Conflict

When Noah Richardson brought his gal to a gathering of cowboys in 1905, he expected her to leave with him. The charm of Allie Means that day won him the girl but lost him his life. Read more about the desperate crimes of Noah Richardson and the chain of events spurred on by the murder of Allie Means.

Fearless, determined Lizabeth Wiley served three terms in the 1920s as Greybull mayor. During her first, she opposed the Ku Klux Klan so successfully that by the term’s second half, she wrote, her job had become “tame.” Later, she weathered a bootlegging scandal and led relief efforts after a devastating flood.

“WOMAN MAYOR IS JAILED, CHARGED WITH BEATING MAN,” read the headline following 1922’s Fourth of July in tiny Cokeville, Wyo. How had the town’s new mayor, elected just a month earlier on a Prohibition and law-enforcement ticket, found herself in the middle of a street brawl?

On the evening of January 11, 1907, Eastern Shoshone Tribal Councilman George Terry was murdered after leaving a council meeting. Was it a crime of passion, perhaps revenge for mistreating his wife Kate Enos? Or was it an assassination, retribution for backing the selloff of half the reservation’s tribal lands?

A major route for emigrants, freighters, the military, stagecoaches and mail, the Overland Trail across present southern Wyoming saw heavy traffic in the 1850s and 1860s. At different stations along the way, coach drivers obtained fresh horses, the wives of station masters fed dusty travelers and soldiers fought attacking warriors.

Thomas Twiss, West Point class of 1826, came to Fort Laramie as a civilian in 1855, tasked with keeping government promises to tribes and keeping peace in all directions. He had an Oglala family on Deer Creek in addition to a family back East—and lived in two worlds for decades.

In 1894, newspapers across Wyoming filled with stories of jobless men headed east along the railroads. Coxey’s Army, they were called, named for their “general.” All were unemployed, many were hungry, but they were bound for the center of the nation’s power. It became the first march on Washington.

Black strikebreakers were imported to the company coal town of Dana on the Union Pacific line in February 1890, but may instead have joined a strike there against unfair pay. Their presence made Dana the only coal town ever in Wyoming with a Black majority. Later, many settled in Hanna and Rock Springs.

During World War II, the U.S. Army operated two large and 17 smaller prisoner of war camps in Wyoming. Prisoners worked on farms and in the camps, often for private employers, who paid a going rate for local wages. Some prisoners became friends with their supervisors, others with the farm families they worked for.

Lucy Yellowmule galloped into the Sheridan WYO Rodeo July 6, 1951. A young Crow barrel racer from Wyola, Mont., her horsemanship wowed the crowd and her selection as rodeo queen inspired creation of All American Indian Days and the Miss Indian America Pageant—institutions widely praised for improving relations among the races.