e-warren-massachusetts-farm-boy-who-changed-wyoming.
• Find a Grave. “John Eugene Osborne.” Accessed Jan. 14, 2016, at http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=Osborne&GSfn=John&GSbyrel=all&GSdy=1943&GSdyrel=in&GSob=n&GRid=7182235&df=all&.
• Georgen, Cynde. John B. Kendrick: Cowboy, Cattle King, Governor and U.S. Senator. WyoHistory.org. Accessed Jan. 20, 2016, at http://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/john-kendrick.
• Gould, Lewis. Wyoming: A Political History 1868-1896. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1968, 159-196.
• Larson, T. A. History of Wyoming, 2d ed., rev. Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1978. 284-290.
• Ridenour, Hugh. “John E. Osborne: A Real ‘Character’ from the Old West.” Annals of Wyoming: The Wyoming History Journal, Summer 2008, 2-16.
• Roberts, Phil. University of Wyoming history professor. Email to author, Jan. 18, 2016.
• Trenholm, Virginia Cole, ed. Wyoming Blue Book, vol. 2. Cheyenne, Wyo.: Wyoming State Archives and Historical Department, 1974.
• Van Pelt, Lori. Big Nose George: A Grisly Frontier Tale. WyoHistory.org. Accessed Jan. 20, 2016, at http://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/big-nose-george-grisly-frontier-tale.
• ___________. Dreamers and Schemers: Profiles from Carbon County, Wyoming’s Past. Glendo, Wyo.: High Plains Press, 1999, 113-120.
• ___________. Lillian Heath: Wyoming’s First Female Physician Packed a Pistol. WyoHistory.org. Accessed Jan. 20, 2016, at http://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/lillian-heath.
• ___________. Willis Van Devanter: Cheyenne Lawyer and U.S. Supreme Court Justice. WyoHistory.org. Accessed Jan. 20, 2016, at http://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/willis-van-devanter-cheyenne-lawyer-and-us-supreme-court-justice.
• Wyoming State Archives. John Osborne. WyoHistory.org. http://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/john-osborne.
• ____________________. Wyoming Postscripts. “Wyoming’s Bachelor Governor: Dr. John E. Osborne.” June 19, 2015. Accessed Jan. 15, 2016, at https://wyostatearchives.wordpress.com/2015/06/19/wyomings-bachelor-governor-dr-john-e-osborne/.

Field Trips

The shoes John Osborne wore when he was inaugurated as Wyoming’s governor are displayed today at the Carbon County Museum in Rawlins near his livestock brand—the skull and crossbones. For many years, he had displayed the shoes in a glass case in the lobby of the Rawlins National Bank. A massive 200-page scrapbook kept in the museum collections contains numerous newspaper articles about his political career. His private secretary, C.P. Hill, compiled many of Osborne’s proclamations and messages as governor into a book, which is also part of the museum collections. See below for details on visiting the museum.

Illustrations

• The photos of Francis E. Warren and Selina Smith Osborne are from the Wyoming State Archives. Used with permission and thanks.
• The rest of the photos are from the collections of the Carbon County Museum. Used with permission and thanks. Museum Registrar Corinne Gordon advises us that though Osborne’s auto was often claimed to be first one in Rawlins, that was not the case. The former governor was the first in Rawlins to order a car, and local newspapers reported his order. But the factory burnt down, shipment was delayed and a different auto arrived in town first. That car, however, did not work well. Osborne’s was the first car in good working order in Rawlins, thanks, says Gordon, to mechanic D.C. Kinnaman.

Editor's note: This article was written by Carolynne Harris, consultant, in collaboration with and for the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Fossil Energy.

Part 1 of 2 (Read Part 2 here)

In 1922, Wyoming was invaded by the U.S. Marines. Four marines, to be exact. They were dispatched by Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., and joined by a few officials of the Department of the Interior and some Denver newspapermen to remove—at gunpoint, if necessary—an oil prospector’s crew from U.S. Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 3, better known then and now as Teapot Dome.

The Teapot Dome Oilfield lies in northern Natrona County, Wyoming, about 25 miles north of Casper. The field is six miles east of Teapot Rock, an eroded sandstone formation that formerly looked like a teapot. The rock is still easily visible from Wyoming Highway 259 about 12 miles south of the town of Midwest. Tornadoes and windstorms in the 1920s broke off what resembled a teapot’s handle and spout.

Early inhabitants

Before any prospectors sought their fortunes in the oil seeps, rocks, sage and dry creek beds around Teapot Dome, Native Americans lived and hunted in the area for millennia, and there is evidence of their use and occupation (e.g. rock shelters, cairns and hearths) in and around the Teapot Dome Oilfield. By the mid-1800s, conflicts with whites had broken out into sporadic warfare. The Bozeman Trail, a shortcut from the Oregon Trail along the North Platte River north to gold fields in Montana, became a focal point for conflict by 1865.

That trail cut northwest across the center of the Powder River Basin in what is now northeastern Wyoming—and across the northeast corner of the Teapot Dome Oilfield. The route was only used for a few years, however. Most of the traveling was done on the dry creek bed of Teapot Creek; no traces of the trail are present at the Teapot Dome Oilfield.

The oil companies start production

The first report on the potential for oil in the area was at nearby Salt Creek in 1886, which eventually led to the development of the Salt Creek Oilfield adjacent and north of the Teapot Dome Oilfield.

The town of Casper was established in 1888 with the completion of a spur of a subsidiary of the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad. The town was located on the former Oregon Trail, near where the Army had maintained a post at a bridge over the North Platte River decades earlier. Natrona County was formed in 1890 with Casper as its county seat. After oilfields were discovered, Casper became Wyoming’s largest oil refining center.

After 1900, oil began to replace coal as the fuel source for railroad locomotives, as well as for the engines that powered oil drill rigs and pumps. The Navy and Merchant Marines began converting ships from coal to fuel oil and setting up refueling stations at naval bases.

Based on the oil discoveries in the Salt Creek Oilfield and concerns about securing oil for the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Department of the Interior declared in 1909 that all unclaimed land around Salt Creek would be withdrawn—that is, that no new government land would be available for occupancy and/or mineral claims.

Unlike in the Eastern U.S., in the West, the federal government owned the majority of the land. The land and mineral-claims laws that existed for agriculture and for gold, silver and copper mining were extended to cover petroleum exploration and drilling. Legal disputes over the government’s withdrawal of the lands around Salt Creek led in 1920 to the passage of new laws regarding petroleum. Oil companies were allowed to lease federal lands for oil exploration, while the government retained surface rights.

Still, there was overproduction, waste and lack of storage. The government attempted to enact conservation measures, but oil companies were self-regulated. As a result, these measures were largely ineffective until 1931, when President Hoover required the oil companies to coordinate activities to reduce waste and rapid depletion.

Meanwhile, larger companies had been edging out smaller ones. By 1910, two main companies, the Wyoming Oil Fields Company and the Midwest Oil Company, were well established on the Salt Creek Oilfield. By 1912, each company had built a refinery in Casper and had laid pipe from the wells on Salt Creek to the new refineries.

By the end of 1913, the Midwest Refining Company had bought, swapped for, or absorbed enough of the other interests to become the biggest company on Salt Creek. Midwest owned mineral claims, producing wells, pumping stations, pipelines, storage tanks and refineries. Most of its workers lived along Salt Creek in the biggest of the camps—a town that would become Midwest, Wyo.

The Navy steps in

At the same time, the U.S. Navy was rapidly converting from coal to oil-burning ships, and concern arose over the Nation’s need for a secure domestic supply of oil in case of war or a national emergency. In response to this concern, the Pickett Act of 1910 authorized the U.S. President to withdraw large areas of potential oil-bearing lands in California and Wyoming—then the most active states for oil exploration on federal lands—as sources of fuel for the Navy.

On July 2, 1910, President William Howard Taft set aside federal lands believed to contain oil as an emergency reserve for the U.S. Navy. This eventually led to an Executive Order by President Woodrow Wilson in 1915 designating the Teapot Dome area as Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 3 NPR-1 and NPR-2 were in Elk Hills and Buena Vista Hills, California, respectively.

All but 400 of the 9481 acres of the Teapot Dome Oilfield were littered with private claims; however, many claims were invalid.

On May 23, 1921, President Warren Harding, by executive order, with the agreement of the secretary of the Navy, transferred administration of all naval reserves from the Department of the Navy to the Department of the Interior.

In 1921, Harding named New Mexico’s U.S. Senator Albert B. Fall, known as an opponent of federal conservation programs, the new Secretary of the Interior. Soon after taking office, Fall announced that the Naval Reserves would be leased for production in order to prevent private drillers on nearby claims from draining off the oil under the lands reserved for the Navy. Fall also argued that this would allow the Navy better access to fuel when needed, and that the Navy could trade the crude oil for refined fuel oil as necessary.

Fall leases the oil in a no-bid contract

In April 1922, Secretary Fall announced leases had been awarded for production of NPR -1 in the Elk Hills of California. He failed to announce, however, that on April 7, he, along with Secretary of the Navy Edwin Denby had also awarded lease rights for NPR-3 at Teapot Dome to the Mammoth Oil Company—without competitive bidding.

Mammoth Oil Company was controlled by Harry Ford Sinclair, owner of the large Sinclair Oil Company. The lease allowed the government to keep 12.5 percent to 50 percent of the oil produced from each well. Mammoth was to construct oil storage tanks on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, and to construct a pipeline from the Teapot Dome Oilfield to pipelines farther east.

The lease terms were intended to secure fuel oil and its storage for the Navy, with a sub-text of supporting the Navy in response to recent threats from Japan, to avoid loss of oil by drainage to adjacent wells and to create a more competitive market, thereby securing higher government royalties from the Salt Creek Oilfield.

Secretary Fall avoided the government’s problem of having to clear rights of the doubtful private claimants by requiring Mammoth Oil to do so before the contract was signed. A subsidiary of Midwest Oil Company, meanwhile, had gathered control of all the nebulous claims, and charged Sinclair and Mammoth $1 million to clear the lease.

Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., sends in the Marines

An old friend and political backer of President Harding’s, James G. Darden, held claims on part of the Teapot Dome Oilfield that predated the Mammoth Oil Company lease by Harry Sinclair. Darden had entered the deal through the U.S. attorney general’s office, and in June 1922, he started drilling on land Secretary Fall had already leased to Mammoth.

When Fall, who despised Darden, discovered this, he demanded that Marines be sent immediately to Teapot to eject Darden’s “squatters.” President Harding wavered, but Fall pressed, and then spoke directly with Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. and asked that the Marines be dispatched. Fall cited a non-existing legal precedent for this action.

Roosevelt complied, and on July 29, 1922, Capt. George Shuler, four Marines and a geologist left Washington, D.C. for Casper. There they were joined by some Interior Department officials and reporters from the Denver Post. They proceeded north to section 30 of the oilfield, the section in dispute, where they arrived on the morning of August 1.

The Marines, armed with carbines, pistols and enough ammunition to take on a small army of oilmen, encountered a foreman, who, along with his supervisor, capitulated promptly.

After installing “No Trespassing” signs all over the rig, the Marines lunched with the foreman and supervisor, and that was it. It was, says historian Laton McCartney, the only time that a U.S. state had been ‘invaded’ by the U.S. Marines.

The lease hits the press

The invasion was not, however, the end of the drama of Teapot Dome.

In April 1922, prior to public knowledge of the lease agreement with Mammoth Oil, Leslie Miller, a Wyoming oil man, future Wyoming governor and a Democrat, asked Wyoming’s U.S. Senator John B. Kendrick, also a Democrat, to find out if leases were available for the Teapot Dome Oilfield.

On April 14, the Wall Street Journal reported on the Mammoth Oil Company lease, noting government officials citing its advantages, but also revealing it was a non-competitive agreement. The newspaper seized on the lack of competitive bidding and implied that a conspiracy was underway between the Department of the Interior and the oilmen.

Senator Kendrick and Wyoming Congressman Frank Mondell, a Republican, asked President Harding that the lease be voided; Harding refused. Some oil producers were in favor of the agreement, assuming the pipeline being developed would be beneficial. As the arguments against the lease continued, Mammoth Oil moved forward with exploration and development of the Teapot Oilfield.

Mammoth develops the field

Harry Sinclair formed Mammoth Oil Company for the sole purpose of developing and operating the Teapot Dome Oilfield. Development came quickly, with multiple contracts to several drilling companies for the first round of wells. The company anticipated an output of more than 20,000 barrels per day. Sinclair’s contractors constructed more than 600 miles of pipelines to support anticipated production in Wyoming—including his interests at Salt Creek Oilfield—and to deliver the oil to the mid-continent trunk lines of both the Sinclair Pipe Line and Prairie Pipe Line companies near Kansas City.

About mid-May 1922, Sinclair Oil’s chief engineer arrived in Casper and immediately began inquiring for oilfield supplies and derrick lumber for 20 drilling outfits. By the end of the month, he had let contracts for 20 derricks, the drilling outfits had been shipped and construction had begun on a large tent camp, fleets of trucks were supplying the field from Casper “and the place generally represented an ant hill in point of activity,” writes historian Rear Admiral C.A. Trexel. To start drilling 20 new wells at once on a largely unproven oil reserve “raised public interest to a high pitch,” Trexel adds.

Most of the oilfield was developed between May 1922 and March 1924, and in May 1923 Mammoth Oil Company brought in a gusher. During the field’s development, crews established eight residence/operation camps, laid telephone and water lines, built roads and bridges, drilled natural gas and oil wells and installed tanks and pipelines throughout the field. When fully developed, the field included approximately 84 producing wells. Production peaked in October 1923 at 4,460 barrels per day.

By the summer of 1922, workers were living in 15 large tents with pinewood floors, pine tables and iron-frame beds. Permanent camps were completed in 1923.

Mammoth eventually developed four camps. They housed pump stations, dormitories, multi-room cottages, mess halls, classrooms and other support structures including tanks for oil. Sinclair, Houston, Chanute and Hardendorf companies also erected small camps on the field. Most of the Mammoth and Sinclair camps had water, gas, electricity and telephones, and the main Mammoth Camp had a sewer system. The other companies’ camps had just gas connections, with water available only from outdoor pumps.

The number of structures suggests Mammoth could house about 125 workers, providing family housing for 12 of the workers. The Sinclair Pipe Line Company could house approximately 25 more workers, assuming four rooms per cottage.

Congress and the courts intervene

Meanwhile, back in the U.S. Senate, Sen. Tom Walsh of Montana, a Democrat, was leading an investigation of the Sinclair-Mammoth lease. Walsh was suspicious of the lack of competition, of the lease’s origin in Secretary Fall’s office, and of Fall’s accelerated personal spending. Walsh was also concerned that the Navy’s previous policy of oil-reserve conservation had been so quickly reversed (Stratton 1998).

On March 13, 1924, Federal court-appointed receivers took control of the Teapot Dome Oilfield and stopped drilling operations but maintained production from existing wells. Drilling rigs were moved into storage at Casper, and many employees were laid off. (Darnell 1953:6-8). At the time the receivers took over operations, 82 wells had been spudded in, and 60 wells were producing oil, gas, or water.

Years of argument in the courts and in public opinion continued. In October 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a U.S. Circuit Court decision that the Teapot Dome lease had been fraudulently obtained. The oilfield was officially turned back over to the Navy on January 7, 1928. Production was by then down to 730 barrels per day, and the Navy returned to its conservation strategy of storing the oil in the ground.

The Navy took steps to shut down the remaining wells and return the entire Teapot Dome Oilfield to conservation status. This resulted in the mudding and abandonment of almost all the oil and gas wells in the oilfield and the sale and removal of the infrastructure and camps. The shutdown and sales ended the initial development of the Teapot Dome Oilfield.

In October 1929, Fall was found guilty of criminal conspiracy, fined $100,000 and sentenced to a year in jail. Sinclair was also tried. Oddly, he was found not guilty of bribing Fall but was sentenced 6 ½ months for refusing to testify and for contempt of court. Edward Doheny, another oil man, was tried for giving $100,000 in loans to Fall, but even more oddly, was acquitted. This entire episode permanently damaged Harding’s reputation and contributed to his administration’s reputation as riddled with controversy and shady deals.

(Editor’s note: Publication of this and a companion article on the Teapot Dome Oilfield since the 1970s are supported in part by the U.S. Department of Energy as part of the terms of the 2015 sale of the field to the private sector.)

Resources

• Darnell, J.L., Lieutenant Commander, U.S.N. “Report on Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 3, (Teapot Dome), Natrona County, Wyoming.,” 1953.
• Fritz, John N., Ph.D. “Ethnographic Overview and Potential Traditional Cultural Properties Within the Teapot Dome Oil Field (RMOTC) North of Casper, Wyoming.” Report prepared for U.S. Department of Energy, 2007.
• Greer Services. “National Register of Historic Places Evaluation of Twenty-One Tank Rings Slated for Reclamation at the U.S. Department of Energy Rocky Mountain Oilfield Testing Center, Natrona County, Wyoming.” Casper, Wyoming, 2011.
• McCartney, Laton. The Teapot Dome Scandal: How Big Oil Bought the Harding White House and Tried to Steal the Country, Laton McCartney, New York: Random House, 2008.
• National Petroleum News, July 3, August 9,1922.
• “Marines Unaided by Artillery, Capture Mutual Well in Frontal Attack.” National Petroleum News, Aug. 4, 1922
• Rea, Tom. “Boom, Bust and After: Life in the Salt Creek Oil Field.” WyoHistory.org, accessed March 21, 2016 at http://www.wyohistory.org/essays/boom-bust-and-after-life-salt-creek-oil-field.
• Stubbs, Donna. “A Class I Cultural Resource Survey and Ethnographic Overview of the Rocky Mountain Oilfield Testing Center (RMOTC) and the Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 3 (NPR-3) in Natrona County, Wyoming.” ACR Consultants, Inc. Sheridan, Wyoming, 2013.
• Stratton, David Hodges. Tempest Over Teapot Dome: The Story of Albert Fall, Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998.
• Trexel, C.A., Lieutenant Commander, U.S.N. “Compilation of Data on Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 3 (Teapot Dome) Natrona County Wyoming,” 1930. Copies of cover sheet, table of contents and individual chapters available at U.S. Department of Energy.
• U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service. “Teapot Rock” National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form. December 1974, accessed March 21, 2016 at http://focus.nps.gov/pdfhost/docs/NRHP/Text/74002028.pdf.
• The Wall Street Journal, April 14, 1922, p. 1.

Illustrations

• The images of the newspaper clippings are courtesy of the author.
• The locator map and the photo of the rock cairn are from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy. Used with permission and thanks.
• The photos of Teapot Rock and the string team are from the Casper College Western History Center. Used with permission and thanks.
• The Clifford Berryman “Juggernaut” cartoon and the 1905 photo of Albert Fall by Harris and Ewing, photographers, are courtesy of the Library of Congress. Used with thanks.
• The photo of the U.S. Marine is from the Wyoming State Archives. Used with permission and thanks.
• The topographical map and animated flyover of the Teapot Dome field are courtesy of the Casper College GIS Department. Special thanks to Jeff Sun and his students.

The horses galloped for the Wyoming-Colorado border, pulling a wagon loaded with several hundred copies of a book, at least one of which had a bullet hole in it. Was this seditious literature? Dangerous information? It all depended which side you were on.

"[T]his book … has a curious habit of either disappearing suddenly and forever, or else of disappearing for a while and then, when returned to the … [library] shelf, showing the marks of surgical operations." wrote Philip A. Rollins, the owner of the copy with the bullet hole, when he sent it to the Princeton University Library in 1923.

This is all quite sensational, but is it true? That will probably never be known. Accounts of what happened after Asa Shinn Mercer published The Banditti of the Plainsin August 1894 are too disparate and mostly not well documented.

In his active and colorful career, Mercer was jailed twice, beaten up at least twice, had his property confiscated several times—sometimes legally, sometimes not—and in general managed to put himself time and again in controversy’s rocky path.

Young adulthood

Born to Aaron Mercer and Jane Dickerson Mercer on June 6, 1839, in Princeton, Ill., Asa Shinn Mercer graduated from Franklin College, a Presbyterian school in New Athens, Ohio, in 1860. In June of the next year, he followed his two older brothers, Thomas and Aaron, to Washington Territory. For the next two years, he taught at the brand-new University of Washington and also served briefly as acting president.

In 1863, he conceived the project for which he is probably best known outside of Wyoming: Observing that the ratio of men to women among white settlers in the Pacific Northwest was 9 to 1, he decided to recruit eligible women from the East Coast to travel west, with the plan to marry and help populate the area. Historians dubbed this effort "Mercer's Belles."

On July 15, 1866, Mercer married Annie E. Stephens in Seattle. His new wife, a staunch Catholic, was the daughter of John Stephens, owner of a hat factory in Philadelphia; Annie and her younger sister, Mamie, were part of the original group of Mercer's Belles. During their nearly 34-year marriage, the Mercers had eight children, five of whom survived childhood.

The same year he married, Mercer was appointed deputy collector for the U.S. Custom House in Astoria, Ore. While in this job, he was accused of smuggling by the U.S. government. This was the first time he was jailed. However, the government's case failed after two trials in which the juries could not agree, plus the added problem—so common in the raw west—of mysteriously missing witnesses.

The Northwestern Live Stock Journal

While the Mercers were still in Oregon, Asa started his first newspaper, the Oregon Granger, on Dec. 4, 1873, an effort that lasted less than a year. By the end of 1878, the Mercers had moved to Sherman, Texas, just south of the Red River, about 65 miles north of Dallas. There, Asa edited—though did not own—the Sherman Courier. In the lively journalistic culture of the state, Mercer eventually did own and edit five newspapers, from 1880 through about the middle of 1883.

In August of that year, the Mercers moved to Cheyenne, Wyo., and on Nov. 25, 1883, Asa published the first issue of his weekly Northwestern Live Stock Journal. He began with eight pages, but by the following spring, that number had doubled. The print run was about 5,000 copies per week in 1884, though the paid circulation was somewhat less. For about five years the Journal chugged quietly along, publishing livestock industry news from at least 10 states and territories, including Texas and California. Mercer also wrote editorials about pending legislation and other issues affecting cattle ranchers.

The back pages were filled with ranch advertisements showing each ranch’s horse and cattle brands. By fall 1886, there were more than 250; 135 of these from Wyoming. Brand ads, paid for a year in advance, were less expensive to produce than the rest of the paper because they required no new typesetting from one issue to the next. Mercer charged $12 per ad per year, and this steady income, with its relatively low overhead, almost certainly helped the Journal in its success.

Mercer also enjoyed the support of the powerful and then-prosperous Wyoming Stock Growers Association (WSGA), and in spring 1884—no more than half a year after he began publishing—the association ordered 150 copies to be sent to members of Congress. By early 1886, Mercer's payroll was almost $160 per week for 10 employees, the financial high point of the Journal.

Mercer's success depended on his support of the WSGA and, as conflict heated up between land settlers and the early cattle barons, who wanted to continue their unrestricted grazing on an unfenced range, he left no doubt about where he stood. After Ella Watson and James Averell were lynched near the Sweetwater River in July 1889, Mercer wrote an editorial so outrageous in content and so unabashed in tone that few historians have failed to quote at least part of it.

"There is but one remedy [to the rustling problem], and that is a freer use of the hanging noose,” Mercer wrote. “Cattle owners should organize and not disband until a hundred rustlers were left ornamenting the trees or telegraph poles of the territory. The hanging of two culprits merely acts as stimulus to the thieves. Hang a hundred and the balance will reform or quit the country. Let the good work go on, and lose no time about it." Many of Mercer’s Live Stock Journal's issues have been lost, but in a common practice of the times, this editorial was quoted in the Sept. 7, 1889, Big Horn Sentinel.

A swift about-face

In light of his subsequent behavior, Mercer's avowed sentiments cannot be ignored. In spring 1892, after prominent members of the WSGA attempted to execute their megalomaniac plan to invade Johnson County and kill as many as 70 supposed rustlers there, the press statewide exploded into debate. Back then, most newspapers represented political parties, and by definition the Northwestern Live Stock Journal had always been Republican. Therefore, it reflected the politics of the majority of its patrons and presumably the convictions of its editor as well.

But no more: In a swift about-face, Mercer not only condemned the actions of the Johnson County invaders, he joined the Democratic party in campaigning during the election season of 1892. No one knows why he switched sides; what is known, to some degree, are the details of what he did—and also how his enemies retaliated.

On May 14, 1892, less than six weeks after the Johnson County invasion, the Cheyenne Daily Leader excerpted a recent editorial by Mercer: "The Journal will uphold all cattlemen in every legitimate effort to protect their herds, but it will not pronounce in favor of an illegal and mercenary plan to aid the few at the expense of the many."

In June, Col. Emerson H. Kimball, editor of the Douglas Graphic and longtime critic of the WSGA and Mercer's newspaper as well, was jailed for criminal libel against several members of the invading force and their supporters. When Mercer offered to sign Kimball's bail bond for $500, most of his brand advertisers withdrew their ads immediately. Mercer ran his next issue with blank spaces captioned "Boycotted for Opinion's Sake."

Later that summer, Mercer attacked the powerful John Clay, Jr., then president of the WSGA and manager of the huge Swan Land and Cattle Company. On Aug. 24, 1892, the Cheyenne Daily Sun quoted the Journal under the Sun's headline, "Mercer's Malicious Attack:""Too great a coward himself to … fight, … [John Clay, Jr.] sent one of his hired men and contributed to the extermination fund in cheap talk if not in shining shekels."

Shortly thereafter, Charles A. Campbell, one of the invaders and also a cattle buyer for Clay, concluded that Mercer had been referring to him as the hired man. Campbell visited Mercer's newspaper office and hit him in the face. Mercer bled heavily from a cut on his eyebrow, but was not seriously hurt.

On Oct. 14, 1892, Mercer dropped the biggest bombshell of all by publishing, word-for-word, the statement known as "Dunning's Confession." George Dunning, a mercenary from Idaho who participated in the invasion, wrote a 44-page longhand account of the plans for the invasion as well as the events themselves. In so doing, he implicated most of the Wyoming participants, in particular the expedition's planners and leaders.

The consequences exploded onto Mercer. Two days after publication, he traveled to Chicago as an alternate commissioner for Wyoming for the World's Fair, to meet with the other commissioners. The fair was scheduled to open the following year. Chicago was John Clay's home town, and Clay filed a libel action against Mercer, who was briefly jailed in Cook County, Ill. However, since Mercer's anti-Clay editorial had not been published in Cook County, action could not proceed against him there, and he was released.

While Mercer had been in Chicago, a legal judgment of the St. Louis Type Foundry was executed against him in Cheyenne in a case that had been pending for a year. The sheriff seized the Journal's property, including copies of the October 14 issue, but 1,400 had already been sent to subscribers. Apparently Mercer's equipment was returned, since it was in his wife's name; he continued publishing the Journal for another nine months before shutting down in summer 1893, as reported in the July 20, 1893, Cheyenne Daily Leader.

The Banditti of the Plains

Mercer's contribution to Wyoming history and literature/journalism lies not in his nearly 10-year production of the Northwestern Live Stock Journal—although “Dunning's Confession” was significant—but in the project he completed in 1894: an account and condemnation of the Johnson County invasion, titled The Banditti of the Plains, or The Cattlemen’s Invasion of Wyoming in 1892 [The Crowning Infamy of the Ages].

Historians agree information in Banditti is correct, with a few exceptions such as Mercer’s theorizing about the motive for the May 10, 1892, ambush and murder of George Wellman, a popular ranch foreman in Johnson County. Wellman's murder had little or nothing to do with the Johnson County conflict, though Mercer blamed it on an unsuccessful conspiracy among the invaders to provoke the federal government to declare martial law.

The first part of The Banditti, "Introductory," is useful to the modern reader for its description of the early cattle industry, before fences; and the brief history of the cattle boom in Wyoming. In Chapter 7, in a section headed "Official Correspondence," Mercer reprints 14 revelatory telegrams, mostly exchanged between high officials bent on protecting the invaders. These officials included Acting Gov. Amos W. Barber and President Benjamin Harrison. Dunning's entire confession appears in an appendix.

Almost from the beginning, the book's publication spawned rumors and wild stories equal to the galloping plot of any western.

The facts are few, however. Two reviews and one editorial, all published in newspapers, have survived. The Aug. 20, 1894, Denver Daily News commented, "The book is written in a free, flowing journalistic style, but with a pen dipped in gall. It does not mince words … [and] is a timely contribution to the history of the West. That it recites the facts of a deep and damning crime detracts not the least from its value."

By contrast, the Cheyenne Sun, in its review published Aug. 22, 1894, accused Mercer of compiling the book in a "careless and reckless spirit," citing Mercer's claim that Dr. Charles Penrose, a Philadelphia surgeon who traveled partway with the invaders, carried a surgical case belonging to Acting Gov. Barber. Barber was also a physician.

This is a point that Mercer has been accused of either lying or being mistaken about. Mercer's biographer, Lawrence M. Woods, contends that Penrose's initials were on the case, therefore it was his. Helena Huntington Smith, author of The War on Powder River, says nothing about whose initials were on the case, but states that Barber lent it to Penrose. This question, though incidental to the history of the Johnson County War, is nonetheless relevant to Mercer's story because it sheds light on possible inaccuracies in Banditti. Additionally, no source contests the fact that Barber and Penrose attended college together and were friends, and that Barber encouraged Penrose to accompany the invaders.

The Sun review continued, "The object of these statements is to fasten on the governor complicity in the invasion." Information then available had already confirmed Barber's involvement, however.

A week after the Sun's review, the Denver Daily News published an editorial defending Mercer, referring to Banditti as "an accurate and official record of the raid of arson and murder to which Wyoming was subjected by the Cheyenne cattle ring." The rest of the article is a commentary on the Johnson County conflict and the crookedness of the invaders.

The first printing of the book was probably done in Denver in August 1894. Likely it was 1,000 copies. Asa and his son Ralph sold books in Cheyenne and also toured the northern part of the state to sell more books. Few of these first editions have survived, leading to endless speculation about what became of them. The most enduring story is that members of the invading force and their relatives purchased, borrowed or stole the book in order to destroy as many copies as possible. Another persistent tale is that the invaders sued for libel and the court ordered the edition impounded, pending the outcome. Supposedly, while the books were in the court's custody, some were stolen and smuggled to Denver. However, no records exist of any such lawsuit in Laramie County from August through November 1894.

Nixon Orwin Rush did a study of the fate of the book, publishing his findings in 1961 in a 67-page booklet, Mercer's Banditti of the Plains: The Story of the First Book Giving an Account of the Cattlemen's Invasion of Wyoming in 1892. However, historian Louis Gould comments that Rush's work must be used with caution, as it is "poorly researched and inaccurate on matters of fact and interpretation."

Possibly the more reliable parts of Rush's study are his interviews with two of Mercer's children, Ralph Mercer and Janet Mercer Webb. Both siblings agree that the book was printed in Denver, and Mrs. Webb stated that there was a second printing, also in Denver, and these books were burned before they could be shipped.

Rush also publishes a letter to him from historian and editor Agnes Wright Spring, in which she recalled a conversation with the woman in charge of the estate of Cheyenne attorney Hugo Donzelman, who was a known supporter of the WSGA and aided their more illegal activities. This woman told Spring that Donzelman somehow obtained some unbound copies of Banditti, put them in his basement and hired a janitor to burn them. Supposedly the janitor burned most of them but saved out a few to sell. This is a good story, but like many of the others, impossible to prove.

Two of Mercer's great-grandsons have their own recollections. Allen Mercer remembers that "my great uncle Ralph told my father that … [Asa Mercer, Sr.] sent him and his brother, Asa Jr., out in Cheyenne to buy back copies" to keep them from being burned. However, continued Allen, a few days later, someone raided Mercer's office, pulled out a bunch of papers, books and equipment, made a pile of it in the street, poured on some kerosene and lit it up.

Regarding this story, Allen Mercer's second cousin, John Mercer, observed, "I doubt they [the Mercer family] had the money to buy anything." On reflection, John added, "I remember all the [family] stories about how … [copies of Banditti] disappeared. They did indeed disappear at an alarming rate, and when I asked Grandpa [Ralph] about a copy of the book he once had, all he said was, 'Somebody borrowed it and didn't bring it back.'" John Mercer further recalls that "a shipment from Denver was printed up"—possibly the legendary second printing—"and never did arrive in Cheyenne."

No newspaper reports of the attack or fire recalled by Allen Mercer's great-uncle Ralph have survived, nor does Rush mention the episode. However, in Chapter 4 of his study, "Burning of Copies and Mercer's Arrest," he cites other stories of the book being seized and burned. Many of these appear difficult to verify.

Woods observes that stories that the cattlemen seized and burned the book lack foundation. However, he notes that few first editions have survived and acknowledges that they could have been burned. Further adding to the mystery is Helena Smith's account: Five hundred copies of the first printing were "said to have been sent" to Sheridan, but only got as far as Buffalo. These 500 books stayed in the Burlington railroad station in Sheridan until 1909. After that, a local stationer "presumably" sold them. Rush also tells a version of this story, naming "a reliable source in Sheridan."

Currently, at least 32 libraries in the U.S. and Canada have first editions, and as of June 2016 five are listed for sale online, with prices ranging from $1,250 to more than $6,000. This suggests that the original book is extremely rare. It is unlikely that anyone will ever learn where most of the remaining 950-plus copies are, or whether they were destroyed.

Later years

In spring 1895, the Mercers moved to Hyattville, Wyo., and, with their now-grown children, filed on 800 acres of homestead land on Paint Rock Creek. A few months later, they were victims of what was either an accident or an attack: On July 11, the Cheyenne Daily Sun-Leader excerpted a paragraph from the Buffalo Voice, including the report that "[Mercer] had his house nearly completed and while he and the boys had gone to the mountains for a load of logs, some one set fire to the house and burned it down." We will probably never know whether this was arson and if so, was further retaliation for the publication of Banditti.

Apparently undaunted, the Mercers must have rebuilt their house, because they went on to plant hay and begin cattle ranching. In 1909, the enterprise became the Mercer Brothers Land and Livestock Company, Inc., issuing 1,000 shares. The ranch, the largest on Paint Rock Creek by 1916, is still in the family today. In the fall of 1900, Annie Mercer died at the home of her daughter, Janet Webb. She was about 60 years old. Asa outlived her by 17 years, dying on Aug. 9, 1917, at the age of 78.

Helena Smith, discussing the aftermath of the Johnson County invasion and Mercer's role in it, comments that "[w]ithout Mercer and his opponents' blundering persecution the 'war' in Johnson County would have been a half forgotten local incident. Instead, largely because of him, it became immortalized in iniquity."

The Banditti of the Plains is now widely available in the reprint edition issued by the University of Oklahoma Press in 1954. Previously, three other editions were issued by various individuals and presses, but the University of Oklahoma edition is the most common of what has become a recognized classic of Wyoming history, despite the book’s bias and occasional errors.

(Editor’s note: Publication of this and seven other articles on Wyoming newspapering is supported in part by the Wyoming Humanities Council and is part of the Pulitzer Prizes Centennial Campfires Initiative, a joint venture of the Pulitzer Prizes Board and the Federation of State Humanities Councils in celebration of the 2016 centennial of the prizes. The initiative seeks to illuminate the impact of journalism and the humanities on American life today, to imagine their future and to inspire new generations to consider the values represented by the body of Pulitzer Prize-winning work. For their generous support for the Campfires Initiative, the council thanks the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Pulitzer Prizes Board, and Columbia University.)

Resources

Primary Sources

• Wyoming Newspapers. Accessed March 2-4, 2016, March 22, 2016, and April 4, 2016, at http://newspapers.wyo.gov:
• Big Horn County Rustler, Sept. 15, 1911.
• Big Horn Sentinel, Sept. 7, 1889.
• Cheyenne Daily Leader, May 14, 1892; June 8, 1892; June 16, 1892; July 20, 1893.
• Cheyenne Daily Sun-Leader, July 11, 1895.
• Cheyenne Daily Sun, July 26, 1884; Aug. 2, 1884; June 9, 1892; Aug. 24, 1892; Oct. 9, 1894.
• Cheyenne Sun, Aug. 22, 1894.
• Northwestern Live Stock Journal, June 27, Dec. 3, 1884; April 10, 1885; Dec. 3, 10, 17, 24, 1886; Jan 7-Dec. 2, 1887; Oct. 14, 1892.
• Denver Daily News, Aug. 20, 1894; Aug. 29, 1894. Quoted in Rush, Nixon Orwin. Mercer's Banditti of the Plains: The Story of the First Book Giving an Account of the Cattlemen's Invasion of Wyoming in 1892. Tallahassee, Fla.: The Florida State University Library, 1961, 2-4, 44-45.
• Mercer, Allen. Telephone interview with the author. March 14, 2016.
• Mercer, John. Telephone interview with the author. March 15 and 16, 2016.

Secondary Sources

• Davis, John W. Wyoming Range War: The Infamous Invasion of Johnson County. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010, 76-77, 176, 210, 216, 230-232, 240-242, 270, 277.
• Gould, Lewis L. "A.S. Mercer and the Johnson County War: A Reappraisal."Journal of the Southwest 7, no. 1 (Spring 1965): 5-20.
• Mercer, Asa S. The Banditti of the Plains: or The Cattlemen's Invasion of Wyoming in 1892 [The Crowning Infamy of the Ages]. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1954, xiii-xv, 5-15, 74-82, 151-195.
• Rush, Nixon Orwin. Mercer's Banditti of the Plains: The Story of the First Book Giving an Account of the Cattlemen's Invasion of Wyoming in 1892. Tallahassee, Fla.: The Florida State University Library, 1961, 2-4, 7-13, 25-26, 44-45.
• Smith, Helena Huntington. The War on Powder River: The History of an Insurrection. Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1966, vii-viii, 133, 191, 214, 217, 252-261, 265-280, 306 note 9.
• Woods, Lawrence M. Asa Shinn Mercer: Western Promoter and Newspaperman, 1839-1917. Western Frontiersmen Series, 30. Spokane, Wash.: Arthur H. Clark Company, 2003, 13-93, 109-113, 117-160, 173-199, 224.

For Further Reading and Research

• Northwestern Live Stock Journal (microfilm), University of California-Berkeley, Accessed April 19, 2016, at http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/using-the-libraries/interlibrary-loan-photoduplication: Feb. 1, March 21, April 4, April 18-May 2, 16, June 6, July 4, Aug. 15-22, Sept. 12, Oct. 10-Nov. 14, 1884; Feb. 27, May 22-June 12, June 26-July 10, Aug. 7-Dec. 25, 1885; Jan. 1-April 16, May 7-14, May 28, July 2, 16, Sept. 17-Dec.24, 1886; Jan. 7-28, Feb. 11-25, March 11-May 13, May 27-June 17, July 1, July 22-Aug. 5, Aug. 19-Sept. 2, Sept. 16, Oct. 14-21, 1887; Feb. 10, Aug. 31-Nov. 16, Nov. 30-Dec. 7, Dec. 21, 1888; Jan. 11-18, Feb. 1, Feb. 15-April 19, May 3-June 21, 1889; Jan 10, Oct. 3, 1890; Sept. 2, 1892.
• Northwestern Live Stock Journal (microfilm), Wyoming State Archives, Cheyenne, Wyo.: Feb. 15, March 28, April 4, 11, Aug. 15, Dec. 5, 1884; April 17, May 29, Oct. 16, 1885; Aug. 20, 27, Oct. 1, 29, 1886.

Illustrations

• The early portrait of photo of Asa Mercer is from Wikipedia. Used with thanks.
• The image of the first-edition title page of The Banditti of the Plains is from a copy in the collections of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. Used with permission and thanks.
• The photo of Mercer with the books is from the Wyoming State Archives. Used with permission and thanks.
• The images of 1886 and 1892 pages of Mercer’s Northwestern Live Stock Journal are from Wyoming Newspapers, a service of the Wyoming State Library. Used with thanks.

Prohibition was on its last legs in Wyoming when top public officials—Casper’s mayor and police chief and the Natrona County Sheriff—were accused of corruption. The men who ran the town and the county, prosecutors claimed, were in cahoots with the crooks who supplied illegal liquor to the people of central Wyoming. All three men were charged in federal court with taking regular payments from bootleggers and bar owners—the men and women who made, shipped, and sold illegal booze.

The charges may well have been true. Casper was one of the biggest centers for vice—the sale of so-called sinful pleasures—in the Rocky Mountains. Gambling, though illegal, was practiced more or less openly in the cafes and bars. Liquor, wine and beer, illegal in the state since 1919, often were openly available in the same places. And though Casper only had around 17,000 people, the town was home to uncounted prostitutes. Wyoming’s oil-drilling, oil-refining, mining, ranching and railroad economy attracted a lot of single men. Many traveled to Casper for sex and alcohol. The brothels and speakeasies clustered in the Sandbar district, just northwest of downtown.

Town and county officials—and the police and sheriff’s officers they employed—had to have known what was going on. But whether they were actually paid to ignore these crimes of pleasure would turn out to be hard to prove in a court of law.

Prohibition’s beginnings

The temperance movement, opposing liquor and saloons, grew stronger and stronger in the United States in the late 19^th- and early 20^th centuries. Many of its stoutest backers were people fighting for all kinds of reforms, including votes for women. Under pressure from groups like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League, Colorado outlawed the possession, manufacture and sale of alcohol in 1914. Idaho went “dry,” as people said then, in 1915. Nebraska, South Dakota, and Montana followed in 1916, and Utah in 1917. By then, 37 states had passed dry laws. Wyoming was the only wet state left in the Rocky Mountains. Its border towns did a brisk business with booze customers driving in from neighbor states.

Finally, Wyoming went along. In 1919, the Legislature passed a state law banning alcohol. By then, enough states had approved a change in the U.S. Constitution that national prohibition of alcohol, too, had become law. The U.S. law went into effect Jan. 29, 1920.

Right away, Wyoming had trouble with enforcement. No one, it seemed, ever expected local police or county sheriffs to do much. Therefore, the Wyoming Legislature set up a new agency specifically to enforce Prohibition statewide. There was no highway patrol then. Other than federal officers, there were no police whose authority reached statewide. Governor Robert Carey appointed Fred Crabbe—a lawyer with no police experience, but president of the Wyoming chapter of the Anti-Saloon League—to head the new state prohibition agency.

Crabbe hired John Cordillo, a former Denver policeman with prohibition enforcement experience in Colorado. John Cordillo brought with him his brother Pete, and another Colorado cop named Walter Newell. Soon they made headlines in Laramie when they arrested five men and a woman and captured 400 gallons of illegal liquor in late August 1919.

An early killing—by Prohibition agents

Two days later, Frank Jennings, a popular local rancher, was found shot to death in his car on the side of the Lincoln Highway, just north of Laramie.

At first, no one could tell who’d done the crime. Jennings’ body had five bullet wounds in it. The shots had come from behind the car. The Albany County prosecutor, following suspicions of his own, began questioning the three state prohibition agents. Then they testified publicly before a coroner’s jury. There were discrepancies. Details in the three men’s stories of the night Jennings was killed didn’t match up.

All three were arrested and charged in connection with Jennings’ death. Laramie was tense. There was talk of a lynching. Jennings’ family hired the former chief of police in Denver—the three agents’ former boss—to interrogate them. He questioned them all night in a cell. The next morning, they were moved to Wheatland for their safety.

In the car on the way, Pete Cordillo told the Denver detective that Newell had shot Frank Jennings. They’d thought they were following the car of a couple of well-known local bootleggers, Cordillo said, and had motioned the driver to pull over. But when the car didn’t stop they began chasing it. The car then veered off the road and almost immediately, Cordillo said, Newell was out of their car, standing on the running board of Jennings’ car and shooting with his rifle.

Before national Prohibition was even on the books, Wyoming’s record of enforcing the law against liquor looked disastrous. The case came to trial the following April. All three were convicted of manslaughter. John Cordillo was sentenced to 15 to 20 years in the state prison, and the other two drew similar sentences.

Haphazard police work

Before long, the Legislature scrapped Crabbe’s job and replaced it with a position of commissioner in charge of all state law enforcement, not just the Prohibition laws. But it continued to be extremely difficult to enforce laws that a large proportion of Wyoming’s people simply didn’t want to obey. And the police work continued to be haphazard, and sometimes violent.

In Cody, in October 1922, a town marshal tried to arrest a federal Prohibition officer for drunkenness. The federal officer had been partying in a house with two women who had low reputations in the town, two bottles of ginger ale, and a bottle of Canadian whiskey that had come from the county sheriff’s evidence vault. In the scuffle, the marshal broke the federal officer’s jaw and the fed shot the marshal in the leg. After a full day and evening of testimony in a packed courtroom, a town judge fined the fed $100 for public intoxication.

The following June, things got more serious. When the Park County sheriff was out of town, the county prosecutor got a tip of a cache of liquor near Cottonwood Creek north of Cody. He rounded up one of the sheriff’s deputies in town, and deputized a courthouse janitor. Then he drove the two men out to the site and dropped them off, armed with rifles, to wait for the bootleggers to come pick up their stuff.

Two men arrived in a car some hours later, stopped near the cache, apparently loaded up some liquor, and started off. Once the booze was in the car, the deputies showed themselves and ordered the men to stop. But the driver, A.E. Carey, stepped on the gas, the Cody Enterprise reported. The deputies opened fire from 50 feet away. In the passenger’s seat, George “Scotty” Sherrin was killed instantly. Carey was hit in the thigh but kept driving, 60 miles all the way back to Greybull, with his friend’s body “soaking in his own blood on the floor of the car where he slid as he died,” the newspaper reported.

The Rosses crack down

After World War I, a bad drought and a sluggish economy drove Wyoming into a depression. William B. Ross, a Democrat and a stout Prohibitionist, benefited politically from the times and got himself elected governor in 1922. He persuaded the Legislature to give him the power to fire elected county officials—sheriffs, for example, or county commissioners—who were failing to enforce Prohibition laws.

William Ross died in 1924, but his wife, Nellie Tayloe Ross, elected to take his place, took advantage of the new law and fired well-known local officials in Park, Hot Springs and Natrona counties.

She fired two state officials too, in connection with their drinking and incompetence—a Game and Fish Department commissioner, and M.S. Wachtel, in the new post of statewide law-enforcement commissioner. It was a big scandal. An investigation showed Wachtel drank on the job, failed to enforce Prohibition—and took bribes from bootleggers to look the other way.

Graft in Edgerton

Law enforcement officers had been given an impossible task: to stamp out the liquor business among people who still very much liked to drink. As Prohibition continued, contempt for the officers and for the law itself spread wider and wider. Bootleggers made more and more money, and were happy to pay police to leave them alone. Corruption spread through law enforcement from top to bottom.

Not all police were corrupt. A file survives in the National Archives in Seattle that details the investigations by federal Prohibition officers in the little town of Edgerton, on the edge of the Salt Creek Oil Field north of Casper. Midwest, the company town at Salt Creek, was dry because the Midwest Oil Company wanted it that way. But the little towns that sprang up around it during the nineteen-teens and -twenties—Lavoye, for example, and Edgerton—were packed with bars and brothels that served the oil field hands when they came off work.

Driven by motives we can only guess at, an anonymous tipster in Edgerton began writing letters in November 1928 to one of the top federal Prohibition agents in Seattle. This agent, Lon Davis, was in charge of the federal anti-booze efforts in Wyoming and other western states. Edgerton’s elected officials, the tipster said, “think they are just about immune from the law.”

Some ran stills themselves. Others took a cut of the whiskey made by other bootleggers. And the local justice of the peace, W.J. Stull, charged bootleggers and bar owners monthly fees to stay in business, the tipster said. It was like an insurance policy: If the bootleggers were arrested by any other arms of the law—by county sheriff’s deputies, or state or federal cops—the fines they had to pay on those charges would be deducted from the fees they owed the Edgerton officials.

But there were much bigger scandals breaking in Wyoming at the time. In November 1928, the same month the tipster began writing to Seattle, W.C. Irving, who had replaced Wachtel as Wyoming’s top cop—law enforcement commissioner—had left office under a cloud of suspicion. In May, a federal grand jury charged him with conspiracy to evade Prohibition laws. Also indicted were 29 other people, including suspected bootleggers from Rawlins, Thermopolis, Cheyenne, Rock Springs and Evanston. Irving and his assistant, James Adler, were charged with taking thousands of dollars in protection money.

Gov. Frank Emerson, meanwhile, had replaced Irving in the state commissioner’s job with Jack Allen. Allen, a Democrat and veteran of both the Spanish-American and World wars, had just lost the 1928 Natrona County Sheriff’s race to the Republican incumbent, Gilbert O. Housley. Though affairs in Edgerton must have seemed minor compared to the Irving scandal at the time, Allen kept pressuring Lon Davis in Seattle to do something about it. Davis’ notes suggest Allen was still smarting from his loss, which had been heaviest around Edgerton and Salt Creek. Though he lost by a two-to-one margin, he may well have suspected the election had been stolen from him, by friends of Housley in cahoots with bootleggers.

In the summer of 1929, two federal agents visited Edgerton for a look around. Stull, the justice of the peace (and editor of the Salt Creek Gusher) was hazy at first when the agents asked him about discrepancies between his court’s records and the records of the Edgerton city treasurer over how much his court collected in fines. But when the agents suggested the information they were collecting probably would be turned over to a federal grand jury, Stull got more talkative. The fees were $50 a month from the guys running the joints where people could buy booze, he said. They weren’t really fines—they were more like an “occupation tax,” he said. The system had been running smoothly for at least five years. Stull gave the agents names of four men who’d each paid their $50 the month before.

In their report the agents concluded that pool-hall and gambling-hall owners in Edgerton had been making regular payments to the town for years, in exchange for being allowed to operate unmolested. A Judge Blake of the municipal court had an arrangement just like the one Stull described—any fines the joint owners had to pay to other authorities would be deducted from what they owed the town of Edgerton each month. But the story stops there. Federal prohibition supervision of Wyoming moved to a Denver office that summer, and those files have not survived.

A few successes for the prosecutors

Former top state law-enforcement commissioner W.C. Irving, meanwhile, was tried, convicted, and sentenced to 18 months in federal prison. He was the highest Wyoming official convicted of corruption in the Prohibition years. Two bootleggers from Thermopolis and two from Kemmerer were convicted as part of the same case.

People continued to break the liquor laws, however. Lawmakers, in frustration, stiffened the penalties. Wyoming in 1927 made possession of a still punishable by three years in prison. Arguing against the proposal, a young legislator from Cody who decades later would become governor, Milward Simpson, noted the saloons in his town “run wide open.” Juries wouldn’t convict, he said, if it meant a jail term for the saloon owners. In 1929, the U.S. Congress went even further, passing the so-called Five & Ten Law—up to five years in federal prison and a $10,000 fine, just for possession of alcohol.

And encouraged, perhaps, by their success in the Irving case, federal prosecutors in Wyoming kept using the same methods—get a grand jury to bring conspiracy charges against large numbers of defendants. But Simpson was right. Juries were reluctant to convict. People were growing sick of the whole thing.

Repeal on the horizon

In 1928, New York Governor Al Smith, a wet candidate, lost the presidential election to Herbert Hoover, a mining engineer and former U.S. secretary of commerce. There were plenty of other issues at work; Smith probably lost primarily because he was a Catholic from New York City in an America that was still mostly rural and Protestant. In October 1929, the stock market crashed, and the nation started into a tailspin. A depression like the one that had already gripped Wyoming for 10 years spread across the U.S. It was so deep and lasted so long it became the Great Depression.

When Hoover ran again in 1932, he didn’t have a chance. He lost to New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt. The new president stood for a lot of things, mostly for a willingness to find out if the government could fix the terrible economy. But he also stood for Repeal, which meant repeal of the 18^th Amendment to the Constitution, which had outlawed alcohol 12 long years before.

In February and March 1933, the Wyoming Legislature repealed its Prohibition laws. State conventions were ratifying the 21^st amendment—repealing the 18^th—by overwhelming margins, some even unanimous. Also in March of 1933, Congress passed a law allowing the sale of weak, 3.2 percent-alcohol beer. Three-two beer became legal in Wyoming at 12:01 a.m. May 20, and big crowds stayed up in Casper for an all-night drunk.

With state Repeal already on the books, and nationwide Repeal clearly on the horizon, federal prosecutors in Wyoming appear to have been in a hurry to bring bootleggers and their municipal friends to justice before the law changed, and everyone would want to forget the crimes.

Federal charges of conspiracy and corruption

Early in May, federal prosecutors persuaded a grand jury to bring charges against 36 people in Natrona County for conspiring to violate federal Prohibition laws. To win, the prosecutors would have to prove that the people they charged had had plotted ahead of time, together, to break the federal laws against owning, selling or transporting illegal alcohol. It meant that a café owner who sold a pint of moonshine from under his counter, or a person who drove a truck loaded with booze, would be as guilty as a bootlegger running a statewide operation, or a county sheriff who took his money to look the other way.

Charged by the grand jury were Natrona County Sheriff Gilbert O. Housley, Casper Mayor R.W. Rowell, Casper Police Chief Michael Quealy, and a number of well-known local bootleggers, including Frank Converse, Cash Olds, and Dave Davidson and his two sons, Gilbert and Lawrence. The arrests were made by a group of deputy U.S. marshals led by Jack Allen, former Natrona County sheriff candidate, former Wyoming law enforcement commissioner and now the top U.S. marshal for Wyoming. Allen must have enjoyed arresting Housley, his former political foe.

The top defendants all pleaded not guilty and were let out of jail on $2,500 bonds. Housley demanded to be tried in Casper “where my friends and associates can hear the case and be thoroughly informed.” But his lawyers and the bootleggers’ lawyers decided differently. In Casper, where everyone knew them, the men couldn’t get a fair trial, the lawyers believed. The trial was moved to Cheyenne. It opened in mid July.

Two star witnesses

The government built its case mainly on the stories of two men. First was Joseph Warren, a former state legislator and purchasing agent for the Midwest Oil Company, who, the government lawyers said, had been collecting money monthly from the bootleggers since 1922. Warren testified that in 1931 alone, he’d collected more than $50,000 from bootleggers. About half of that went to Mayor Rowell, Warren said, and $5,000 or $6,000 to Chief Quealy.

Albert Morris was the second star witness. Until recently, Morris had worked for Housley as undersheriff. He told the court he routinely carried messages between Housley and members of “the combination”—the local ring of whiskey makers and sellers—sometimes for as much as $100 per month over his regular monthly salary of $106.86.

Warren swore the payoff arrangements stretched all the way back to 1922, when Rowell first ran for mayor. After Rowell was elected, according to the prosecutor, Warren collected an initial payment of $1,000 from Frank Converse, the biggest booze manufacturer in Natrona County. After that, for years, he’d collected bootleggers’ payoffs to the mayor, the police chief and the sheriff.

Sheriff Housley had fired Morris the previous year. When, in May 1933, it became clear that Morris was likely to testify to what he knew, Housley had traveled to Denver where Morris was living in a hotel. There, according to Morris, the two talked for hours. Housley first said he would “plead guilty and take the rap” if Morris had told too much. Then Housley asked if Morris really would stick with his story or side with his old boss after all. Finally, Morris said, Housley asked if Morris was afraid of him.

Morris told the court he answered he was not, but told Housley “but I remembered what happened to Harvey Perkins,” a small-time criminal who had turned up shot to death outside Casper the fall before. Then, said Morris, Housley threatened him directly, saying “If you ever get on the witness stand and tell what you know, I’ll shoot you, for I’d rather be behind bars as a murderer than have my children know I’m in jail for graft.”

Cross-examination

But under cross-examination, the government’s two main witnesses looked less trustworthy. Morris denied the defense lawyer’s suggestion that he had anything to do with the theft of six gallons of booze from a vault in the courthouse.

And Warren, who’d been elected to the Wyoming House of Representatives in 1930, had to admit he’d also served two terms in Nebraska—but in the state penitentiary, not the legislature. This fact had already come out in the election campaign, Warren said. He also admitted he’d been jailed once in Casper “for some gunplay,” as the paper put it, after he lost his job as purchasing agent for the oil company.

Warren detailed a cozy relationship with Rowell—the mayor and also a printer—by which Warren would steer the oil company’s printing contracts to Rowell, who would get paid, but not always have to do the work. Asked by one of the defense lawyers if that meant Warren was also “double-crossing the Midwest,” Warren answered that he didn’t treat the oil company any worse than it treated him. Warren, said one of the lawyers, was “an ex-convict, a drunkard, disgraced and down and out. … I have never seen a more thoroughly discredited witness.”

Mayor Rowell testified he’d done all he could to clean up Casper’s “vice and liquor conditions,” that he never had any agreement with bootleggers, and that Warren’s claim the two had connived to make money off the Midwest printing contracts was “ridiculous.” Five other men—two patients from a Denver hospital where Morris spent time after he was fired by Housley, the Cheyenne police chief, a detective for the Burlington Railroad and a druggist from Edgerton—all testified they’d heard Morris say he’d do anything he could—“dirty if I have to”—to put Housley in jail.

Like Rowell, Sheriff Housely swore that he, too, was clean. He denied he’d ever taken protection money, or made any agreements with Warren or Morris on payments; said he’d never paid Morris more than $50 per month over his $101 salary, a common practice around the state; and swore he had raided many of the places himself that supposedly were protected.

After five days of testimony, the paper noted that Oregon had just joined the states voting for repeal of the 18^th Amendment and of its own prohibition laws.

Bootleggers on the stand

The next day, several of Casper’s most prominent bootleggers and saloon owners took the stand. Dave Davidson, supposedly Casper’s biggest booze maker, said he had been in business in 1924 and ’25 but was no longer—and said he’d never paid any protection money to Joe Warren.

Gordon Weekly, owner of the Black Cat café, noted that the sheriff’s office had once raided him nine times in one night. Surely that showed he’d never paid any protection money, he claimed. On one of those raids, said Weekly, Housley had even knocked him down when he tried to dump the whiskey he had on hand. But when the government lawyer suggested Weekly objected to the raid because he was paying protection, and that was why Housley had knocked him down, the café owner denied it.

Three other bootleggers, including Pearl “Dynamite” Kyle, said they, too, had been in business a long time but had never paid off the cops.

The federal prosecutor, Ewing T. Kerr, asked the jurors to scratch their heads and think if such claims really made sense. “Is it not strange,” he asked the jury, that the large operators got to keep on operating, “while the small operators were knocked off” by the police. But really, Kerr said, it wasn’t the bootleggers who were the real criminals in the case. “It’s the conspirators, the men in public office who betrayed the public trust to the good citizens of Casper by accepting graft money at the expense of the taxpayers. …”

“Certain gentlemen,” Kerr said—meaning Rowell and the whiskey merchants—got together before the election and agreed on how the system would work. And as soon as the mayor was elected “that procedure was put into place.”

Acquittal

But looking back, it seems that Kerr’s distinction between criminals and real criminals may have confused the whole issue. Before the jury retired to consider its verdict, federal Judge T. Blake Kennedy reminded them that conspiracy law makes any one member of a conspiracy equally guilty with any other. After deliberating one long evening and all the next day, the jury sent a note to the judge asking if a man who was hired by another man to break the law was equally guilty with his employer. Yes, Kennedy answered, if the employee knew he was hired to break the law.

Maybe, in the jurors’ minds, the whole issue flipped. Maybe they concluded that that if any conspirator was as guilty as any other, then any conspirator was also as innocent as any other. Kerr had as much as said that the public officials had committed far more serious crimes than the bootleggers they’d taken money from. But because they’d all been charged with the same crime, it didn’t seem fair to convict them all of the same crime as some were obviously much more guilty than others.

Or maybe the jurors were just sick of Prohibition altogether. Near the end, one of the defense lawyers had speechified at length about the “wave of protest” to Prohibition then

sweeping the nation. “The whole case smacks of the graveyard,” the lawyer shouted. “Let the dead bury the dead.”

The jury, anyway, buried the case. The jurors found all 29 defendants not guilty. Though there was almost certainly a lot of graft money being paid in Casper and Wyoming, it’s clear in hindsight that the government lawyers charged far too many people. Perhaps if they’d just charged Rowell, Quealy, Housley and two or three of the men who had paid them routinely—say, Converse, Davidson and Olds—they would have had a much tighter case, uncluttered by questions of relative guilt.

But they didn’t do that. The jury, like the rest of the nation, was sick to death of the strange combination of hypocrisy and corruption that Prohibition dragged along with it wherever it went. So the jurors did their best to kill it off, once and for all.

Repeal

Public opinion in Wyoming had by that time become disenchanted with the so-called Noble Experiment. In 1918, Wyoming voters approved state Prohibition by a better than three-to-one margin. By 1926, Wyoming’s U.S. senators F.E. Warren and John B. Kendrick were reporting their mail on the topic about evenly divided. The tide had turned by November 1932, when the Legislature authorized a referendum: 71.5 percent of voters voted in favor of state Repeal—more than two to one.

The following spring, Wyoming was one of the first states to ratify the 21^st Amendment. When Utah became the 36^th state to ratify the amendment in December 1933, the provision became law nationwide.

Wyoming’s state Repeal did not become law until April 1935, however. As well as the 3.2 percent beer legalized earlier, drinkers could now get legal access to beer, wine and spirits. Less easy to measure was the hangover left by all that corruption—and its effect on people’s sense of the rule of law.

Resources

Primary sources

• The Casper Daily Tribune and its Sunday version, the Casper Tribune-Herald, paid close attention to the government’s conspiracy case against the Natrona County bootleggers, cops and politicians. See the editions of May 1, 3, 5, 7, 9-11, and 16, 1933; July 17-21, 23-27 and 30, 1933. This paper is on microfilm at the Western History Center at the Casper College Library, at the Natrona County Library, and at the Wyoming State Archives in Cheyenne.

Secondary sources

• Jones, Walter R. “Casper’s Prohibition Years,” Annals of Wyoming, vol. 48 No. 2, (Fall 1976), pp. 263-273. Stories of more criminal cases than I’ve included here, drawn mostly from newspaper accounts, but without the names of the officials involved.
• _____________. History of the Sand Bar(1888-1977), Casper: BASO, 1981. This book is full of vivid anecdotes, taken mostly from newspaper accounts, and lots of good historical photos of the Sandbar in its heyday.
• Scheer, Teva J. Governor Lady: The Life and Times of Nellie Tayloe Ross. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2005.
• Larson, T.A. History of Wyoming. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965, pp. 408-419, 439-443.
• Roberts, Phil. “Inside Federal Prohibition Enforcement in Wyoming: The Case of Bootlegger Busts in Northern Natrona County.” Annals of Wyoming, 74:3 (Summer 2002), pp. 2-7. Accessed July 14, 2016 at https://archive.org/stream/annalsofwyom74142002wyom#page/n83/mode/2up/search/Bootlegger.
• Roberts, Phil. “Wyoming’s Pioneers of Prohibition: The United States Army, the U.S. District Court, and Federal Enforcement of Laws Governing Morality.” Wyoming Law Review 1:2 (Spring, 2001), pp. 633-645.
• Roberts, Phil. “The Prohibition Agency’s First Case: Official Zeal, Mistaken Identity, and Murder in Wyoming, 1919.” Western Legal History, 11:2 (Summer/Fall 1998), pp.145-61.

Illustrations

• The photo of Ewing T. Kerr is from the Wyoming State Archives. Used with permission and thanks. The 1926 photo of the Casper Police Department is from the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming. Used with permission and thanks.
• The rest of the photos are from the Casper College Western History Center. Used with permission and thanks.

Edward T. Payton, a Wyoming reporter, editor and tireless advocate for the mentally ill is now nearly forgotten. During his lifetime, however, he published two Wyoming newspapers, promoted newspapers in Colorado and Wyoming, wrote many articles for others and two booklets on mental illness and hospital conditions, all while dogged by recurring bouts of mental illness of his own.

Payton’s was a long life, and a troubled one. But his own writings plus evidence in public records show a lucid passion for the plight of his fellow sufferers. After the many times he was released from the hospital, he clearly felt that others had been left behind whom he should defend; and his allegations were indirectly supported by several other former patients with their own horrific accounts.

By the time of his death in 1933, his legacy may already have brought improvements to care at Wyoming’s state mental hospital.

Early career

Payton was born in Minnesota in 1856 to James Harvey Payton and Rebecca Ann Thomas Payton. Sometime before 1886, the family moved to Rapid City, Dakota Territory. Payton first worked as a government freighter and in 1889 began to sell magazine and newspaper subscriptions, working for the Denver Post, and by 1890 for the Cheyenne Daily Leader.

Subscription selling and reporting were a fortuitous combination. In spring 1892, Payton, though barely launched on his reporter's career, witnessed the invasion of Johnson County and, as he wrote years later in the first of his booklets, Mad Men, "scooped the professionals [who] intended to cover the news of the expedition for the press of the country." Payton's articles "Caught in a Trap" and "Coming to Cheyenne" were published in the Cheyenne Daily Leader on April 13 and 16, 1892, in the immediate aftermath of the invasion.

In 1899, Payton accompanied one of the posses that chased the outlaws after the Wilcox Train Robbery. In so doing, he encountered some personal danger: Both the Natrona County Tribune and the Wyoming Derrick reported on June 8, 1899, that his horse was shot, though he escaped serious injury.

Newspapering with a taste for politics

From early in his career, Payton seems to have seen himself as a champion of the little guy.

"When in 1890 I became attached to the [Democratic] Cheyenne Leader," Payton wrote in Mad Men, "I had no politics, but soon began to read with interest the editorials in the paper and that fall marched in the parades with the party to which it belonged; within two years I claimed allegiance to the same party … [and] became actively interested in state issues."

In August 1894, President Grover Cleveland signed the Carey Act, named for Wyoming’s U.S. senator, Joseph Carey. Under its provisions, the federal government could donate up to a million acres of federal land to any state that would help private developers and settlers irrigate that land. Payton, along with many other Democrats, felt the act simply legalized the efforts of a few rich men to grab as much land as they could. During the 1894 election season, when Republican William A. Richards was running for governor, Payton accused him of land fraud in the Laramie Daily Boomerang of Oct. 22, 1894. Two days later, he also attacked Sens. Carey and Francis E. Warren, as published in the Boomerang.

When John Carroll, Payton's editor at the Cheyenne Daily Leader, switched party affiliation during the 1894 campaign season, Payton started his own newspaper in Cheyenne, the Big Horn Basin Savior, picking up the term "Savior" from an anti-Payton editorial Carroll had published November 3 of that year. Years later, Payton explained in Mad Men, "I desired to see the land of the Big Horn, and the water saved to the homesteaders. … There was nothing religious about my paper unless it is religious to try to save from the few for a posterity majority what rightfully belongs to it." The Savior had a short run, from early November, just before the 1894 election, into January 1895.

A few months later, in early spring of 1895, Payton traveled in a snowstorm to Thermopolis, Wyo., to settle on the homestead he'd filed on the previous year. He also started his second newspaper, publishing the premiere issue of the Big Horn River Pilot on April 18, 1895.

A mental crisis

By Payton's own analysis, these combined efforts and the resulting difficulties precipitated one of his early episodes of mental instability: "I was without funds, yet impatient, impulsive, determined. Circumstances made it impossible for me to keep up with my desires and I could not sleep."

His insomnia persisted; he began hallucinating, and in August he was arrested and escorted to Lander, Wyo., for a trial to evaluate his mental state. In those days, juries determined whether a person was insane; this jury could not agree and the case was dismissed.

A few weeks later, however, Payton was again arrested and this time declared insane by the jury and taken to the Wyoming Insane Asylum, as it was then called, in Evanston, Wyo., for the first of several times throughout his life. Quite soon, Payton felt he had recovered his sanity and tried to get released, starting in late October. On November 20, Payton finally left the hospital—though his official release date was November 4—to spend Thanksgiving with his family in Rapid City. On December 10 of that year the Daily Boomerang published a long letter by Payton, "State Insane Asylum," which earlier had been published by the Wyoming Tribune.

Payton described the hospital: its grounds, daily routines, administration and finances, including employee salaries. Mentioning several of the inmates and their backgrounds, he wound up by praising one of the attendants, Herbert L. Jackson. Sadly, according to Payton, the sheriff who escorted him from Green River to Evanston had "beat[en] the blood from my nostrils with his brawny fists." This was the first time he reported being abused while in the custody of the state as a mental patient.

“Cruel Treatment:” a series of news stories

In spring 1896, Payton returned to Thermopolis and hired Mike Maley, a Cheyenne printer, to run the Pilot while Payton traveled in Wyoming selling subscriptions to the Denver Post. About two years later, still working for the Post, he began writing more articles for the Pilot, precipitating a bout of overwork and insomnia that apparently caused stresses similar to those he experienced in September 1895. Again he became unbalanced, was arrested and after a hearing was committed to the Wyoming State Hospital for the Insane, as it was now called. This time Payton stayed for six months, from late May 1898 to Nov. 17, 1898.

In January 1899 Payton began publishing a series of articles, titled "Cruel Treatment," about his stay at the hospital. In five weekly issues of the Pilot, January 18 through February 22, Payton described what he had gone through and what he had seen. Naming 15 patients and four attendants, he told 11 specific stories of abuse.

In one, he stated that three attendants had seized one of the patients and thrown him across the edge of a bathtub. Then one of these attendants "placed both hands upon his throat and choked him until he was black in the face." Payton noted that the patient had not been violent or in any way threatening to the attendants.

Payton claimed an attendant had also beaten him, while other attendants looked on. By the end of the episode "my shirt was very bloody … the walls of the room were covered with blood … and the back of my head was beginning to swell in lumps where it had struck the wall. The window, five feet away, was bespattered with blood."

An eye for the bigger picture

In conjunction with these reports, Payton published an article with general information about the hospital, and another on a mental hospital in Gheel, Belgium. This was an early manifestation of his desire to educate the public about the medical, as well as the physical, treatment of mental patients worldwide.

Conflicts with Dr. C. H. Solier

The Wyoming Insane Asylum had been established in 1887. By 1891, when C. H. Solier was appointed superintendent, the hospital was governed by the state Board of Charities and Reform. The board was one of several overseeing state government, all of them made up of the state’s top five elected officials: governor, secretary of state, state auditor, state treasurer and state superintendent of public instruction.

Prior to his appointment, Solier lived in Rawlins and was county physician and a surgeon for the Union Pacific Railroad. He was a Republican, and may have won the post due to his party affiliation as much as to his qualifications.

In his "Cruel Treatment" series of 1899, Payton reported that Solier had opened, read and destroyed most of Payton’s outgoing mail. He also accused Solier of abusing patients and witnessing similar episodes. Solier wrote a letter to the Pilot, denying all of Payton's allegations, and Payton published this letter with his own rebuttal in the February 1 issue.

Solier wrote another letter, this one to the Board of Charities and Reform, refuting Payton's charges against himself and the hospital, which the board noted in its Feb. 6, 1899, minutes. The board as well sent two of its members to Evanston to investigate. Details from their report are recorded in the April 3, 1899, minutes. The investigators said they had interviewed "[e]very one of the inmates referred to in the … Pilot [and] not one had any complaint."

In a series of three articles dated March 31, April 12 and May 1, 1899, the Laramie Daily Boomerang condemned the board’s investigation as a whitewash. The Boomerang also published a long letter from Payton in the May 1 issue, in which he contested the investigators' claims that they had interviewed all the inmates he had named in the Pilot. Some were not competent, Payton wrote, while others had left the hospital and so could not have been there to speak to the investigators.

The Saratoga Sun, a Republican paper, noted on April 27, "[I]t is time to ask that Payton be given an opportunity to prove his charges." In a separate article, the Sun interviewed a former patient, not named, who had been at the hospital seven years previously: "I was thrown down and choked until almost dead … one of the attendants … used to beat me with a hard-wood cane … until I would be black for days."

The Sun called for a more thorough investigation to "bring the truth to the surface, scorch whom it may." However, the board took no further action.

More charges

The next two-and-a-half years seem to have been quiet for Payton. While in St. Paul, Minn., he married Della Badger, a graduate of Wellesley College, on July 3, 1900. The couple returned to Wyoming where Payton continued publishing the Pilot and sold subscriptions for the Denver Republican and Cheyenne Leader.

Then, on Jan. 3, 1902, Payton wrote to the Board of Charities and Reform, "I have recently been urgently appealed to for help and furnished with evidence of the … cruelties practiced in … [the hospital] since the year 1898." Calling for "another and most thorough investigation," Payton went on to state that conditions were far worse than they had been when he was there.

The board apparently responded; Payton wrote another letter January 10, stating that he could comply with their requests for names of victims and witnesses. Four patients "are believed to have died" from abuse and neglect, he wrote, and Solier—in front of witnesses—choked three different patients until they were "black in the face" or "blood ran from their mouths." Payton also claimed that Solier forced towels down the throats of two others, and dragged three female patients by the hair. Mr. Wanlace, the steward, was one of Payton's primary witnesses, and Payton requested that both he and Wanlace testify before the board.

Minutes dated January 16, 1902, indicate the board met that day in Cheyenne, expressly to listen to this evidence. Present were Payton, Wanlace, Solier, a stenographer—Miss Webster—plus board members Fenimore Chatterton, secretary of state; Thomas T. Tynan, state superintendent of public instruction; George E. Abbott, state treasurer; LeRoy Grant, state auditor and F. B. Sheldon, clerk. The board spent the day listening to Payton, Wanlace and Solier testify, and decided to continue the hearings at the hospital on January 20. This second hearing, however, is not mentioned in subsequent minutes.

On April 28, 1902, Sheldon, the clerk of the board, wrote to Payton, "[E]vidence does not sustain the charges made by you against Dr. Solier and the management of the institution." There was no further investigation.

Spreading ideas of reform

On June 20, 1903, Payton suspended publication of the Pilot. In November of that year he was again committed to the hospital but was released to the custody of his wife sometime in December, and the couple traveled to South Dakota. By 1904 they had returned to Wyoming, and in 1907, Payton began one of his major efforts to improve the care of the mentally ill.

Since 1898 he'd been studying the causes and treatment of insanity. In in March 1907 he suggested to the Board of Charities and Reform that some less dangerous patients in Evanston could benefit from home care. Payton offered to take in Ed Byers, a 32-year-old man who had been at the hospital since 1893.

Around the time the board was consulting Solier about this, the June 27, 1907, Laramie Boomerang published an extensive, front-page letter from former patient Joe Gillespie, who had been at Evanston the previous year. "I was beaten and kicked [by an attendant] into unconsciousness," Gillespie wrote. "Then I was allowed to recover my senses and was choked almost into unconsciousness again. … It is my opinion that the board of charities is completely deceived as to the true condition at Evanston and Dr. Solier himself is, to some extent."

The board did not investigate Gillespie's charges, and also refused to release Byers to Payton. However, Payton filed suit for custody and won it from Wyoming's Supreme Court. Byers then moved in with the Paytons at their ranch near Thermopolis. In 1908, Payton toured the state with a lecture about insanity, "Psychological Truth." Then, in June 1909, he was again committed but was released in August on the condition that he halt any further attempts at home treatment of the mentally ill.

The Jenkins murders, and two booklets

In late September 1911, Edna Jenkins, the youngest daughter of former Gov. William A. Richards, was found shot along with her husband, Thomas Jenkins. The murders occurred at Richards' Red Bank cattle ranch on Little Canyon Creek south of Tensleep in present southeastern Washakie County. Payton had been in the area at the time.

On October 7, the Wyoming Tribune reported that Payton "was so clearly out of his head and caused so much trouble that the sheriff was notified." Payton "constantly muttered about the dead woman and ... made other remarks which aroused suspicion." Briefly held in the Big Horn County jail in Basin, Wyo., Payton was released and never charged because there was no real evidence against him.

Payton continued selling newspaper subscriptions. In January 1923, he published Mad Men: A Psychological Study Complete in Twelve Parts. The first printing of 2,000 copies sold out; Payton printed another 2,000 in April.

He published the second booklet of the series in June 1923, but titled it Behind the Scenes at Evanston. This was the last volume, though he had planned more. Mad Men is autobiographical, focusing mainly on events he felt affected his mental state, and includes details from some of his early attacks and incarcerations. Behind the Scenes continues the tale, while broadening out to include descriptions of some of the other patients at Evanston, as well as reporting on Payton's own extended study of insanity and its treatment. He mentions Solier in both booklets, but mostly in passing and not directly in connection with the various charges in the Pilot and in letters to the Board of Charities and Reform.

From January 1924 on, Payton struggled with his malady, ending up at the hospital in late November 1925, never to be released again. Overlapping with his last months of liberty, however, were new charges of abuse by yet another former patient.

Charges from other patients and staff

Sometime in spring 1924, former patient Mary Emma Meek, wife of a state senator from Weston County, wrote to the Board of Charities and Reform requesting an investigation and the opportunity to testify "to the brutal and inhuman treatment given to … inmates." Meek claimed she was "left without succor, not allowed drinking water … brutally assaulted by attendants without cause or provocation … placed in a straightjacket, and submitted to numerous indignities."

Her neck had been injured, she wrote, and "other unfortunates" had also been cruelly treated. Mrs. Meek, confined from September 1923 through early March 1924, said she was "of sound mind and memory within a month or thereabouts after her incarceration … and knows whereof she speaks." The letter ended, "[Y]our petitioner has been by a jury on the 19^th day of April A.D. 1924 declared to be of sound mind."

On April 21, 1924, her husband, Sen. Commodore P. Meek, also wrote in a short letter to the board, "I shall never let up on this man at the Asylum. He has got to go." The context of this letter makes it clear that Meek was referring to Solier.

On May 6, 1924, the board met to investigate Mrs. Meek's charges. The transcript indicates that Solier testified himself and also questioned two witnesses: Mrs. Anna Massamore, night nurse; and Mrs. Inez Stricker, matron. All three among them denied 100 percent of Mrs. Meek's charges, Solier adding, "[S]he was not in her sound mind at any time while she was in the State Hospital. … [W]hat she saw, what she heard, what impressions she received, were those of an insane person." The board took no further action.

Solier was superintendent until he died on Dec. 10, 1930. Obituaries lauded him in The Wyoming Press and The Wyoming Times.

The hospital after Solier

Dr. D. B. Williams was appointed in Solier’s place in April 1931. Hospital staff soon charged Williams with mismanagement and cruelty, but the board investigated, concluding that disgruntled employees were making unfounded charges.

Then, on Jan. 11, 1932, Dr. A. L. Darche, formerly of the hospital staff, sent an affidavit to acting Gov. Alonzo M. Clark. Darche, assistant superintendent during Solier's declining years, detailed the behavior of Inez Stricker, the matron who had testified against Mrs. Meek. Stricker, Darche wrote, "had never taken a regular nurse's course … and therefore could never be a registered nurse. ... She ruled the place in a high handed manner … and discharged or had discharged any and everyone who did not pay obedience to her. Her orders were supreme and extended to every department of the hospital."

Darche charged Stricker with running "a veritable espionage system," dismissing good employees for no reason. Further, Darche stated, Stricker witnessed the severe beating of several patients, condoning this and protecting the guilty attendant. Mrs. Stricker subsequently left the hospital, apparently sometime in 1932.

At about the same time as the Darche affidavit, the board held a hearing to investigate another matter, the death of an epileptic patient, Mr. John Erickson. Mr. A. N. Williams, an attendant, was the only witness testifying, and apparently had requested the hearing because he feared Stricker would charge him with Erickson's murder. The transcript of this Jan. 7, 1932, hearing reveals that after general questions about the events leading up to Erickson's death, the inquiry turned to Solier's last years as superintendent.

Williams testified that during the time Solier and Stricker were in charge, they "never did anything against" the beating and other cruel treatment of patients. Attendant Williams further accused Stricker of locking two other epileptic patients each alone in a (heated) cement-floored room in winter, without clothing or blankets, for up to two months. When asked by the board about Solier’s successor Dr. D. B. Williams's running of the hospital, witness A. N. Williams, the attendant, replied that it was "very good."

Payton’s legacy

Although Payton was still alive at the time of this hearing, more than seven years after the last time he entered the hospital, we do not know whether he was aware of the change of administration or in the treatment of patients. We do know that fourteen months earlier, he had still been mentally active and hoping to gain his release. On October 26, 1931, he wrote to Grace Raymond Hebard at the University of Wyoming, "I expect to leave here in the spring, my expectations being based on the best possible reasons." These and other letters written to Hebard in November of that year reveal that he was writing or had written a manuscript, "Wyoming 1807-1899." His half-brother, Benjamin Dowd of Gillette, and his grown daughter, Dorothy, then living in Nebraska, were apparently helping him with it.

Payton died on Jan. 3, 1933. Only one short obituary appears to have survived, in the Jan. 4, 1933, Wyoming Press. The Press stated that he "had no known relatives," but this may not have been true. However, he was divorced from his wife and buried, presumably in the hospital cemetery, in a pauper's grave.

Although he had been well known and liked, participating in the political life of the young state, reporting on important events, boosting the town of Thermopolis from its beginnings, advocating for those he claimed were victimized at the Wyoming State Hospital and bravely putting forth his own case, hoping thereby to educate the public about insanity, all seems to have been forgotten and swallowed up in the shadow of his own mental illness.

Yet some of his efforts may have been effective: On Feb. 25, 1925, the Wyoming Legislature passed a law prohibiting harsh, cruel or abusive treatment of insane persons. Representative Preston McAvoy, like Sen. Meek from Weston County, who introduced the bill, cited Mrs. Meek's case. Possibly, public awareness had been advancing for the past quarter-century, starting with Payton's 1899 revelations in the Pilot, and continuing with those of other former patients.

Payton's battles, on his own behalf as well as for his fellow patients, illustrate the difficulty both of his position and of Solier's. Mental patients are easy targets for that percentage of caregivers who are thugs and sadists. Who would believe the testimony of a person known to have mental problems, when those problems by definition can include hallucinations and delusions? Incompetent administrators and cruel attendants, it seems fair to say, can have an easy time refuting patients' accusations.

Conversely, compassionate and well-qualified caregivers of the mentally ill can easily face the specter of demented patients fabricating stories about their treatment. In either case, one can only hope the truth provides adequate defense.

This was Payton's mission. His letters, booklets and newspaper accounts of conditions at the Wyoming State Hospital are fair and objective in tone, noting the good as well as the bad. Although officials discredited all of Payton's accusations, Solier's case stands, or falls, on the historical record. Payton's remarkable persistence and energy, despite his illnesses, shone through to expose what should never be tolerated or allowed to continue.

Resources

Primary Sources

• Darche, A. L., M.D. Affidavit to Acting Governor A.M. Clark, Jan. 11, 1932. MA 8925, Box 6, Investigations, Wyoming State Archives, Cheyenne, Wyo.
• Meek, C. P. Letter to Board of Charities and Reform, April 21, 1924. MA 1606, Box 6, Wyoming State Archives.
• Meek, Mary Emma. Letter to Board of Charities and Reform, undated. MA 1606, Box 6, Wyoming State Archives.
• Payton, E. T. Behind the Scenes at Evanston, 1923, 6, 7, 17-20, 26, 28, 32-36, 56-64, Wyoming State Archives.
• __________. Letters to Grace Raymond Hebard, Oct. 26, Nov. 1, 15, 20, 24, Dec. 6, 12, 17, 1931. Grace Raymond Hebard Collection, Box 41, Folder 25, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
• __________. Letters to Board of Charities and Reform, Jan. 3, 10, 12, 17, 1902. Letters Received, Incoming Correspondence, MA 7939, Box 3, Wyoming State Archives.
• __________. Mad Men: A Psychological Study Complete in Twelve Parts, 1923, 11-20, 26, 31, 35, 41-49, 51,Wyoming State Archives.
• Sheldon, F. B. Letter to E. T. Payton, April 28, 1902. Letterpress Book, p. 589, Wyoming State Archives.
• Wyoming State Board of Charities and Reform. "Hearing Before the State Board of Charities and Reform, at Cheyenne, Wyoming, January 7, 1932, with reference to Alleged Mismanagement of Wyoming State Hospital at Evanston, Wyoming." MA 8925, Box 6, Investigations, Wyoming State Archives.
• ———. "Investigation: C. P. Meek, Upton, Wyoming, Wyo. State Hospital, Evanston," May 6, 1924. MA 1606, Box 6, Wyoming State Archives.
• ———. Minutes, Feb. 6, 1899, Book B, p. 98; April 3, 1899, Book B, pp. 123-124; Jan. 16, 1902, Book C., p.116; March 3, 1902, Book C, p. 136; April 26, 1902, Book C, p. 166, Wyoming State Archives.
• Wyoming Press, Jan. 4, 1933. (microfilm) Coe Library, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyo.
• Wyoming Newspapers. Accessed June 16, 2016, June 20-25, 2016, July 14, 2016, at http://newspapers.wyo.gov/.
• Big Horn River Pilot, June 1, 1898, July 27, 1898, Sept. 14, 1898, Jan. 11, 1899, Jan. 18, 1899, Jan. 25, 1899, Feb. 1, 1899, Feb. 8, 1899, Feb. 15, 1899, Feb. 22, 1899.
• Cheyenne Daily Leader, April 13, 1892, April 16, 1892, April 24, 1894, Nov. 3, 1894.
• Daily Boomerang, Oct. 22, 1894, Oct. 24, 1894, Oct. 23, 1895, Dec. 10, 1895, March 31, 1899, April 12, 1899, May 1, 1899, June 6, 1899.
• Laramie Boomerang, June 27, 1907.
• Natrona County Tribune, June 8, 1899, April 8, 1908.
• Saratoga Sun, April 27, 1899.
• Wyoming Derrick, June 8, 1899.
• Wyoming Tribune, Oct. 7, 1911.

Secondary Sources

• Beers, Clifford Whittington. A Mind that Found Itself: An Autobiography. 5^th ed., rev. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1953.
• Bogart, Barbara Allen. "The Wyoming State Hospital." WyoHistory.org, accessed June 21, 2016, at www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/wyoming-state-hospital.
• Bonner, Robert. "Town Founder and Irrigation Tycoon: The Buffalo Bill Nobody Knows." WyoHistory.org, accessed Aug. 6, 2016, at www.wyohistory.org/essays/town-founder-and-irrigation-tycoon-buffalo-bill.
• "Carey Act." Wikipedia, accessed Aug. 6, 2016, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carey_Act.
• Davis, John W. Wyoming Range War: The Infamous Invasion of Johnson County. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010, 178-179.
• Ewig, Rick. “E. T. Payton: Savior or Madman?.” Annals of Wyoming 79: 1, Winter 2007, 18-36.

For Further Reading and Research

• Big Horn Basin Savior, (microfilm, Special Collections) Coe Library, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyo.: Nov. 19, 22, 29, Dec. 3, 6, 27, 31, 1894; Jan. 3, 1895.
• Big Horn River Pilot, Wyoming Newspapers, http://newspapers.wyo.gov/: June 15, 29, 1895; Aug. 4, 11, 18, 25, Sept. 1, 8, 15, 22, 29, Oct. 6, 13, 20, 27, Nov. 3, 10, 17, 24, Dec. 1, 8, 15, 22, 29, 1897; Jan. 19, 26, Feb. 2, 9, 16, 23, March 2, 9, 16, 23, 30, April 6, 13, 20, 27, May 4, 11, 18, 25, June 8, 15, 22, 29, July 6, 13, 20, Aug. 3, 10, 17, 24, 31, Sept. 7, 21, 28, Oct. 5, 12, 19, Nov. 2, 9, 16, 23, 30, Dec. 7, 14, 21, 28, 1898; March 1, 8, 15, 1899.
• Rothman, David J. The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic. Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1971.
• Scull, Andrew, ed. Madhouses, Mad-Doctors and Madmen: The Social History of Psychiatry in the Victorian Era. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981.
• Whitaker, Robert, Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill. Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus Publishing, 2002.

Illustrations

• The images of of the Wyoming Insane Asylum and Dr. C.H. Solier are from the Uinta County Museum. Used with permission and thanks.
• The page of the Big Horn River Pilot, 1899, is from Wyoming Newspapers. Used with thanks.
• The photos of Secretary of State Fenimore Chatterton and the 1909 J.E. Stimson photo of Thermopolis are from Wyoming State Archives. Used with permission and thanks.

It is Aug. 19, 1854. At a site just east of Fort Laramie, on the Oregon/California Trail along the North Platte River, the weather is hot, pleasant and clear. And this afternoon, Brevet 2nd Lt. John Lawrence Grattan, an 1853 graduate of West Point, will start a 22-year war between the U.S. Army and the Great Sioux Nation.

Thirteen years earlier, the first small emigrant party followed the North Platte River heading west to Oregon. In 1843, an estimated 1,000 emigrants made the same trip over the identical route. Two years after that, 5,000 emigrants followed what was now being called the Oregon Trail, from the Missouri River west to free and fertile farm lands in Oregon.

When gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill northeast of Sacramento in California early in 1848, it unleashed the fabled Gold Rush of 1849. That year, approximately 30,000 “Forty-Niners” made the trek across the Northern Plains to California and Oregon.

For the first few years of its existence, relationships between emigrants and American Indians along the Great Platte River Road were generally peaceful. Emigrants were sometimes in great fear of the native people, however, and many began the journey armed to the teeth to defend themselves.

On the trail, most contacts were with Indians asking for “presents”–small quantities of foodstuffs or luxury items such as cloth, coffee and tobacco. These were essentially tolls that tribespeople sought for permitting the emigrants to traverse their land—and to kill the game, cut the wood and graze the grass that grew along it.

After the Gold Rush began, traffic on the trail increased enormously and tensions between whites and Indians increased along with it. Traffic was heaviest during the traveling season; the annual surge of emigrants lasted just four to eight weeks in late spring and early summer, before the travelers moved along into the sunset. Later in the summer, most westbound travelers were Mormons bound for Utah—a shorter distance that allowed them to make a later start.

In 1848, the Army established Fort Kearny at the head of Grand Island in what’s now Nebraska on the south bank of the North Platte River.[1] The next year, the U.S. Army purchased a small trading post at the junction of the Laramie and North Platte Rivers, and permanently established Fort Laramie as a military post.

Tensions rise

Trail traffic peaked in 1850, when 50,000 gold seekers traveled to California and 10,000 land seekers went to Oregon. Numbers stayed high in the following years. Businesses sprang up along the trails to serve the emigrants. By 1854, little trading operations served the travelers every 15 or 20 miles along the Platte.

Many diarists report a chronic nervousness as Indian people would travel with them for days at a time, wanting to make trades, curious about their lives, tools, kitchen and traveling gear.  As traffic increased, requests for tolls became demands; demands became threats.

Trouble at Platte ferry

The year of 1853 found Fort Laramie occupied by a small, single-company garrison. The commander, 2nd Lt. Richard B. Garnett, enjoyed at least better relations with the Indians around the fort than did some of his successors in the job. That summer, a large party of Minniconjou Sioux were camped at the Platte Ferry—current location of the historic Fort Laramie Iron Bridge, built in 1875—on the north side of the North Platte River. The Minniconjou had come into the area more recently and were not as well known around the fort as were the Oglala and Brule Sioux, who had been trading at the fort and nearby posts for a decade and a half.

The Minniconjou intermittently harassed passing emigrants, being particularly aggressive in demanding their tolls. At the ferry on June 15, an altercation broke out between an infantry sergeant stationed there and a Minniconjou warrior. A shot was fired at the sergeant as the soldier was crossing the river in the ferry boat. Whether the Indian man was shooting into the water to intimidate the sentry, or he simply missed, was unclear.

In response, Lt. Garnett dispatched Brevet 2nd Lt. Hugh B. Fleming and 22 men of his company to arrest the Minniconjou, or to take hostages if the man could not be found. This was Fleming’s first opportunity for independent command, as he had just arrived fresh from graduation from West Point.

Two young West Point graduates

The U.S. Military Academy takes great pride in the ranks of military and political leaders it has produced, among them the generals Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, William T. Sherman, Philip H. Sheridan, John J. Pershing, Dwight D. Eisenhower, George S. Patton and Norman Schwarzkopf. Grant and Eisenhower also became presidents of the United States.

The classes of 1852 and 1853 were among West Point’s most productive. The class of 1852 graduated acclaimed military leaders George Crook (of Indian War fame), and Civil War Union officers Henry Slocum (XII and XX Corps commander), David Stanley (IV Corps commander who made major contributions to the defeat of Confederate General John B. Hood and his Army of Tennessee in 1864), and Alexander McCook (a Corps commander in the Union’s Army of the Cumberland). The class of 1853 produced Union officers James McPherson (Commander of the Army of the Tennessee), Joshua Sill (killed at the Battle of Stones River, Philip Sheridan and John Schofield (both Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. Army), and Confederate generals Alexander Chambers and John Bell Hood.

The careers of Hugh Brady Fleming and John Grattan were less accomplished.

Both entered West Point in July 1848, Grattan at age 18 and Fleming at 19 years old, aiming to graduate in 1852. Grattan flunked mathematics his first year, however, and recycled to the class of 1853. His next four years were undistinguished. In his senior year his poorest marks were in infantry tactics; he finally managed to graduate ranked 36^th out of 52 cadets.

Fleming had been appointed from Crawford County in northwestern Pennsylvania. His father had served with distinction during the War of 1812 and enjoyed a laudable career in the U.S. Army. As a sophomore Fleming accumulated 66 demerits. As senior cadet, his poorest marks were in infantry and artillery tactics. He graduated from West Point with the class of 1852, ranked 29^th out of 43 cadets commissioned. He was assigned to Company G, 6^th Infantry at Fort Laramie in the Wyoming Territory.

As it turned out, both Fleming and Grattan would have done well to spend more time learning infantry and artillery tactics.

Attack on the Minniconjou village

On June 17, 1853, two days after the trouble at the ferry, Fleming marched two dozen men into the Minniconjou village to demand the supposed culprit —or several other prisoners as substitutes. Shooting broke out, the warriors retreated to the far side of the village and three were killed, with not a single soldier killed or wounded. Fleming returned across the North Platte River to Fort Laramie with two Minniconjou women captives.  

In negotiations in the following days, Garnett said he was willing to forget what had happened and make amends. The Minniconjou saw nothing to be gained in escalating hostilities, although they greatly outnumbered the small Army command. The prisoners were released.

Conquering Bear, a well-regarded Brule Sioux chief who enjoyed good relations with the army garrison, assured Garnett that the rest of Sioux were friendlier than the Minniconjou. Relations between the soldiers and all the nearby Sioux bands began to deteriorate, however.

For his part, Fleming received commendation for his leadership. But nearly all the Minniconjou men had been away hunting; Fleming had led an attack upon a largely undefended village. Unfortunately, both Fleming and the Army believed afterward that even a small force of regulars could defeat the Indians, a belief that clearly influenced Fleming’s future actions at Fort Laramie. He had drawn the wrong lessons from this minor action.

And probably none of the officers understood that the Treaty of Fort Laramie, signed just three years before between the federal government and the tribes of the northern plains, gave no jurisdiction over individual Indians to U.S. civil or military authorities, notes historian Remi Nadeau.  The treaty left responsibility for dealing with miscreants in the hands of the tribes; if there was a violation, the tribes were to be held collectively responsible, and officers or Indian agents were expected to negotiate accordingly.

Time and again, however, the Army set out to arrest individuals or take hostages. For their part, the tribes saw capture as a prelude to death—that was how their warfare worked—and so they often resisted arrest or capture at all costs.

Throughout 1853 and 1854, Fort Laramie and the entire U.S. Army on the western frontier were woefully understrength. When Garnett was re-assigned, Fleming became commander of the single Company G of the 6th Infantry still stationed at the fort—and post commander as well.

Grattan arrived in the fall of 1853. Fleming, a year older than his subordinate, a classmate of his during their plebe year together at West Point and his superior in the Army by only a single year, was only slightly more experienced than Grattan.

And Grattan seemed to fit the stereotype of the worst West Pointers. He was brash and arrogant and he despised the Indians that lived around or regularly visited Fort Laramie. He repeatedly bragged that with 10 men he could conquer the entire Indian nation.

He would soon get his chance to prove his boasts.

A sick cow and a confrontation

On Aug. 18, 1854, a sick cow lagged behind a Mormon wagon train as it passed Fort Laramie heading for Utah Territory. Large, separate camps of Minniconjou, Brule and Oglala Sioux Indians were nearby that summer, waiting for distribution of their annuities—their annual government payments in beef and other goods as part of the terms of the treaty signed three years before.

With their promised rations late, their pony herds eating up all the available grass and most of the local game long since exhausted, the people were hungry. The sick cow ended up in in a Brule Sioux camp, where she was killed by a visiting Minniconjou warrior, High Forehead, and ended up as dinner. The emigrant reported his loss to Fleming, perhaps hoping that the Army would issue him a free replacement. He then moved on, vanishing nameless from history.

Fleming did nothing about it for a day, during which Conquering Bear came to the fort and named High Forehead as responsible for the theft. Conquering Bear offered either a horse or mule in restitution for the cow—a pretty good deal for the time, and certainly evidence of his good faith. Fleming said he would wait for the arrival of the Indian agent to negotiate a solution

But Grattan was eager for confrontation. On the 19^th, he urged his superior officer to send him to the village. After a long, loud argument Fleming finally agreed, and authorized Grattan to take 22 men. Grattan asked for volunteers.

Had Fleming turned the entire affair over to the local Indian agent, had he agreed to compensation from High Forehead through Conquering Bear by accepting the horse or mule—or even led the party himself—the entire mess could have been avoided. But good judgment was scarce at Fort Laramie on the hot afternoon of Aug. 19.

Further, Fleming may have had little control over Grattan, as both were nearly the same age, had attended the same West Point class their first year, and with Fleming carrying only a single year’s seniority. No other officers were available. Grattan was dispatched, perhaps with some guidance and direction from Fleming.

Lt. Grattan took two sergeants and 27 enlisted men with him to arrest High Forehead, along with a 12-pounder mountain howitzer and a 12-pounder Napoleon howitzer.

Making things worse, Lt. Grattan was accompanied by Lucian Auguste, an interpreter who appears to have made himself unpopular in the area with Indians and whites alike. He had been humiliated a few weeks before when some Cheyenne had stolen some of his cows. With a posse of French-speaking traders he chased them, but when the warriors offered a fight, the posse halted out of rifle range and the Cheyenne went on their way. Grattan later ridiculed Auguste and his friends, loudly, for their apparent cowardice.

 On the afternoon of the 19^th, Auguste was reluctant to go, took a long time to get ready, acquired some whiskey and began drinking before he left.

Attack on the Brule village

The little detachment left the fort about 3 p.m. and headed downriver toward the villages. The infantrymen rode in a wagon and on the limbers of the two howitzers— the two-wheeled carts that support the tail of the gun. According to at least one account they, too, were passing a bottle as they rode.

After about an hour, the troops arrived at the American Fur Company houses where all the annuity goods were stored. Here the Oglala village stretched along the river for three-quarters of a mile. Beyond it, in a shallow loop of the North Platte, lay the huge Brule village of around 700 lodges —about 4,200 people, including perhaps 1,000 warriors.

Grattan ordered his soldiers to load their muskets and fix bayonets, and led his soldiers past the Oglala village to the trading houses of James Bordeaux at the Brule village. Auguste, now drunk, began shouting threats and insults in all directions.

At Grattan’s urging, Bordeaux sent for Conquering Bear. Grattan demanded the chief deliver High Forehead, so that he could be taken back to the fort and held until the Indian agent arrived. Conquering Bear stalled and procrastinated, went back to his lodge for the general’s uniform presented him at the treaty negotiations three years earlier and returned—at which point a messenger arrived saying High Forehead would resist even if it meant death.

More demands, more stalling and refusals followed; Grattan ordered his men to load the howitzers and advanced toward the center of the Brule village—Auguste continuing his rants in Sioux the whole time. Out of sight of the soldiers, hundreds of warriors were already stripped for battle.

Grattan marshaled the troops in a line facing Conquering Bear’s lodge, the two howitzers in the center, and repeated his demand. Again, the chief offered a mule in restitution. Grattan pulled out a pocket watch and snarled, “It is getting late and I can’t wait any longer.” Conquering Bear said it was out of his hands; if Grattan wanted High Forehead, the troops would have to use force.

Bordeaux later reported he saw one man on the right-hand end of the line fire his musket into a group of Indians at the lodge; one fell. There was a long pause. Someone, perhaps Conquering Bear, shouted that that was enough; perhaps the soldiers would be ready to leave now. Then, soldiers on the left side of the line fired. Then the two howitzers fired, but high; the grapeshot hitting only the tops of the lodgepoles.

Surrounded as the soldiers were, the fight didn’t last long. Grattan’s body would later be found with 24 arrows in it, including one through his head. His body had to be identified by his pocket watch. His two sergeants attempted a fighting withdrawal, but within about 10 minutes Grattan, the interpreter and his entire detachment had been wiped out. One wounded man escaped and started back for the fort, later returned to the trading houses and finally died at the fort a few days later.

In the fray, Conquering Bear, exposed and vulnerable at the head of his village, was shot three times and mortally wounded; he would die several days later. Angry warriors raided the Fort Laramie vicinity, plundered the local traders of their stores, and trapped Lt. Fleming and the remaining soldiers inside the fort for a couple of days, running off the fort’s entire animal herd.

War for a generation 

Fleming later noted in his official report that Grattan had been “rash and impulsive almost beyond belief.” But it had been Fleming who dispatched Grattan on his venture, and had authorized his course of action. And it had been the Army itself that had chosen to leave Fort Laramie in the hands of a single company of infantry and two officers barely out of their teens. Fleming would have no more independent commands his entire career: He was never again trusted by the Army. Though he would retire as a major, his subsequent career was undistinguished.

Previously, the Sioux nations and the incoming Euro-Americans had enjoyed fairly good relations. With Grattan’s and Fleming’s actions that day, good relations ended. Twenty-two years of intermittent conflict, accompanied by horrific bloodshed and terrible suffering on both sides, erupted.

A sick cow, a hungry Minniconjou warrior, and a pair of West Pointers had just ignited war on the frontier of the Northern Plains.

Resources

Primary sources

• Cadet records, Special Collections and Archives, Jefferson Hall, U.S. Military Academy Library, West Point, New York.
• Fay, George D., editor. Military Engagements Between United States Troops and Plains Indians: Part Ia : Documentary Inquiry by the U.S. Congress, 1854-1867. Occasional Publications in Anthropology, Ethnology Series No. 26. Greeley, Colorado: Museum of Anthropology, University of Northern Colorado, 1972.
• Major Hugh B. Fleming Appointment, Commissioning and Promotion (ACP) File, Record Group 94.3, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.

Secondary sources

• Hedren, Paul and Carroll Friswold. The Massacre of Lieutenant Grattan and his Command by Indians. Glendale, California: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 1983.
• Mattes, Merrill J. The Great Platte River Road. University of Nebraska Press, 1969.
• McCann, Lloyd E. “The Grattan Massacre” Nebraska History (March 1956), 1-25.
• McChristian, Douglas C. Fort Laramie: Military Bastion of the High Plains. Norman, Okla.: Arthur H. Clark Co., 2008.
• Nadeau, Remi. Fort Laramie and the Sioux. Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1967, 83-110.

Illustrations

• The photo of the battlefield is by Max Farrar from Panoramio. Used with thanks.
• The photo of the howitzer is by Mike Kendra, from CivilWarWiki. Used with thanks.
• The rest of the photos are by the author. Used with permission and thanks.

Some readers may have thought the Casper Star-Tribune's front-page headline on April 1, 1984, was just an April Fool's prank: "Gas customers pay extra $5.8 million for nothing." It sounded far-fetched, but the news was all too real.

Wyoming's only statewide newspaper spent more than a year telling the story of how Northern Utilities—the company that contracted with the city of Casper to be its natural gas franchise—and several of its associated partners overcharged customers by millions of dollars. It was a complex series that required the staff's top editors, reporters and even its cartoonist to chart the course of how consumers in Casper and many other cities were unfairly required for years to pay much higher gas rates than customers in other parts of Wyoming and in nearby states.

The newspaper's efforts led to passage of legislation that resulted in more competition among gas providers and significantly lower prices for consumers. In 1985 the newspaper was also recognized by the renowned Pulitzer Prizes, which selected it as the runner-up for excellence in public service journalism, one of its highest honors.

But the important series had humble beginnings. Anne MacKinnon, the Star-Tribune's energy reporter at the time, recalled that it began with "kind of a classic thing in journalism—we did an ordinary, basic story." MacKinnon became editor of the paper in 1990.

She said Editor Dick High noted that with winter coming on, the newspaper should do a story about how much people are going to have to pay to heat their houses. High recently explained he had a personal motive for looking at heating prices.

"We had just moved [to Casper] and we had a wonderful old house," he said. "It was kind of a pioneer house but it had no insulation. I had this huge natural gas bill that went up in the winter and I thought, 'Oh my God, I can't afford this, I'm not getting paid anything here. What are we going to do?'"

MacKinnon's initial story, published Nov. 9, 1983, noted natural gas bills in Casper were expected to total about $600 per customer for the seven-month heating season from October through April. Of course, the actual amount would vary depending upon the severity of the weather.

The $600 estimate was about $55 above the 1982-83 winter, or an increase of about 10 percent. The winter before that, Casper had seen a price increase of nearly 14 percent. MacKinnon found residential gas rates in Casper in July 1981 were $3.96 per thousand cubic feet (mcf) of gas. Two year later, the rates rose to $5.29 per mcf.

"My neighbor, a banker named Joe Shickich," High recalled, "was aware of a number of things [about utilities] and he said, 'Take a look at this -- when you're looking down the pipeline I'm sure the prices are lower the further away you go.' Shickich, whose advice persuaded High to investigate the situation, died in Casper on May 20, 2016, at age 94.

So High said he had reporters “look down the pipeline and basically, sure enough, the further away the gas line went from Casper, the less expensive it got," High said. "I'm going, what is wrong with this picture? Economics would suggest it should be more expensive the further away."

The gas companies had kind of a captive provider, High noted. "We're an energy-producing state ... They had a [contract] and nobody had ever looked at it so they were pretty free to raise their prices locally and have it much cheaper the further away they went." Northern Utilities' franchise contract to deliver gas to Casper expired at the beginning of 1984.

Natural gas prices widely varied

Len Edgerly, who was a Northern Utilities vice president when the Star-Tribune's series on gas prices was published in 1984, declined in 2016 to comment for this article about the paper's coverage of the issue.

MacKinnon's research found natural gas prices did indeed vary widely across Wyoming. On Nov. 27, 1983, she wrote that Northern Utilities customers in the Gillette-Newcastle area would pay about $690 during the winter, while Cheyenne customers would be charged about $365.

In an editorial on Jan. 29, 1984, the Star-Tribune called for increased gas competition to drive natural gas prices down. "Casper customers pay too much for gas," the paper stated. "Northern Utilities says that is because the company made a bad business decision and now must pay too much for wholesale gas.

"But that is not the reason," the editorial continued. "The reason is that Northern chooses to charge its customers for the management mistake, instead of charging its stockholders."

What was the mistake? In 1957 Northern had signed a gas purchase contract with its parent company, Kansas-Nebraska Energy Co. (K-N) that allowed unlimited price escalation but excluded competition from cheap gas when there was an oversupply. K-N required Northern and other subsidiaries to buy their gas from the Amoco Production Co. at the highest price allowed for gas sold in interstate commerce under the federal Natural Gas Policy Act.

K-N tried to break its contract with Amoco when a gas glut began forcing prices down. In federal court the utility argued that the prices called for under its Amoco contract were "unconscionable." K-N lost, even though U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer agreed the contract resulted in "exorbitant prices."

A Feb. 3, 1984, analysis by High maintained Casper might not be stuck paying for Northern Utilities' costly gas contract after all. The company had been divided into two separate corporations: wholesaler NU Inc. and retailer NU Division. The latter actually held the Casper gas franchise.

Company executives said under a contract the NU Division must buy gas from NU Inc., even at higher prices. But the editor pointed out neither utility had been able to produce a legal contract to support their claim. NU Inc. President Larry Hall countered, "It doesn't have to be a contract in writing." But even if there was a written one in their contract files, Hall added, the companies were "reluctant" to let the Star-Tribune examine them.

A news blackout

Next came an explosive editorial on Feb. 5, 1984, which said Casper and other Wyoming cities should begin thinking about collecting $100 million owed in natural gas price refunds. The paper stressed that in federal court NU Inc. admitted its prices were too high. The company, the Star-Tribune reasoned, couldn't expect to resell gas at "excessive and unreasonable" prices, and then see the extra costs passed on to Casper families.

"Casper can and should insist the company holding its gas franchise place the customer first. ... A big refund is due," the editorial concluded.

On Feb. 17, 1984, NU Inc. announced it would impose a "news blackout" on the Star-Tribune. Hall said his company would no longer supply information to the paper or respond to any future articles and editorials.

Hall said NU Inc. was conducting "very sensitive negotiations" with several gas companies, and charged the newspaper's actions were "not conducive to bringing these negotiations to a successful conclusion." High defended his paper's news coverage and the Star-Tribune stood by its editorial requesting a large refund for consumers.

Recalling the "news blackout" more than three decades later, High giggled. "I mean what were they going to do, right?" he said. "As if we were going to stop covering it."

"When you're talking about something they don't want to talk about, it makes you all the more interested in it," MacKinnon added.

City reporter Dan Neal said the editors made it clear to the utilities "if you want to talk to us, fine, but if you don't we'll find other ways to get the information. This story is too important."

Neal said the company thought if it just stopped talking to the paper the heat on them would lessen. "That just ratcheted things up because it made them look bad," he said. "They're supposed to be providing a public service for which they were guaranteed a profit, and then we found out how they've been gimmicking the system to take more profit out of Casper while their customers in Nebraska were paying very low rates.

Low heat content in Wyoming gas

The Star-Tribune broke the next big news in the series on Feb. 26, 1984. In a copyrighted story High explained most Wyoming residents weren't even receiving all of the overpriced natural gas they were being sold, because the natural gas being delivered had low heat content.

A heat value of 1,000 British Thermal Units (BTUs) was standard for natural gas. But the gas delivered to most Wyoming customers contained between 800 and 900 BTUs. The low heat content of delivered gas was a function of Wyoming's high elevation.

In mile-high Casper, a furnace would burn about 20 percent more cubic feet of gas to provide the same heat as an identical furnace in New York City. When the gas was adjusted for heat content, the newspaper said consumers in Casper, Riverton, Lander, Rawlins, Laramie and Gillette were paying about $6 per mcf. But in Cheyenne, Evanston, Green River, Wheatland, Glenrock and Douglas, customers paid about $4 per mcf for the same heat value.

Nonexistent investments

On April Fools Day in 1984, High reported that state utility regulators let four Northern natural gas companies charge customers an extra $5.8 million a year to provide profits on $28 million of stockholders' investments that did not exist. The Wyoming Public Service Commission approved higher rates to provide profit on about $31 million of owners' equity it assumed as at work in the Casper-based subsidiaries of K-N.

But the combined owners' equity in the four companies was only $3 million at the end of 1981. The correct figure was on file with federal regulators, but Wyoming PSC officials admitted they did not ordinarily check such federal documents.

The higher the proportion of equity compared to debt, High explained to readers, the greater the cost to customers. When the PSC allowed Northern subsidiaries to obtain profits on $28 million in investments that didn't exist, customers had to pay an extra $5.8 million for literally nothing.

MacKinnon covered an April meeting of the Casper City Council where it was suggested up to $100 a year could be cut from a typical household's heating bill if prices were averaged with comparatively lower costs in the much larger K-N system.

K-N Vice President Harlan Hansen testified such price averaging couldn't be done. "That's a law," he said. "I can't do it. ... I wish it could. We would have done it long ago." But in her article MacKinnon noted the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said no such law existed.

"A couple of these spokesmen were caught in lies, and the city got more interested in pursuing this," said Neal, the former city reporter. "As those spokesmen came and went, [Mayor] Larry Clapp referred to them as 'Jaws 1' and 'Jaws 2.'"

Northern Utilities ended its news blackout on May 1, 1984.

Business, legal skills among the news staff

MacKinnon said High's ability to track the money in the Northern Utilities case was essential to the paper's reporting.

"Before I came to Wyoming, [members of the Howard family, which owned the paper] told me they were going to make me a publisher, so they sent me off to Stanford Business School and I got a masters there," High said. "So I had some ability—limited—but I could follow money, look at the financials, things like that. That helped a lot, I think. You're not asking somebody 'what's this financial thing?'—you still have to ask—but that was a very helpful set of skills."

MacKinnon had studied utility issues in law school. When she listened to company officials' testimony that wasn't true, she was able to call them out.

"It was fun to apply what I learned in law school and try to figure out what the companies were doing, and matching wits with lawyers and spokesmen," she recalled. "I was able to say what they said was not true, and could find people who would say that. It was shocking to see someone in authority basically lying.

"It's terribly important for the public to know what's really happening," she said. "People should have a hand in their fate."

Pulitzer news was surprise to staff

High said the Pulitzer jury nominated three papers for the public service award. How the staff learned the Star-Tribune was chosen the runner-up to the winner, the Dallas-Fort Worth Telegram, was really low-key.

After Star-Tribune staffers had submitted a package of materials to make the paper a contender for the prize, "nobody had thought about it," he remembered. "[The news] came across the wire, I don't think anyone even noticed. Then someone said, ‘Hey, looky here.’ Oh wow—it wasn't like we were on pins and needles, it was just—I don't think we had any expectation [of winning] or anything."

High said he couldn’t remember how the staff celebrated the news. "I think we got some champagne in the newsroom and sort of hooted a bit," he said. But Neal recalled the publisher had a string quartet from the Casper Symphony play while the staff had dinner and celebrated.

Accuracy is always important in journalism, but High said it was essential in telling this story. "We didn't want to have to make corrections," he said. "You have to be charging ahead and at the same time you have to really pay attention to what you are doing so you know it will stand scrutiny.

"If you have a series of 20 stories going, you can't have one screw-up in one story or it will bring the whole thing down," he said.

The Star-Tribune had a vibrant letters section in the 1980s that served as a forum for the entire state. High said the paper was bombarded by writers who wanted to express their views about natural gas prices in Wyoming.

High said a consistent view was, "What are you guys doing at this paper? What's wrong with you? This is the hand that feeds us; the energy companies are here and you're saying, 'wait a minute.' You're saying no to the energy companies?"

"I don't know if anybody had ever stood up to them before," he said.

"To me it just shows what a powerful instrument journalism can be to make things better in a community," Neal said. "It was painful; we got a lot of criticism from people who thought we were being too hard on an institution that had served this community for many years."

Paper focused on hard news

Wyoming experienced an oil boom in the late 1970s, and the economy helped bring the Star-Tribune more financial and personnel resources. The paper had one reporter, and hired nine more in 1979. MacKinnon was one of them.

"During the boom we were pouring money back into the newsroom," High said. "Our budget was just ready to go past a million dollars in 1984. Then the crash hit and it went down to a half-million, just like that. Everything had gone to hell, and we had to make some choices."

He decided to focus on hard news and investigate stories like the natural gas price series. Reporters were told to stop writing features—in fact Neal said they became known in the newsroom as 'the F word.'

"We ended up with news and letters, and that was about it," High said. "It was a pretty gutsy news report."

The Star-Tribune had an additional resource in its Northern Utilities coverage: cartoonist Greg Kearney, who also kept the computers running. A few of his cartoons were included in the Pulitzer package that went to the judges. "It was the cartoons that drove the company the craziest," Neal recalled.

In one, Kearney depicted a couple standing near a gas meter, with the husband holding a Northern Utilities bill. The man and woman each had one leg missing and were walking on crutches.

The man says, "You know, I think it's time we look for a new gas company."

City Council votes to find new gas supply

Based upon the Star-Tribune series, the Casper City Council hired a Denver-based consultant that estimated the city could save up to $5.4 million a year if it obtained wholesale natural gas supplies from sources other than Northern Utilities.

During 1983, Northern charged Casper customers $6.01 per mcf -- $2.58 higher than the average retail price of the K-N energy system. K-N reduced local prices by 42 cents the following year, but the consultant noted Northern was expected to seek an additional 80-cent price increase the next fall, further adding to the price differential.

After the yearlong battle with Northern Utilities, the Casper City Council voted unanimously to obtain its own natural gas supply.

But that wasn't the end of the story. The Casper City Council successfully lobbied the Wyoming Legislature to approve transporting natural gas in a "common carrier" bill, and had editorial support from the newspaper.

"What that did was basically everybody could go through the pipeline because they couldn't restrict it, so it became a common carrier, like a highway -- everybody could drive down it," High explained. "So you had to pay for the shipping of the gas, but they weren't able to say 'OK, only Amoco gets gas shipped here.'"

The legislation got rid of the monopoly power that a natural gas company exercised at the local level. "It brought in competition," High said. "It affected the cost of power."

After the law went into effect, High said the results were shocking. "We had a drop of something like 40 percent. It was quite amazing, because the rates had been getting extraordinarily high."

(Editor’s note: Publication of this and seven other articles on Wyoming newspapering is supported in part by the Wyoming Humanities Council and is part of the Pulitzer Prizes Centennial Campfires Initiative, a joint venture of the Pulitzer Prizes Board and the Federation of State Humanities Councils in celebration of the 2016 centennial of the prizes. The initiative seeks to illuminate the impact of journalism and the humanities on American life today, to imagine their future and to inspire new generations to consider the values represented by the body of Pulitzer Prize-winning work. For their generous support for the Campfires Initiative, the council thanks the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Pulitzer Prizes Board, and Columbia University.)

Resources

• "Casper can reduce gas prices through franchise competition."Casper Star-Tribune, Jan. 29, 1984.
• High, Richard. "Casper may not be stuck with costly gas contract." Casper Star-Tribune, Feb. 3, 1984.
• High, Richard. "Gas customers pay extra $5.8 million for nothing."Casper Star-Tribune, April 1, 1984.
• High, Richard. "Most Wyoming residents receive natural gas with low heat content."Casper Star-Tribune, Feb. 26, 1984.
• High, Richard. "Special deal for Amoco raises city gas prices."Casper Star-Tribune, May 27, 1984.
• High, Richard and A. Marcos Ortiz. "Northern says it will cut natural gas prices in state."Casper Star-Tribune, June 9, 1984.
• High, Richard and Anne MacKinnon. "Northern bypassed cheap gas, took on expensive contract."Casper Star-Tribune, July 15, 1984.
• High, Richard and Anne MacKinnon, "City action could save millions on gas prices."Casper Star-Tribune, Oct. 18, 1984.
• MacKinnon, Anne. "No law blocks gas price cut."Casper Star-Tribune, April 4, 1984.
• MacKinnon, Anne. "Northern has decided to lift news blackout."Casper Star-Tribune, May 1, 1984.
• Neal, Dan. "Northern Utilities imposes news blackout against Star-Tribune."Casper Star-Tribune, Feb. 17, 1984.
• Peterson, Iver. "Wyoming gas utilities face consumer revolt."New York Times, March 29, 1984.
• Rose, P. J. "City Council decides to obtain natural gas supply for Casper."Casper Star-Tribune, Nov. 8, 1984.
• "Time to think about seeking $100 million owed in gas rebates."Casper Star-Tribune, Feb. 5, 1984.

Illustrations

• All photos are from the Casper Star-Tribune collection at the Casper College Western History Center. Used with permission and thanks. The collection includes extensive of the paper’s photographs and news content, sorted by topic and available for research. See below for details on visiting the center.

While the Civil War raged east of the Mississippi River, Euro-American settlement in what would soon become Wyoming Territory was decidedly limited.

A few isolated communities squatted near military reservations at Fort Laramie and Platte Bridge Station. A handful of lonely telegraph operators were guarded by blue-clad soldiers, occupying stations every 20 or so miles along the old Pony Express route. An assemblage of French-speaking traders, many of them entrepreneurs, had built toll bridges across the North Platte River and other businesses, and lived by them with their American Indian wives and families.

All of this would change beginning in May 1863 when gold was discovered in Alder Gulch in what’s now southwestern Montana. The new goldfield lured unemployed veterans as the war came to a close, and was viewed by the federal government as a solution to the war debt. The problem was how to get there. One route—long, arduous and painstaking—led west over South Pass into Utah, then north to the gold camps around Virginia City.

A shorter, more efficient route, located by John Bozeman, led from the Oregon Trail along the North Platte northwest through the Powder River Country. In the fall of 1865, the federal government directed the 18th U.S. Infantry to begin protecting the Bozeman Trail to Montana Territory the following spring.

Soldier

Among the men on this expedition was a Civil War veteran, 18-year old John “Posey” Ryan. Born in Ireland Feb. 25, 1848, he had crossed the North Atlantic with his family and settled in Missouri.

On March 1, 1865, at the age of 17, he enlisted in Company A, 51st Missouri Volunteer Infantry. His enlistment papers show him as 5 feet 6 ½ inches tall, with a fair complexion, brown hair and blue eyes. He served mostly as a clerk at the District of Missouri headquarters at Saint Louis, and later at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. With the end of the war Pvt. Ryan was honorably discharged Aug. 31, 1865, at Fort Leavenworth.

Teamster

Learning that the U.S. Army Quartermaster Department was hiring men for the Bozeman Trail expedition, Posey enlisted as a civilian teamster at Fort Leavenworth. He accompanied the 18th U.S. Infantry from Fort Leavenworth to Fort Kearny, Neb., in the fall of 1865, where he spent the winter. That spring, he continued to serve as a teamster with the Carrington Expedition establishing three forts along the Bozeman Trail from the North Platte River to Virginia City.

He spent July through November 1866 at Fort Phil Kearny near present Story, Wyo. There, he took part in several skirmishes with Oglala Sioux warriors attempting to drive out the American incursion through the heart of their homeland—the conflict that became known as Red Cloud’s War

Just before the December 1866 fights at Fort Phil Kearny, Posey Ryan returned to Fort Laramie where he was discharged from the Quartermaster Department. He continued serving the U.S. Army at Fort Laramie as a private teamster for years. He had a reputation as being “honest and upright in all dealings” and “the only man that ever was in the freighting business that never kicked or beat a mule” as one of his Guernsey associates, C. W. Rawlins, testified decades later.

Settler

Ryan established his own homestead north of Fort Laramie, becoming one of the earliest permanent settlers in the Wyoming Territory. By 1876 he was the common-law husband of Sophia Mousseau, the daughter of a French trader and his Oglala Sioux wife. Sophia was reportedly related to the famous Oglala war leader, Red Cloud.

As a girl, Sophia had served as a translator to the U.S. Peace Commissioners that signed the Treaty of Fort Laramie at that post in 1868, in which the government abandoned the forts on the Bozeman Trail and returned the Powder River country to the Sioux, Arapaho and Northern Cheyenne nations. Posey Ryan and Sophia Mousseau had five children between 1876 and 1885, and Posey appears to have been a happy, relatively prosperous settler and well-respected teamster.

Then in 1887 an attractive 30-year old widow, Mary Ellen Clouser, moved in next to Posey’s ranch. Mrs. Clouser turned Posey’s head, and they were married shortly afterwards. Sophia returned to her family on Pine Ridge Reservation in Dakota Territory. In 1890 Ryan purchased an officer’s quarters—a house--from Fort Laramie upon that fort’s closure by the U.S. Army, and moved it to his ranch to be a more fitting home for his bride.

Entrepreneur

Ryan became one of the founders of the nearby town of Guernsey when it was incorporated in 1902. The next year, he and Mary purchased the recently constructed Guernsey Hotel in Guernsey, and for the next six years they managed the hotel together. The young town prospered as a shipping point where a spur line from the iron mines at Sunrise, five miles north, joined the Burlington Railroad.

Early in 1909, Ryan departed on a lengthy freight delivery. Upon return, he was shocked to discover that his wife had sold the Guernsey Hotel and all its contents for $15,000 and skipped town—leaving Posey with only the money in his pocket and the clothes on his back, destitute and homeless.

Murderer

On March 18, 1909, Ryan finally caught up with Mary Ryan and his step-daughter Nellie at Sunday lunch at the Palmer Restaurant in downtown Cheyenne. Harsh words were exchanged, and when Nellie threatened to stab him with a fork, he pulled out a Colt .45 single-action army revolver and killed them both. Thirteen thousand dollars in cash was discovered hidden upon Mary’s body.

She had been living in style in Cheyenne with the proceeds of her sale of the Guernsey Hotel and was rumored to be planning to re-marry, apparently unconcerned about the absence of a divorce. Posey immediately surrendered his revolver to a lawman who happened to be eating in the restaurant, telling him, “They bled me of all I had … I expect to hang for this and I don’t care.”

Convict and veteran

In a sensational trial in August 1909 Cheyenne, Ryan was found guilty of second-degree murder, sentenced to 30 to 99 years and incarcerated in the newly opened state penitentiary at Rawlins.

He was a prisoner there during the infamous uprising of 1912. When disgruntled inmates lit the broom factory on fire, Ryan played a major role in helping to evacuate convicts, saving numerous lives. Many prominent Wyoming residents petitioned the governor on Ryan’s behalf.

Finally, given his advanced age at the time, he was pardoned by Gov. Robert Carey as one of the governor’s earliest official acts in February 1919. Ryan spent the remainder of his life at the Wyoming Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Home in Buffalo, Wyo.,—on the site of the historic Fort McKinney where he doubtless found himself in familiar and comfortable circumstances.

He was helping a young woman friend perform errands in Buffalo, holding her baby, when he died peacefully on March 2, 1929, at the age of 81 years. During his lifetime, he had crossed Wyoming from Fort Laramie to Fort Phil Kearny to Rawlins, traveled on the Bozeman Trail, and lived at Fort Laramie, Guernsey, Rawlins and Buffalo.

Posey Ryan, a youthful Civil War veteran barely old enough to shave, was among Wyoming’s earliest settlers, two years before it became a legal territory. He established a homestead north of Fort Laramie in 1867, at a time when isolated ranches and homes were vulnerable to raids by Indians angry at white incursions. He was one of the founding fathers of the town of Guernsey.

Despite the terrible murder of his wife and her daughter, he was well liked and popular, and was one of the forgotten veterans who helped to build the state of Wyoming. His descendants still live in the Cowboy State.

Resources

Primary sources

• “Governor Shortens Term of Five Convicts for Proving Fire Heroes.” Cheyenne State Leader, July 26, 1912.
• Ryan Family Papers, American Catholic History Research Center and University Archives, The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C.
• Ryan, John, Service Record, 51^st Missouri Volunteer Infantry, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.
• Strahorn, Robert Edward. The Hand-Book of Wyoming and Guide to the Black Hills and Big Horn Regions (Cheyenne, Wyoming: 1877; reproduction, Provo, Utah: Repressed Publishing, 2015).

Secondary sources

• Gatchell, T. James. “Life and Early History of John ‘Posey’ Ryan” Annals of Wyoming 31:1 (April 1959), 48-52, accessed Dec. 23, 2016 at https://archive.org/stream/annalsofwyom31121959wyom#page/48/mode/2up.
• Hagen, Mary. “Murders on Sunday” Empire Magazine, The Denver Post (June 26, 1977), 26-33.
• Van Pelt, Lori. “Wyoming’s First State Prison.” WyoHistory.org, accessed Dec. 23, 2016 at http://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/wyomings-first-state-prison.

Illustrations

• Posey Ryan’s prison mug shot is from the collections of the Wyoming Frontier Prison. Used with permission and thanks.
• The photo of the participants in Ryan’s 1909 murder trial is from the Wyoming State Archives. Used with permission and thanks.
• The photo of Sophia Mousseau and the peace commissioners is negative 3687, National Anthropological Archives at the Smithsonian Institution. Used with thanks.
• The postcard of the Wyoming State Penitentiary is from the author’s collection, and the photo of Ryan’s headstone is by the author. Used with permission and thanks.

When the war broke out in Jackson Hole, most people had their money on the hometown hero to win. He had easily warded off any challengers before, and the townsfolk were dead certain he was unbeatable.

But sure enough, like many wars in the West, a newcomer appeared on the streets of Jackson Hole and said, "Not so fast."

The battle seemed endless at the time and eventually lasted 30 years. No one had seen anything like it in such a small but prosperous town, and when the dust settled and a winner finally emerged, many were shocked at the outcome.

There had been newspaper wars before, of course, but not many in the late 20th century. It was an intense, no-holds barred struggle between the Jackson Hole Guide and the Jackson Hole News. Readers had been loyal, but soon other industries began competing for their attention. The two sides fought for readers' hearts and minds, and even though it wasn't bloody, a lot of sweat and tears were shed by publishers, editors and reporters on both sides.

Unhappy with paper's coverage

In 1970, the Jackson Hole Guide was the established newspaper in the small town, nestled at the southern end of a valley between the Hoback Range and East Gros Ventre Butte. Jackson only had 2,688 year-round residents. But the town hosted hundreds of thousands of tourists each summer who spent lot of money in its shops, saloons, ski areas and restaurants.

The first newspaper in the area, the Jackson Hole Courier, began publishing in the early 1900s. The Guide was born in 1956, and Floy Tonkin and William Kirol had dual roles as owners and editors.

The Guide was unquestionably successful, but every newspaper has readers who don't like what's being published. The Guide was no exception. Unsatisfied with news coverage and convinced the community needed another voice, local residents Virginia Huidekoper and Ralph Gill started the Jackson Hole News in 1970. The first issue, on April 17, listed Norman and Jackie Lynes as editors and publishers.

Huidekoper and Marc Fischer—a local woman who bought out Gill's shares in the business soon after the newspaper launched—decided in 1973 that the venture was bigger than they had imagined and taking up all their time. They decided to sell and found the perfect buyer right in their newsroom.

A cub reporter from Chicago

Mike Sellett had been a regular contributor to the Chicago Tribune after graduating from Northwestern University. He came to Wyoming in 1965 to work for the Rawlins Daily Times, and one of his former editors later told him the Jackson Hole News needed a reporter. He was hired in 1972 and six months later he became the managing editor.

When the owners approached him about buying the News, Sellett was interested but had a seemingly insurmountable problem. The 28-year-old didn't have any money to buy it. He also didn't have any business experience and knew he would be facing "an established, extremely well-financed newspaper. I was dead in the water," he said.

The owners solved his financial dilemma when they offered to carry 90 percent of the purchase price. The deal demonstrates how much the pair wanted a local resident to take over the News.

Still needing $10,000 to complete the purchase, Sellett asked a friend, Mike Howard of Scripps-Howard publishing, to look at the financials. He told a disappointed Sellett that the News would never be able to match the deep pockets of the Guide. But Sellett turned to friends and relatives and scraped together the money.

"I don't know why I persisted ... I suppose that I had no place to go," he said.

But the new owner had no doubt that whatever happened, it would be a lively career challenge. "I wasn't walking into Bum---k, Iowa," he recalled many years later when interviewed by an author writing a book about hometown journalism. "This was already a competitive [newspaper] town."

The paper attracted a talented staff, with many members lured by the beauty of the small town and its world-class skiing and other recreation. Sellett said to survive he had to learn "how you can turn editorial excellence into dollars."

Sellett said Cammie Pyle, who had worked at the Atlantic Monthly, was responsible for the award-winning, striking layout of the News, which featured photos much larger than most newspapers.

Richard Murphy was chief photographer. In 1984 he guided the staff to a landmark achievement—the News won the prestigious National Press Photographers Association's "Best Use of Photos" award. The weekly competed against papers of all sizes for the prize, including metropolitan dailies; the next year the organization divided contestants into daily and weekly divisions. It was a point of pride for the News staff that the daily papers thought it was unfair to compete against "the little weeklies."

'Climbing bum' arrives

In 1978, Yale graduate and self-proclaimed "climbing bum" Angus Thuermer, Jr. moved to Jackson. He worked on an oil rig in the winter, but one year when that job fell through he was hired as an assistant in the News pressroom. The job he wanted, though, was in the newsroom, and when there was an opening he had a spontaneous, clever idea about how to land it.

Thuermer and Sellett lived in the same condominium complex. One morning Thuermer managed to lure Sellett's beloved golden retriever to his porch, where he adorned the pooch with a sign that warned, "Hire Angus or else." He signed it "The Phantom."

Amused, Sellett put Thuermer to work in the newsroom as a reporter covering the local education beat. That decision changed the course of the News forever: The new hire helped editorially guide the paper for more than three decades, including a long stint as its managing editor.

Both the Columbia Journalism Review and the American Journalism Review did articles about the intense competition between the Guide and News, which lasted nearly three decades. "It was one of the epic newspaper battles in the United States," Sellett said.

The publisher noted it was a rich town for news content. "We were kind of at the epicenter of all these federal agencies -- Grand Teton Park, the U.S. Forest Service, the Elk Refuge and Yellowstone National Park," he said. "We didn't cover anything outside Teton County but agencies had their headquarters in Jackson, and they were all part of our responsibility."

The competing papers also had to cover local news like school board and city council meetings. "We both had a much broader canvas--not only local stories but ones of national interest," Sellett noted. The owner said Jackson had "an educated, affluent audience. They knew first-class journalism and demanded it."

"We had to serve a schizophrenic clientele," agreed Thuermer. "People wanted to know what the local school board was doing, and they also wanted to know about the latest federal decisions that affected Yellowstone. In terms of newspapering, it was a fantastic community."

The News had a rule of thumb about its coverage of grizzly bear maulings. "It was an automatic front-page story," the editor said. "It was a no-brainer. Whenever it happened everyone was interested in it."

Respect for competitors

Sellett and Thuermer both said that the Guide was a very good newspaper that, like the News, won many state and national awards. "We always thought we were better, but they handed our asses to us several times," said Thuermer, who added that he thinks the competition made both papers better.

The publications were always seeking an edge against their rival. At one time both papers published on Thursday, but the News shifted its delivery schedule to Wednesday to offer more timely coverage of meetings held earlier in the week.

Thuermer said the Guide once raised its price from 50 cents to $1. "We decided not to follow, and they were forced to go back to 50 cents," he noted. Readers seem to have considered it money well spent, no matter how much they were charged.

Sellett said the News's decision in 1988 to begin publishing a free daily paper had a huge impact on the lively newspaper war. Several other resort towns, including Aspen and Vail, Colo., each had at least two free daily papers. Sellett liked the business model because it allowed news to be published when it was fresh, and readers no longer had to wait until Wednesday to discover what happened at a meeting the previous Thursday.

The News' free edition published mostly wire copy six times a week, and local spot news stories written on deadline. The weekly edition, which still charged for its publication, offered more in-depth articles often written about issues that received small attention in the daily. "It upped the ante, so to speak, in terms of the level of competition," Sellett said. In 1996 the Guide launched its own free daily, bringing the number of local newspapers to four.

Of the hundreds of news articles Thuermer has written, he said the 1988 fire in Yellowstone National Park is still considered the biggest story the News ever published. The entire editorial staff was involved in covering the lightning-caused fire from early August until mid-September.

The Yellowstone fires

Thuermer said he was driving to Mammoth Hot Springs, at the north end of Yellowstone Park, early that September. "I was wearing the same kind of yellow shirt the firefighters wore, plus jeans," he said. "Thuermer blended in with everyone at the camp. At 4 a.m. he found himself at the firefighters’ incident command center, where officials from every agency were getting an update on the fire and weather conditions. Included were infrared photos showing where the fires were at night.

"I hung out there drinking coffee with the bigwigs," Thuermer recalled. "They heard a grim weather forecast and these people were ashen as they listened. ... It was really an incredible scene."

But as fire officials prepared for the worst, a storm front came through and accomplished what $100 million in firefighting costs had not been able to do. One storm came in and put it all out.

It was a historic day in Yellowstone, and Thuermer was there to document and write about it for the News.

"It was the biggest story in the nation and our small staff [based 100 miles away] was able to stay on top and cover it," Sellett said. "This was before cell phones, the Internet and ways to send text and pictures back to the newsroom. It was pretty primitive from today's perspective."

He credited Thuermer with coordinating the Yellowstone fire coverage, and said his managing editor used his environmental reporting experience to help give News readers a better understanding about how the fires were affecting the ecosystem.

Wolf reintroduction

Thuermer has good memories of another major wildlife news story he began covering in the mid-1990s. The reintroduction of gray wolves to the Yellowstone ecosystem was extremely controversial, with Wyoming ranchers and state government on one side and U.S. Fish & Wildlife officials representing the federal government on the other.

He said he will never forget the sight of then-Secretary of Interior Bruce Babbitt carrying the first wolf to be put in a pen to be reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park before it would be released about six months later.

"It surprised me how much controversy that story generated," Thuermer said. "I didn't understand the deep-seated hatred for predators in Wyoming."

Building a news staff

The publisher said many of the employees at the paper came to Jackson Hole first and foremost for its abundant recreational opportunities, not jobs. He recalled that his chief photographer, Richard Murphy, was working as a carpenter when he showed Sellett some photos he had taken.

"I said, 'You have a job,'" Sellett remembered. "It was not about recruiting high-priced sophisticated journalists. We built [the staff] with the material we had."

What was Sellett like at work? "Michael was a good boss. He gave me a long leash," Thuermer said. "He had a lot of insight and a good perspective [on the world], but he had fun. He didn't kowtow to the powers that be. He was irreverent, but he was serious about news and serious about writing."

Asked when he thought his paper had turned the corner financially, Sellett said with the Guide as his competitor he was never complacent. "I knew I wasn't comfortable, but I was making enough money that we could handle a little bit of adversity," he said. "You're never sure—you’re only as good as your last paper."

Something unexpected happened in 2002 that surprised both Sellett and many readers. He had made some overtures about buying the Guide over the years, but was always rebuffed by owners Fred and Elizabeth McCabe.

After McCabe died in 1997, his widow took over the Guide and Sellett sensed she was struggling to manage it on her own. "Her editor approached me and said they would like to do something together with the News," Sellett said. "I was shocked. Fred never even talked to me once in 30 years or even acknowledged I was around."

Over a top-secret dinner at his house, Sellett said, preliminary talks began. "It all came together rather quickly," he said of the deal.

But many readers were upset when in November 2002 the merger was announced and their only choice of papers was the newly combined Jackson Hole News&Guide. "They had the perception that they had two voices and had lost one of them. But we really agreed on a lot of key issues," Sellett said. "Our editorial policies by that time were fairly close."

When the papers merged, the News was the dominant paper in town. Its circulation was 7,100, about 2,000 more copies than the Guide sold each week. Sellett said the appearance of an alternative weekly, Planet Jackson Hole, actually helped the situation. "It was perceived as restoring at least some level of competition," he explained.

Sellett decided to sell the News&Guide in 2012 and, like Huidekoper and Fisher 39 years earlier, sought a local buyer. "I didn't want to sell to a chain," he said emphatically. "I decided I would rather take less money and have a buyer who lived here and worked here instead of someone who showed up with an armored truck and then made the News part of some homogenized chain."

Wanted: A local buyer

He found his local buyer—Kevin Olson, the chief operating officer of the paper for 11 years. Sellett offered Olson and his wife Shelley the opportunity to buy the paper.

"It was important to me that the newspaper remain in local hands,” Sellett said. “Since taking over management of the newspaper, Kevin and his family planted deep roots in this valley, and he has become an outstanding leader in the business community."

Sellett said the legacy of the News&Guide and the hard-fought newspaper war was due to the efforts of hundreds of editors, reporters, photographers, salespeople, artists and production personnel who worked for the now-united publications.

“Together we tried to produce a newspaper that not only covered the news events of the week," he said, "but provided a window into the lives of the hardy souls who shaped the history of Jackson Hole as well as those who offered a vision of how this community would take control of its future.”

After the sale Thuermer agreed to stay at the News&Guide but quit about six months later. "I discovered after many years of working at a wonderful, dynamic paper with great colleagues, I found myself doing more and more administrative stuff and less journalism."

Thuermer became a reporter covering northwest Wyoming and brought to WyoFile, a public policy and news website, his institutional knowledge of his favorite beat—the environment, wildlife and conservation efforts. "I'm honored to work for WyoFile," he said of his new journalism home.

Meanwhile, Sellett retired in 2014 and now splits time between Jackson and Santa Barbara, Calif. He said he's having a happy retirement, and his tone was upbeat.

"The paper is in good hands," Sellett said. "I read it every week and I'm just glad I no longer have to worry about what to put in it next week."

Resources

• Associated Press. “Jackson Hole News, Guide Will Merge,” Billings Gazette, November 14, 2002, accessed Jan. 26, 2017 at http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/wyoming/jackson-hole-news-guide-will-merge/article_12e56d8f-9037-5cca-bc92-14b2eb9cc993.html.
• Boner, Bradley J. “Legendary line: Forty-five years ago, a photograph documented ski mountaineering history,” Jackson Hole News&Guide, June 15, 2016, accessed Jan., 26, 2017 at http://www.jhnewsandguide.com/valley/feature/legendary-line/article_4c1c332d-06bb-57a5-b8fb-ffc00693ef0b.html.
• Roberts, Gene. Leaving Readers Behind: The Age of Corporate Journalism (University of Arkansas, 2001), 91-103.
• Stanford, Jim. “Thuermer stepping down as News&Guide editor,” JH Underground, April 24, 2014, accessed September 2016 at http://www.jhunderground.com/2014/04/24/thuermer-stepping-down-as-newsguide-editor/.
• Thuermer, Angus. “Paper Set to Change Hands,” Jackson Hole News&Guide, Dec. 19, 2012, accessed Jan. 24, 2017 at http://www.jhnewsandguide.com/news/top_stories/paper-set-to-change-hands/article_7f5abb3c-96df-57b4-b78c-f57b907f60e9.html.
• U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Decennial Census Population for Wyoming Counties, Cities. 2010, accessed December 10, 2016, http://eadiv.state.wy.us/demog_data/cntycity_hist.htm.

Illustrations

• The photo of the Tetons is from a Grand Teton National Park page on NASA’s Earth Observatory. Used with thanks.
• The photo of Jackson traffic is from the Jackson Hole Historical Society. Used with permission and thanks.
• The photo of fires in Norris Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park, 1988, is from the National Park Service. Used with thanks.
• The photo of Angus Thuermer is by Price Chambers. Courtesy Angus Thuermer.
• The photo of Virginia Huidekoper is from the collections of the Jackson Hole News&Guide. The photo of Mike Sellett and Liz McCabe is by Paul Bruun. Used with permission and special thanks in both cases to News&Guide photographer Brad Boner.

In late November 1917, seven months after the United States entered World War I, a high school teacher in Powell, Wyo., was asked to resign because she was a pacifist. The Nov. 22, 1917, Powell Leader reported that members of the community had been complaining to the school board that Miss Georgiana Youngs had been making "unpatriotic expressions" in the classroom. The article did not identify those who complained.

Youngs "felt she could not refrain from expressing her views on the subject of war when the question came up," so the board decided that "the best interests of the school would be conserved if she resigned, which she did." Although The Leader noted, "[n]o charge of disloyalty or un-Americanism is held against the teacher," the message was clear: In the patriotic fervor sweeping Wyoming and the nation in wartime, dissenting views were not tolerated.

Prelude to war

From Aug. 3, 1914, when German forces invaded Belgium and declared war on France, until April 6, 1917, when President Woodrow Wilson declared war on Germany, the prevailing attitude in Wyoming and the United States was neutral and isolationist. The majority of citizens apparently felt that since the United States was not seriously threatened, the nation should stay out of the conflict.

Still, war news flooded the country. Wyoming citizens participated in relief efforts, especially for Belgium. In the "flour relief program," from November 1914 to January 1915, residents of the state donated money to purchase flour from local mills to be shipped to starving Belgian women and children. Cheyenne and Laramie, Wyo., together provided 32 tons of flour.

The Red Cross also was active. The Wyoming Tribunein Cheyenne reported Nov. 25, 1914 that "ragged little waifs contributed their pennies” at a fundraiser and “wore a Red Cross bedecked pin with as great a pride as the plutocrat who gave his greenbacks." By noon, “eager girls and their chaperones, stationed all over the city”, had collected $400.

Many citizens followed war news with interest. On Aug. 29, 1914, The Wyoming Tribune mentioned a "long and ardent discussion of the European war" at the recent meeting of the Young Men's Literary Club in Cheyenne. About a year later, two men were arrested after a fist-and-knife fight in Sheridan, Wyo., over which side would win the war.

On Feb. 14, 1917, Congress passed the Espionage Act to allow for prosecution of spies.

Wyoming at war

Two months later, on April 6, 1917, Congress and President Wilson declared war on Germany. Wyoming, along with the rest of the country, exploded into super-patriotism. Newspapers throughout the state exhorted citizens to buy Liberty Loan Bonds. The May 24, 1917, Pine Bluffs Post reported that bonds, maturing in 30 years, paid 3.5 percent interest and were available in denominations from $50 through $100,000. The first bond issue was for $2 billion.

"What would George Washington or Abraham Lincoln think of the American who failed to buy United States Liberty Bonds?" admonished the Douglas Enterprise on June 12, 1917. Can't afford to buy a bond? See your local banker for "easy terms," suggested another short item in the same issue.

As the summer of 1917 progressed, communities organized parades and other activities to boost support for the war. A planned parade in Basin, Wyo., was rained out, and an event substituted at the Rex Theater, reported The Big Horn County Rustler. There were songs and speeches, one of the latter promoting the American Red Cross, and another informing citizens about the purpose and activities of the Council of National Defense.

Edmund Nichols, a judge from Billings, Mont., stated in his speech, "I cannot understand the hesitancy of some people in buying a bond." Judge Nichols’ remarks suggest that despite overwhelming social pressure to buy bonds, not everyone was doing so.

The Sedition Act

On May 16, 1918, 13 months after America entered the war, President Wilson signed the Sedition Act, aimed at suppressing German sympathizers and unpatriotic talk in general. U.S. attorneys' offices in each state received reports of suspected spies or seditious activity and had to investigate each complaint and decide whether it was valid.

Many Wyoming citizens reported the suspicious behavior of their neighbors and community members to their county attorneys, who in turn reported to C.L. Rigdon, U.S. attorney for Wyoming. Despite hundreds of reports, however, few cases were prosecuted.

Sometimes people took advantage of the espionage and sedition laws to take revenge on a neighbor in an ongoing dispute, or to even up a score. In one case, a woman caught her husband cheating on her, had him arrested for adultery and reported him as a spy.

The One Hundred Percent American Society

Patriotic organizations proliferated. The One Hundred Percent American Society had a chapter in almost every Wyoming town. The Cheyenne chapter's constitution, article three, stated, "The object of the Society shall be to promote patriotism and to aid and assist the United States Government in the prosecution of the war against Germany and its allies to the fullest extent, and to discountenance and suppress all disloyalty, and to aid and encourage the vigorous prosecution and punishment of all persons seeking to interfere with or hamper the successful prosecution of the war."

The May 2, 1918, Wyoming State Tribune reported, "When an order by the school board to burn all the German text books in the Lander high school was not complied with as quickly as some of the more radical pro-Americans around here would have wished, a group of them … got hold of the books Monday morning, carried them to the business center of the town, and there, in the presence of a large crowd, made a bonfire of them."

The article continued, "The board's order was made at the request of the One Hundred Per Cent American club, which also demanded that "the teaching of German be discontinued."

Anti-German sentiment

People with German names had to be careful. In one of the two espionage cases prosecuted in Wyoming, the German-American defendant, John Leibig, had been a respected member of his community before he was accused. Ranching for about 20 years in the Leo community, about 70 miles northeast of Rawlins, Wyo., Leibig had become a naturalized American on Jan. 24, 1905.

In August 1917, an anonymous accuser reported him for treason and for advocating draft resistance. His standing in the community was further complicated by the fatal shooting of a neighbor, Louis Senften. The two men had been involved in an ongoing quarrel, and Leibig was the only witness to Senften's death, on Oct. 20, 1917. Previous to his death, Senften had also formed a partnership with two other neighbors to purchase Leibig's property.

Charged with Senften's murder, Leibig was acquitted but still had to stand trial for 11 counts of espionage. Neighbor after neighbor swore to specific charges. In June 1918, Leibig entered a plea of "guilty," possibly a plea bargain. He was sentenced to a year and a half in the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kan., which President Wilson later commuted to one year.

Efforts to strip him of his citizenship continued into 1922, through the U.S. attorney for Wyoming, Albert D. Watson, but it is not known who initiated these attempts or why. As a convicted felon, Leibig had already lost his citizenship.

Historian Phil Roberts, in his analysis of the Leibig/Senften episode, has suggested that Leibig's neighbors may have had two possible motives for reporting him and possibly making extra efforts to jeopardize his citizenship: At the time Senften died, he had not concluded the purchase of Leibig's property, so ownership was not resolved for the remaining prospective buyers. By driving Leibig away, and making sure he was denied any right to claim his ranch, they could better secure that property. The second motive, Roberts suggests, was to punish Leibig for Senften's murder, since the courts had refused to. That is, Roberts suggests, his neighbors used the espionage law instead of lynching him outright.

Life on the front

Of the 11,393 Wyoming men who served in the war, not all fought overseas, but those who did were stationed in France. Many were part of the 148th Field Artillery in the Sunset (41st) Division; others served in the 91st Division. Conditions for soldiers on the front were grueling. When it rained, there might or might not be shelter, but there was sure to be mud. Food for the common soldier ranged from hard tack to beans and bread, or sometimes hot, fresh doughnuts furnished by Salvation Army women, cooking in huts and dugouts hidden in the French woods. Bathing was a luxury; fleas and lice were added to the soldier's trials. Fighting men were always tired, and could sleep anywhere, as they often had to, perhaps on a stack of bread, or sitting on a box in the bottom of a truck, with a helmet for a pillow. And there was the chronic danger of enemy fire.

Civilian life

Life at home was nonstop work, especially for farmers and ranchers who had lost much of their labor force when young men were drafted or volunteered. At the same time, prices for agricultural goods had skyrocketed. Demand was high because war-ravaged Europe could not provide food for itself.

Wheat prices tripled, from 76 cents a bushel in 1912 to $2.49 in June 1917. In August of that year, the government set prices at $2.20 per bushel for the following year's crop. The price of beef also rose dramatically, and the U.S. Food Administration granted ranchers a partial exemption from the prohibition on grain hoarding so they could store feed for the winter.

Wool, 27 and a half cents a pound in 1915—already a high price compared with the previous 30 years—jumped to approximately 50 cents in 1917 and was fixed by the War Industries Board at 55 cents a pound for 1918. Producers of these agricultural goods prospered, but also had to pay higher prices for the items they purchased: clothing, groceries, machinery and equipment.

Coal and oil extraction also boomed. Between 1916 and 1918, oil production in Wyoming doubled, from 6 million barrels to more than 12 million. The state’s coal production mounted from 8.8 million tons in 1917 to more than 9 million in 1918.

Wyoming women worked hard preparing bandages and knitting vests, jackets, scarves and wristlets. They also raised money for the Red Cross, YMCA, Salvation Army and United War Work. Volunteers, mostly women, collected nearly $4,500 for the Soldiers' Book Fund Campaign. The Army earmarked this money for technical books unlikely to be donated. Members of the American Library Association in Wyoming, through directors in more than 60 towns throughout the state, also collected 20,538 books to supply libraries in Army camps.

Politics

Democratic Gov. John B. Kendrick, elected in 1914, ran for the U.S. Senate in 1916 and won. He did not resign the governorship, however, until after the end of the 1917 session of the state legislature. He took his Senate seat March 4, 1917, just five weeks before the nation entered the war. Secretary of State Frank L. Houx became acting governor, serving through January 1919, the entire duration of U.S. involvement in the war. Following the dictates of the federal government, as did all the other governors, Houx oversaw the activities of the state's Council of National Defense. Houx also supervised county draft boards and recruitment for the National Guard.

The end of the war

On Nov. 11, 1918, Germany requested an armistice; the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919. Thousands of Americans, including many from Wyoming, were demobilized near Cheyenne through Fort D. A. Russell, which had also served as a major mobilization point at the start of the war.

Gov. Robert D. Carey, who had won the 1918 election, appropriated $10,000 for a fund to welcome the soldiers home. There are apparently no records of how this money was spent. However, plenty of projects sprang up to ease the soldiers’ transition back to civilian life.

The Wyoming State Tribune reported on March 24, 1919, "ninety-eight per cent of … [returning soldiers] will get their own old jobs back, or a job equally as good." This effort was coordinated by Edward P. Taylor, U.S. Labor Commissioner for Wyoming.

An article in the same issue announced that the YMCA National War Work Council had opened headquarters in downtown Cheyenne. The Council expected to facilitate soldiers' travel home and to funnel information to them from various agencies such as the U.S. employment bureau.

By order of the War Department, the War Camp Community Service also planned a soldiers' club in Cheyenne. The club was to include a lounge, writing room, pool tables and a room for pressing uniforms and shining shoes.

Four bond drives were held during the war, all Liberty Loans, and one bond drive was held after the war—the Victory Loan. Wyoming residents purchased $23.6 million worth of Liberty Bonds. Victory Bonds paid 4.75 percent, and Wyoming purchased $7.2 million of these. Charitable donations in Wyoming totaled an additional $1.4 million, with individuals giving, giving, giving, "until it hurt."

Memorializing Wyoming's fallen soldiers

During Wyoming’s 1919 legislative session, the House of Representatives introduce House Joint Resolution No. 9, appropriating $2,000 "to have placed in the Capitol rotunda, a suitable tablet of bronze, upon which are to be inscribed the names of our brave heroes who shall have given their lives for justice and liberty." There are 468 names on the tablet. An additional 881 Wyoming men were wounded in the war

The tablet is "inaccurate," notes John Goss, director of Wyoming Military Department Museums. His research and that of his colleague, Johanna Wickman, reveals that the number of dead does not include Navy men; also, some of those listed may not have been Wyoming men. This could have happened when a relative of a fallen soldier sent in his name—and the relative was a Wyoming resident but the soldier was not. The actual total of Wyoming men may be closer to 450. Thus, some percentage of the information gathering after American forces returned home was inevitably haphazard, reflecting the stress and chaos of war.

Resources

Primary Sources

• "Constitution of the 100 Per Cent. American Society of Cheyenne, Wyoming." H71-9, Wyoming State Archives, Cheyenne, Wyo.
• Goss, John, Director of Wyoming Military Department Museums. Telephone interview with the author; personal email to the author; Dec. 8, 2016.
• Olson, Ted. Ranch on the Laramie. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1973, 217-218.
• Wyoming Newspapers. Accessed Nov. 18, 21, 28, 2016, Dec. 1, 2, 6, 2016, at http://newspapers.wyo.gov:
• The Big Horn County Rustler, June 8, 1917.
• The Casper Daily Tribune, June 9, June 16, 1917.
• Cheyenne State Leader, Nov. 17, Nov. 22, Nov. 25, 1917.
• Douglas Enterprise, June 12, 1917.
• Laramie Republican, April 9, April 18, 1917.
• The Pine Bluffs Post, May 24, 1917.
• The Powell Leader, Nov. 22, 1917.
• The Riverton Review, June 15, 1917.
• The Sheridan Post, June 5, May 25, 1917.
• The Van Tassell Pioneer, June 8, 1917.
• Wyoming State Tribune, May 2, 1918; March 24, May 2, 1919.
• The Wyoming Tribune, Aug. 29, Nov. 17, Nov. 24, Nov. 25, Dec. 5, Dec. 22, 1914; Jan. 5, Oct. 19, Nov. 11, 1915; Nov. 23, April 6, 1917; Jan. 1, 1918.
• Wyoming State Legislature, 1919. "House Joint Resolution No. 9." Wyoming Veterans Memorial Museum, Casper, Wyo.

Secondary Sources

• Beard, Frances Birkhead. Wyoming from Territorial Days to the Present. Vol. 1. Chicago and N.Y.: The American Historical Society, Inc., 1933, 591, 609-616.
• Cassity, Michael. "Wyoming Will Be Your New Home ... Ranching, Farming, and Homesteading in Wyoming, 1860-1960." Cheyenne, Wyo.: Wyoming State Historic Preservation Office, 2011, 205-213. Accessed Dec. 5, 2016, at http://wyoshpo.state.wy.us/homestead/pdf/historic_context_study_011311.pdf.
• Davis, Paul M., and Hubert K. Clay. History of Battery "C," 148th Field Artillery, American Expeditionary Forces. Colorado Springs, Colo.: Out West, 1919, 83, 90, 104, 112-113.
• Georgen, Cynde. “John B. Kendrick: Cowboy, Cattle King, Governor and U.S. Senator.” Wyohistory.org. Accessed Dec. 23, 2016, at http://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/john-kendrick.
• Hallberg, Carl. "Anti-German Sentiment in Wyoming During World War I." In The Equality State: Essays on Intolerance and Inequality in Wyoming, edited by Mike Mackey. Powell, Wyo.: Western History Publications, 1999, 63-74.
• "Interesting Statistics on Defense Activities in Wyoming, World War I."Annals of Wyoming, 14:1, Jan. 1942, 60-64.
• Kilander, Ginny. "'Over There With the YMCA': A Wyoming Educator in French Canteen Service."Annals of Wyoming, 82:2, Spring 2010, 2-13.
• Larson, T. A. History of Wyoming. 2d. ed., rev. Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1978, 386-410.
• Poeske, Dale A. "Wyoming in World War I." Master's thesis, University of Wyoming, 1968.
• Rea, Tom. "Bob David's War: A Wyoming Soldier Serves in France."Wyohistory.org. Accessed Nov. 10, 2016, at www.wyohistory.org/essays/bob-david's-war-wyoming-soldier-serves-france.
• Roberts, Phil. "Murder in the Freeze-outs: Loyalty, Sedition and Vigilante Justice in World War I Wyoming." First published in Annals of Wyoming 85:1, Winter 2013. Accessed Nov. 10, 2016, at http://wyomingalmanac.com/history_of_wyoming/sedition_act_world_war_i_wyoming_article.
• Sawtell, Maj. W. A., Capt. Frank R. Jeffrey, Lieut. W. S. Griscom, and Lieut. William R. Wright. A History of the Sixty-Sixth Field Artillery Brigade, American Expeditionary Forces. Denver, Colo.: Smith-Brooks Printing Co., [1919], 110-164.
• Spencer, Charles Floyd. Wyoming Homestead Heritage. Hicksville, N.Y.: Exposition Press, 1975, 81-104.
• Trueman, C. N. "Timeline of World War One." Accessed Dec. 1, 2016, at https://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/world-war-one/timeline-of-world-war-one/.
• "World War One and Wyoming." Accessed Nov. 10, 2016, at http://guides.gowyld.net/content.php?pid=692487&sid=5744273.

Illustrations

• The studio photo of the five recruits is from the Preston Alsop biographical file, Wyoming State Archives. The five men are, left to right, Preston Alsop, Ray Clark, Walter Gizan, H.L. Jones, Robert Hays. The photo of the Belgian soldiers is from the George P. Johnson Collection, Wyoming State Archives. The photos of soldier in front of the “Off to France” backdrop, the nurses in the Senate chambers and the children in the 200 percent parade are all from the Meyers Collection, Wyoming State Archives. All are used with permission and thanks.
• The photo of the Liberty Loan poster is from the Edward Lyman Munson Collection, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming. The photos of the war monument in Laramie, the recruits on the courthouse steps and of Helen Svenson and her carrots are from the Ludwig-Svenson collection, American Heritage Center. Used with permission and thanks.
• AHC Archivist John Waggener informs us that Helen Svenson was the daughter of the original studio owner, Henning Svenson. Out of focus in the background of the photo is Helen’s sister, Lottie, who later married Walter Ludwig. Walter eventually purchased the studio from his father-in-law and changed the name to Ludwig Studio. The studio, now known as Ludwig Photography, is still in operation in downtown Laramie and remains in the family.

“Noted beauty coming,” declared the Laramie Republican in its October 1916 headline advancing Inez Milholland’s appearance in Cheyenne.

Accustomed to having her good looks noticed before her formidable intellect, Milholland had learned to rely on the first to lure crowds and the second to convert them. As she rose to prominence in previous years, becoming the prototypical “New Woman,” the Laramie Republican had also noted Milholland’s “striking features, flashing dark eyes, mass of dark brown hair, dimples, even, regular teeth and dazzling smile.”

Milholland was born in Brooklyn in 1886, but moved to London at age 13. There, she learned social justice from the British suffragettes, African-American civil rights activists, Irish revolutionaries, and Boer War dissidents her parents regularly entertained. By 1905, when Inez returned to the United States to attend Vassar College, she had become a fearless activist.

She made waves by ignoring Vassar’s ban on suffrage activities and by leading her fellow students to a nearby cemetery to hear speakers banned by the college. After graduation, Yale, Harvard and Columbia law schools rejected Milholland because of her gender.

But New York University welcomed her, conferring her law degree in 1912. Milholland was passionate about prison reform, world peace and labor reform but gained fame as a suffragist, often leading their colorful parades, complete with floats, banners, bands and costumes.

Drunks attack Washington parade

Such was true in 1913 when Milholland—resplendent in a flowing white cape and crown atop a large white horse—led a massive parade on the eve of President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration.

When drunken bullies rushed the crowd—grabbing, cursing, and spitting on the women—things quickly turned ugly. The Laramie Boomerang captured the scene: “Five thousand women … fought their way foot by foot up Pennsylvania avenue, through a surging mob that defied the police, swamped the marchers and broke the procession into little companies.”

From her perch high above the crowd, Milholland continued to guide the “petticoat cavalry,” pushing through the mob until troops finally arrived to assist the “exhausted and unnerved” marchers. Later, after witnesses at a Senate hearing told jarring “tales of indignities and affronts,” of “coarse buffoonery,” of police standing by “with arms folded,” according to press reports, the Senate passed the first favorable women’s suffrage report in two decades.

“Women for women and not for Wilson.”

But in 1916, with another presidential election looming, the women’s right to vote remained elusive. Alice Paul, head of the National Woman’s Party, devised a special appeal to the 4 million Western women already empowered to vote: Vote for women’s suffrage by voting against Wilson, then running for a second term.

A public relations genius, Paul beseeched the always-newsworthy Milholland to lead this effort. Although exhausted by a recent unsuccessful European peace conference, Milholland agreed to become the campaign’s “special flying envoy.” The effort would begin in Chicago with a keynote by Milholland to the National Woman’s Party convention. One hundred years before teleconferencing became commonplace, Paul arranged an open phone line to allow people in far-flung communities to hear Milholland’s address.

Afterwards, Milholland left for Cheyenne, Wyo., accompanied by Harriot Stanton Blatch, daughter of the nationally known veteran suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton. They would kick off the tour on Oct. 6 at Cheyenne’s Plains Hotel.

The headlines now would belong to Inez Milholland Boissevain. Shortly after the terrifying 1913 parade, Milholland had proposed to, and then eloped with, Eugen Boissevain, scion of a Dutch publishing family. Ironically, having married a foreigner, Inez had lost her citizenship. So even her most passionate advocacy would never win Milholland a vote.

Dr. Frances Margaret Lane of Cody, Wyo., chaired the Woman’s Party in Wyoming. She arranged for “every woman voter in every county of the state” to receive the party’s appeal, which declared: “It is impossible for any problem that confronts the nation today to be decided adequately or justly while half the people are excluded from its consideration. If Democracy means anything it means a right to a voice in government.”

Decrying as intolerable allowing so many issues to be decided without women’s input, the appeal urged Western women to vote “for her fellow women who are not yet free.” Newspapers summarized the message as: “Women for women and not for Wilson.”

Miss Mildred McIntosh, Cheyenne chair of the Woman’s Party, welcomed Milholland and Blatch to the city. “[B]acking no campaign, as such” but “fighting all who oppose the [suffrage] amendment,” Milholland “spoke from the standpoint of the republican; [Blatch] from the standpoint of the democrat,” the Laramie Republican reported.

Milholland crosses Wyoming

The Republican judged the event at the Plains Hotel “highly successful.” At a reception in Cheyenne, however, a skeptical Mrs. Gibson Clark challenged the women for their “inconsistencies and contradictions” and expressed confidence that their rhetoric “would not … injure the cause of President Wilson.”

The Cheyenne Sunday State Leader dismissed Milholland and Blatch’s “little fling at President Wilson,” crowing: “These women of national reputation journeyed two-thirds of the way across the continent to find themselves out-matched by a Cheyenne woman,” justifying “a certain thrill of pride.”

Across the state in Kemmerer, Wyo., however, the Kemmerer Republican reported Mrs. C. Watt Brandon ebullient after seeing the two speak in Pocatello, Idaho: “Mrs. Boissevain is a most interesting, convincing and logical speaker and she made a most favorable impression. … As a woman of immense wealth, splendid education, accomplished, one of magnetism and stately beauty, yet withal a womanly woman, she is one to win the hearts of all who were so fortunate as to hear her.” With “common sense … plainly written in [Boissevain’s] every feature,” Mrs. Brandon lamented that “the women of Kemmerer are unable to hear these speakers,” noting that even tiny Montpelier, Idaho, had given the women “quite an ovation.”

The same happened in Green River, Wyo., where a large crowd turned out to meet the train carrying the two. Inez “made a brief speech from the rear platform of No. 7,” charming “all who heard her,” the Rock Springs Miner reported. Throughout the West, noted the Kemmerer Republican, “enthusiastic crowds” had filled “halls and theaters … to the limit.”

Buoyed by the crowds, Inez Milholland Boissevain gave rousing, impassioned speeches but, behind the scenes, she was ill. She had returned ill from the European peace conference even before she began her western tour. By this time, she was suffering from a raging infection. The recommended strychnine and arsenic did nothing and she grew weaker and weaker.

In Butte, Mont., she awoke unable to stand. Then, on Oct. 22, 1916, Inez collapsed before a packed Los Angeles auditorium. The infection had spread to her teeth and weakened her heart. Hospitalized with pernicious anemia, her ups and downs were closely chronicled by newspapers nationwide. Finally, on election night, as the Western states guaranteed President Wilson a second term and Montana elected Jeannette Rankin the first female to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives, Inez’s sister announced that the suffrage movement’s “noted beauty” was dying.

Dead at age 30, Inez Milholland Boissevain continued to make history, becoming the first woman honored with a memorial service in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall. “Politicians, in this unusual and beautiful ceremony … glimpse[d] the turning of the tide,” the Park County Enterprise reported.

In 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified by enough states that it became law, giving women nationwide their long-sought right to vote. As suffragists celebrated, a small group gathered in upstate New York, in the shadow of the recently renamed Mt. Inez, to honor the indomitable and beautiful Inez Milholland Boissevain.

Resources

Primary sources

• “Beauty Contest to Be Part of the Great Suffrage Parade,” Laramie Republican, February 1, 1913, 2.
• “Cheyenne Woman Routs Speaker of Sex Party,” Sunday State Leader, October 8, 1916, 1.
• “Dawn Mist of Montana in Parade,” Weekly Boomerang, February 27, 1913, 4.
• “Death of Miss Inez Milholland Boissevain,” Rock Springs Miner, December 2, 1916, 6.
• “Extension Phones for Mrs. Boissevain’s Talk,” Wyoming Tribune, November 4, 1916, 1.
• “Famous Woman Spoke at Pocatello,” Kemmerer Republican, October 13, 1916, 1.
• “Memorial for Inez Milholland Boissevain,” Park County Enterprise, December 27, 1916, 4.
• “Memorial to Mrs. Boissevain,” Kemmerer Republican, December 29, 1916.
• “Miss Inez Milholland: Equal Suffrage Advocate Is Made the Heroine of a Novel,” Laramie Republican, November 11, 1911, 5.
• “Noted Beauty Coming,” Laramie Republican, October 4, 1916, 8.
• “Rioting Mars the Suffrage Parade,” Laramie Boomerang, March 4, 1913, 1.
• “Sing Sing Inmates Honor Suffragist,” Laramie Daily Boomerang, December 7, 1916, 1.
• “Successful Meeting at Plains Hotel,” Laramie Republican, 11 Oct 1916, 6.
• “Washington’s Discourtesy to Women,” Wyoming Semi-Weekly Tribune, March 11, 1913, 6.
• “Washington City’s Insult to Women,” Wyoming Semi-Weekly Tribune, March 11, 1913, 6.
• “Women Outline Political Views,” Kemmerer Republican, October 27, 1916.
• “Women Unfurl Their First Battle Flag,” Laramie Daily Boomerang, December 7, 1916, 1.

Secondary sources

• Cooney, Robert P.J., Jr. Remembering Inez, The Last Campaign of Inez Milholland, Suffrage Martyr. Half Moon Bay, Cal.: American Graphic Press, 2015.
• Lumsden, Linda J. Inez: The Life and Times of Inez Milholland. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004.
• _______________. “The Woman on the White Horse: The Forgotten Fighter Who Led the Way for Woman’s Suffrage.” TalkingPointsMemo. Accessed Feb. 24, 2017 at http://talkingpointsmemo.com/longform/the-woman-on-the-white-horse-inez-milholland.

Illustrations

• The Milholland portrait, the photo of Milholland on a white horse and the photo of the woman holding a banner are all from Wikipedia. Used with thanks. The photo of Inez at the start of her 1916 speaking tour is from Wikimedia Commons. Used with thanks.
• The photo of Inez giving a speech in Cheyenne in 1916 is from the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument. Used with thanks.

In a U.S. Army career spanning three wars and four decades, Paul Kendall, of Sheridan, Wyo., never forgot the moment when his platoon, guarding a Siberian rail station, was attacked one night at 30 below—by an armored train full of Bolshevik partisans.

The attack came on Jan. 10, 1920. Young 2nd Lt. Kendall’s 34-man platoon was part of a 90,000-man force of American, Canadian, British, French, Italian and Japanese troops, which had landed 16 months earlier in Vladivostok, Russia, at the Pacific end of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Their mission was to cover the retreat of the famed Czechoslovak Legion, by then allied with the Tsarist Whites against the Communist Red Army in Russia’s bitter Civil War.

The U.S. mission was never particularly realistic, relationships with supposed allies, especially the Japanese, were rocky, and the American experience in Siberia proved to be confusing and frustrating. The night attack was Kendall’s first taste of combat, however, and he and his men performed well.

Young Paul Kendall

Paul Wilkins Kendall was born July 17, 1898, in Baldwin City, Kan. His family subsequently moved to Sheridan, Wyo. As a boy, Kendall remembered years later, he was absorbed by a series of books, “The West Point Series,” by West Point graduate Capt. Paul Malone. These novels, with eye-catching, full-color covers of young West Point cadets in all their glory, featured cadet life and were extremely popular.

Kendall attended Sheridan High School, where he captained the football team, and graduated in 1916. He was accepted at West Point, where he arrived the hot, muggy morning of July 10, 1916, as a member of the class of 1920. At the academy he wrestled, played football and served as a cadet sergeant.

The United States entered World War I in April 1917. Facing a high demand for junior officers, the Army accelerated West Point graduations. Kendall’s class graduated Nov. 1, 1918—just ten days before the armistice that brought an end to the war was signed in France.

U.S. troops in Russia

But large pieces of that conflict lingered elsewhere. Pressures of war were one of the immediate causes of the Russian Revolution, which deposed the Tsar and brought the Bolsheviks to power in November 1917. Quickly, the Bolsheviks made a separate peace with the Central Powers—Germany and Austria—and began withdrawing Russian troops from the Eastern Front.

The peace stranded 60,000 battle-hardened, high-morale Czech and Slovak troops, who had allied with the Tsar’s army to fight the Austrian overlords that had ruled their provinces for centuries. Trapped deep in the Ukraine between Russia and Poland, which with the peace had become German territory, the Legion’s officers believed they would be shot as traitors if they surrendered to advancing German troops. They figured their best hope was to travel 5500 miles east on the Trans Siberian Railway to Vladivostok. There they planned to board ships, continue east around the world and rejoin their French and British allies fighting Germans on the Western Front.

Circumstances intervened. When the Russian Revolution devolved into Civil War, the Legion joined the Tsarists in a railroad war that involved heavily armed trains on both sides.

Bound for Siberia

Kendall, meanwhile, underwent three months of infantry training at Camp Benning, Ga. before shipping out—for Siberia via San Francisco. He arrived at Vladivostok March 28, 1919, where he was assigned command of the 3^rd Platoon, Company M, 27th U.S. Infantry, nicknamed the Wolfhounds.

The earliest American troops had arrived in September 1918, initially parts of the 27^th and 31^st U.S. Infantry regiments ordered from garrison duty in the Philippines. Under the command of Maj. Gen. William S. Graves, this 9,000-man American force was supposedly safeguarding American property in the port of Vladivostok, securing the Trans-Siberian Railway, and defending the Czechoslovak Legion, troops of which by then had been arriving at the port for several months.

Difficult service

For Kendall and his fellow doughboys, service in Siberia was austere, and living conditions were primitive. The climate was brutal. One soldier with the 31^st Infantry wrote a poem ending, “The Lord played a joke on creation, When he dumped Siberia on the map.”

The U.S. Army lacked adequate cold weather gear, and had to issue muskrat coats, gloves and caps dating from the the Indian Wars on the Northern Plains 40 years earlier. Military duties proved tedious and boring.

In June 1919, Pvt. John Speer threw down his rifle and bayonet at Lt. Kendall’s feet, cursing “I’ll be damned if I can stand it any longer and you can give me six months or a year, I don’t give a damn which.”

Anton Karachun, a soldier in the Machine Gun Company of the 31^st Regiment, married a Russian woman, deserted to the Bolshevik partisans, and became a leader fighting against the Americans until he was captured and court-martialed.

Kendall’s 34-man platoon was assigned to guard a portion of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, at Posolskaya Station, Siberia, on the eastern shore of Lake Baikal and 2,000 rail miles west of Vladivostok.

A night attack

At 1 a.m. on Jan, 10, 1920, Kendall’s position was attacked by the Red Russian armored train, the Destroyer, operated by the free-wheeling Cossack, Ataman Semionoff, a self-styled general with dreams of rebuilding the empire of Genghis Khan. The train was directly under the command of Semionoff’s chief, General Nikolai Bogomolets.

With the Americans in the process of withdrawing from Siberia, the Cossacks doubtless expected to catch the doughboys enjoying a long winter’s nap, for the Fahrenheit temperature was 30 below. Unfortunately for the Bolsheviks, Kendall had been warned, and his platoon was alert and waiting. Instead of silence and surrender, the Bolsheviks met hot gunfire and an aggressive counterattack.

Sgt. Carl Robbins climbed up on the locomotive, threw a hand grenade into the cab and disabled it, being killed in the action. Another soldier, Pvt. Homer D. Tommie, also attempted to climb on the Cossack train, was wounded, and fell under the wheels of the train, losing his leg.

The Reds and their train, including Bogomolets, were forced to surrender to Kendall. His small command had overcome a heavily armored and well-armed train manned by no less than 48 Cossacks, killing 12 of them. His platoon lost two killed and one wounded. This proved to be the final combat action of World War I.

A long career

Kendall’s platoon received an unprecedented three Distinguished Service Crosses in this action, with Kendall, Sgt. Robbins and Pvt. Tommie recognized. Kendall captured a Hotchkiss Model 1914 heavy machine gun, manufactured at the Japanese Koishikawa Arsenal, perhaps showing some double-dealing by the Japanese allies.

Just two weeks after the attack, Kendall on Jan. 25 left Siberia with his regiment. He donated the machine gun to Sheridan High School upon his return, and this historically significant gun remains at the Sheridan National Guard Armory today–the last weapon captured in the First World War.

Kendall went on to one of the most distinguished careers of any Wyoming soldier. During World War II he commanded the 88th Infantry Division in Italy; and, in 1952 and 1953 he commanded the I Corps in the Korean War. He retired as a lieutenant general in 1955, and died at Palo Alto, Calif., Oct. 3, 1983. He is buried at the West Point Cemetery beneath a simple soldier’s headstone.

In his incredible military career that spanned 37 years, three wars and four continents, Paul Kendall’s finest moment was as a 21-year old second lieutenant on a dark, frozen Siberian night.

Resources

Primary Sources

• Faulstich, Edith Collection, Hoover Institution, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford, California. Box 19, Paul W. Kendall Folder.
• Kendall, Paul. “Horizontal File: Sheridan High School, Class of 1916,” Sheridan County Fulmer Library, Sheridan, Wyoming.
• Kendall, Paul. Entry in The Howitzer, (West Point, New York: U.S. Military Academy Yearbook), 1920.
• West Point Association of Graduates. “Memorial: Paul W. Kendall, 1918, Cullum No. 6212.” Accessed March 9, 2017 at http://apps.westpointaog.org/Memorials/Article/6212/.

Secondary Sources

• 31st Infantry Association, “America’s Legion: The 31st Infantry Regiment at War and Peace.” Chapter 2- Siberia.” Accessed March 9, 2017 at http://www.31stinfantry.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Chapter-2.pdf.
• Bell, Ulric. “Colonel Morrow Bares Semenoff Atrocities as He Nears America,” Louisville, Kentucky Courier-Journal, January 16, 1922, 1-2. Accessed March 9, 2017 at https://www.newspapers.com/image/119471737/.
• Bibliomaven. “The West Point Series by Paul Malone -Penn Publishing,” July 9, 2009. Accessed March 9, 2017 at http://bookofbibliomaven.blogspot.com/2009/07/west-point-series-by-paul-malone-penn.html.
• Borch, Fred L. III. “Bolsheviks, Polar Bears, and Military Law: The Experiences of Army Lawyers in North Russia and Siberia in World War I.” Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives and Records Administration, 30:3, Fall 1998, 181-191.
• Filofey, Reverend F. “Asia’s Man on Horseback: The Story of Ataman Semionoff, Adventurer and Empire Builder of the Far East,” Sunset: The Magazine of the Pacific and of All the Far West, 44:4, April 1920, 30-32.
• “Find A Grave Memorial: LTG Paul Wilkins Kendall (1898-1983).” Accessed March 9, 2017 at http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=52686798.
• HomeofHeroes.Com. Website: “Full Text Citations for Award of The Distinguished Service Cross, U.S. Army--Siberia Expedition.” Accessed March 9, 2017 at http://www.homeofheroes.com/members/02_DSC/citatons/02_interim-dsc/dsc_06siberia.html.
• House, Col. John M. Wolfhounds and Polar Bears: The American Expeditionary Force in Siberia, 1918–1920. 2nd Edition. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2016.
• Kindall, Sylvian G. American Soldiers in Siberia. New York: R. R. Smith, 1945.
• Military History Now. “A Long Way from Home: The Czech Legion’s Amazing Trek Across Siberia.” Accessed March 8, 2017 at http://militaryhistorynow.com/2013/06/02/a-long-way-from-home-the-czech-legions-amazing-trek-across-siberia/.
• O’Connor, Neil P., Jr. Website: “AEF Siberia: Everyday Life of a Soldier.” Accessed March 8, 2017 at https://sites.google.com/a/bates.edu/aefsiberia/home/everyday-life-of-a-soldier.
• O’Connor, Richard. “Yanks in Siberia,” American Heritage 25:2, August 1974. Accessed March 8, 2017 at http://www.americanheritage.com/content/yanks-siberia?page=show.
• Smalser, Colonel Robert L. The Siberian Expedition 1918-1920: An Early Operation Other Than War. Newport, Rhode Island: Naval War College Thesis, 1994.
• Smith, Gibson Bell. “Guarding the Railroad, Taming the Cossacks: The U.S. Army in Russia, 1918-1920. Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives and Records Administration, 34:4, Winter 2002. Accessed March 9, 2017 at https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2002/winter/us-army-in-russia-1.html.
• Willett, Robert L. “The Story of a Turncoat” Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives and Records Administration, 37:4, Winter 2005, 32-38.
• The author acknowledges the generous assistance of Ms. Carol A. Leadenham, Assistant Archivist for Reference, Hoover Institution Archives.

Illustrations

• The photos of the morning train in the station and of troops training in the snow are from Paul Kendall’s Siberian Scrapbook in the collections of the Wyoming Veterans Memorial Museum. Used with permission and thanks.
• The colorful 1903 advertising card is from the author’s collection. Used with permission and thanks.
• The photo of U.S. troops on parade in Vladivostok is from Wikipedia. Used with thanks.
• The photo of the armored train is from U.S. Militaria Forum, with special thanks to Bob Hudson.
• The Sheridan High School photo of Paul Kendall is from the historical collections at the Sheridan Fulmer Library. Used with thanks. The photo of cadet Paul Kendall is from Special Collections and Archives, Jefferson Hall, U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York. Used with thanks. The photo of Gen. Paul Kendall late in his career is from Findagrave.com. Used with thanks.

The horses galloped for the Wyoming-Colorado border, pulling a wagon loaded with several hundred copies of a book, at least one of which had a bullet hole in it. Was this seditious literature? Dangerous information? It all depended which side you were on.

"[T]his book … has a curious habit of either disappearing suddenly and forever, or else of disappearing for a while and then, when returned to the … [library] shelf, showing the marks of surgical operations." wrote Philip A. Rollins, the owner of the copy with the bullet hole, when he sent it to the Princeton University Library in 1923.

This is all quite sensational, but is it true? That will probably never be known. Accounts of what happened after Asa Shinn Mercer published The Banditti of the Plainsin August 1894 are too disparate and mostly not well documented.

In his active and colorful career, Mercer was jailed twice, beaten up at least twice, had his property confiscated several times—sometimes legally, sometimes not—and in general managed to put himself time and again in controversy’s rocky path.

Young adulthood

Born to Aaron Mercer and Jane Dickerson Mercer on June 6, 1839, in Princeton, Ill., Asa Shinn Mercer graduated from Franklin College, a Presbyterian school in New Athens, Ohio, in 1860. In June of the next year, he followed his two older brothers, Thomas and Aaron, to Washington Territory. For the next two years, he taught at the brand-new University of Washington and also served briefly as acting president.

In 1863, he conceived the project for which he is probably best known outside of Wyoming: Observing that the ratio of men to women among white settlers in the Pacific Northwest was 9 to 1, he decided to recruit eligible women from the East Coast to travel west, with the plan to marry and help populate the area. Historians dubbed this effort "Mercer's Belles."

On July 15, 1866, Mercer married Annie E. Stephens in Seattle. His new wife, a staunch Catholic, was the daughter of John Stephens, owner of a hat factory in Philadelphia; Annie and her younger sister, Mamie, were part of the original group of Mercer's Belles. During their nearly 34-year marriage, the Mercers had eight children, five of whom survived childhood.

The same year he married, Mercer was appointed deputy collector for the U.S. Custom House in Astoria, Ore. While in this job, he was accused of smuggling by the U.S. government. This was the first time he was jailed. However, the government's case failed after two trials in which the juries could not agree, plus the added problem—so common in the raw west—of mysteriously missing witnesses.

The Northwestern Live Stock Journal

While the Mercers were still in Oregon, Asa started his first newspaper, the Oregon Granger, on Dec. 4, 1873, an effort that lasted less than a year. By the end of 1878, the Mercers had moved to Sherman, Texas, just south of the Red River, about 65 miles north of Dallas. There, Asa edited—though did not own—the Sherman Courier. In the lively journalistic culture of the state, Mercer eventually did own and edit five newspapers, from 1880 through about the middle of 1883.

In August of that year, the Mercers moved to Cheyenne, Wyo., and on Nov. 25, 1883, Asa published the first issue of his weekly Northwestern Live Stock Journal. He began with eight pages, but by the following spring, that number had doubled. The print run was about 5,000 copies per week in 1884, though the paid circulation was somewhat less. For about five years the Journal chugged quietly along, publishing livestock industry news from at least 10 states and territories, including Texas and California. Mercer also wrote editorials about pending legislation and other issues affecting cattle ranchers.

The back pages were filled with ranch advertisements showing each ranch’s horse and cattle brands. By fall 1886, there were more than 250; 135 of these from Wyoming. Brand ads, paid for a year in advance, were less expensive to produce than the rest of the paper because they required no new typesetting from one issue to the next. Mercer charged $12 per ad per year, and this steady income, with its relatively low overhead, almost certainly helped the Journal in its success.

Mercer also enjoyed the support of the powerful and then-prosperous Wyoming Stock Growers Association (WSGA), and in spring 1884—no more than half a year after he began publishing—the association ordered 150 copies to be sent to members of Congress. By early 1886, Mercer's payroll was almost $160 per week for 10 employees, the financial high point of the Journal.

Mercer's success depended on his support of the WSGA and, as conflict heated up between land settlers and the early cattle barons, who wanted to continue their unrestricted grazing on an unfenced range, he left no doubt about where he stood. After Ella Watson and James Averell were lynched near the Sweetwater River in July 1889, Mercer wrote an editorial so outrageous in content and so unabashed in tone that few historians have failed to quote at least part of it.

"There is but one remedy [to the rustling problem], and that is a freer use of the hanging noose,” Mercer wrote. “Cattle owners should organize and not disband until a hundred rustlers were left ornamenting the trees or telegraph poles of the territory. The hanging of two culprits merely acts as stimulus to the thieves. Hang a hundred and the balance will reform or quit the country. Let the good work go on, and lose no time about it." Many of Mercer’s Live Stock Journal's issues have been lost, but in a common practice of the times, this editorial was quoted in the Sept. 7, 1889, Big Horn Sentinel.

A swift about-face

In light of his subsequent behavior, Mercer's avowed sentiments cannot be ignored. In spring 1892, after prominent members of the WSGA attempted to execute their megalomaniac plan to invade Johnson County and kill as many as 70 supposed rustlers there, the press statewide exploded into debate. Back then, most newspapers represented political parties, and by definition the Northwestern Live Stock Journal had always been Republican. Therefore, it reflected the politics of the majority of its patrons and presumably the convictions of its editor as well.

But no more: In a swift about-face, Mercer not only condemned the actions of the Johnson County invaders, he joined the Democratic party in campaigning during the election season of 1892. No one knows why he switched sides; what is known, to some degree, are the details of what he did—and also how his enemies retaliated.

On May 14, 1892, less than six weeks after the Johnson County invasion, the Cheyenne Daily Leader excerpted a recent editorial by Mercer: "The Journal will uphold all cattlemen in every legitimate effort to protect their herds, but it will not pronounce in favor of an illegal and mercenary plan to aid the few at the expense of the many."

In June, Col. Emerson H. Kimball, editor of the Douglas Graphic and longtime critic of the WSGA and Mercer's newspaper as well, was jailed for criminal libel against several members of the invading force and their supporters. When Mercer offered to sign Kimball's bail bond for $500, most of his brand advertisers withdrew their ads immediately. Mercer ran his next issue with blank spaces captioned "Boycotted for Opinion's Sake."

Later that summer, Mercer attacked the powerful John Clay, Jr., then president of the WSGA and manager of the huge Swan Land and Cattle Company. On Aug. 24, 1892, the Cheyenne Daily Sun quoted the Journal under the Sun's headline, "Mercer's Malicious Attack:""Too great a coward himself to … fight, … [John Clay, Jr.] sent one of his hired men and contributed to the extermination fund in cheap talk if not in shining shekels."

Shortly thereafter, Charles A. Campbell, one of the invaders and also a cattle buyer for Clay, concluded that Mercer had been referring to him as the hired man. Campbell visited Mercer's newspaper office and hit him in the face. Mercer bled heavily from a cut on his eyebrow, but was not seriously hurt.

On Oct. 14, 1892, Mercer dropped the biggest bombshell of all by publishing, word-for-word, the statement known as "Dunning's Confession." George Dunning, a mercenary from Idaho who participated in the invasion, wrote a 44-page longhand account of the plans for the invasion as well as the events themselves. In so doing, he implicated most of the Wyoming participants, in particular the expedition's planners and leaders.

The consequences exploded onto Mercer. Two days after publication, he traveled to Chicago as an alternate commissioner for Wyoming for the World's Fair, to meet with the other commissioners. The fair was scheduled to open the following year. Chicago was John Clay's home town, and Clay filed a libel action against Mercer, who was briefly jailed in Cook County, Ill. However, since Mercer's anti-Clay editorial had not been published in Cook County, action could not proceed against him there, and he was released.

While Mercer had been in Chicago, a legal judgment of the St. Louis Type Foundry was executed against him in Cheyenne in a case that had been pending for a year. The sheriff seized the Journal's property, including copies of the October 14 issue, but 1,400 had already been sent to subscribers. Apparently Mercer's equipment was returned, since it was in his wife's name; he continued publishing the Journal for another nine months before shutting down in summer 1893, as reported in the July 20, 1893, Cheyenne Daily Leader.

The Banditti of the Plains

Mercer's contribution to Wyoming history and literature/journalism lies not in his nearly 10-year production of the Northwestern Live Stock Journal—although “Dunning's Confession” was significant—but in the project he completed in 1894: an account and condemnation of the Johnson County invasion, titled The Banditti of the Plains, or The Cattlemen’s Invasion of Wyoming in 1892 [The Crowning Infamy of the Ages].

Historians agree information in Banditti is correct, with a few exceptions such as Mercer’s theorizing about the motive for the May 10, 1892, ambush and murder of George Wellman, a popular ranch foreman in Johnson County. Wellman's murder had little or nothing to do with the Johnson County conflict, though Mercer blamed it on an unsuccessful conspiracy among the invaders to provoke the federal government to declare martial law.

The first part of The Banditti, "Introductory," is useful to the modern reader for its description of the early cattle industry, before fences; and the brief history of the cattle boom in Wyoming. In Chapter 7, in a section headed "Official Correspondence," Mercer reprints 14 revelatory telegrams, mostly exchanged between high officials bent on protecting the invaders. These officials included Acting Gov. Amos W. Barber and President Benjamin Harrison. Dunning's entire confession appears in an appendix.

Almost from the beginning, the book's publication spawned rumors and wild stories equal to the galloping plot of any western.

The facts are few, however. Two reviews and one editorial, all published in newspapers, have survived. The Aug. 20, 1894, Denver Daily News commented, "The book is written in a free, flowing journalistic style, but with a pen dipped in gall. It does not mince words … [and] is a timely contribution to the history of the West. That it recites the facts of a deep and damning crime detracts not the least from its value."

By contrast, the Cheyenne Sun, in its review published Aug. 22, 1894, accused Mercer of compiling the book in a "careless and reckless spirit," citing Mercer's claim that Dr. Charles Penrose, a Philadelphia surgeon who traveled partway with the invaders, carried a surgical case belonging to Acting Gov. Barber. Barber was also a physician.

This is a point that Mercer has been accused of either lying or being mistaken about. Mercer's biographer, Lawrence M. Woods, contends that Penrose's initials were on the case, therefore it was his. Helena Huntington Smith, author of The War on Powder River, says nothing about whose initials were on the case, but states that Barber lent it to Penrose. This question, though incidental to the history of the Johnson County War, is nonetheless relevant to Mercer's story because it sheds light on possible inaccuracies in Banditti. Additionally, no source contests the fact that Barber and Penrose attended college together and were friends, and that Barber encouraged Penrose to accompany the invaders.

The Sun review continued, "The object of these statements is to fasten on the governor complicity in the invasion." Information then available had already confirmed Barber's involvement, however.

A week after the Sun's review, the Denver Daily News published an editorial defending Mercer, referring to Banditti as "an accurate and official record of the raid of arson and murder to which Wyoming was subjected by the Cheyenne cattle ring." The rest of the article is a commentary on the Johnson County conflict and the crookedness of the invaders.

The first printing of the book was probably done in Denver in August 1894. Likely it was 1,000 copies. Asa and his son Ralph sold books in Cheyenne and also toured the northern part of the state to sell more books. Few of these first editions have survived, leading to endless speculation about what became of them. The most enduring story is that members of the invading force and their relatives purchased, borrowed or stole the book in order to destroy as many copies as possible. Another persistent tale is that the invaders sued for libel and the court ordered the edition impounded, pending the outcome. Supposedly, while the books were in the court's custody, some were stolen and smuggled to Denver. However, no records exist of any such lawsuit in Laramie County from August through November 1894.

Nixon Orwin Rush did a study of the fate of the book, publishing his findings in 1961 in a 67-page booklet, Mercer's Banditti of the Plains: The Story of the First Book Giving an Account of the Cattlemen's Invasion of Wyoming in 1892. However, historian Louis Gould comments that Rush's work must be used with caution, as it is "poorly researched and inaccurate on matters of fact and interpretation."

Possibly the more reliable parts of Rush's study are his interviews with two of Mercer's children, Ralph Mercer and Janet Mercer Webb. Both siblings agree that the book was printed in Denver, and Mrs. Webb stated that there was a second printing, also in Denver, and these books were burned before they could be shipped.

Rush also publishes a letter to him from historian and editor Agnes Wright Spring, in which she recalled a conversation with the woman in charge of the estate of Cheyenne attorney Hugo Donzelman, who was a known supporter of the WSGA and aided their more illegal activities. This woman told Spring that Donzelman somehow obtained some unbound copies of Banditti, put them in his basement and hired a janitor to burn them. Supposedly the janitor burned most of them but saved out a few to sell. This is a good story, but like many of the others, impossible to prove.

Two of Mercer's great-grandsons have their own recollections. Allen Mercer remembers that "my great uncle Ralph told my father that … [Asa Mercer, Sr.] sent him and his brother, Asa Jr., out in Cheyenne to buy back copies" to keep them from being burned. However, continued Allen, a few days later, someone raided Mercer's office, pulled out a bunch of papers, books and equipment, made a pile of it in the street, poured on some kerosene and lit it up.

Regarding this story, Allen Mercer's second cousin, John Mercer, observed, "I doubt they [the Mercer family] had the money to buy anything." On reflection, John added, "I remember all the [family] stories about how … [copies of Banditti] disappeared. They did indeed disappear at an alarming rate, and when I asked Grandpa [Ralph] about a copy of the book he once had, all he said was, 'Somebody borrowed it and didn't bring it back.'" John Mercer further recalls that "a shipment from Denver was printed up"—possibly the legendary second printing—"and never did arrive in Cheyenne."

No newspaper reports of the attack or fire recalled by Allen Mercer's great-uncle Ralph have survived, nor does Rush mention the episode. However, in Chapter 4 of his study, "Burning of Copies and Mercer's Arrest," he cites other stories of the book being seized and burned. Many of these appear difficult to verify.

Woods observes that stories that the cattlemen seized and burned the book lack foundation. However, he notes that few first editions have survived and acknowledges that they could have been burned. Further adding to the mystery is Helena Smith's account: Five hundred copies of the first printing were "said to have been sent" to Sheridan, but only got as far as Buffalo. These 500 books stayed in the Burlington railroad station in Sheridan until 1909. After that, a local stationer "presumably" sold them. Rush also tells a version of this story, naming "a reliable source in Sheridan."

Currently, at least 32 libraries in the U.S. and Canada have first editions, and as of June 2016 five are listed for sale online, with prices ranging from $1,250 to more than $6,000. This suggests that the original book is extremely rare. It is unlikely that anyone will ever learn where most of the remaining 950-plus copies are, or whether they were destroyed.

Later years

In spring 1895, the Mercers moved to Hyattville, Wyo., and, with their now-grown children, filed on 800 acres of homestead land on Paint Rock Creek. A few months later, they were victims of what was either an accident or an attack: On July 11, the Cheyenne Daily Sun-Leader excerpted a paragraph from the Buffalo Voice, including the report that "[Mercer] had his house nearly completed and while he and the boys had gone to the mountains for a load of logs, some one set fire to the house and burned it down." We will probably never know whether this was arson and if so, was further retaliation for the publication of Banditti.

Apparently undaunted, the Mercers must have rebuilt their house, because they went on to plant hay and begin cattle ranching. In 1909, the enterprise became the Mercer Brothers Land and Livestock Company, Inc., issuing 1,000 shares. The ranch, the largest on Paint Rock Creek by 1916, is still in the family today. In the fall of 1900, Annie Mercer died at the home of her daughter, Janet Webb. She was about 60 years old. Asa outlived her by 17 years, dying on Aug. 9, 1917, at the age of 78.

Helena Smith, discussing the aftermath of the Johnson County invasion and Mercer's role in it, comments that "[w]ithout Mercer and his opponents' blundering persecution the 'war' in Johnson County would have been a half forgotten local incident. Instead, largely because of him, it became immortalized in iniquity."

The Banditti of the Plains is now widely available in the reprint edition issued by the University of Oklahoma Press in 1954. Previously, three other editions were issued by various individuals and presses, but the University of Oklahoma edition is the most common of what has become a recognized classic of Wyoming history, despite the book’s bias and occasional errors.

(Editor’s note: Publication of this and seven other articles on Wyoming newspapering is supported in part by the Wyoming Humanities Council and is part of the Pulitzer Prizes Centennial Campfires Initiative, a joint venture of the Pulitzer Prizes Board and the Federation of State Humanities Councils in celebration of the 2016 centennial of the prizes. The initiative seeks to illuminate the impact of journalism and the humanities on American life today, to imagine their future and to inspire new generations to consider the values represented by the body of Pulitzer Prize-winning work. For their generous support for the Campfires Initiative, the council thanks the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Pulitzer Prizes Board, and Columbia University.)

Resources

Primary Sources

• Wyoming Newspapers. Accessed March 2-4, 2016, March 22, 2016, and April 4, 2016, at http://newspapers.wyo.gov:
• Big Horn County Rustler, Sept. 15, 1911.
• Big Horn Sentinel, Sept. 7, 1889.
• Cheyenne Daily Leader, May 14, 1892; June 8, 1892; June 16, 1892; July 20, 1893.
• Cheyenne Daily Sun-Leader, July 11, 1895.
• Cheyenne Daily Sun, July 26, 1884; Aug. 2, 1884; June 9, 1892; Aug. 24, 1892; Oct. 9, 1894.
• Cheyenne Sun, Aug. 22, 1894.
• Northwestern Live Stock Journal, June 27, Dec. 3, 1884; April 10, 1885; Dec. 3, 10, 17, 24, 1886; Jan 7-Dec. 2, 1887; Oct. 14, 1892.
• Denver Daily News, Aug. 20, 1894; Aug. 29, 1894. Quoted in Rush, Nixon Orwin. Mercer's Banditti of the Plains: The Story of the First Book Giving an Account of the Cattlemen's Invasion of Wyoming in 1892. Tallahassee, Fla.: The Florida State University Library, 1961, 2-4, 44-45.
• Mercer, Allen. Telephone interview with the author. March 14, 2016.
• Mercer, John. Telephone interview with the author. March 15 and 16, 2016.

Secondary Sources

• Davis, John W. Wyoming Range War: The Infamous Invasion of Johnson County. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010, 76-77, 176, 210, 216, 230-232, 240-242, 270, 277.
• Gould, Lewis L. "A.S. Mercer and the Johnson County War: A Reappraisal."Journal of the Southwest 7, no. 1 (Spring 1965): 5-20.
• Mercer, Asa S. The Banditti of the Plains: or The Cattlemen's Invasion of Wyoming in 1892 [The Crowning Infamy of the Ages]. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1954, xiii-xv, 5-15, 74-82, 151-195.
• Rush, Nixon Orwin. Mercer's Banditti of the Plains: The Story of the First Book Giving an Account of the Cattlemen's Invasion of Wyoming in 1892. Tallahassee, Fla.: The Florida State University Library, 1961, 2-4, 7-13, 25-26, 44-45.
• Smith, Helena Huntington. The War on Powder River: The History of an Insurrection. Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1966, vii-viii, 133, 191, 214, 217, 252-261, 265-280, 306 note 9.
• Woods, Lawrence M. Asa Shinn Mercer: Western Promoter and Newspaperman, 1839-1917. Western Frontiersmen Series, 30. Spokane, Wash.: Arthur H. Clark Company, 2003, 13-93, 109-113, 117-160, 173-199, 224.

For Further Reading and Research

• Northwestern Live Stock Journal (microfilm), University of California-Berkeley, Accessed April 19, 2016, at http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/using-the-libraries/interlibrary-loan-photoduplication: Feb. 1, March 21, April 4, April 18-May 2, 16, June 6, July 4, Aug. 15-22, Sept. 12, Oct. 10-Nov. 14, 1884; Feb. 27, May 22-June 12, June 26-July 10, Aug. 7-Dec. 25, 1885; Jan. 1-April 16, May 7-14, May 28, July 2, 16, Sept. 17-Dec.24, 1886; Jan. 7-28, Feb. 11-25, March 11-May 13, May 27-June 17, July 1, July 22-Aug. 5, Aug. 19-Sept. 2, Sept. 16, Oct. 14-21, 1887; Feb. 10, Aug. 31-Nov. 16, Nov. 30-Dec. 7, Dec. 21, 1888; Jan. 11-18, Feb. 1, Feb. 15-April 19, May 3-June 21, 1889; Jan 10, Oct. 3, 1890; Sept. 2, 1892.
• Northwestern Live Stock Journal (microfilm), Wyoming State Archives, Cheyenne, Wyo.: Feb. 15, March 28, April 4, 11, Aug. 15, Dec. 5, 1884; April 17, May 29, Oct. 16, 1885; Aug. 20, 27, Oct. 1, 29, 1886.

Illustrations

• The early portrait of photo of Asa Mercer is from Wikipedia. Used with thanks.
• The image of the first-edition title page of The Banditti of the Plains is from a copy in the collections of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. Used with permission and thanks.
• The photo of Mercer with the books is from the Wyoming State Archives. Used with permission and thanks.
• The images of 1886 and 1892 pages of Mercer’s Northwestern Live Stock Journal are from Wyoming Newspapers, a service of the Wyoming State Library. Used with thanks.

Prohibition was on its last legs in Wyoming when top public officials—Casper’s mayor and police chief and the Natrona County Sheriff—were accused of corruption. The men who ran the town and the county, prosecutors claimed, were in cahoots with the crooks who supplied illegal liquor to the people of central Wyoming. All three men were charged in federal court with taking regular payments from bootleggers and bar owners—the men and women who made, shipped, and sold illegal booze.

The charges may well have been true. Casper was one of the biggest centers for vice—the sale of so-called sinful pleasures—in the Rocky Mountains. Gambling, though illegal, was practiced more or less openly in the cafes and bars. Liquor, wine and beer, illegal in the state since 1919, often were openly available in the same places. And though Casper only had around 17,000 people, the town was home to uncounted prostitutes. Wyoming’s oil-drilling, oil-refining, mining, ranching and railroad economy attracted a lot of single men. Many traveled to Casper for sex and alcohol. The brothels and speakeasies clustered in the Sandbar district, just northwest of downtown.

Town and county officials—and the police and sheriff’s officers they employed—had to have known what was going on. But whether they were actually paid to ignore these crimes of pleasure would turn out to be hard to prove in a court of law.

Prohibition’s beginnings

The temperance movement, opposing liquor and saloons, grew stronger and stronger in the United States in the late 19^th- and early 20^th centuries. Many of its stoutest backers were people fighting for all kinds of reforms, including votes for women. Under pressure from groups like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League, Colorado outlawed the possession, manufacture and sale of alcohol in 1914. Idaho went “dry,” as people said then, in 1915. Nebraska, South Dakota, and Montana followed in 1916, and Utah in 1917. By then, 37 states had passed dry laws. Wyoming was the only wet state left in the Rocky Mountains. Its border towns did a brisk business with booze customers driving in from neighbor states.

Finally, Wyoming went along. In 1919, the Legislature passed a state law banning alcohol. By then, enough states had approved a change in the U.S. Constitution that national prohibition of alcohol, too, had become law. The U.S. law went into effect Jan. 29, 1920.

Right away, Wyoming had trouble with enforcement. No one, it seemed, ever expected local police or county sheriffs to do much. Therefore, the Wyoming Legislature set up a new agency specifically to enforce Prohibition statewide. There was no highway patrol then. Other than federal officers, there were no police whose authority reached statewide. GovernorRobert Carey appointed Fred Crabbe—a lawyer with no police experience, but president of the Wyoming chapter of the Anti-Saloon League—to head the new state prohibition agency.

Crabbe hired John Cordillo, a former Denver policeman with prohibition enforcement experience in Colorado. John Cordillo brought with him his brother Pete, and another Colorado cop named Walter Newell. Soon they made headlines in Laramie when they arrested five men and a woman and captured 400 gallons of illegal liquor in late August 1919.

An early killing—by Prohibition agents

Two days later, Frank Jennings, a popular local rancher, was found shot to death in his car on the side of the Lincoln Highway, just north of Laramie.

At first, no one could tell who’d done the crime. Jennings’ body had five bullet wounds in it. The shots had come from behind the car. The Albany County prosecutor, following suspicions of his own, began questioning the three state prohibition agents. Then they testified publicly before a coroner’s jury. There were discrepancies. Details in the three men’s stories of the night Jennings was killed didn’t match up.

All three were arrested and charged in connection with Jennings’ death. Laramie was tense. There was talk of a lynching. Jennings’ family hired the former chief of police in Denver—the three agents’ former boss—to interrogate them. He questioned them all night in a cell. The next morning, they were moved to Wheatland for their safety.

In the car on the way, Pete Cordillo told the Denver detective that Newell had shot Frank Jennings. They’d thought they were following the car of a couple of well-known local bootleggers, Cordillo said, and had motioned the driver to pull over. But when the car didn’t stop they began chasing it. The car then veered off the road and almost immediately, Cordillo said, Newell was out of their car, standing on the running board of Jennings’ car and shooting with his rifle.

Before national Prohibition was even on the books, Wyoming’s record of enforcing the law against liquor looked disastrous. The case came to trial the following April. All three were convicted of manslaughter. John Cordillo was sentenced to 15 to 20 years in the state prison, and the other two drew similar sentences.

Haphazard police work

Before long, the Legislature scrapped Crabbe’s job and replaced it with a position of commissioner in charge of all state law enforcement, not just the Prohibition laws. But it continued to be extremely difficult to enforce laws that a large proportion of Wyoming’s people simply didn’t want to obey. And the police work continued to be haphazard, and sometimes violent.

In Cody, in October 1922, a town marshal tried to arrest a federal Prohibition officer for drunkenness. The federal officer had been partying in a house with two women who had low reputations in the town, two bottles of ginger ale, and a bottle of Canadian whiskey that had come from the county sheriff’s evidence vault. In the scuffle, the marshal broke the federal officer’s jaw and the fed shot the marshal in the leg. After a full day and evening of testimony in a packed courtroom, a town judge fined the fed $100 for public intoxication.

The following June, things got more serious. When the Park County sheriff was out of town, the county prosecutor got a tip of a cache of liquor near Cottonwood Creek north of Cody. He rounded up one of the sheriff’s deputies in town, and deputized a courthouse janitor. Then he drove the two men out to the site and dropped them off, armed with rifles, to wait for the bootleggers to come pick up their stuff.

Two men arrived in a car some hours later, stopped near the cache, apparently loaded up some liquor, and started off. Once the booze was in the car, the deputies showed themselves and ordered the men to stop. But the driver, A.E. Carey, stepped on the gas, the Cody Enterprise reported. The deputies opened fire from 50 feet away. In the passenger’s seat, George “Scotty” Sherrin was killed instantly. Carey was hit in the thigh but kept driving, 60 miles all the way back to Greybull, with his friend’s body “soaking in his own blood on the floor of the car where he slid as he died,” the newspaper reported.

The Rosses crack down

After World War I, a bad drought and a sluggish economy drove Wyoming into a depression. William B. Ross, a Democrat and a stout Prohibitionist, benefited politically from the times and got himself elected governor in 1922. He persuaded the Legislature to give him the power to fire elected county officials—sheriffs, for example, or county commissioners—who were failing to enforce Prohibition laws.

William Ross died in 1924, but his wife, Nellie Tayloe Ross, elected to take his place, took advantage of the new law and fired well-known local officials in Park, Hot Springs and Natrona counties.

She fired two state officials too, in connection with their drinking and incompetence—a Game and Fish Department commissioner, and M.S. Wachtel, in the new post of statewide law-enforcement commissioner. It was a big scandal. An investigation showed Wachtel drank on the job, failed to enforce Prohibition—and took bribes from bootleggers to look the other way.

Graft in Edgerton

Law enforcement officers had been given an impossible task: to stamp out the liquor business among people who still very much liked to drink. As Prohibition continued, contempt for the officers and for the law itself spread wider and wider. Bootleggers made more and more money, and were happy to pay police to leave them alone. Corruption spread through law enforcement from top to bottom.

Not all police were corrupt. A file survives in the National Archives in Seattle that details the investigations by federal Prohibition officers in the little town of Edgerton, on the edge of the Salt Creek Oil Field north of Casper. Midwest, the company town at Salt Creek, was dry because the Midwest Oil Company wanted it that way. But the little towns that sprang up around it during the nineteen-teens and -twenties—Lavoye, for example, and Edgerton—were packed with bars and brothels that served the oil field hands when they came off work.

Driven by motives we can only guess at, an anonymous tipster in Edgerton began writing letters in November 1928 to one of the top federal Prohibition agents in Seattle. This agent, Lon Davis, was in charge of the federal anti-booze efforts in Wyoming and other western states. Edgerton’s elected officials, the tipster said, “think they are just about immune from the law.”

Some ran stills themselves. Others took a cut of the whiskey made by other bootleggers. And the local justice of the peace, W.J. Stull, charged bootleggers and bar owners monthly fees to stay in business, the tipster said. It was like an insurance policy: If the bootleggers were arrested by any other arms of the law—by county sheriff’s deputies, or state or federal cops—the fines they had to pay on those charges would be deducted from the fees they owed the Edgerton officials.

But there were much bigger scandals breaking in Wyoming at the time. In November 1928, the same month the tipster began writing to Seattle, W.C. Irving, who had replaced Wachtel as Wyoming’s top cop—law enforcement commissioner—had left office under a cloud of suspicion. In May, a federal grand jury charged him with conspiracy to evade Prohibition laws. Also indicted were 29 other people, including suspected bootleggers from Rawlins, Thermopolis, Cheyenne, Rock Springs and Evanston. Irving and his assistant, James Adler, were charged with taking thousands of dollars in protection money.

Gov. Frank Emerson, meanwhile, had replaced Irving in the state commissioner’s job with Jack Allen. Allen, a Democrat and veteran of both the Spanish-American and World wars, had just lost the 1928 Natrona County Sheriff’s race to the Republican incumbent, Gilbert O. Housley. Though affairs in Edgerton must have seemed minor compared to the Irving scandal at the time, Allen kept pressuring Lon Davis in Seattle to do something about it. Davis’ notes suggest Allen was still smarting from his loss, which had been heaviest around Edgerton and Salt Creek. Though he lost by a two-to-one margin, he may well have suspected the election had been stolen from him, by friends of Housley in cahoots with bootleggers.

In the summer of 1929, two federal agents visited Edgerton for a look around. Stull, the justice of the peace (and editor of the Salt Creek Gusher) was hazy at first when the agents asked him about discrepancies between his court’s records and the records of the Edgerton city treasurer over how much his court collected in fines. But when the agents suggested the information they were collecting probably would be turned over to a federal grand jury, Stull got more talkative. The fees were $50 a month from the guys running the joints where people could buy booze, he said. They weren’t really fines—they were more like an “occupation tax,” he said. The system had been running smoothly for at least five years. Stull gave the agents names of four men who’d each paid their $50 the month before.

In their report the agents concluded that pool-hall and gambling-hall owners in Edgerton had been making regular payments to the town for years, in exchange for being allowed to operate unmolested. A Judge Blake of the municipal court had an arrangement just like the one Stull described—any fines the joint owners had to pay to other authorities would be deducted from what they owed the town of Edgerton each month. But the story stops there. Federal prohibition supervision of Wyoming moved to a Denver office that summer, and those files have not survived.

A few successes for the prosecutors

Former top state law-enforcement commissioner W.C. Irving, meanwhile, was tried, convicted, and sentenced to 18 months in federal prison. He was the highest Wyoming official convicted of corruption in the Prohibition years. Two bootleggers from Thermopolis and two from Kemmerer were convicted as part of the same case.

People continued to break the liquor laws, however. Lawmakers, in frustration, stiffened the penalties. Wyoming in 1927 made possession of a still punishable by three years in prison. Arguing against the proposal, a young legislator from Cody who decades later would become governor, Milward Simpson, noted the saloons in his town “run wide open.” Juries wouldn’t convict, he said, if it meant a jail term for the saloon owners. In 1929, the U.S. Congress went even further, passing the so-called Five & Ten Law—up to five years in federal prison and a $10,000 fine, just for possession of alcohol.

And encouraged, perhaps, by their success in the Irving case, federal prosecutors in Wyoming kept using the same methods—get a grand jury to bring conspiracy charges against large numbers of defendants. But Simpson was right. Juries were reluctant to convict. People were growing sick of the whole thing.

Repeal on the horizon

In 1928, New York Governor Al Smith, a wet candidate, lost the presidential election to Herbert Hoover, a mining engineer and former U.S. secretary of commerce. There were plenty of other issues at work; Smith probably lost primarily because he was a Catholic from New York City in an America that was still mostly rural and Protestant. In October 1929, the stock market crashed, and the nation started into a tailspin. A depression like the one that had already gripped Wyoming for 10 years spread across the U.S. It was so deep and lasted so long it became the Great Depression.

When Hoover ran again in 1932, he didn’t have a chance. He lost to New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt. The new president stood for a lot of things, mostly for a willingness to find out if the government could fix the terrible economy. But he also stood for Repeal, which meant repeal of the 18^th Amendment to the Constitution, which had outlawed alcohol 12 long years before.

In February and March 1933, the Wyoming Legislature repealed its Prohibition laws. State conventions were ratifying the 21^st amendment—repealing the 18^th—by overwhelming margins, some even unanimous. Also in March of 1933, Congress passed a law allowing the sale of weak, 3.2 percent-alcohol beer. Three-two beer became legal in Wyoming at 12:01 a.m. May 20, and big crowds stayed up in Casper for an all-night drunk.

With state Repeal already on the books, and nationwide Repeal clearly on the horizon, federal prosecutors in Wyoming appear to have been in a hurry to bring bootleggers and their municipal friends to justice before the law changed, and everyone would want to forget the crimes.

Federal charges of conspiracy and corruption

Early in May, federal prosecutors persuaded a grand jury to bring charges against 36 people in Natrona County for conspiring to violate federal Prohibition laws. To win, the prosecutors would have to prove that the people they charged had had plotted ahead of time, together, to break the federal laws against owning, selling or transporting illegal alcohol. It meant that a café owner who sold a pint of moonshine from under his counter, or a person who drove a truck loaded with booze, would be as guilty as a bootlegger running a statewide operation, or a county sheriff who took his money to look the other way.

Charged by the grand jury were Natrona County Sheriff Gilbert O. Housley, Casper Mayor R.W. Rowell, Casper Police Chief Michael Quealy, and a number of well-known local bootleggers, including Frank Converse, Cash Olds, and Dave Davidson and his two sons, Gilbert and Lawrence. The arrests were made by a group of deputy U.S. marshals led by Jack Allen, former Natrona County sheriff candidate, former Wyoming law enforcement commissioner and now the top U.S. marshal for Wyoming. Allen must have enjoyed arresting Housley, his former political foe.

The top defendants all pleaded not guilty and were let out of jail on $2,500 bonds. Housley demanded to be tried in Casper “where my friends and associates can hear the case and be thoroughly informed.” But his lawyers and the bootleggers’ lawyers decided differently. In Casper, where everyone knew them, the men couldn’t get a fair trial, the lawyers believed. The trial was moved to Cheyenne. It opened in mid July.

Two star witnesses

The government built its case mainly on the stories of two men. First was Joseph Warren, a former state legislator and purchasing agent for the Midwest Oil Company, who, the government lawyers said, had been collecting money monthly from the bootleggers since 1922. Warren testified that in 1931 alone, he’d collected more than $50,000 from bootleggers. About half of that went to Mayor Rowell, Warren said, and $5,000 or $6,000 to Chief Quealy.

Albert Morris was the second star witness. Until recently, Morris had worked for Housley as undersheriff. He told the court he routinely carried messages between Housley and members of “the combination”—the local ring of whiskey makers and sellers—sometimes for as much as $100 per month over his regular monthly salary of $106.86.

Warren swore the payoff arrangements stretched all the way back to 1922, when Rowell first ran for mayor. After Rowell was elected, according to the prosecutor, Warren collected an initial payment of $1,000 from Frank Converse, the biggest booze manufacturer in Natrona County. After that, for years, he’d collected bootleggers’ payoffs to the mayor, the police chief and the sheriff.

Sheriff Housley had fired Morris the previous year. When, in May 1933, it became clear that Morris was likely to testify to what he knew, Housley had traveled to Denver where Morris was living in a hotel. There, according to Morris, the two talked for hours. Housley first said he would “plead guilty and take the rap” if Morris had told too much. Then Housley asked if Morris really would stick with his story or side with his old boss after all. Finally, Morris said, Housley asked if Morris was afraid of him.

Morris told the court he answered he was not, but told Housley “but I remembered what happened to Harvey Perkins,” a small-time criminal who had turned up shot to death outside Casper the fall before. Then, said Morris, Housley threatened him directly, saying “If you ever get on the witness stand and tell what you know, I’ll shoot you, for I’d rather be behind bars as a murderer than have my children know I’m in jail for graft.”

Cross-examination

But under cross-examination, the government’s two main witnesses looked less trustworthy. Morris denied the defense lawyer’s suggestion that he had anything to do with the theft of six gallons of booze from a vault in the courthouse.

And Warren, who’d been elected to the Wyoming House of Representatives in 1930, had to admit he’d also served two terms in Nebraska—but in the state penitentiary, not the legislature. This fact had already come out in the election campaign, Warren said. He also admitted he’d been jailed once in Casper “for some gunplay,” as the paper put it, after he lost his job as purchasing agent for the oil company.

Warren detailed a cozy relationship with Rowell—the mayor and also a printer—by which Warren would steer the oil company’s printing contracts to Rowell, who would get paid, but not always have to do the work. Asked by one of the defense lawyers if that meant Warren was also “double-crossing the Midwest,” Warren answered that he didn’t treat the oil company any worse than it treated him. Warren, said one of the lawyers, was “an ex-convict, a drunkard, disgraced and down and out. … I have never seen a more thoroughly discredited witness.”

Mayor Rowell testified he’d done all he could to clean up Casper’s “vice and liquor conditions,” that he never had any agreement with bootleggers, and that Warren’s claim the two had connived to make money off the Midwest printing contracts was “ridiculous.” Five other men—two patients from a Denver hospital where Morris spent time after he was fired by Housley, the Cheyenne police chief, a detective for the Burlington Railroad and a druggist from Edgerton—all testified they’d heard Morris say he’d do anything he could—“dirty if I have to”—to put Housley in jail.

Like Rowell, Sheriff Housely swore that he, too, was clean. He denied he’d ever taken protection money, or made any agreements with Warren or Morris on payments; said he’d never paid Morris more than $50 per month over his $101 salary, a common practice around the state; and swore he had raided many of the places himself that supposedly were protected.

After five days of testimony, the paper noted that Oregon had just joined the states voting for repeal of the 18^th Amendment and of its own prohibition laws.

Bootleggers on the stand

The next day, several of Casper’s most prominent bootleggers and saloon owners took the stand. Dave Davidson, supposedly Casper’s biggest booze maker, said he had been in business in 1924 and ’25 but was no longer—and said he’d never paid any protection money to Joe Warren.

Gordon Weekly, owner of the Black Cat café, noted that the sheriff’s office had once raided him nine times in one night. Surely that showed he’d never paid any protection money, he claimed. On one of those raids, said Weekly, Housley had even knocked him down when he tried to dump the whiskey he had on hand. But when the government lawyer suggested Weekly objected to the raid because he was paying protection, and that was why Housley had knocked him down, the café owner denied it.

Three other bootleggers, including Pearl “Dynamite” Kyle, said they, too, had been in business a long time but had never paid off the cops.

The federal prosecutor, Ewing T. Kerr, asked the jurors to scratch their heads and think if such claims really made sense. “Is it not strange,” he asked the jury, that the large operators got to keep on operating, “while the small operators were knocked off” by the police. But really, Kerr said, it wasn’t the bootleggers who were the real criminals in the case. “It’s the conspirators, the men in public office who betrayed the public trust to the good citizens of Casper by accepting graft money at the expense of the taxpayers. …”

“Certain gentlemen,” Kerr said—meaning Rowell and the whiskey merchants—got together before the election and agreed on how the system would work. And as soon as the mayor was elected “that procedure was put into place.”

Acquittal

But looking back, it seems that Kerr’s distinction between criminals and real criminals may have confused the whole issue. Before the jury retired to consider its verdict, federal Judge T. Blake Kennedy reminded them that conspiracy law makes any one member of a conspiracy equally guilty with any other. After deliberating one long evening and all the next day, the jury sent a note to the judge asking if a man who was hired by another man to break the law was equally guilty with his employer. Yes, Kennedy answered, if the employee knew he was hired to break the law.

Maybe, in the jurors’ minds, the whole issue flipped. Maybe they concluded that that if any conspirator was as guilty as any other, then any conspirator was also as innocent as any other. Kerr had as much as said that the public officials had committed far more serious crimes than the bootleggers they’d taken money from. But because they’d all been charged with the same crime, it didn’t seem fair to convict them all of the same crime as some were obviously much more guilty than others.

Or maybe the jurors were just sick of Prohibition altogether. Near the end, one of the defense lawyers had speechified at length about the “wave of protest” to Prohibition then

sweeping the nation. “The whole case smacks of the graveyard,” the lawyer shouted. “Let the dead bury the dead.”

The jury, anyway, buried the case. The jurors found all 29 defendants not guilty. Though there was almost certainly a lot of graft money being paid in Casper and Wyoming, it’s clear in hindsight that the government lawyers charged far too many people. Perhaps if they’d just charged Rowell, Quealy, Housley and two or three of the men who had paid them routinely—say, Converse, Davidson and Olds—they would have had a much tighter case, uncluttered by questions of relative guilt.

But they didn’t do that. The jury, like the rest of the nation, was sick to death of the strange combination of hypocrisy and corruption that Prohibition dragged along with it wherever it went. So the jurors did their best to kill it off, once and for all.

Repeal

Public opinion in Wyoming had by that time become disenchanted with the so-called Noble Experiment. In 1918, Wyoming voters approved state Prohibition by a better than three-to-one margin. By 1926, Wyoming’s U.S. senators F.E. Warren and John B. Kendrick were reporting their mail on the topic about evenly divided. The tide had turned by November 1932, when the Legislature authorized a referendum: 71.5 percent of voters voted in favor of state Repeal—more than two to one.

The following spring, Wyoming was one of the first states to ratify the 21^st Amendment. When Utah became the 36^th state to ratify the amendment in December 1933, the provision became law nationwide.

Wyoming’s state Repeal did not become law until April 1935, however. As well as the 3.2 percent beer legalized earlier, drinkers could now get legal access to beer, wine and spirits. Less easy to measure was the hangover left by all that corruption—and its effect on people’s sense of the rule of law.

Resources

Primary sources

• The Casper Daily Tribune and its Sunday version, the Casper Tribune-Herald, paid close attention to the government’s conspiracy case against the Natrona County bootleggers, cops and politicians. See the editions of May 1, 3, 5, 7, 9-11, and 16, 1933; July 17-21, 23-27 and 30, 1933. This paper is on microfilm at the Western History Center at the Casper College Library, at the Natrona County Library, and at the Wyoming State Archives in Cheyenne.

Secondary sources

• Jones, Walter R. “Casper’s Prohibition Years,” Annals of Wyoming, vol. 48 No. 2, (Fall 1976), pp. 263-273. Stories of more criminal cases than I’ve included here, drawn mostly from newspaper accounts, but without the names of the officials involved.
• _____________. History of the Sand Bar(1888-1977), Casper: BASO, 1981. This book is full of vivid anecdotes, taken mostly from newspaper accounts, and lots of good historical photos of the Sandbar in its heyday.
• Scheer, Teva J. Governor Lady: The Life and Times of Nellie Tayloe Ross. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2005.
• Larson, T.A. History of Wyoming. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965, pp. 408-419, 439-443.
• Roberts, Phil. “Inside Federal Prohibition Enforcement in Wyoming: The Case of Bootlegger Busts in Northern Natrona County.” Annals of Wyoming, 74:3 (Summer 2002), pp. 2-7. Accessed July 14, 2016 at https://archive.org/stream/annalsofwyom74142002wyom#page/n83/mode/2up/search/Bootlegger.
• Roberts, Phil. “Wyoming’s Pioneers of Prohibition: The United States Army, the U.S. District Court, and Federal Enforcement of Laws Governing Morality.” Wyoming Law Review 1:2 (Spring, 2001), pp. 633-645.
• Roberts, Phil. “The Prohibition Agency’s First Case: Official Zeal, Mistaken Identity, and Murder in Wyoming, 1919.” Western Legal History, 11:2 (Summer/Fall 1998), pp.145-61.

Illustrations

• The photo of Ewing T. Kerr is from the Wyoming State Archives. Used with permission and thanks. The 1926 photo of the Casper Police Department is from the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming. Used with permission and thanks.
• The rest of the photos are from the Casper College Western History Center. Used with permission and thanks.

Edward T. Payton, a Wyoming reporter, editor and tireless advocate for the mentally ill is now nearly forgotten. During his lifetime, however, he published two Wyoming newspapers, promoted newspapers in Colorado and Wyoming, wrote many articles for others and two booklets on mental illness and hospital conditions, all while dogged by recurring bouts of mental illness of his own.

Payton’s was a long life, and a troubled one. But his own writings plus evidence in public records show a lucid passion for the plight of his fellow sufferers. After the many times he was released from the hospital, he clearly felt that others had been left behind whom he should defend; and his allegations were indirectly supported by several other former patients with their own horrific accounts.

By the time of his death in 1933, his legacy may already have brought improvements to care at Wyoming’s state mental hospital.

Early career

Payton was born in Minnesota in 1856 to James Harvey Payton and Rebecca Ann Thomas Payton. Sometime before 1886, the family moved to Rapid City, Dakota Territory. Payton first worked as a government freighter and in 1889 began to sell magazine and newspaper subscriptions, working for the Denver Post, and by 1890 for the Cheyenne Daily Leader.

Subscription selling and reporting were a fortuitous combination. In spring 1892, Payton, though barely launched on his reporter's career, witnessed the invasion of Johnson County and, as he wrote years later in the first of his booklets, Mad Men, "scooped the professionals [who] intended to cover the news of the expedition for the press of the country." Payton's articles "Caught in a Trap" and "Coming to Cheyenne" were published in the Cheyenne Daily Leader on April 13 and 16, 1892, in the immediate aftermath of the invasion.

In 1899, Payton accompanied one of the posses that chased the outlaws after the Wilcox Train Robbery. In so doing, he encountered some personal danger: Both the Natrona County Tribune and the Wyoming Derrick reported on June 8, 1899, that his horse was shot, though he escaped serious injury.

Newspapering with a taste for politics

From early in his career, Payton seems to have seen himself as a champion of the little guy.

"When in 1890 I became attached to the [Democratic] Cheyenne Leader," Payton wrote in Mad Men, "I had no politics, but soon began to read with interest the editorials in the paper and that fall marched in the parades with the party to which it belonged; within two years I claimed allegiance to the same party … [and] became actively interested in state issues."

In August 1894, President Grover Cleveland signed the Carey Act, named for Wyoming’s U.S. senator, Joseph Carey. Under its provisions, the federal government could donate up to a million acres of federal land to any state that would help private developers and settlers irrigate that land. Payton, along with many other Democrats, felt the act simply legalized the efforts of a few rich men to grab as much land as they could. During the 1894 election season, when Republican William A. Richards was running for governor, Payton accused him of land fraud in the Laramie Daily Boomerang of Oct. 22, 1894. Two days later, he also attacked Sens. Carey and Francis E. Warren, as published in the Boomerang.

When John Carroll, Payton's editor at the Cheyenne Daily Leader, switched party affiliation during the 1894 campaign season, Payton started his own newspaper in Cheyenne, the Big Horn Basin Savior, picking up the term "Savior" from an anti-Payton editorial Carroll had published November 3 of that year. Years later, Payton explained in Mad Men, "I desired to see the land of the Big Horn, and the water saved to the homesteaders. … There was nothing religious about my paper unless it is religious to try to save from the few for a posterity majority what rightfully belongs to it." The Savior had a short run, from early November, just before the 1894 election, into January 1895.

A few months later, in early spring of 1895, Payton traveled in a snowstorm to Thermopolis, Wyo., to settle on the homestead he'd filed on the previous year. He also started his second newspaper, publishing the premiere issue of the Big Horn River Pilot on April 18, 1895.

A mental crisis

By Payton's own analysis, these combined efforts and the resulting difficulties precipitated one of his early episodes of mental instability: "I was without funds, yet impatient, impulsive, determined. Circumstances made it impossible for me to keep up with my desires and I could not sleep."

His insomnia persisted; he began hallucinating, and in August he was arrested and escorted to Lander, Wyo., for a trial to evaluate his mental state. In those days, juries determined whether a person was insane; this jury could not agree and the case was dismissed.

A few weeks later, however, Payton was again arrested and this time declared insane by the jury and taken to the Wyoming Insane Asylum, as it was then called, in Evanston, Wyo., for the first of several times throughout his life. Quite soon, Payton felt he had recovered his sanity and tried to get released, starting in late October. On November 20, Payton finally left the hospital—though his official release date was November 4—to spend Thanksgiving with his family in Rapid City. On December 10 of that year the Daily Boomerang published a long letter by Payton, "State Insane Asylum," which earlier had been published by the Wyoming Tribune.

Payton described the hospital: its grounds, daily routines, administration and finances, including employee salaries. Mentioning several of the inmates and their backgrounds, he wound up by praising one of the attendants, Herbert L. Jackson. Sadly, according to Payton, the sheriff who escorted him from Green River to Evanston had "beat[en] the blood from my nostrils with his brawny fists." This was the first time he reported being abused while in the custody of the state as a mental patient.

“Cruel Treatment:” a series of news stories

In spring 1896, Payton returned to Thermopolis and hired Mike Maley, a Cheyenne printer, to run the Pilot while Payton traveled in Wyoming selling subscriptions to the Denver Post. About two years later, still working for the Post, he began writing more articles for the Pilot, precipitating a bout of overwork and insomnia that apparently caused stresses similar to those he experienced in September 1895. Again he became unbalanced, was arrested and after a hearing was committed to the Wyoming State Hospital for the Insane, as it was now called. This time Payton stayed for six months, from late May 1898 to Nov. 17, 1898.

In January 1899 Payton began publishing a series of articles, titled "Cruel Treatment," about his stay at the hospital. In five weekly issues of the Pilot, January 18 through February 22, Payton described what he had gone through and what he had seen. Naming 15 patients and four attendants, he told 11 specific stories of abuse.

In one, he stated that three attendants had seized one of the patients and thrown him across the edge of a bathtub. Then one of these attendants "placed both hands upon his throat and choked him until he was black in the face." Payton noted that the patient had not been violent or in any way threatening to the attendants.

Payton claimed an attendant had also beaten him, while other attendants looked on. By the end of the episode "my shirt was very bloody … the walls of the room were covered with blood … and the back of my head was beginning to swell in lumps where it had struck the wall. The window, five feet away, was bespattered with blood."

An eye for the bigger picture

In conjunction with these reports, Payton published an article with general information about the hospital, and another on a mental hospital in Gheel, Belgium. This was an early manifestation of his desire to educate the public about the medical, as well as the physical, treatment of mental patients worldwide.

Conflicts with Dr. C. H. Solier

The Wyoming Insane Asylum had been established in 1887. By 1891, when C. H. Solier was appointed superintendent, the hospital was governed by the state Board of Charities and Reform. The board was one of several overseeing state government, all of them made up of the state’s top five elected officials: governor, secretary of state, state auditor, state treasurer and state superintendent of public instruction.

Prior to his appointment, Solier lived in Rawlins and was county physician and a surgeon for the Union Pacific Railroad. He was a Republican, and may have won the post due to his party affiliation as much as to his qualifications.

In his "Cruel Treatment" series of 1899, Payton reported that Solier had opened, read and destroyed most of Payton’s outgoing mail. He also accused Solier of abusing patients and witnessing similar episodes. Solier wrote a letter to the Pilot, denying all of Payton's allegations, and Payton published this letter with his own rebuttal in the February 1 issue.

Solier wrote another letter, this one to the Board of Charities and Reform, refuting Payton's charges against himself and the hospital, which the board noted in its Feb. 6, 1899, minutes. The board as well sent two of its members to Evanston to investigate. Details from their report are recorded in the April 3, 1899, minutes. The investigators said they had interviewed "[e]very one of the inmates referred to in the … Pilot [and] not one had any complaint."

In a series of three articles dated March 31, April 12 and May 1, 1899, the Laramie Daily Boomerang condemned the board’s investigation as a whitewash. The Boomerang also published a long letter from Payton in the May 1 issue, in which he contested the investigators' claims that they had interviewed all the inmates he had named in the Pilot. Some were not competent, Payton wrote, while others had left the hospital and so could not have been there to speak to the investigators.

The Saratoga Sun, a Republican paper, noted on April 27, "[I]t is time to ask that Payton be given an opportunity to prove his charges." In a separate article, the Sun interviewed a former patient, not named, who had been at the hospital seven years previously: "I was thrown down and choked until almost dead … one of the attendants … used to beat me with a hard-wood cane … until I would be black for days."

The Sun called for a more thorough investigation to "bring the truth to the surface, scorch whom it may." However, the board took no further action.

More charges

The next two-and-a-half years seem to have been quiet for Payton. While in St. Paul, Minn., he married Della Badger, a graduate of Wellesley College, on July 3, 1900. The couple returned to Wyoming where Payton continued publishing the Pilot and sold subscriptions for the Denver Republican and Cheyenne Leader.

Then, on Jan. 3, 1902, Payton wrote to the Board of Charities and Reform, "I have recently been urgently appealed to for help and furnished with evidence of the … cruelties practiced in … [the hospital] since the year 1898." Calling for "another and most thorough investigation," Payton went on to state that conditions were far worse than they had been when he was there.

The board apparently responded; Payton wrote another letter January 10, stating that he could comply with their requests for names of victims and witnesses. Four patients "are believed to have died" from abuse and neglect, he wrote, and Solier—in front of witnesses—choked three different patients until they were "black in the face" or "blood ran from their mouths." Payton also claimed that Solier forced towels down the throats of two others, and dragged three female patients by the hair. Mr. Wanlace, the steward, was one of Payton's primary witnesses, and Payton requested that both he and Wanlace testify before the board.

Minutes dated January 16, 1902, indicate the board met that day in Cheyenne, expressly to listen to this evidence. Present were Payton, Wanlace, Solier, a stenographer—Miss Webster—plus board members Fenimore Chatterton, secretary of state; Thomas T. Tynan, state superintendent of public instruction; George E. Abbott, state treasurer; LeRoy Grant, state auditor and F. B. Sheldon, clerk. The board spent the day listening to Payton, Wanlace and Solier testify, and decided to continue the hearings at the hospital on January 20. This second hearing, however, is not mentioned in subsequent minutes.

On April 28, 1902, Sheldon, the clerk of the board, wrote to Payton, "[E]vidence does not sustain the charges made by you against Dr. Solier and the management of the institution." There was no further investigation.

Spreading ideas of reform

On June 20, 1903, Payton suspended publication of the Pilot. In November of that year he was again committed to the hospital but was released to the custody of his wife sometime in December, and the couple traveled to South Dakota. By 1904 they had returned to Wyoming, and in 1907, Payton began one of his major efforts to improve the care of the mentally ill.

Since 1898 he'd been studying the causes and treatment of insanity. In in March 1907 he suggested to the Board of Charities and Reform that some less dangerous patients in Evanston could benefit from home care. Payton offered to take in Ed Byers, a 32-year-old man who had been at the hospital since 1893.

Around the time the board was consulting Solier about this, the June 27, 1907, Laramie Boomerang published an extensive, front-page letter from former patient Joe Gillespie, who had been at Evanston the previous year. "I was beaten and kicked [by an attendant] into unconsciousness," Gillespie wrote. "Then I was allowed to recover my senses and was choked almost into unconsciousness again. … It is my opinion that the board of charities is completely deceived as to the true condition at Evanston and Dr. Solier himself is, to some extent."

The board did not investigate Gillespie's charges, and also refused to release Byers to Payton. However, Payton filed suit for custody and won it from Wyoming's Supreme Court. Byers then moved in with the Paytons at their ranch near Thermopolis. In 1908, Payton toured the state with a lecture about insanity, "Psychological Truth." Then, in June 1909, he was again committed but was released in August on the condition that he halt any further attempts at home treatment of the mentally ill.

The Jenkins murders, a divorce and two booklets

In late September 1911, Edna Jenkins, the youngest daughter of former Gov. William A. Richards, was found shot along with her husband, Thomas Jenkins. The murders occurred at Richards' Red Bank cattle ranch on Little Canyon Creek south of Tensleep in present southeastern Washakie County. Payton had been in the area at the time.

On October 7, the Wyoming Tribune reported that Payton "was so clearly out of his head and caused so much trouble that the sheriff was notified." Payton "constantly muttered about the dead woman and ... made other remarks which aroused suspicion." Briefly held in the Big Horn County jail in Basin, Wyo., Payton was released and never charged because there was no real evidence against him.

Whatever burdens were bothering E.T. Payton, they seem after more than two decades to have ended his marriage. On Nov. 16, 1921, Della Payton filed a petition for divorce in the District Court of Hot Springs County, Wyoming. E.T. contested the petition on Dec. 24 of that year. On Jan. 3, 1922, Della responded, "[F]or many years last past the defendant has been obsessed of an ambition to build an institution in which to treat and care for insane persons. … [H]e has also at diverse times brought to the home of plaintiff, men who had previously been incarcerated in institutions for insane people who were of unsound mind dangerous, and who were not fit subjects to be allowed to be in and to remain in the home of the plaintiff and her [four minor] children." Payton denied all allegations, but on Jan. 7, 1922, the court granted the divorce, stating, "[A]n incompatibility of temperament exists between the parties."

All along, Payton continued selling newspaper subscriptions. In January 1923, he published Mad Men: A Psychological Study Complete in Twelve Parts. The first printing of 2,000 copies sold out; Payton printed another 2,000 in April.

He published the second booklet of the series in June 1923, but titled it Behind the Scenes at Evanston. This was the last volume, though he had planned more. Mad Men is autobiographical, focusing mainly on events he felt affected his mental state, and includes details from some of his early attacks and incarcerations. Behind the Scenes continues the tale, while broadening out to include descriptions of some of the other patients at Evanston, as well as reporting on Payton's own extended study of insanity and its treatment. He mentions Solier in both booklets, but mostly in passing and not directly in connection with the various charges in the Pilot and in letters to the Board of Charities and Reform.

From January 1924 on, Payton struggled with his malady, ending up at the hospital in late November 1925, never to be released again. Overlapping with his last months of liberty, however, were new charges of abuse by yet another former patient.

Charges from other patients and staff

Sometime in spring 1924, former patient Mary Emma Meek, wife of a state senator from Weston County, wrote to the Board of Charities and Reform requesting an investigation and the opportunity to testify "to the brutal and inhuman treatment given to … inmates." Meek claimed she was "left without succor, not allowed drinking water … brutally assaulted by attendants without cause or provocation … placed in a straightjacket, and submitted to numerous indignities."

Her neck had been injured, she wrote, and "other unfortunates" had also been cruelly treated. Mrs. Meek, confined from September 1923 through early March 1924, said she was "of sound mind and memory within a month or thereabouts after her incarceration … and knows whereof she speaks." The letter ended, "[Y]our petitioner has been by a jury on the 19^th day of April A.D. 1924 declared to be of sound mind."

On April 21, 1924, her husband, Sen. Commodore P. Meek, also wrote in a short letter to the board, "I shall never let up on this man at the Asylum. He has got to go." The context of this letter makes it clear that Meek was referring to Solier.

On May 6, 1924, the board met to investigate Mrs. Meek's charges. The transcript indicates that Solier testified himself and also questioned two witnesses: Mrs. Anna Massamore, night nurse; and Mrs. Inez Stricker, matron. All three among them denied 100 percent of Mrs. Meek's charges, Solier adding, "[S]he was not in her sound mind at any time while she was in the State Hospital. … [W]hat she saw, what she heard, what impressions she received, were those of an insane person." The board took no further action.

Solier was superintendent until he died on Dec. 10, 1930. Obituaries lauded him in The Wyoming Press and The Wyoming Times.

The hospital after Solier

Dr. D. B. Williams was appointed in Solier’s place in April 1931. Hospital staff soon charged Williams with mismanagement and cruelty, but the board investigated, concluding that disgruntled employees were making unfounded charges.

Then, on Jan. 11, 1932, Dr. A. L. Darche, formerly of the hospital staff, sent an affidavit to acting Gov. Alonzo M. Clark. Darche, assistant superintendent during Solier's declining years, detailed the behavior of Inez Stricker, the matron who had testified against Mrs. Meek. Stricker, Darche wrote, "had never taken a regular nurse's course … and therefore could never be a registered nurse. ... She ruled the place in a high handed manner … and discharged or had discharged any and everyone who did not pay obedience to her. Her orders were supreme and extended to every department of the hospital."

Darche charged Stricker with running "a veritable espionage system," dismissing good employees for no reason. Further, Darche stated, Stricker witnessed the severe beating of several patients, condoning this and protecting the guilty attendant. Mrs. Stricker subsequently left the hospital, apparently sometime in 1932.

At about the same time as the Darche affidavit, the board held a hearing to investigate another matter, the death of an epileptic patient, Mr. John Erickson. Mr. A. N. Williams, an attendant, was the only witness testifying, and apparently had requested the hearing because he feared Stricker would charge him with Erickson's murder. The transcript of this Jan. 7, 1932, hearing reveals that after general questions about the events leading up to Erickson's death, the inquiry turned to Solier's last years as superintendent.

Williams testified that during the time Solier and Stricker were in charge, they "never did anything against" the beating and other cruel treatment of patients. Attendant Williams further accused Stricker of locking two other epileptic patients each alone in a (heated) cement-floored room in winter, without clothing or blankets, for up to two months. When asked by the board about Solier’s successor Dr. D. B. Williams's running of the hospital, witness A. N. Williams, the attendant, replied that it was "very good."

Payton’s legacy

Although Payton was still alive at the time of this hearing, more than seven years after the last time he entered the hospital, we do not know whether he was aware of the change of administration or in the treatment of patients. We do know that fourteen months earlier, he had still been mentally active and hoping to gain his release. On October 26, 1931, he wrote to Grace Raymond Hebard at the University of Wyoming, "I expect to leave here in the spring, my expectations being based on the best possible reasons." These and other letters written to Hebard in November of that year reveal that he was writing or had written a manuscript, "Wyoming 1807-1899." His half-brother, Benjamin Dowd of Gillette, and his grown daughter, Dorothy, then living in Nebraska, were apparently helping him with it.

Payton died on Jan. 3, 1933. Only one short obituary appears to have survived, in the Jan. 4, 1933, Wyoming Press. The Press stated that he "had no known relatives," but this was not true. Payton's living grandson and great-grandson know he had close relatives when he died. Payton was buried, presumably in the hospital cemetery, in a pauper's grave.

Although he had been well known and liked, participating in the political life of the young state, reporting on important events, boosting the town of Thermopolis from its beginnings, advocating for those he claimed were victimized at the Wyoming State Hospital and bravely putting forth his own case, hoping thereby to educate the public about insanity, all seems to have been forgotten and swallowed up in the shadow of his own mental illness.

Yet some of his efforts may have been effective: On Feb. 25, 1925, the Wyoming Legislature passed a law prohibiting harsh, cruel or abusive treatment of insane persons. Representative Preston McAvoy, like Sen. Meek from Weston County, who introduced the bill, cited Mrs. Meek's case. Possibly, public awareness had been advancing for the past quarter-century, starting with Payton's 1899 revelations in the Pilot, and continuing with those of other former patients.

Payton's battles, on his own behalf as well as for his fellow patients, illustrate the difficulty both of his position and of Solier's. Mental patients are easy targets for that percentage of caregivers who are thugs and sadists. Who would believe the testimony of a person known to have mental problems, when those problems by definition can include hallucinations and delusions? Incompetent administrators and cruel attendants, it seems fair to say, can have an easy time refuting patients' accusations.

Conversely, compassionate and well-qualified caregivers of the mentally ill can easily face the specter of demented patients fabricating stories about their treatment. In either case, one can only hope the truth provides adequate defense.

This was Payton's mission. His letters, booklets and newspaper accounts of conditions at the Wyoming State Hospital are fair and objective in tone, noting the good as well as the bad. Although officials discredited all of Payton's accusations, Solier's case stands, or falls, on the historical record. Payton's remarkable persistence and energy, despite his illnesses, shone through to expose what should never be tolerated or allowed to continue.

(Editor’s note: Publication of this and seven other articles on Wyoming newspapering is supported in part by the Wyoming Humanities Council and is part of the Pulitzer Prizes Centennial Campfires Initiative, a joint venture of the Pulitzer Prizes Board and the Federation of State Humanities Councils in celebration of the 2016 centennial of the prizes. The initiative seeks to illuminate the impact of journalism and the humanities on American life today, to imagine their future and to inspire new generations to consider the values represented by the body of Pulitzer Prize-winning work. For their generous support for the Campfires Initiative, the council thanks the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Pulitzer Prizes Board, and Columbia University.)

Resources

Primary Sources

• Darche, A. L., M.D. Affidavit to Acting Governor A.M. Clark, Jan. 11, 1932. MA 8925, Box 6, Investigations, Wyoming State Archives, Cheyenne, Wyo.
• Meek, C. P. Letter to Board of Charities and Reform, April 21, 1924. MA 1606, Box 6, Wyoming State Archives.
• Meek, Mary Emma. Letter to Board of Charities and Reform, undated. MA 1606, Box 6, Wyoming State Archives.
• Payton, Bill, great-grandson of E. T. Payton. Personal email to the author,  Oct. 5, 2016.
• Payton, Dave, grandson of E. T. Payton. Personal emails to the author, Oct. 4, 10, 2016.
• Payton, Della B. v. Payton, E.T. Petition, District Court of Hot Springs County, Wyoming, Nov. 16, 1921, 7 pages. The divorce was granted on Jan. 7, 1922.
• Payton, E. T. Behind the Scenes at Evanston, 1923, 6, 7, 17-20, 26, 28, 32-36, 56-64, Wyoming State Archives.
• __________. Letters to Grace Raymond Hebard, Oct. 26, Nov. 1, 15, 20, 24, Dec. 6, 12, 17, 1931. Grace Raymond Hebard Collection, Box 41, Folder 25, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
• __________. Letters to Board of Charities and Reform, Jan. 3, 10, 12, 17, 1902. Letters Received, Incoming Correspondence, MA 7939, Box 3, Wyoming State Archives.
• __________. Mad Men: A Psychological Study Complete in Twelve Parts, 1923, 11-20, 26, 31, 35, 41-49, 51,Wyoming State Archives.
• Sheldon, F. B. Letter to E. T. Payton, April 28, 1902. Letterpress Book, p. 589, Wyoming State Archives.
• Wyoming State Board of Charities and Reform. "Hearing Before the State Board of Charities and Reform, at Cheyenne, Wyoming, January 7, 1932, with reference to Alleged Mismanagement of Wyoming State Hospital at Evanston, Wyoming." MA 8925, Box 6, Investigations, Wyoming State Archives.
• ———. "Investigation: C. P. Meek, Upton, Wyoming, Wyo. State Hospital, Evanston," May 6, 1924. MA 1606, Box 6, Wyoming State Archives.
• ———. Minutes, Feb. 6, 1899, Book B, p. 98; April 3, 1899, Book B, pp. 123-124; Jan. 16, 1902, Book C., p.116; March 3, 1902, Book C, p. 136; April 26, 1902, Book C, p. 166, Wyoming State Archives.
• Wyoming Press, Jan. 4, 1933. (microfilm) Coe Library, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyo.
• Wyoming Newspapers. Accessed June 16, 2016, June 20-25, 2016, July 14, 2016, at http://newspapers.wyo.gov/.
• Big Horn River Pilot, June 1, 1898, July 27, 1898, Sept. 14, 1898, Jan. 11, 1899, Jan. 18, 1899, Jan. 25, 1899, Feb. 1, 1899, Feb. 8, 1899, Feb. 15, 1899, Feb. 22, 1899.
• Cheyenne Daily Leader, April 13, 1892, April 16, 1892, April 24, 1894, Nov. 3, 1894.
• Daily Boomerang, Oct. 22, 1894, Oct. 24, 1894, Oct. 23, 1895, Dec. 10, 1895, March 31, 1899, April 12, 1899, May 1, 1899, June 6, 1899.
• Laramie Boomerang, June 27, 1907.
• Natrona County Tribune, June 8, 1899, April 8, 1908.
• Saratoga Sun, April 27, 1899.
• Wyoming Derrick, June 8, 1899.
• Wyoming Tribune, Oct. 7, 1911.

Secondary Sources

• Beers, Clifford Whittington. A Mind that Found Itself: An Autobiography. 5^th ed., rev. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1953.
• Bogart, Barbara Allen. "The Wyoming State Hospital." WyoHistory.org, accessed June 21, 2016, at www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/wyoming-state-hospital.
• Bonner, Robert. "Town Founder and Irrigation Tycoon: The Buffalo Bill Nobody Knows." WyoHistory.org, accessed Aug. 6, 2016, at www.wyohistory.org/essays/town-founder-and-irrigation-tycoon-buffalo-bill.
• "Carey Act." Wikipedia, accessed Aug. 6, 2016, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carey_Act.
• Davis, John W. Wyoming Range War: The Infamous Invasion of Johnson County. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010, 178-179.
• Ewig, Rick. “E. T. Payton: Savior or Madman?.” Annals of Wyoming 79: 1, Winter 2007, 18-36.

For Further Reading and Research

• Big Horn Basin Savior, (microfilm, Special Collections) Coe Library, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyo.: Nov. 19, 22, 29, Dec. 3, 6, 27, 31, 1894; Jan. 3, 1895.
• Big Horn River Pilot, Wyoming Newspapers, http://newspapers.wyo.gov/: June 15, 29, 1895; Aug. 4, 11, 18, 25, Sept. 1, 8, 15, 22, 29, Oct. 6, 13, 20, 27, Nov. 3, 10, 17, 24, Dec. 1, 8, 15, 22, 29, 1897; Jan. 19, 26, Feb. 2, 9, 16, 23, March 2, 9, 16, 23, 30, April 6, 13, 20, 27, May 4, 11, 18, 25, June 8, 15, 22, 29, July 6, 13, 20, Aug. 3, 10, 17, 24, 31, Sept. 7, 21, 28, Oct. 5, 12, 19, Nov. 2, 9, 16, 23, 30, Dec. 7, 14, 21, 28, 1898; March 1, 8, 15, 1899.
• Rothman, David J. The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic. Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1971.
• Scull, Andrew, ed. Madhouses, Mad-Doctors and Madmen: The Social History of Psychiatry in the Victorian Era. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981.
• Whitaker, Robert, Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill. Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus Publishing, 2002.

Illustrations

• The images of of the Wyoming Insane Asylum and Dr. C.H. Solier are from the Uinta County Museum. Used with permission and thanks.
• The page of the Big Horn River Pilot, 1899, is from Wyoming Newspapers. Used with thanks.
• The photos of Secretary of State Fenimore Chatterton and the 1909 J.E. Stimson photo of Thermopolis are from Wyoming State Archives. Used with permission and thanks.

It is Aug. 19, 1854. At a site just east of Fort Laramie, on the Oregon/California Trail along the North Platte River, the weather is hot, pleasant and clear. And this afternoon, Brevet 2nd Lt. John Lawrence Grattan, an 1853 graduate of West Point, will start a 22-year war between the U.S. Army and the Great Sioux Nation.

Thirteen years earlier, the first small emigrant party followed the North Platte River heading west to Oregon. In 1843, an estimated 1,000 emigrants made the same trip over the identical route. Two years after that, 5,000 emigrants followed what was now being called the Oregon Trail, from the Missouri River west to free and fertile farm lands in Oregon.

When gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill northeast of Sacramento in California early in 1848, it unleashed the fabled Gold Rush of 1849. That year, approximately 30,000 “Forty-Niners” made the trek across the Northern Plains to California and Oregon.

For the first few years of its existence, relationships between emigrants and American Indians along the Great Platte River Road were generally peaceful. Emigrants were sometimes in great fear of the native people, however, and many began the journey armed to the teeth to defend themselves.

On the trail, most contacts were with Indians asking for “presents”–small quantities of foodstuffs or luxury items such as cloth, coffee and tobacco. These were essentially tolls that tribespeople sought for permitting the emigrants to traverse their land—and to kill the game, cut the wood and graze the grass that grew along it.

After the Gold Rush began, traffic on the trail increased enormously and tensions between whites and Indians increased along with it. Traffic was heaviest during the traveling season; the annual surge of emigrants lasted just four to eight weeks in late spring and early summer, before the travelers moved along into the sunset. Later in the summer, most westbound travelers were Mormons bound for Utah—a shorter distance that allowed them to make a later start.

In 1848, the Army established Fort Kearny at the head of Grand Island in what’s now Nebraska on the south bank of the North Platte River.[1] The next year, the U.S. Army purchased a small trading post at the junction of the Laramie and North Platte Rivers, and permanently established Fort Laramie as a military post.

Tensions rise

Trail traffic peaked in 1850, when 50,000 gold seekers traveled to California and 10,000 land seekers went to Oregon. Numbers stayed high in the following years. Businesses sprang up along the trails to serve the emigrants. By 1854, little trading operations served the travelers every 15 or 20 miles along the Platte.

Many diarists report a chronic nervousness as Indian people would travel with them for days at a time, wanting to make trades, curious about their lives, tools, kitchen and traveling gear.  As traffic increased, requests for tolls became demands; demands became threats.

Trouble at Platte ferry

The year of 1853 found Fort Laramie occupied by a small, single-company garrison. The commander, 2nd Lt. Richard B. Garnett, enjoyed at least better relations with the Indians around the fort than did some of his successors in the job. That summer, a large party of Minniconjou Sioux were camped at the Platte Ferry—current location of the historic Fort Laramie Iron Bridge, built in 1875—on the north side of the North Platte River. The Minniconjou had come into the area more recently and were not as well known around the fort as were the Oglala and Brule Sioux, who had been trading at the fort and nearby posts for a decade and a half.

The Minniconjou intermittently harassed passing emigrants, being particularly aggressive in demanding their tolls. At the ferry on June 15, an altercation broke out between an infantry sergeant stationed there and a Minniconjou warrior. A shot was fired at the sergeant as the soldier was crossing the river in the ferry boat. Whether the Indian man was shooting into the water to intimidate the sentry, or he simply missed, was unclear.

In response, Lt. Garnett dispatched Brevet 2nd Lt. Hugh B. Fleming and 22 men of his company to arrest the Minniconjou, or to take hostages if the man could not be found. This was Fleming’s first opportunity for independent command, as he had just arrived fresh from graduation from West Point.

Two young West Point graduates

The U.S. Military Academy takes great pride in the ranks of military and political leaders it has produced, among them the generals Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, William T. Sherman, Philip H. Sheridan, John J. Pershing, Dwight D. Eisenhower, George S. Patton and Norman Schwarzkopf. Grant and Eisenhower also became presidents of the United States.

The classes of 1852 and 1853 were among West Point’s most productive. The class of 1852 graduated acclaimed military leaders George Crook (of Indian War fame), and Civil War Union officers Henry Slocum (XII and XX Corps commander), David Stanley (IV Corps commander who made major contributions to the defeat of Confederate General John B. Hood and his Army of Tennessee in 1864), and Alexander McCook (a Corps commander in the Union’s Army of the Cumberland). The class of 1853 produced Union officers James McPherson (Commander of the Army of the Tennessee), Joshua Sill (killed at the Battle of Stones River, Philip Sheridan and John Schofield (both Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. Army), and Confederate generals Alexander Chambers and John Bell Hood.

The careers of Hugh Brady Fleming and John Grattan were less accomplished.

Both entered West Point in July 1848, Grattan at age 18 and Fleming at 19 years old, aiming to graduate in 1852. Grattan flunked mathematics his first year, however, and recycled to the class of 1853. His next four years were undistinguished. In his senior year his poorest marks were in infantry tactics; he finally managed to graduate ranked 36^th out of 52 cadets.

Fleming had been appointed from Crawford County in northwestern Pennsylvania. His father had served with distinction during the War of 1812 and enjoyed a laudable career in the U.S. Army. As a sophomore Fleming accumulated 66 demerits. As senior cadet, his poorest marks were in infantry and artillery tactics. He graduated from West Point with the class of 1852, ranked 29^th out of 43 cadets commissioned. He was assigned to Company G, 6^th Infantry at Fort Laramie in the Wyoming Territory.

As it turned out, both Fleming and Grattan would have done well to spend more time learning infantry and artillery tactics.

Attack on the Minniconjou village

On June 17, 1853, two days after the trouble at the ferry, Fleming marched two dozen men into the Minniconjou village to demand the supposed culprit —or several other prisoners as substitutes. Shooting broke out, the warriors retreated to the far side of the village and three were killed, with not a single soldier killed or wounded. Fleming returned across the North Platte River to Fort Laramie with two Minniconjou women captives.  

In negotiations in the following days, Garnett said he was willing to forget what had happened and make amends. The Minniconjou saw nothing to be gained in escalating hostilities, although they greatly outnumbered the small Army command. The prisoners were released.

Conquering Bear, a well-regarded Brule Sioux chief who enjoyed good relations with the army garrison, assured Garnett that the rest of Sioux were friendlier than the Minniconjou. Relations between the soldiers and all the nearby Sioux bands began to deteriorate, however.

For his part, Fleming received commendation for his leadership. But nearly all the Minniconjou men had been away hunting; Fleming had led an attack upon a largely undefended village. Unfortunately, both Fleming and the Army believed afterward that even a small force of regulars could defeat the Indians, a belief that clearly influenced Fleming’s future actions at Fort Laramie. He had drawn the wrong lessons from this minor action.

And probably none of the officers understood that the Treaty of Fort Laramie, signed just three years before between the federal government and the tribes of the northern plains, gave no jurisdiction over individual Indians to U.S. civil or military authorities, notes historian Remi Nadeau.  The treaty left responsibility for dealing with miscreants in the hands of the tribes; if there was a violation, the tribes were to be held collectively responsible, and officers or Indian agents were expected to negotiate accordingly.

Time and again, however, the Army set out to arrest individuals or take hostages. For their part, the tribes saw capture as a prelude to death—that was how their warfare worked—and so they often resisted arrest or capture at all costs.

Throughout 1853 and 1854, Fort Laramie and the entire U.S. Army on the western frontier were woefully understrength. When Garnett was re-assigned, Fleming became commander of the single Company G of the 6th Infantry still stationed at the fort—and post commander as well.

Grattan arrived in the fall of 1853. Fleming, a year older than his subordinate, a classmate of his during their plebe year together at West Point and his superior in the Army by only a single year, was only slightly more experienced than Grattan.

And Grattan seemed to fit the stereotype of the worst West Pointers. He was brash and arrogant and he despised the Indians that lived around or regularly visited Fort Laramie. He repeatedly bragged that with 10 men he could conquer the entire Indian nation.

He would soon get his chance to prove his boasts.

A sick cow and a confrontation

On Aug. 18, 1854, a sick cow lagged behind a Mormon wagon train as it passed Fort Laramie heading for Utah Territory. Large, separate camps of Minniconjou, Brule and Oglala Sioux Indians were nearby that summer, waiting for distribution of their annuities—their annual government payments in beef and other goods as part of the terms of the treaty signed three years before.

With their promised rations late, their pony herds eating up all the available grass and most of the local game long since exhausted, the people were hungry. The sick cow ended up in in a Brule Sioux camp, where she was killed by a visiting Minniconjou warrior, High Forehead, and ended up as dinner. The emigrant reported his loss to Fleming, perhaps hoping that the Army would issue him a free replacement. He then moved on, vanishing nameless from history.

Fleming did nothing about it for a day, during which Conquering Bear came to the fort and named High Forehead as responsible for the theft. Conquering Bear offered either a horse or mule in restitution for the cow—a pretty good deal for the time, and certainly evidence of his good faith. Fleming said he would wait for the arrival of the Indian agent to negotiate a solution

But Grattan was eager for confrontation. On the 19^th, he urged his superior officer to send him to the village. After a long, loud argument Fleming finally agreed, and authorized Grattan to take 22 men. Grattan asked for volunteers.

Had Fleming turned the entire affair over to the local Indian agent, had he agreed to compensation from High Forehead through Conquering Bear by accepting the horse or mule—or even led the party himself—the entire mess could have been avoided. But good judgment was scarce at Fort Laramie on the hot afternoon of Aug. 19.

Further, Fleming may have had little control over Grattan, as both were nearly the same age, had attended the same West Point class their first year, and with Fleming carrying only a single year’s seniority. No other officers were available. Grattan was dispatched, perhaps with some guidance and direction from Fleming.

Lt. Grattan took two sergeants and 27 enlisted men with him to arrest High Forehead, along with a 12-pounder mountain howitzer and a 12-pounder Napoleon howitzer.

Making things worse, Lt. Grattan was accompanied by Lucian Auguste, an interpreter who appears to have made himself unpopular in the area with Indians and whites alike. He had been humiliated a few weeks before when some Cheyenne had stolen some of his cows. With a posse of French-speaking traders he chased them, but when the warriors offered a fight, the posse halted out of rifle range and the Cheyenne went on their way. Grattan later ridiculed Auguste and his friends, loudly, for their apparent cowardice.

 On the afternoon of the 19^th, Auguste was reluctant to go, took a long time to get ready, acquired some whiskey and began drinking before he left.

Attack on the Brule village

The little detachment left the fort about 3 p.m. and headed downriver toward the villages. The infantrymen rode in a wagon and on the limbers of the two howitzers— the two-wheeled carts that support the tail of the gun. According to at least one account they, too, were passing a bottle as they rode.

After about an hour, the troops arrived at the American Fur Company houses where all the annuity goods were stored. Here the Oglala village stretched along the river for three-quarters of a mile. Beyond it, in a shallow loop of the North Platte, lay the huge Brule village of around 700 lodges —about 4,200 people, including perhaps 1,000 warriors.

Grattan ordered his soldiers to load their muskets and fix bayonets, and led his soldiers past the Oglala village to the trading houses of James Bordeaux at the Brule village. Auguste, now drunk, began shouting threats and insults in all directions.

At Grattan’s urging, Bordeaux sent for Conquering Bear. Grattan demanded the chief deliver High Forehead, so that he could be taken back to the fort and held until the Indian agent arrived. Conquering Bear stalled and procrastinated, went back to his lodge for the general’s uniform presented him at the treaty negotiations three years earlier and returned—at which point a messenger arrived saying High Forehead would resist even if it meant death.

More demands, more stalling and refusals followed; Grattan ordered his men to load the howitzers and advanced toward the center of the Brule village—Auguste continuing his rants in Sioux the whole time. Out of sight of the soldiers, hundreds of warriors were already stripped for battle.

Grattan marshaled the troops in a line facing Conquering Bear’s lodge, the two howitzers in the center, and repeated his demand. Again, the chief offered a mule in restitution. Grattan pulled out a pocket watch and snarled, “It is getting late and I can’t wait any longer.” Conquering Bear said it was out of his hands; if Grattan wanted High Forehead, the troops would have to use force.

Bordeaux later reported he saw one man on the right-hand end of the line fire his musket into a group of Indians at the lodge; one fell. There was a long pause. Someone, perhaps Conquering Bear, shouted that that was enough; perhaps the soldiers would be ready to leave now. Then, soldiers on the left side of the line fired. Then the two howitzers fired, but high; the grapeshot hitting only the tops of the lodgepoles.

Surrounded as the soldiers were, the fight didn’t last long. Grattan’s body would later be found with 24 arrows in it, including one through his head. His body had to be identified by his pocket watch. His two sergeants attempted a fighting withdrawal, but within about 10 minutes Grattan, the interpreter and his entire detachment had been wiped out. One wounded man escaped and started back for the fort, later returned to the trading houses and finally died at the fort a few days later.

In the fray, Conquering Bear, exposed and vulnerable at the head of his village, was shot three times and mortally wounded; he would die several days later. Angry warriors raided the Fort Laramie vicinity, plundered the local traders of their stores, and trapped Lt. Fleming and the remaining soldiers inside the fort for a couple of days, running off the fort’s entire animal herd.

War for a generation 

Fleming later noted in his official report that Grattan had been “rash and impulsive almost beyond belief.” But it had been Fleming who dispatched Grattan on his venture, and had authorized his course of action. And it had been the Army itself that had chosen to leave Fort Laramie in the hands of a single company of infantry and two officers barely out of their teens. Fleming would have no more independent commands his entire career: He was never again trusted by the Army. Though he would retire as a major, his subsequent career was undistinguished.

Previously, the Sioux nations and the incoming Euro-Americans had enjoyed fairly good relations. With Grattan’s and Fleming’s actions that day, good relations ended. Twenty-two years of intermittent conflict, accompanied by horrific bloodshed and terrible suffering on both sides, erupted.

A sick cow, a hungry Minniconjou warrior, and a pair of West Pointers had just ignited war on the frontier of the Northern Plains.

Resources

Primary sources

• Cadet records, Special Collections and Archives, Jefferson Hall, U.S. Military Academy Library, West Point, New York.
• Fay, George D., editor. Military Engagements Between United States Troops and Plains Indians: Part Ia : Documentary Inquiry by the U.S. Congress, 1854-1867. Occasional Publications in Anthropology, Ethnology Series No. 26. Greeley, Colorado: Museum of Anthropology, University of Northern Colorado, 1972.
• Major Hugh B. Fleming Appointment, Commissioning and Promotion (ACP) File, Record Group 94.3, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.

Secondary sources

• Hedren, Paul and Carroll Friswold. The Massacre of Lieutenant Grattan and his Command by Indians. Glendale, California: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 1983.
• Mattes, Merrill J. The Great Platte River Road. University of Nebraska Press, 1969.
• McCann, Lloyd E. “The Grattan Massacre” Nebraska History (March 1956), 1-25.
• McChristian, Douglas C. Fort Laramie: Military Bastion of the High Plains. Norman, Okla.: Arthur H. Clark Co., 2008.
• Nadeau, Remi. Fort Laramie and the Sioux. Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1967, 83-110.

Illustrations

• The photo of the battlefield is by Max Farrar from Panoramio. Used with thanks.
• The photo of the howitzer is by Mike Kendra, from CivilWarWiki. Used with thanks.
• The rest of the photos are by the author. Used with permission and thanks.

Some readers may have thought the Casper Star-Tribune's front-page headline on April 1, 1984, was just an April Fool's prank: "Gas customers pay extra $5.8 million for nothing." It sounded far-fetched, but the news was all too real.

Wyoming's only statewide newspaper spent more than a year telling the story of how Northern Utilities—the company that contracted with the city of Casper to be its natural gas franchise—and several of its associated partners overcharged customers by millions of dollars. It was a complex series that required the staff's top editors, reporters and even its cartoonist to chart the course of how consumers in Casper and many other cities were unfairly required for years to pay much higher gas rates than customers in other parts of Wyoming and in nearby states.

The newspaper's efforts led to passage of legislation that resulted in more competition among gas providers and significantly lower prices for consumers. In 1985 the newspaper was also recognized by the renowned Pulitzer Prizes, which selected it as the runner-up for excellence in public service journalism, one of its highest honors.

But the important series had humble beginnings. Anne MacKinnon, the Star-Tribune's energy reporter at the time, recalled that it began with "kind of a classic thing in journalism—we did an ordinary, basic story." MacKinnon became editor of the paper in 1990.

She said Editor Dick High noted that with winter coming on, the newspaper should do a story about how much people are going to have to pay to heat their houses. High recently explained he had a personal motive for looking at heating prices.

"We had just moved [to Casper] and we had a wonderful old house," he said. "It was kind of a pioneer house but it had no insulation. I had this huge natural gas bill that went up in the winter and I thought, 'Oh my God, I can't afford this, I'm not getting paid anything here. What are we going to do?'"

MacKinnon's initial story, published Nov. 9, 1983, noted natural gas bills in Casper were expected to total about $600 per customer for the seven-month heating season from October through April. Of course, the actual amount would vary depending upon the severity of the weather.

The $600 estimate was about $55 above the 1982-83 winter, or an increase of about 10 percent. The winter before that, Casper had seen a price increase of nearly 14 percent. MacKinnon found residential gas rates in Casper in July 1981 were $3.96 per thousand cubic feet (mcf) of gas. Two year later, the rates rose to $5.29 per mcf.

"My neighbor, a banker named Joe Shickich," High recalled, "was aware of a number of things [about utilities] and he said, 'Take a look at this -- when you're looking down the pipeline I'm sure the prices are lower the further away you go.' Shickich, whose advice persuaded High to investigate the situation, died in Casper on May 20, 2016, at age 94.

So High said he had reporters “look down the pipeline and basically, sure enough, the further away the gas line went from Casper, the less expensive it got," High said. "I'm going, what is wrong with this picture? Economics would suggest it should be more expensive the further away."

The gas companies had kind of a captive provider, High noted. "We're an energy-producing state ... They had a [contract] and nobody had ever looked at it so they were pretty free to raise their prices locally and have it much cheaper the further away they went." Northern Utilities' franchise contract to deliver gas to Casper expired at the beginning of 1984.

Natural gas prices widely varied

Len Edgerly, who was a Northern Utilities vice president when the Star-Tribune's series on gas prices was published in 1984, declined in 2016 to comment for this article about the paper's coverage of the issue.

MacKinnon's research found natural gas prices did indeed vary widely across Wyoming. On Nov. 27, 1983, she wrote that Northern Utilities customers in the Gillette-Newcastle area would pay about $690 during the winter, while Cheyenne customers would be charged about $365.

In an editorial on Jan. 29, 1984, the Star-Tribune called for increased gas competition to drive natural gas prices down. "Casper customers pay too much for gas," the paper stated. "Northern Utilities says that is because the company made a bad business decision and now must pay too much for wholesale gas.

"But that is not the reason," the editorial continued. "The reason is that Northern chooses to charge its customers for the management mistake, instead of charging its stockholders."

What was the mistake? In 1957 Northern had signed a gas purchase contract with its parent company, Kansas-Nebraska Energy Co. (K-N) that allowed unlimited price escalation but excluded competition from cheap gas when there was an oversupply. K-N required Northern and other subsidiaries to buy their gas from the Amoco Production Co. at the highest price allowed for gas sold in interstate commerce under the federal Natural Gas Policy Act.

K-N tried to break its contract with Amoco when a gas glut began forcing prices down. In federal court the utility argued that the prices called for under its Amoco contract were "unconscionable." K-N lost, even though U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer agreed the contract resulted in "exorbitant prices."

A Feb. 3, 1984, analysis by High maintained Casper might not be stuck paying for Northern Utilities' costly gas contract after all. The company had been divided into two separate corporations: wholesaler NU Inc. and retailer NU Division. The latter actually held the Casper gas franchise.

Company executives said under a contract the NU Division must buy gas from NU Inc., even at higher prices. But the editor pointed out neither utility had been able to produce a legal contract to support their claim. NU Inc. President Larry Hall countered, "It doesn't have to be a contract in writing." But even if there was a written one in their contract files, Hall added, the companies were "reluctant" to let the Star-Tribune examine them.

A news blackout

Next came an explosive editorial on Feb. 5, 1984, which said Casper and other Wyoming cities should begin thinking about collecting $100 million owed in natural gas price refunds. The paper stressed that in federal court NU Inc. admitted its prices were too high. The company, the Star-Tribune reasoned, couldn't expect to resell gas at "excessive and unreasonable" prices, and then see the extra costs passed on to Casper families.

"Casper can and should insist the company holding its gas franchise place the customer first. ... A big refund is due," the editorial concluded.

On Feb. 17, 1984, NU Inc. announced it would impose a "news blackout" on the Star-Tribune. Hall said his company would no longer supply information to the paper or respond to any future articles and editorials.

Hall said NU Inc. was conducting "very sensitive negotiations" with several gas companies, and charged the newspaper's actions were "not conducive to bringing these negotiations to a successful conclusion." High defended his paper's news coverage and the Star-Tribune stood by its editorial requesting a large refund for consumers.

Recalling the "news blackout" more than three decades later, High giggled. "I mean what were they going to do, right?" he said. "As if we were going to stop covering it."

"When you're talking about something they don't want to talk about, it makes you all the more interested in it," MacKinnon added.

City reporter Dan Neal said the editors made it clear to the utilities "if you want to talk to us, fine, but if you don't we'll find other ways to get the information. This story is too important."

Neal said the company thought if it just stopped talking to the paper the heat on them would lessen. "That just ratcheted things up because it made them look bad," he said. "They're supposed to be providing a public service for which they were guaranteed a profit, and then we found out how they've been gimmicking the system to take more profit out of Casper while their customers in Nebraska were paying very low rates.

Low heat content in Wyoming gas

The Star-Tribune broke the next big news in the series on Feb. 26, 1984. In a copyrighted story High explained most Wyoming residents weren't even receiving all of the overpriced natural gas they were being sold, because the natural gas being delivered had low heat content.

A heat value of 1,000 British Thermal Units (BTUs) was standard for natural gas. But the gas delivered to most Wyoming customers contained between 800 and 900 BTUs. The low heat content of delivered gas was a function of Wyoming's high elevation.

In mile-high Casper, a furnace would burn about 20 percent more cubic feet of gas to provide the same heat as an identical furnace in New York City. When the gas was adjusted for heat content, the newspaper said consumers in Casper, Riverton, Lander, Rawlins, Laramie and Gillette were paying about $6 per mcf. But in Cheyenne, Evanston, Green River, Wheatland, Glenrock and Douglas, customers paid about $4 per mcf for the same heat value.

Nonexistent investments

On April Fools Day in 1984, High reported that state utility regulators let four Northern natural gas companies charge customers an extra $5.8 million a year to provide profits on $28 million of stockholders' investments that did not exist. The Wyoming Public Service Commission approved higher rates to provide profit on about $31 million of owners' equity it assumed as at work in the Casper-based subsidiaries of K-N.

But the combined owners' equity in the four companies was only $3 million at the end of 1981. The correct figure was on file with federal regulators, but Wyoming PSC officials admitted they did not ordinarily check such federal documents.

The higher the proportion of equity compared to debt, High explained to readers, the greater the cost to customers. When the PSC allowed Northern subsidiaries to obtain profits on $28 million in investments that didn't exist, customers had to pay an extra $5.8 million for literally nothing.

MacKinnon covered an April meeting of the Casper City Council where it was suggested up to $100 a year could be cut from a typical household's heating bill if prices were averaged with comparatively lower costs in the much larger K-N system.

K-N Vice President Harlan Hansen testified such price averaging couldn't be done. "That's a law," he said. "I can't do it. ... I wish it could. We would have done it long ago." But in her article MacKinnon noted the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said no such law existed.

"A couple of these spokesmen were caught in lies, and the city got more interested in pursuing this," said Neal, the former city reporter. "As those spokesmen came and went, [Mayor] Larry Clapp referred to them as 'Jaws 1' and 'Jaws 2.'"

Northern Utilities ended its news blackout on May 1, 1984.

Business, legal skills among the news staff

MacKinnon said High's ability to track the money in the Northern Utilities case was essential to the paper's reporting.

"Before I came to Wyoming, [members of the Howard family, which owned the paper] told me they were going to make me a publisher, so they sent me off to Stanford Business School and I got a masters there," High said. "So I had some ability—limited—but I could follow money, look at the financials, things like that. That helped a lot, I think. You're not asking somebody 'what's this financial thing?'—you still have to ask—but that was a very helpful set of skills."

MacKinnon had studied utility issues in law school. When she listened to company officials' testimony that wasn't true, she was able to call them out.

"It was fun to apply what I learned in law school and try to figure out what the companies were doing, and matching wits with lawyers and spokesmen," she recalled. "I was able to say what they said was not true, and could find people who would say that. It was shocking to see someone in authority basically lying.

"It's terribly important for the public to know what's really happening," she said. "People should have a hand in their fate."

Pulitzer news was surprise to staff

High said the Pulitzer jury nominated three papers for the public service award. How the staff learned the Star-Tribune was chosen the runner-up to the winner, the Dallas-Fort Worth Telegram, was really low-key.

After Star-Tribune staffers had submitted a package of materials to make the paper a contender for the prize, "nobody had thought about it," he remembered. "[The news] came across the wire, I don't think anyone even noticed. Then someone said, ‘Hey, looky here.’ Oh wow—it wasn't like we were on pins and needles, it was just—I don't think we had any expectation [of winning] or anything."

High said he couldn’t remember how the staff celebrated the news. "I think we got some champagne in the newsroom and sort of hooted a bit," he said. But Neal recalled the publisher had a string quartet from the Casper Symphony play while the staff had dinner and celebrated.

Accuracy is always important in journalism, but High said it was essential in telling this story. "We didn't want to have to make corrections," he said. "You have to be charging ahead and at the same time you have to really pay attention to what you are doing so you know it will stand scrutiny.

"If you have a series of 20 stories going, you can't have one screw-up in one story or it will bring the whole thing down," he said.

The Star-Tribune had a vibrant letters section in the 1980s that served as a forum for the entire state. High said the paper was bombarded by writers who wanted to express their views about natural gas prices in Wyoming.

High said a consistent view was, "What are you guys doing at this paper? What's wrong with you? This is the hand that feeds us; the energy companies are here and you're saying, 'wait a minute.' You're saying no to the energy companies?"

"I don't know if anybody had ever stood up to them before," he said.

"To me it just shows what a powerful instrument journalism can be to make things better in a community," Neal said. "It was painful; we got a lot of criticism from people who thought we were being too hard on an institution that had served this community for many years."

Paper focused on hard news

Wyoming experienced an oil boom in the late 1970s, and the economy helped bring the Star-Tribune more financial and personnel resources. The paper had one reporter, and hired nine more in 1979. MacKinnon was one of them.

"During the boom we were pouring money back into the newsroom," High said. "Our budget was just ready to go past a million dollars in 1984. Then the crash hit and it went down to a half-million, just like that. Everything had gone to hell, and we had to make some choices."

He decided to focus on hard news and investigate stories like the natural gas price series. Reporters were told to stop writing features—in fact Neal said they became known in the newsroom as 'the F word.'

"We ended up with news and letters, and that was about it," High said. "It was a pretty gutsy news report."

The Star-Tribune had an additional resource in its Northern Utilities coverage: cartoonist Greg Kearney, who also kept the computers running. A few of his cartoons were included in the Pulitzer package that went to the judges. "It was the cartoons that drove the company the craziest," Neal recalled.

In one, Kearney depicted a couple standing near a gas meter, with the husband holding a Northern Utilities bill. The man and woman each had one leg missing and were walking on crutches.

The man says, "You know, I think it's time we look for a new gas company."

City Council votes to find new gas supply

Based upon the Star-Tribune series, the Casper City Council hired a Denver-based consultant that estimated the city could save up to $5.4 million a year if it obtained wholesale natural gas supplies from sources other than Northern Utilities.

During 1983, Northern charged Casper customers $6.01 per mcf -- $2.58 higher than the average retail price of the K-N energy system. K-N reduced local prices by 42 cents the following year, but the consultant noted Northern was expected to seek an additional 80-cent price increase the next fall, further adding to the price differential.

After the yearlong battle with Northern Utilities, the Casper City Council voted unanimously to obtain its own natural gas supply.

But that wasn't the end of the story. The Casper City Council successfully lobbied the Wyoming Legislature to approve transporting natural gas in a "common carrier" bill, and had editorial support from the newspaper.

"What that did was basically everybody could go through the pipeline because they couldn't restrict it, so it became a common carrier, like a highway -- everybody could drive down it," High explained. "So you had to pay for the shipping of the gas, but they weren't able to say 'OK, only Amoco gets gas shipped here.'"

The legislation got rid of the monopoly power that a natural gas company exercised at the local level. "It brought in competition," High said. "It affected the cost of power."

After the law went into effect, High said the results were shocking. "We had a drop of something like 40 percent. It was quite amazing, because the rates had been getting extraordinarily high."

(Editor’s note: Publication of this and seven other articles on Wyoming newspapering is supported in part by the Wyoming Humanities Council and is part of the Pulitzer Prizes Centennial Campfires Initiative, a joint venture of the Pulitzer Prizes Board and the Federation of State Humanities Councils in celebration of the 2016 centennial of the prizes. The initiative seeks to illuminate the impact of journalism and the humanities on American life today, to imagine their future and to inspire new generations to consider the values represented by the body of Pulitzer Prize-winning work. For their generous support for the Campfires Initiative, the council thanks the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Pulitzer Prizes Board, and Columbia University.)

Resources

• "Casper can reduce gas prices through franchise competition."Casper Star-Tribune, Jan. 29, 1984.
• High, Richard. "Casper may not be stuck with costly gas contract." Casper Star-Tribune, Feb. 3, 1984.
• High, Richard. "Gas customers pay extra $5.8 million for nothing."Casper Star-Tribune, April 1, 1984.
• High, Richard. "Most Wyoming residents receive natural gas with low heat content."Casper Star-Tribune, Feb. 26, 1984.
• High, Richard. "Special deal for Amoco raises city gas prices."Casper Star-Tribune, May 27, 1984.
• High, Richard and A. Marcos Ortiz. "Northern says it will cut natural gas prices in state."Casper Star-Tribune, June 9, 1984.
• High, Richard and Anne MacKinnon. "Northern bypassed cheap gas, took on expensive contract."Casper Star-Tribune, July 15, 1984.
• High, Richard and Anne MacKinnon, "City action could save millions on gas prices."Casper Star-Tribune, Oct. 18, 1984.
• MacKinnon, Anne. "No law blocks gas price cut."Casper Star-Tribune, April 4, 1984.
• MacKinnon, Anne. "Northern has decided to lift news blackout."Casper Star-Tribune, May 1, 1984.
• Neal, Dan. "Northern Utilities imposes news blackout against Star-Tribune."Casper Star-Tribune, Feb. 17, 1984.
• Peterson, Iver. "Wyoming gas utilities face consumer revolt."New York Times, March 29, 1984.
• Rose, P. J. "City Council decides to obtain natural gas supply for Casper."Casper Star-Tribune, Nov. 8, 1984.
• "Time to think about seeking $100 million owed in gas rebates."Casper Star-Tribune, Feb. 5, 1984.

Illustrations

• All photos are from the Casper Star-Tribune collection at the Casper College Western History Center. Used with permission and thanks. The collection includes extensive of the paper’s photographs and news content, sorted by topic and available for research. See below for details on visiting the center.