E. T. Payton: Muckraker, Mental Patient and Advocate for the Mentally Ill

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.