spanish influenza

Two years after they were married in 1910, a Lander bank took almost everything from John and Ethel Love’s sheep ranch in central Wyoming. Still, despite floods, blizzards, wild dogs, rattlesnakes, barbed-wire cuts and the Spanish Influenza the family remained—and Ethel, in her letters and journals, kept track.

In October 1918, when a deadly flu was sweeping the world, a Casper newspaper offered advice as sound now as it was then: Avoid crowds, wash your hands often, “[d]on’t worry, and keep your feet warm.” But there was reason to worry. Schools, churches and businesses closed—and 780 Wyomingites died.