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Mathew Campfield: Barber, Coroner and Pioneer Survivor
In the third week of March 1936, laborers working to reconstruct old Fort Caspar dug up a set of human leg bones. Expert analysis, the CasperTribune-Herald reported, would soon show whether the legs...
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John E. Osborne and the Logjammed Politics of 1893
In December 1892, a tug-of-war between Wyoming Democrats and Republicans resulted in a tense standoff in the governor’s office. Two men claimed to be the state’s top official. The deep-seated conflict...
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Kathy Karpan: A Life in Law and Politics
The young woman in the plaid jumper could hardly contain her excitement as she stood in a crowd outside the University of Wyoming field house after President John F. Kennedy spoke there in late...
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Bill Nye, Frontier Humorist
Few Wyoming newspapers have names as arresting as Laramie’s. Go to the newspaper’s home page on the web, and you will find: “Laramie Boomerang: Laramie’s Voice Since 1881.”[1] But the page provides...
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Ed Farlow, Tim McCoy and Their Native Friends on Stage and Screen
The old trapper galloped for his cabin, with 75 yelling Arapaho close behind. Reaching his front door just in time, he slammed it in his enemies' faces. His gun spat bullets from the windows, and...
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Trade Among Tribes: Commerce on the Plains before Europeans Arrived
In the spring of 1934, an aging cowboy and stockman wrote some recollections to the editor of the Lusk Free Lance, a newspaper then published in Niobrara County in eastern Wyoming. In his letter,...
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Earhart Once Piloted “Weird Windmill Ship” across Wyoming
Most people associate Amelia Earhart with aviation, worldwide fame and her mysterious disappearance in 1937 during an attempt to fly around the world. Fewer may realize that the record-setting pilot...
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Making a Home in Empire, Wyo.
The plains of Wyoming and Nebraska are dotted with old cemeteries hidden in hay meadows or on vacant plots between county roads slicing the countryside in perfect, straight lines. Interred in the...
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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...
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Caroline Fuller, Pioneer Dentist
Caroline Fuller had never heard of women’s liberation in 1905 when she entered a field of medicine usually reserved for men—dentistry. How she came to pull teeth and take dental impressions while...
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The Sagebrush Philosopher: Merris Barrow and Bill Barlow’s Budget
What does an editor reveal about himself by offering 100-year subscriptions to his brand-new weekly newspaper? That he has a sense of humor? Superhuman energy? Grandiose plans? Perhaps all three.Merris...
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Louise Spinner Graf, First Woman Jury Foreman
In May 1950, Louise Spinner Graf served as foreman of a jury in a murder trial in Green River, Wyo.—the first jury in Wyoming to include women since the early 1870s, when territorial courts briefly...
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“’Those Damn Women:’ Louise Graf and Women on Wyoming Juries
On May 9, 1950, a court in Green River, Wyo. found Otto Long guilty of second-degree murder. Long's attorney, Walter Muir Sr., complained, "I'd never have lost if it hadn't been for those damn women on...
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Alice Morris: Mapping Yellowstone’s Trails
Mrs. Robert C. Morris of New York is an authority on Western fishing. ... In the Winter she lives on Fifth Avenue, and goes to the opera, and rides in her limousine, and does the other things that city...
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Bombardier Conservationist: Tom Bell and the High Country News
In 1973 in Lander, Wyo., a father faced a difficult choice: Buy rubber boots to get his daughter through the Wyoming snows? Or continue pouring family funds into his newspaper and its quixotic...
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This Great Struggle: African-American Churches in Rock Springs
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, workers and their families came to southwest Wyoming from around the nation and world, drawn by good wages paid by the coal mines that served the Union...
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Rocky Ridge
Rocky Ridge, where the Oregon Trail climbs a steep, stony slope to a high plateau about 40 trail miles east of South Pass, was troublesome to all emigrants. But it was deadly to some starving Mormons...
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‘Noted Beauty Coming:’ Suffragist Campaigns Across Wyoming
“Noted beauty coming,” declared the Laramie Republican in its October 1916 headline advancing Inez Milholland’s appearance in Cheyenne.Accustomed to having her good looks noticed before her formidable...
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Paul Kendall’s War: A Wyoming Soldier Serves in Siberia
In a U.S. Army career spanning three wars and four decades, Paul Kendall, of Sheridan, Wyo., never forgot the moment when his platoon, guarding a Siberian rail station, was attacked one night at 30...
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The Seminoe Cutoff and Sarah Thomas Grave
Among the many branches and variants of the Oregon Trail was the 35-mile Seminoe Cutoff, which allowed travelers to avoid the last four crossings of the Sweetwater River as well as the difficult climb...
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