Have you ever wondered about the intricate details behind Wyoming's white Thanksgiving, the triumphs of Cowboy football, and a closer look at high school sports transitioning to winter? Brace yourself for a deep-dive into it all! We walk you through the weather patterns that cloaked Wyoming under a snowy blanket and how it influenced the Cowboy's football season. We also discuss the transition from fall to winter sports at the school level, and the exhilarating collegiate volleyball championship season. As we navigate through this, we also take a pause to reflect on the essence of Thanksgiving and gratitude amidst the holiday hustle.
Shifting our gears, we bring to the forefront the fascinating life of Tom Horn, a notorious figure in the American West during the late 1800s. From his work for the U.S Army and the Pinkerton National Detectives Agency as a scout and tracker, to his feared presence in Wyoming, Horn's life is an intoxicating mix of mystery and speculation. Moreover, the controversies surrounding his execution and its impact on the political fabric of Wyoming add another layer to this captivating narrative. Get ready to unravel the enigmas of Wyoming weather, sports, and history with us!
Have you ever wondered about the intricate details behind Wyoming's white Thanksgiving, the triumphs of Cowboy football, and a closer look at high school sports transitioning to winter? Brace yourself for a deep-dive into it all! We walk you through the weather patterns that cloaked Wyoming under a snowy blanket and how it influenced the Cowboy's football season. We also discuss the transition from fall to winter sports at the school level, and the exhilarating collegiate volleyball championship season. As we navigate through this, we also take a pause to reflect on the essence of Thanksgiving and gratitude amidst the holiday hustle.
Shifting our gears, we bring to the forefront the fascinating life of Tom Horn, a notorious figure in the American West during the late 1800s. From his work for the U.S Army and the Pinkerton National Detectives Agency as a scout and tracker, to his feared presence in Wyoming, Horn's life is an intoxicating mix of mystery and speculation. Moreover, the controversies surrounding his execution and its impact on the political fabric of Wyoming add another layer to this captivating narrative. Get ready to unravel the enigmas of Wyoming weather, sports, and history with us!
Good morning and welcome to let's Talk Wyoming. I'm Mark Hamelk and you're host Today. We'll be taking a look at our white Thanksgiving weather. So we'll be having a recap of the Wyoming Cowboy football season. We'll talk about Thanksgiving and what's ahead. We'll take a look at Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and finally, tom Horn. Was he guilty or was he not? Thanks for joining us today. We hope you enjoy the show.
Speaker 1:Taking a look at Wyoming weather here on the 27th day of November. I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving. It is blowing about 20 miles an hour. We have about a foot of snow on the ground. We had a white Thanksgiving. Quite a change. We could go Wednesday. We were in the 40s and 50s, just gorgeous weather, just unbelievable weather. And on Thanksgiving Day it all changed real rapidly as the storm blew in. We had snow and wind and ice and winter weather. So winter weather is upon us.
Speaker 1:The roads have been bad in certain areas. Of course, that I-80 corridor always gets bad. It seems to be the first place that gets hit with potentially perilous travel conditions down there and I just hate it when people have to drive on those type of roads. I always feel for them. I haven't driven those type of roads before myself. I try to avoid them now, unless it's just an emergency. But here in Wyoming we had a white Thanksgiving and the way it's looking we're going to have a white Christmas Wyoming weather. We'll see where we had this year. I'm just hoping that it's not as bad as last year.
Speaker 1:With the Thanksgiving weekend, the Wyoming Cowboys included their regular season, their 2023 regular season. They came out on top of Nevada On the road, the first road wind of the season. They were 7-0 in the confines of War Memorial Stadium in Laramie and they finally won a road game. So congratulations to the Cowboys. They just put it to Nevada. Nevada, I should say, was having a not very successful year. They had two winds coming in and two and nine, and the Cowboys didn't let them have a chance to get in the game. The defense took over. This was dominating 42-6. The final, again, cowboys end up 8-4. Now we have to wait and hopefully we'll have a good bowl this year. I know everybody is tired of the potato bowl and some of these bowls that we've seen to go to every year, hoping that this year we might get a little better bowl and maybe a little different place to go. It's going to be an interesting year for the Cowboys. Coach Bowles contract is out in 2024. That's when it expired. He's the highest paid coach in the conference. He's probably the highest paid state employee. I know he is the state employee in the state of Wyoming and a lot of people are thinking maybe it's a time. I think before this last two game win streak a lot of people were just ready for Coach Bowles to go and then they look at 8-4. I have a feeling the Cowboys will get bowls in a couple more years and will continue on. I think it's a lot of people have different views on what we need to do with the program In Wyoming.
Speaker 1:High school sports the high school sports are all over with here. We finished up the football and the fall seasons ended up. Volleyball football, cost country the golf teams. Everyone is done. We're on to winter sports. They started last Monday. You're looking at your wrestling and indoor track, basketball, boys and girls basketball, so they'll be starting games up after another week. They've got to get enough practices in so you'll start seeing the following week that they'll start having games across the state and then you have to look forward to travel. It's always a perilous time with, like I said, with these winters, those buses and those kids on some of these roads. But the sport season is definitely at that point I notice now you'll no more football on, no more college football. It's amazing the amount of content that's on the TV right now, with ESPN and different networks. Everybody's broadcasting basketball, both the men's and the women's. College game is really going right now. And the volleyball. As I've said many times before, I really enjoy the women's volleyball and collegiate level. They've just announced their 64 team field and they'll start their championship. It's really enjoyable and fun to watch. So look forward to that in the next few weeks and see who's going to win that. It looks like Nebraska would be the favorite just because of their record and how well they played, but they did lose the other night to Wisconsin. Wisconsin was also, I think, the number four seed overall in the country. Volleyball collegiate volleyball something to watch on TV, because there's really not much else on TV to watch but sports anymore.
Speaker 1:Hoping everyone had a great Thanksgiving weekend or holiday. It's a good time to reflect back on your life. I know they were talking about Black Friday and I can remember years and years ago we lived in Montana. At the time in Billings, and it was a day, black Friday people were out and about. It was a busy shopping day and I think a lot of that is slowed down. Number one with the internet, there were Black Friday sales everywhere way before Black Friday.
Speaker 1:With the way business is right now and then, I think, with everybody kind of a little uncertain with where they are right now in the country, there's just a lot of concern, a lot of people financially, with the way everything is gone through the rough pricing, housing prices. Now you're going to have to heat your homes and then you just came through Thanksgiving and then you go and are looking at Christmas and you all want to celebrate Christmas. So it can be a stressful time for us all and here in our state of Wyoming, with the weather hitting, it always makes people a little bit gloomy. But always think about those things that you're thankful for. There are people in your life that you need to be thankful for Family, friends it could be just about anybody that you could be thankful for that are around you. There's people that care for you, are out there, and I'm hoping that 2024 we reflect on 2023.
Speaker 1:It wasn't a great year. A lot of things are happening in our lives. I say one positive thing the price of gasoline has come down, which is totally surprising. Oil prices have dropped. I'm just waiting if something does happen in the Middle East and prices will go skyrocketing back up. But it's pretty amazing right now that they are where they are. But I think that a lot of our travel businesses and stuff are down.
Speaker 1:I did see an article the other day where they were talking the Biden administration is going to start using these business buildings that are empty office buildings and different businesses that have no longer in keeping their doors open, whether they've moved to other cities or just closed down entirely because of business. They're going to start using these to house the illegal aliens that are coming across the border and I know that's not a proper thing to say legal aliens, but people that are coming across the border. I don't think anybody is against legal immigration. Again, I said many times my mother was from England and so she immigrated here after the war. It is okay to have legal immigration, but we've had just so many people coming in we really don't know where they are. So it's that woke time of year. I laughed the other day.
Speaker 1:I saw a city out in Michigan or somewhere in that area, in one of those few states. Through there we're talking, the city was telling people that the city employees that you can't say snowman is supposed to be snow people and you just kind of shake your head. What is wrong with people? What's happened to us? What's happened since we locked down in 2020 for COVID? If, boy, it sure changed our lives and it sure hasn't changed them to the better. Everything that's taking place in our, with our schools and in our lives. It all started back then and we're slowly but surely trying to get out of it, and politically, who knows. But I think that you need to be thankful for what we have now and we'll see what happens and be ready in 2024, because I think it's going to be another wild ride ahead of us. The real estate market is just totally crazy right now with the price of homes and interest rates. It can't go on forever. I think a lot of people are foreclosures are going on, price of vehicles are the same, a lot of repossessions. So it's an interesting time coming up ahead of us and here in the state of Wyoming we're just like everyone else across the country. Through December we want to take a look at some good things that are happening here in our state. We'll try to pull ourselves away from all the negative and let's talk about positive. Let's talk about things that are really good in our lives, and I know we all have good things in our lives that we need to celebrate every day with Christmas. What I want for Christmas we want to be a different country, we want to be thankful, we want to get back to the way we used to be and let's make that a big push here in the month of December for the state of Wyoming.
Speaker 1:Harry Longabaugh, aka Sundance Kid, a member of the Wild Bunch, harry Alonzo Longabaugh, better known as a Sundance Kid, was an outlaw and a member of Butch Casty's Wild Bunch during his wild days in the Old West. He also went by the name of Frank Smith H A Brown, harry A Place and Harry Long Longabaugh was born in Mount Clara, pennsylvania, in 1867, the youngest of five children of Joshua and Annie G Place Longabaugh. When he was only 15 years old he headed west with a cousin. By the time he was 20, he had stolen a gun, a saddle and a horse from a ranch in Sundance, wyoming, only to be almost immediately captured. He was convicted and spent 18 months in jail, at which time he took on the name of Sundance Kid. After his release he worked as a cowboy before being implicated in the 1892 train robbery and by 1897 he had hooked up with Harvey Logan, a member of the Wild Bunch. The two then robbed a bank at Belfour, south Dakota, on June 27. Both men were captured but managed to escape from a Deadwood Jail three months later. Afterward they hid in a log cabin at Old Trail Town in Cody, wyoming, as they planned to rob a bank in Red Lodge, montana. He soon met up with Butch Casty, joined the Wild Bunch and moved to the Robbers Roost in Utah.
Speaker 1:On June 2 of 1899, the gang, including Butch Casty, sundance Kid, harvey Logan and Elsie Lay, robbed a Union Pacific Overland Flyer passenger train near Wilcox, wyoming. He is thought to have met up with Ed A Place in San Antonio, texas. On August 29 of 1900, casty, longabaugh and others robbed Union Pacific Train no 3 in their Tipton, wyoming of about $55,000,. Less than a month later, on September 19, 1903, or four bandits, including the Sundance Kid, struck the First National Bank in Winamucca, nevada, stealing $32,640. In December of 1900, casty posed alongside Longabaugh, harvey Logan Wilcarver and Ben Kilpatrick in Fort Worth, texas, for the now-famous Fort Worth Five photograph. The Pinkerton Detective Agency obtained a copy of the photograph and began to use it for its wanted posters.
Speaker 1:In the meantime, with the gang breaking up and filling continuous pressure from the numerous law enforcement agencies pursuing them, butch Casty, harry Longabaugh and Ed A Place fled to New York City. On February 20 of 1901, the trio departed to Buenos Aires, argentina, aboard the British steamer Hermedias. After several years, ed A Place was tired of living on the run and, at her request, longabaugh accompanied her from Valparaiso, chile, to San Francisco, california, in June of 1906,. The Sundance Kid then returned to South America where he and Butch Casty were thought to have been killed in Bolivia in November of 1908. However, another tale says the men stayed in South America for some time until they both returned to the United States and Sundance didn't die until about 1936.
Speaker 1:An interesting story, I think, if you've seen the old Butch Casty and Sundance Kid movie. That's how the movie closes, with them going out the door down in Bolivia with the Bolivian soldiers outside, and that's where they leave it hanging. So a lot of people have had this. I've heard this from other sources that the Butch Casty and Sundance Kid had lived on. I guess that's part of the Legends of the West. Again, thanks to Kathy Weiser and Alexander for this updated story.
Speaker 1:Today we want to take a look at a story from wildhistoryorg, tom Horn, a Wyoming enigma. This was by Chip Carlson. It was published on November 8th of 2014. Tried and convicted and hanged in 1903 in Cheyenne for a murder he almost certainly did not commit, tom Horn was an enigmatic range detective in the employ of ranchers who controlled large tracks of land in southeastern Wyoming and northwestern Colorado. Even today he has reputation as a killer hired to exterminate cattle wrestlers, but in his own words, his work was that of a detective to patrol the range and look for cattle that were out of place, that is, away from the customary ranges of their owners. Horn remained controversial for two reasons First, because of doubts that he actually killed 14-year-old Willie Nichols at the Iron Mountain northwest of Cheyenne on July 18, 1901. And second, because of the questionable nature of his trial.
Speaker 1:By then, he already had led an eventful life in the west that was evolving from frontier territory to a place more settled and economically developed. Born in Scotland County, missouri, in 1806, horn left home at the age of 14., according to his own accounts, and ended up in the Arizona territories by way of various livestock and stage driving jobs In Kansas and Mexico. He was smart, tough and an excellent ear for speech, quickly picking up Spanish and later some of the Apache language. While still in his teens he went to work for Al Scheiber, chief of scouts for the US Army in its campaign against the Apache. In 1886, horne escorted the Army call that captured the famed Apache leader Geronimo. For the final time In 1891, the Pickerton National Detectives Agency hired Horne to pursue bandits who had robbed the Denver and Rio Grande train near Canyon City, colorado. Over the next decade Horne did other jobs for the Pickerton's.
Speaker 1:Tom Horne came to Wyoming in the late 1880s, early 1890s. His service, apparently solicited secretly by prominent ranchers. Ranchers Aura Haley, john Cobble and Cobble's partner Frank Bosler, and probably the huge Swann Land and Cattle Company, almost certainly were among his employers. At the time. The owners of large herds of cattle were struggling to survive in a business that had, just a decade before, was making them rich. In the 1880s they ruled their range like private fiefdoms. Most had little concept of the true carrying capacity of those ranges, however, and stocked them with more cattle than the land could support. Cattle prices peaked in 1882, drawing more money to the industry and bringing more cattle to the land. Soon there was a beef glut. Prices began to fall. Yet no one could think of anything to do but acquire even more cattle, weakening the ranges further and driving prices farther down. When a bad drought in 1886 was followed by a terrible winter of 1886-1887, the cattle business was nearly wiped out. Many ranchers went out of business. Many long-standing cowboys and more recent immigrants to the territory took up homesteads and other small land claims of their own.
Speaker 1:The once powerful Wyoming Stock Growers Association found both its membership and its revenues from dues shrinking drastically. Some of the cattlemen who survived began publicly blaming all their problems on cattle thieves. Rustling was definitely a factor, but only one of the many difficulties facing ranchers who owned large tracts of land Claiming. They were forced to make an example of the thieves cattlemen Lynch Homesteader, ella Watson and Jim Averill on the Sweetwater River in 1889, when that crime went unpunished. Leading men of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association led a private army of 50 men into Johnson County in northern Wyoming in 1892 to kill suspected rustlers there. They murdered two men. But those crimes too went unpunished. Association Secretary Thomas Sturges equated viewpoint common among the association members and often repeated by newspapers under their control, when in 1886 he blamed the problem on sympathetic juries that could not convict cattle thieves.
Speaker 1:It's very difficult to get an indictment from a grand jury, even with pretty definite evidence as to the guilt of the party charged with stealing cattle. There seems to be a morbid sympathy with cattle thieves both on the bench and in the jury room. It would be impossible for the association to undertake to bring the parties referred to to justice in the first place. We have no money at our disposal. Circumstances have forced cattlemen to look to themselves for protection outside of any association.
Speaker 1:Public outcry against the Sweetwater lynching and the Johnson County invasion was widespread. After the invasion, in the elections of 1892, the cattlemen political hold on the state weakened and suddenly sheepmen too were bringing their flocks onto ranges. Cattlemen had long thought was of their own, but many cattlemen's attitude toward their difficulties appeared not to have changed much. They still thought rustlers were the cause of their woes, but they began to deal with those woes in secret. And her Tom Horn. While no fixed date was established for Horn's arrival in Wyoming. The correspondence of US Marshall Joseph P Rankin shows Horn was in the state by May of 1892 when Rankin deputized him to investigate and murder in the aftermath of the Johnson County invasion. Rankin believed Horn was working for the Pinkerton's at the same time.
Speaker 1:In 1895, horn was most likely working for private interests when he was suspected of murdering two settlers. The first, william Lewis, was an immigrant from England who settled on Horse Creek northwest of Cheyenne. In previous years Lewis had been jailed for stealing clothing and shooting a boy at a ferro game. At the time of his death Lewis was suspected of cattle thief and under a court order to refrain from butchering cattle. On July 31, as Lewis was loading a skinned beef into a wagon, three shots entered him Tom Horn was suspected and a subpoena to appear at the corners in Cheyenne.
Speaker 1:More than a dozen witnesses testified, including Horn and rancher William L Clay. Clay and Horn both testified that Horn had been in the Bates Hole south of Casper at the time of the murder. Horn was exonerated Two months later. Fred U Powell, who homestead west of Laramie Range and in Elving County, was shot and killed. Powell's hired hand, andrew Ross, was only other person on the ranch at the time. Ross testified at the inquest that he heard one shot, found his employer body and fled. Powell's wife Mary and son Billy were in Laramie at the time of the murder. But at the inquest Billy was in court and upon seeing Tom Horn cried out Mama, that's the man who killed Daddy. But the boy could make a statement like that when he was not present at the murder remains a major question. But the prosecutor in Horn's trial years later would use it against the detective. Despite Billy's sudden outburst, horn was not charged in connection with the Powell murder. But these crimes and rumors about the killings had by 1895 already solidified horns intimidating reputation.
Speaker 1:In 1914, philadelphia physician Charles Penrose, who briefly accompanied the 1892 invasion of Johnson County but left before the killing began, wrote his recollections. Penrose included a vivid description of horn as he was in 1895, as told to him by W C Billy Irvin, president of the Wyoming Stock Grows Association during the 1890s. At the time Wyoming Governor W A Richards was experienced cattle thieves on his own range in northwest Wyoming. As Penrose recounts in Irving's story, richards and Irving encountered each other walking toward the capital where both the governor and the Stock Grows Association had offices at the time. When he reached the building he said Come into my office, I want to see you. He immediately laid his troubles at the ranch before me.
Speaker 1:Irving told Penrose and we discussed the situation quite fully. He finally said that he would like to meet Tom Horn, but hesitated to have him come to the governor's office. I said Stroll in my office at the other end of the hall at three o'clock this afternoon and I will have him there At the meeting. The governor was quite nervous. So was I? Horn perfectly cool. He generally was careful of his ground. He told the governor he would either drive every rustler out of Big Horn County or take no pay other than the $350 advance to buy two horses and a pack outfit when he had finished his job to the governor's satisfaction. He should receive $5,000 because, he said in conclusion, whenever everything else fails, I have a system which never does. He placed no limit on the number of men to be gotten rid of. This almost stunned the governor. He immediately showed an inclination to shorten the interview. After Horn left. The governor said to me so that is Tom Horn, a very different man from what I expected to meet. Why he is not bad looking and quite intelligent, but a cool devil isn't he? Horn continued to work as a detective through the late 1890s into 1990.
Speaker 1:Many historians have concluded Horn murdered two suspected cattle thieves, matt Rash and Isom Dart, in Browns Park where the Colorado-Utah and Wyoming borders intersect. A foreman for the ranch who hired Horn was quite firm in the account written down 20 years later that Horn had done their crimes. The crimes received little notice in Wyoming. After the nickel murder in 1901, the county commissioners at Cheyenne hired sometimes stock detective and sometimes deputy US Marshal Joe LaFours to investigate that crime. In December 1901, lafours received the first of several letters from a former boss in Miles City, montana, that spoke of a need for a range detective to investigate wrestling in the area. Lafours forwarded the letters to Tom Horn, apparently to induce him to respond. Apparently, taking the bait, horn went from John Cobble's place in Bosler, where he had been living at the time, to Cheyenne on Saturday January 11, 1902. Probably stayed up all night drinking and accompanied LaFours to the US Marshal office on 16th Street, now 210 West Lincoln Way. The next morning LaFours secreted two people, a stenographer and a witness, behind a locked door. Over the course of a couple hours LaFours led Horn into making a series and, in terminating remarks about the nickel killing the most damaging was it was the best shot that ever made and the dirtiest trick I'd ever done. Everything was recorded and this transcribes these comments which were used as key evidence in Horn's trial.
Speaker 1:The trial, held just before the November 1902 election, was tainted by politics. Prosecutor Walter R Stroll and presiding judge Richard Scott were both up for reelection. Public interest was intense and the event received widespread newspaper coverage in Wyoming and Colorado. Horn's lawyers included some of the best known in the state, including John W Lacey, a former chief justice of the Wyoming Territory, and T Blake Kennedy, later a federal judge. But they had a client who on the stand, became his own worst enemy. Horn oversized ego apparently caused him to challenge a prosecutor and Horn's own testimony destroyed his alibi, placing him 20 miles from the site of the murder just an hour after it happened. Horn's lawyers closed by emphasizing that all evidence was circumstantial and that Horn's supposed confession was nothing but a drunken boast. Stroll and closing arguments for the prosecution, poised that Horn killed Willie Nickel in order to keep the boy from reporting on his presence in the area. The jurors accepted this motive but in all likelihood, given the anti-Horn press coverage and their poorly enforced sequestration. They made up their minds before they left the courtroom to deliberate.
Speaker 1:Horn was hanged at the Cheyenne Jail November 20th of 1903. Although he might have murdered Willie Nickel's, he probably did not. There was no direct material or testimony evidence to revive that he did commit the crime. The confession he gave to LaForest was given while he was drunk. Horn was a known boaster and neither LaForest nor any other authority tried to investigate anyone else. The Nickels, for example, had been feuding for several years with a neighbor, the Millers. A strong case can be made that Jim Miller mistook Willie Nickel's for his father Kells that morning in 1901 and shot him to settle old scores. Horn, it seemed clear, was convicted because his reputation made him an easy target for prosecution. Horn remains enigma because of the lingering controversy over whether he killed Willie Nickel and over the nature of the trial. Even more important than questions of his guilt, however, was the political shift of Wyoming shown by the fact that Horn, friend of Barons, was convicted and executed. Their power, once substantial, was on the wane. Ordinary Wyoming citizens were growing intolerant of their heavy-handed actions. Another great story from wildhistoryorg.
Speaker 2:Joining us today and we hope you enjoyed our show. As per the Code of the West, we ride for the brand and we ride for Wyoming here at let's Talk Wyoming your everything Wyoming podcast.