People & Peoples

“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?

U.S. Census taker James Clopper counted 366 people with military connections at Fort Laramie in 1860, and another 300 civilians outside fort boundaries. It weas a diverse group: Soldiers, Indians, traders and freighters lived there; stagecoaches carrying people and mail, westbound young families and a few handcart-pulling Mormons were all passing through.

Skiing for fun began on Casper Mountain in the 1920s. People cut a few scattered slopes, added rope tows, started a ski patrol and held races. Hogadon Basin Ski Area was founded in the late 1950s. Today, Hogadon, 26 miles of Nordic trails and a world-class biathlon course lure skiers from everywhere.

In 1878, the enterprising Otto Franc described Wyoming as “the finest & wildest country . . .  abounding with fish & game.” From conflicts with rustlers through the beginnings of irrigation and the end of the open range, his huge Pitchfork Ranch came to dominate Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin.

Hawaiian cowboys, competing at Frontier Days in 1908, kicked off Wyoming’s Hawaiian music (and culture) craze. The “paniolo” dominated the world championships that year. Wyomingites bought ukeleles, phonographs and records and attended Hawaiian plays, musicals, dances and concerts for decades. Interest was still strong well into the 1950s.

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?

Though born in Cody, Jackson Pollock soon moved away and never returned, and the state has never claimed him. But Pollock vigorously claimed Wyoming—this wild place. Risk was what he was all about—both in his life and in the revolutionary drips and swirls of his paint.

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.

Beginning in 1858, a group of Iowa-based German Lutherans worked to establish a ministry on Deer Creek near present Glenrock, Wyo. Plagued by sparse funding and widening Indian wars, the effort finally collapsed. Three converted Cheyenne boys returned to Iowa with the missionaries and died there; their families never knew what happened to them.

The automobile age arrived in Wyoming almost unnoticed. While the Spanish American War dominated headlines, Elmer Lovejoy was building Wyoming’s first car in his Laramie bicycle shop during the winter of 1897-98. Townspeople thought the machine an “interesting toy,” but Lovejoy stuck with his tinkering, with some surprising long-term results.