Wyoming's Seasonal Shifts Sporting Trials and a Literary Legend Remembered

As the Wyoming winds whisper tales of changing seasons, we find ourselves wrapped in the warmth of a March that feels more like a prelude to summer. Weather fluctuations aside, the real storm was on the courts, where the Wyoming Cowboys and Cowgirls faced their own challenges, triggering a mix of heartache and hope within our sporting community. My own tale of seasonal shifts took a personal turn with Luke, my furry companion, whose recent health scare reminded me of the preciousness of each moment we share with our loved ones. We'll toast to belated St. Patrick's Day memories and look toward the Easter horizon, weaving together the threads of community, celebration, and the unbreakable spirit that defines us.

Saddle up for a ride into the past as we honor the indomitable Carolyn Lockhart, a woman whose ink and initiative left an indelible mark on the soul of Cody, Wyoming. Lockhart's legacy, from her vivid portrayals of the Old West in her writings to her instrumental role in founding the Cody Stampede, embodies the spirit of an era that continues to captivate the heart of America. Her story is one of determination and passion, a journey through a life that carved out a legacy as enduring as the rugged landscapes she so cherished. Join us as we honor the memory of a woman whose vision helped shape the cultural heritage of the West, and whose influence still echoes in the hoofbeats of the Stampede.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:22

Good morning and welcome to let's Talk Wyoming. I'm Mark Hamilton, your host. We'll take a quick look at Wyoming weather. We'll have a little bit of potpourri, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. We'll talk about Yellowstone Park, our favorite subject, and also we'll talk about Carolyn Lockhart, a legend in Cody, wyoming. Thanks for joining us and we hope you enjoy the show.

Speaker 1: 1:03

Take a look at Wyoming weather here on the 19th day of March, supposed to have 60 degree weather, the next few days Just been warm. Over the weekend we had a little bit of cool weather, but it was still enjoyable. I know the southern part of Wyoming got snowed. On Cheyenne Wyoming got 8 inches of snow and of course that I-80 corridor was closed as usual. Colorado got buried with snow, but it seemed to just totally bypass us. Right now don't see much. Maybe a little disturbance on Sunday and Monday, but nothing right now. That looks too extreme and then it looks like our March temperatures will continue on. So it's getting to that point Starting to do some of the yard work and work out there. It's just that nice. Just really need a nice rainstorm. Right now. The grass is getting a little bit dry and it's just a little bit cool yet to get the sprinklers going, but again Wyoming weather here in March. What does April have in store for us Today? In a little bit of this, a little bit of that.

Speaker 1: 2:12

On Cowboy Sports both the Wyoming Cowboys and the Cowgirls in the Mountain West Conference went one and done, unfortunately. Today I noticed that the Cowgirls have been selected again for the WNIT. Of course they missed out on the big dance, but it gives them an opportunity to play some basketball. Their schedule is upcoming. They have a bye in the first round and we'll see how they do with that. The men's team is done and I guess we'll all kind of wait to see how many players will be back for the Cowboys next year.

Speaker 1: 2:43

Also a pet update after the Cowboys news had to take my Luke back up to Billings, back up to the surgeon. He'd had a little bit of a setback. Went up last Thursday with him, took x-rays, figuring might have knocked the screw loose or something in his leg. Everything came back good. Everything was still in place. He had started about a week earlier. Out of the blue he had been using his leg or putting pressure on it. Now he doesn't want to. He lifts it up all the time. So we're treating him for additional pain antibiotics in case there's some type of an infection, seen a little bit of an improvement but he still isn't back to where he needs to be. So we'll continue on with that and I guess we do a lot of things for our dogs and our animals and for all those Irishmen out there.

Speaker 1: 3:26

We want to wish you a belated Happy St Patrick's Day. Hope that you had a chance to drink some green beer or whatever you partake for your St Patrick's Day a little corned beef and cabbage. And we're in that time of the year. We are at Palm Sunday. Next weekend is Easter Sunday a great celebration. Christ arising again from the dead had a Palm Sunday. Next weekend is Easter Sunday, a great celebration. Christ is rising again from the dead. Had a Palm Sunday service, a cantata, easter cantata at our local church. That was very well done by our choir with a lot of other additions from other churches in the community. Enjoy the music and the talent that people have. But again it's that Easter time of the year and we'll talk more about Easter next week.

Speaker 1: 4:12

Today we want to talk about the Yellowstone tragedy, and this is from Charles M Skinner from 1896. Although the Indians feared the geyser basins of the upper Yellowstone country, believing the hissing and thundering to be voices of evil spirits. They regarded the mountains at the head of the river as the crest of the world, and who so gained their summit could see the happy hunting grounds below brightened with the homes of the blessed they loved in this land in which their fathers had hunted. And when they were driven back from the settlements, the crows took refuge in what is now Yellowstone Park. Even here, the soldiers pursued them, intent on avenging acts that the red men had committed, while suffering under the sting of tyranny and wrong.

Speaker 1: 5:00

A mere remnant of the fugitive band gathered at the head of the mighty rift in the earth known as the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, a remnant that had succeeded in escaping the bullet of the soldiery. And with Spartan courage, they resolved to die rather than be taken and carried away to pine in a distant prison. They built their raft and laced it on the river at the foot of the upper fall, and for a few days they enjoyed the plenty and peace that were their privileges in the former times. A short-lived peace, however. For one morning they are aroused by the crack of rifles.

Speaker 1: 5:36

The troops are upon them. Boarding their rafts, they thrust it towards the middle of the stream, perhaps with the idea of gaining the opposite shore. But if such is their intent, it is swarmed by the rapidity of the current. A few among them have guns that they discharge with slight effects at the troops who stand wandering on the shore. The soldiers forbear to fire and watch, with something like dread, the descent of the raft as it passes into the current and with many a turn and pitch whirls on faster and faster. The death song rises triumphantly above the lash of the waves and that distance. But awful booming that is to be heard in the canyon. Every red man has his face turned toward the foe with a look of defiance, and the tones of death chant have them in something of mockery, no less than hate and vaunting. The raft is now between the jaws of rock that yawns so hungrily. Beyond and below are vast walls shelving toward the floor of the gulf, a thousand feet beneath their brilliant colors, shining in the sun of the morning that sheds as peaceful light on wood and hill, as if there were no such thing as brother hunting brother in this free land of ours. The raft is galloping through the foam like a racehorse and, hardened as the soldiers are, they cannot repress a shudder as they see the fate that the savages have chosen for themselves. Now the brink is reached, the raft tips toward the gulf and, with a cry of triumph, the red men are launched over the cataract into the bellowing chasm where the mists weep forever on the rocks and mosses.

Speaker 1: 7:19

What a story and how it reflected what happened to the Native Americans here in the American West. September is Women's History Month and we'd like to share an article from wildhistoryorg by John Clayton, on a woman in Wyoming's history the Old West female champion, caroline Lockhart, and Wyoming's cowboy heritage. The living room of Caroline Lockhart's house in downtown Cody boasts mementos of western adventures. A bare-skinned rug covered the floor, a tame wildcat prowled the premises, on the wall hung a portrait of Sourdough Sam, the old outfitter who had accompanied Lockhart when she first became the first woman to cross Swift Current Pass in what is now Glacier National Park.

Speaker 1: 8:09

On the evening of April 20, 1920, in what is now Glacier National Park On the evening of April 20, 1920, six of Cody's leading citizens gathered in the room. These include Ernest J Goldpert Sr, an ambitious young attorney. Irving H Larry Larman, a Princeton-educated owner of a prominent dude ranch, sid Eldridge, editor of the Park County Enterprise, a newspaper founded by William F Buffalo Bill, Cody himself and Clarence Williams and William Lower, who helped run the town's small 4th of July celebration. And there was Lockhart, a nationally selling novelist with a flair for the publicity. In the three years since the death of Buffalo Bill, she had become the biggest celebrity in Cody. In fact, she had arguably attained her goal of becoming the best-known woman west of the Mississippi, although she is little known today.

Speaker 1: 8:58

1920 marked perhaps the peak of Walkart's fame. Her novels the Fighting Shepherdess and the man from Bitter Roots had been made into major movies. She had recently completed a stint as a celebrity journalist at the Denver Post, a newspaper with a region-wide circulation, and she had just returned from Hollywood where she met with her dashing actor-producer, douglas Fairbanks, about adapting their newly completed novel the Dude Wrangler. She was almost 50 years old. She was born February 24th of 1871 in Eagle Point, illinois, but heavy blonde hair and a shapely figure made her look decades younger. Many men desired her and, though she never married, she often juggled multiple boyfriends. This offended some conservative Kodiites, along with the fact that she drank when three-quarters of the town had voted for Prohibition and aiming her biting, sometimes cruel wit against many enemies. She was, in short, a controversial figure, but a woman with a passion, gumption and money to get things done.

Speaker 1: 10:03

The folks at this meeting wanted to organize a new celebration, something bigger than the town had ever known. It would be more than a Fourth of July party, more than a rodeo, more than a street dance. It would be an event to entertain tourists driving the newly opened road to Yellowstone National Park and lure visitors to area dude ranches. Most importantly, it would be an event to bring back the old west. The first 20 years of the 20th century had been a remarkable, forward-looking time.

Speaker 1: 10:31

In Wyoming and across the West, homesteaders started thousands of new dryland farms, agricultural prices were high and droughts. Rare. Oil replaced gold and silver as a resource that could create both booms and boom towns. Railroads continued to expand and were increasingly complemented by paved automobile roads. Electricity, telephones and motion pictures made life increasingly comfortable and made the totems of bygone eras seem irrelevant. Who needed horses? Why would anybody care about Crow Indians? Why should Wyoming pay more than a cursory respect to Buffalo Bill, whose old triumphs have since been tarnished by a divorce and financial ruins? There is no point in looking back when the future looks so bright. The western frontier, like the midwestern frontier before it, would soon be chock full of farms and industry.

Speaker 1: 11:25

But Lockhart was more sentimental. She had a passion for the old open-range cattle ranches before they had been fenced into dryland farms. She admired the old characters who had been tough enough to live through those raw days and she absolutely loved horses. And since, lockhart's passion marks those of the other early Western novelists such as Owen Wister from the Virginian or Zane Grey, writers of the Purple Sage. But there were two key differences. First, two other writers lived full-time in the West. Thus their depictions were shaped by the romantic illusions of what Easterners wanted the West to represent. Walkart, quite a romantic herself, had lived in Cody since 1904. Where other writers nostalgically set most of their tales of cowboys and rustlers in the old west in the 1880s, lockhart's novels were always set in contemporary times. It was as if she was saying to the world but especially Wyoming, look, we can still live in such a paradise.

Speaker 1: 12:27

The folks meeting at Lockhart's house decided to call their event the Cody Stampede. They didn't want to include rodeo in the title because that sounded like a dude word and besides, we did not know how to pronounce it. Lockhart later joked they elected Lockhart the organization's president and sent out to raise funds. They also sought to attract top rodeo contestants, including one of Lockhart's boyfriends champion bulldogger Pinky Guess, the including one of Lockhart's boyfriend's champion bulldogger Pinky Guess. The following week Lockhart hosted another meeting with life-changing results. This one led to her purchase, with four partners, of the enterprise. She quickly took control and used the newspaper to promote the Stampede. The combination proved a huge success, both for the town of Cody and Lockhart personally.

Speaker 1: 13:12

The Stampede grew through its early years. Its fundraising ball held in late fall was also a success, especially after Lockhart invited some Crow Indians to appear in traditional dress. People had renewed fascination for Indians who were rarely seen in Cody except for such invitation. The fascination started expanding to other aspects of the frontier. In contrast to the century's first two decades, the early 20s in Wyoming were a difficult time economically, with trout, plummeting agricultural prices and closing banks. Suddenly, the argument of Lockhart and her cohorts to capitalize on Wyoming's unique cowboy heritage rather than letting the state develop into a place just like anywhere else became increasingly persuasive. Lockhart next proposed a gigantic statue of Buffalo Bill to be sculpted by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, one of the country's most famous artists. The townspeople supported her, though they couldn't afford Whitney, so Lockhart pestered the sculptor until Whitney agreed to make both the statue and raise the required funds. Whitney's fundraising campaign, conducted among New York City's wealthiest classes and top publications, did much to establish Buffalo Bill's nationwide reputation.

Speaker 1: 14:30

Though Lockhart at first loved this new life at the helm of changing Cody society, after a few years she's tired of it. One problem was that she failed to grasp the effect she was having. It's easy to see today as the Cody Stampede ranks with Cheyenne Frontier Days and the Pendulum Oregon Roundup among the nation's premier rodeos, and as the Buffalo Bill Historical Center and dozens of Old West-themed business marked Cody as a mecca of American frontier nostalgia, with a profound impact across the West. Nevertheless, as Stampede president, lockhart was caught up in day-to-day frustrations. She felt, for example, that local merchants didn't provide enough support to an event that brought them so much business. She had similar disappointments as enterprise editor and owner. Her many unpopular political positions made enemies and dampened profits, and she felt constricted by the paper's weekly routine. She had stopped writing novels and too often only got to ride her horse on the four blocks from home to the office. Through her novels, the Stampede, the Cody Enterprise Paper and her work memorializing William F Buffalo Bill Cody Lockhart made an impact on her town and the West in general. But she did it all because she loved the Old West, especially horses, and in 1925, she retired to her homestead, her very own ranch north of Lovell.

Speaker 1: 15:59

Lockhart had tried to recreate the Old West in her imagination through her novels. Then she tried to recreate it in an entire community through the Stampede. But she had done all this because she wanted to live herself on an old West cattle ranch. Finally, in 1925, she realized that the best way to do this was to homestead a spread of her own. She found the most remote spot she could across the Montana line north of Lovell, on a shelf between the Prior Mountains and the Bighorn Canyon. There she established the L Slash Hart Ranch and pursued her lifelong quest, hidden largely from public view.

Speaker 1: 16:39

In 1950, lockhart decided at age 79 and her then-boyfriend, age 77, were too old to run a ranch so she sold it and moved back to Cody where she lived in obscurity. She bought one of the first television sets in town, invited neighborhood children over to watch Hop Along Cassidy, a show based on a set of novels that in 1910, had been considered inferior to her own. There was no funeral for Lockhart after she died on July 25, 1962. For Lockhart after she died on July 25, 1962. Instead, she had requested that her ashes be scattered over the most convenient peak. Just a rather interesting story and the impact that Lockhart had on the state of Wyoming and on the community of Cody and where it's grown to now and the Stampede continues on A lady that definitely was part of Wyoming history. Thanks for joining us today and we hope you enjoy our podcast. No-transcript.