Let's Talk Wyoming
A podcast about Wyoming and everything we talk about including the weather, politics, energy & agriculture, sports & everything else effecting our state.
Let's Talk Wyoming
Wyoming's Weather Surge and the Controversial Chronicles of Tom Horn
What if the national election results defied all expectations? Join me, Mark Hamilton, on "Let's Talk Wyoming" as we unpack a whirlwind of topics shaping our state today. Discover how unusually warm weather and recent rains have not only quelled the elk fire but also boosted our agriculture. From the adrenaline-pumping Border War football showdown to the champions crowned at the state volleyball championships, Wyoming's sports scene is buzzing. Stay tuned for thrilling updates on the football finals at War Memorial in Laramie, and get the latest scoop on the Wyoming Cowboys' basketball and wrestling teams. This episode promises insights and excitement for every Wyomingite.
Our journey doesn't stop there. We dive into the storied and controversial past of Tom Horn, a figure whose legacy is as debated as his life was adventurous. Accused of murder and caught in the turbulent era of the cattle wars, Horn's narrative offers a glimpse into the lawlessness of the American West. Explore his transformation from a US Army scout to a Pinkerton detective, and his possible entanglements with powerful ranchers. This historical reflection prompts deeper questions about justice and myth in the Wild West, filling our episode with intrigue and thought-provoking discussion. Don't miss this compelling exploration of Wyoming's history and its lasting impact.
Good morning and welcome to let's Talk Wyoming. I'm Mark Hamilton, your host, and today we'll be looking at Wyoming weather, some Wyoming sports, we'll talk about election results, we'll also honor our veterans and we'll have an encore presentation on Tom Horn. Thanks for joining us again and and hope you enjoy the show Taking a look at Wyoming weather here. On the 11th day of November, veterans Day, wyoming weather looks good so far. We are out going to maybe hit in the high 50s, maybe low 60s today. It's unbelievable. Our weather Over the weekend it's just been gorgeous and looking forward and seeing what our weather's going to do, I see a little disturbance tomorrow and then maybe over the weekend, but nothing major is brewing out there yet. Of course, that usually happens on Thanksgiving, unfortunately, but all this weather has been nice. We got some moisture before and that did put out that elk fire, which is 100% contained, so that's good news for the area. Now we get a chance to get a little bit of a rest and other happenings affecting weather.
Speaker 1:The sugar beet harvest looks like it's been completed in the Bighorn Basin and right now most of the livestock producers are getting cattle situated for the winter. You see a lot of aftermath. Those barley. Regrowth fields are looking really good right now as there's going to be a lot of feed out in the basin. So much of that anymore grazed. Years ago nothing was used like that. Maybe beet tops were a big one at one time. But here in the state of Wyoming right now it looks pretty good. Now our neighbors to the south in Colorado. They got dumped on with snow over the weekend and I did see some amounts of a foot, two foot depending on the area of a wet snow. So it's around us. But right now Wyoming we're looking good going into the mid part of November.
Speaker 1:In sports news the Board of War is this Friday night in Fort Collins. The Wyoming Cowboys and CSU Rams will go head to head. Wyoming has been pretty dominant in the Board of War, winning the bronze boot the last few years. This year looks a little different Right now. Csu would probably be the favorite going into the game. Csu has a better record. They are last I saw they are undefeated in conference play. I don't think they've taken on Boise State. I'm going to have to check that. But the Cowboys, as we know, have one win on this season against Air Force and just been up and down and down mainly Cowboys. With that one win will try to break through. What a better way to get back on the winning column with a victory over CSU on Friday night in the border war.
Speaker 1:Also here in the state of Wyoming our fall sports are wrapping up. Right over the weekend in Casper they had the state volleyball championships. Some really good volleyball down there, got a chance to take in some Riverside Rebels games. Unfortunately they did not place this year. They played some really exciting matches and I guess there's always next year. There are some pretty dominant teams.
Speaker 1:I watched the 4A between Kelly Walsh and Laramie. They're usually in that final every year. There are some pretty dominant teams. I watched the 4A between Kelly Walsh and Laramie. They're usually in that final every year and this year Kelly Walsh prevailed in four. And the one that really surprised me Douglas beat Cody in 3A, which to me was a surprise. I thought that probably Cody would dominate that match, but Douglas has got a group of girls the same group of girls that play basketball a core and they've won so many state championships. All those girls have won a state championship every year that they've been in high school. So dominant to the Douglas.
Speaker 1:Lady Bearcats In 2A Bighorn. Of course Bighorn's kind of a sports machine over there. Their football team is in the finals this weekend down at Laramie at War Memorial as they'll take on Cokeville. But the Bighorn Lady Rams came out on top in 1A Southeast. They played the Riverside Rebels first round. It went five sets and they pulled that out 16-14. But they did come through and win the championships. So congratulations to all those volleyball players Just love volleyball. Great sport to watch Football.
Speaker 1:As I said, they're in their final weekend coming up. They'll all be playing down in Laramie at War Memorial. There'll be some good action in all the classes. I would say probably Sheridan and Star Valley are my two favorites. Now. That wouldn't even be a good betting odds right now the way they've been dominating. So Bighorn is another one. I'd like to see Burlington Little Snake that's going to be an exciting one and six-man football. So we'll keep an eye on it and see what ends up happening here in the state of Wyoming with our fall sports, winter sports will start practicing right about Thanksgiving time. Games will start back up in December. The same with the Wyoming Cowboys. As I forgot to mention, the basketball and wrestling teams are at it. They have an outstanding wrestling program down there for anybody that's a wrestling fan. The basketball teams have started some action early. They've been pretty dominant in their games, except I guess the Cowgirls did lose to CU at home the other night. But expect good things out of both teams this year. We'll keep an eye on them.
Speaker 1:In other news, in national news, of course, everybody made it through the week last week with the election. It was a lot of questions going into that election. What would happen, and it was just surprised a lot of people. The decisive victory that President Trump attained with winning the Electoral College and also the popular vote by 5 million. People are starting to wonder. Look at the vote totals through the years, the Electoral College and also the popular vote by 5 million. People are starting to wonder. Look at the vote totals through the years and where the 14 million people came from that voted for Joe Biden with his high numbers in 2020, or where did they disappear to? Where did they go, or were they even there? Did they go or were they even there? It's kind of a question mark going on. But President Trump is coming out with sounds like a lot of good things. The stock market likes it. A lot of people are in favor. Of course you're going to have to go up against the bureaucracy in Washington DC. Washington DC I noticed in the voting that Washington DC was pretty much 100% Democratic and I figured that would be the case. So Donald Trump we'll see how he does. He's got a couple of months before inauguration and we'll see what happens here in the state of Wyoming.
Speaker 1:No real big surprises here locally. We did have our school board election I talked about previously in our county commissioner election and my two favorites that got in for the school board were, I hope, will do some good work. One incumbent was voted out and the other incumbent just snuck by. On that fourth spot there were four seats open, so I was hoping to get new people in there. I always say term limits on everything. Get people out of there. County Commissioner there was a lot of probably inside politics going on there, but the outside candidate everybody was in agreement and won the election. So we have some new blood and we'll have a new direction on the county commissioners group coming up in 2024.
Speaker 1:Today we'd like to recognize and remember coming up this week on the 11th day of the month of November is Veterans Day and how important that day is for our country. We want to remember all those veterans that had the ultimate sacrifice, that went away and defended our country and they didn't come back. And here we are. We're in an election week and we have a lot of things going on in our country right now, and I think it's really important for people to reflect back on Veterans Day and how many people stepped up and went and served at a time when we definitely needed to serve. They didn't complain, they went and did the duty that they were given. And so just remember that this week, as you're sitting there wondering about what is going on and maybe complaining about stuff and such that's going on, but remember these gentlemen and these ladies gave their lives for our country so we'd have the right to vote, we'd have the right to free speech, and how important that is as our country continues on through some difficult times. But remember the sacrifice all these great Americans made. Thank you ¶¶.
Speaker 1:Today we want to take a look at a story from wildhistoryorg Tom Horn, a Wyoming Enigma, and 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 and employee of ranchers who controlled large tracts of land in southeastern Wyoming and northwestern Colorado. Even today he has a reputation as a killer hired to exterminate cattle rustlers, 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.
Speaker 1:Horne 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. 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, warren 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 in 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, horn escorted the army column that captured the famed Apache leader Geronimo for the final time. In 1891, the Pickerton National Detective Agency hired Horn to pursue bandits who had robbed the Denver and Rio Grande train near Canyon City, colorado. Over the next decade Horn did other jobs for the Pickertons.
Speaker 1:Tom Horn came to Wyoming in the late 1880s, early 1890s. His service, apparently solicited secretly by prominent ranchers ranchers Ora Haley, john Coble and Coble's partner Frank Bosler, and probably the huge Swan 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. Hustling 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.
Speaker 1:Association Secretary Thomas Sturgis echoed a viewpoint common among the association members an offer repeated by newspapers under their control when in 1886, he blamed the problem on sympathetic juries that could not convict cattle thieves. 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 sheep men too were bringing their flocks onto range, as cattlemen had long thought was of their own. But many cattlemen's attitude toward their difficulty 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. Enter Tom Horn. While no fixed date was established for Horn's arrival in Wyoming, the correspondence of US Marshal Joseph P Rankin shows Horne was in the state by May of 1892 when Rankin deputized him to investigate a murder in the aftermath of the Johnson County invasion. Rankin believed Horne was working for the Pinkertons.
Speaker 1:At the same time, in 1895, horne 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 cheating a boy at a faro 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 31st, as Lewis was loading a skinned beef into a wagon, three shots entered him. Tom Horn was suspected in a subpoena to appear at the coroner's request 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 Elvin County, was shot and killed. Powell's hired hand, andrew Ross, was the 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. That 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 of other killings had by 1895 already solidified Horn's 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 WC Billy Irvin, president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association during the 1890s. At the time Wyoming Governor WA Richards was experiencing cattle thieves on his own range in northwest Wyoming. 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 Capitol where both the governor and the Stock Growers 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 genuinely was careful of his ground. He told the governor he would either drive every rustler out of Bighorn County or take no pay other than the $350 advance to buy two horses and a pack outfit. When he had finished the 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?
Speaker 1:Horn continued to work as a detective through the late 1890s, 1990s into 1990, many historians have included. Horn murdered two suspected cattle thieves, matt Rash and Isom Dart, in Browns Park where the Colorado-Utah-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 in Cheyenne hired sometimes stock detective and sometimes deputy US Marshal Joe LaForge to investigate that crime. In December 1901, laforge 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 rustling in the area. Laforest forwarded the letters to Tom Horn, apparently to induce him to respond.
Speaker 1: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 LaForest to the US Marshal office on 16th Street, now 210 West Lincoln Way. The next morning LaForest secreted two people, a stenographer and a witness, behind a locked door. Over the course of a couple hours LaForest led Horn into making a series of incriminating 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 transcribed these comments, which were used as key evidence in Horne'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 re-election. 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's oversized ego apparently caused him to challenge the 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. In 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:Horne was hanged at the Cheyenne Jail November 20th of 1903. Although he might have murdered Willie Nichols, he probably did not. There was no direct material or testimony evidence to provide 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 Nichols, for example, had been feuding for several years with a neighbor, the Millers. A strong case can be made that Jim Miller mistook Willie Nichols 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 an enigma because of the lingering controversy over whether he killed Willie Nichols 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 Barron's, was convicted and executed. Their power, once substantial, was on the wane. Ordinary Wyoming citizens were growing intolerant of their heavy-handed actions.
Speaker 1:Another great story from wildhistoryorg. If you remember, in this story they talked about a couple that were murdered by these Barons in more or less a cover-up, and that was a story we had earlier about Cattle Kate and her husband. So if you'd like to go back to that episode and you can take another, listen to the story about Cattle Kate, which ties directly into this Tom Horne story, to this Tom Horne story. Thanks for joining us today and we hope you enjoy our podcast. As per the code of the West, we ride for the brand and we ride for Wyoming. We'll be right back. © BF-WATCH TV 2021 you.
