People & Peoples

Democrat Kathy Karpan traces her love of politics to her youth in working-class Rock Springs, Wyo. She served as Wyoming secretary of state from 1987 through 1994, when she ran unsuccessfully for governor. During the Clinton administration, she directed the Office of Mining and Reclamation Enforcement, and now practices law in Cheyenne.

In December 1892, newly elected Gov. John E. Osborne, a Democrat, took office a month early in a storm of controversy. State politics were still reeling from the Johnson County War and the 1893 Legislature, in an uproar, failed to elect a U.S. senator.

Mathew Campfield, African-American Union Army veteran, worked as a barber and was elected coroner of Natrona County, Wyo., in the early 1890s. Decades earlier, he froze both feet when he lived in Kansas and ever afterward walked on wooden ones. His Army pension records reveal a great deal about his life. 

Tracy McCraken borrowed $3,000 in 1926 to purchase the Cheyenne-based Wyoming Eagle. With a media empire that came to include newspapers in Cheyenne, Laramie, Rawlins, Rock Springs and Worland, plus TV and radio, he played a big role in 20th century Wyoming politics—and prospered.

In July 1864, several members of the Kelly-Larimer wagon train were killed by a large party of Oglala Sioux. The graves of five victims—7-year-old Mary Kelly and four men—are located near present Glenrock, Wyo. Fanny Kelly, held captive by the Sioux, later wrote a book about her trials.

Three-year-old Ada Magill of Kansas, died of dysentery in 1864 on the Oregon Trail west of present Glenrock, Wyo. The Magills were bound for Oregon. In 1912, road surveyor L. C. Bishop moved the grave to a site nearby, where it is now marked by the Oregon-California Trails Association.

Frederick Fulkerson, 17, died in 1847 on the Oregon Trail after becoming exhausted and ill from swimming his family’s livestock across the North Platte River near present Casper, Wyo. His grave, located on state land near Devil’s Gate, is one of the oldest identified graves along the trail. 

In the early 1900s, Jewish families came from eastern cities to Goshen County, Wyo., seeking a better life in the West. They farmed, raised families, founded schools and worshiped in private homes. Many were discouraged by the harsh farm life, however, and nearly all left by the 1930s.

On a jittery night in 1864, a lone warrior stole three horses from a California-bound wagon train west of present Glenrock, Wyo. Early next morning, emigrant Martin Ringo died from an accidental gunshot. His grave is still there, on private land. Johnny Ringo, his son, was later a famous outlaw. 

The trapper and guide Kit Carson traversed what’s now Wyoming dozens of times. Of one of those trips we have a close account—1842, when the careful, competent Carson guided a brash young Lt. John C. Frémont of the Topographical Engineers up the old fur-trade route to South Pass.