Good morning and welcome to Let's Talk Wyoming. I'm Mark Hamilton, your host, and today we'll be taking a look at a little bit of Wyoming weather and some Wyoming sports. Also, we'll talk about JM, the town, and finally Big Nose George. Thanks for joining us today, and we hope you enjoyed the pod. It's upon us, and two more months left in 2025. Can you believe that? Today here in Hot Springs County, it's 65 degrees this afternoon. We've had the last couple days that have been gorgeous. All weekend long was really nice. I'm really enjoying this fall weather. I'm not enjoying the daylight savings time. It was great to fall back an hour, but the afternoons are brutal. Getting up early and looking at the clock, saying, Why am I up at this hour? But I think everybody faces it, making that change. But where we're at fast as time is flying. So here in Wyoming, nothing to complain about. Everything is good, a little wind, some high winds, but we can bear those as long as there's no snow and cold in them. Of course, that's right around the corner. It causes a little bit of havoc on the highways. I made another trip down south and coming on I-25 and on Sunday. And it seems like Sunday, every Sunday that I've been on that, that the winds are high, I saw a person pulling a small trailer, kind of an older style camper trailer, and it was going about 40 miles an hour. Sorry for that guy, but again, he should have waited it out like a lot of people have. So everything going good right now. Other news in the area, Hot Springs County and in the Bighorn Basin, always talk about the beet harvest, the sugar beet harvest, and uh farmers are finishing that up. A lot of them are done, and a few of them have a little bit, and they probably are done by now. So that is done. Uh now it's that time of year to start getting ready for next year. And nowadays there's just so much regrowth on that barley that uh they put cattle on, so there's a lot of cattle out in the field, and this type of weather is great. There's been other years where that regrowth you'll get that early snow and ice and it'll cover it up, and it's pretty hard for those cattle to get to. But right now, it's gorgeous here in the uh state. Other activities are really going well. I've talked about in our sports before, about here in Hot Springs County, the Thermopolis Bobcats were in the first round of the playoff. They hosted a game on Friday night against the Burns Bronx, and they came out victorious in that game. Beat him pretty decisively. Of course, we had our firework issue that I mentioned in the last episode about causing a little bit of problem to some of the people in the community, but that has finally been smoothed out. And I'm gonna say that there was a lot of explosions. The Bobcat scored 43 points, but they have a tall order on Friday afternoon at 2 p.m. as they make the trip across the Bighorn Mountains to go over and play Bighorn. Bighorn is the number one team coming in, and they've just been a juggernaut. Them and uh Sheridan, the Sheridan Bronx. Last I heard that Sheridan was in the 50 straight game range. They just reload. They don't seem to have any type of a drop-up. I keep waiting for the day it'll happen. And I think a lot of the players that can't make it on the Sheridan team end up going up to Bighorn, but should be a tough test for the Bobcats. But you know, as high school sports, anything can happen. And we'll see on Tuesday or Tuesday, I don't know, it is Tuesday. We'll see on Friday, two o'clock. It looks like the weather will be just absolutely beautiful for that game. Talk about beautiful weather. Unfortunately, the Cowboys did lost that game. Same old story, offense just couldn't score, and defense played well, but if you're not scoring points, it's pretty hard to defense is having to do a lot. So the Cowboys are back in the losing weight. The offensive coordinator change just didn't flip a switch and suddenly the Cowboys are scoring at will. So Cowboys will continue on. The one big event here in the state of Wyoming, I think it's on November 22nd. Down in Laramie, they'll be retiring Josh Allen's number. I think he'll be in inducted into the Hall of Fame. If I'm not 100% right on that, but I know that they'll be retiring his number. And he will be at the game. That was his bye week that he'd come to the to Laramie and and take part in this. And that has been sold out. That game has, and so I just keep my fingers crossed that the weather will hold out so they can get that taken care of. Nothing would be worse. Suddenly, a lot of bad weather for that game for Josh Allen's tribute in Laramie, Wyoming. In other sports, volleyball. I talked a lot about the Riverside Lady Rebels volleyball team. They've been a really top 1A volleyball team for quite a few years. Well, this year had a little trouble throughout the year. Had a very good year, but it just wasn't what they're used to. They dropped out in the regionals last weekend in Lander, and so they did not make it to state. They lost on the loser out game on Saturday morning to Dubois. That was kind of an interesting story. I didn't know about it by talking to people down at Lander on Friday. The coach at Du Boys, if I'm not wrong, but this is what I was told, is battling breast cancer. So the team is kind of more or less playing these games for their coach. And so they ended the season for the Riverside Lady Rebels. And they've been going to state for quite a while. But you know, this is what high school athletics are about. It's uh about what happens in life. Sometimes in life, we all know it doesn't happen. Sometimes what we expect doesn't happen. We've got to keep putting out a lot of effort, but we gotta get up t tomorrow and start over and have at it. So a big learning lesson. And finally, I'd be remiss not to talk about the government shutdown. I never thought that it would last this long. I am not being impacted at all. I'm lucky enough um by this shutdown. I don't get any type of checks from the government or have any uh issues there, but um I thought maybe this would be a couple weeks and it's starting to drag on and I know people are it's getting tough for a lot of people out there, and I guess it's the time we have to kind of band together to try to help each other until our government can figure out what they're what's gonna happen. But um so we always want to remember these people that are facing some hardships that unfortunately some of them haven't had to face before and and it puts a lot of people in a bad way, especially coming with Thanksgiving, three weeks out and Christmas right around the corner, and it's that time of year where it's starting to get cold and and heating bills and other issues and this costs are going through the roof. So I just want to remember those people and just hope that somehow we can come together as a country and figure this out. Get ourselves back together and and start doing something positive in the country. But uh my thoughts go out to all the people that are facing those shortfalls. Today we'll be looking at JM barely holding on. JM Wyoming began along a watering hole on the old Texas Trail that ran north-south through Goshen County. The land around the town site was originally claimed by James Moore, a former Pony Express rider and rancher in 1860. By 1869, Moore had the second largest cattle ranch in Wyoming Territory under the brand J. Rolling M. A small stream on his land was named J. M. Creek. Moore died in 1873, but his brand continued to live on. On February 13, 1899, a post office was established on JM Creek, a short distance from the future site of the present town of JM. The postmaster was Uncle Jack Hargraves, and the post office went by the name of Hargraves. Uncle Jack was an unconventional person with decided opinions of his own. The story goes that there came a time when the U.S. Postal Inspector called on Uncle Jack and their opinions strongly clashed. After that, Uncle Jack informed the inspector that he could pack up his post office and get out, which is exactly what the gentleman did. Since the materials and supplies of the post office were all contained in a large wooden box, packing up and getting out was not a very difficult task. This left the ranchers and settlers with no post office nearer than the Rawhide Butte Station or Fort Laramie for the next ten years. In 1905, Silas Harris and his three sons, Art, Lake, and Frank from Wisconsin, took over the JM Cattle Company. Three years later, in 1908, Silas Harris sent a request to Washington, D.C. to have a post office in the area again. They replied that the post office would be established so the family would bring the mail from the Rawhide Butte Station to JM Ranch every other day for 90 days. Silas's son, Lake Harris, made the 20-mile trip for the three months it was required. Upon receiving approval for the post office, the equipment was set up in a bunkhouse at the ranch. On February 10th, 1909, Elizabeth Thornton, a friend of the Harris family, was appointed postmistress. In addition to the post office, the Harris family maintained a small general store on the JM Ranch. The Silas Harris Company store sold general merchandise to area farmers and ranchers, provided rudimentary banking services, bought farm produce, and became a gathering place for homesteaders and cowboys alike. In 1912, 21-year-old Lake C. Harris filed for land under their Homestead Act on an empty stretch of prairie along Rawhead Creek. He first built his own house and then operated feed store in the ranch bunkhouse, which soon became a general store. When he was appointed postmaster in 1914, the post offices moved to his store. In addition to homesteading, Harris immediately began establishing a town to support area ranchers. He called the new town site JM after Jim Moore's JM Ranch. A weekly newspaper called the JM Sentinel and the Fort Laramie News ran from 1917 to 1921. The Harris General Store was moved from the ranch to the new town site in 1918. Other businesses were also established, including a Yumberyard and a blacksmith shop. The Farmer State Bank opened in 1920 and Shout's Garage opened in 1925. Through the 1920s and 30s, the town became a regional center for commerce in northern Goshen County. Afterwards, however, it began to decline as the automobile made it easier for residents to travel to larger towns like Lusk, Lingle, and Torrington. In 1931, Lake Harris was again appointed postmaster, a position he held until 1959 when he retired. In 1935, Lake Harris established the JM Stone Company, making tombstones and building products from the stone quarry around the Rawhide Buttes. The Farmer State Bank sold out in 1945 and Shout's Garage closed the same year. However, the following year, the garage would reopen as Wolf's Repair, a business that lasted until 1960. The general store lasted until the late 1970s. Lake Harris died in 1983 at the age of 96. At about the same time, most of the remaining residents gradually moved to more modern accommodations scattered around the edge of town, eventually leaving the old historic center of town abandoned for the most part. Never incorporated, the streets of JM were never paved or graveled. There were never sidewalks, curbs, or gutter, and there were no municipal organizations or community center. At its largest, JM hosted more than 200 residents. The JM Historical District was listed on the National Register of Historical Places in 1984. The historical district is a tightly knit commercial center with all the buildings within a block of each other. The buildings constructed with materials at hand display a consistent architectural design. The buildings are wood framed with shiplap siding and some concrete walls and foundations. They have simple, functional doors, windows, and gabled roofs, and they are small one or two stories constructed to serve the needs at hand. A few modern structures are scattered about the fringes, housing the few remaining residents. The district, looking much like it did in 1910 and 1920, remains in the hands of the Lake Harris heirs. The buildings of the historic district include the Lumber Yard. This is an unusual commercial structure with a two and a half story false front at the east end, an arch connecting wall, and gabled warehouse that creates a courtyard in between, which was two shed type outbuildings. This building was first called the JM Store and then the general store. In 1917, it housed the grocery, hardware, drugstore, livestock feed, and lumber yard. The Stone Company, a two-story gabled brick structure, was with two large shed roof wings flanking the central structure. The concrete wings are on one story and may have functioned as a living quarter on the east and storage on the right. Lloyd Damro and Oscar Bradbury opened a business called JM, Onyx, and Jam Company. Through the years, it was also known as the Wyoming Marble and Stone Inc and JM Stone Shop. They made headstones, fireplace mantles, tabletops, paperweights, salt and pepper shakers, ashtrays, candlestick holders, and jewelry. The bank in JM was a one-story wood frame, shiplap commercial building that has concrete foundation and a flat roof. Two oversized fixed windows are flanking the central front door with concrete sills and plain surroundings. There is a small one-story frame garage with a gable tin roof and original double doors and back. Farmer State Bank opened for business in 1920. In 1933, after a month-long run on American banks, President Franklin Roosevelt temporarily shut down banks on March 6th, and they weren't allowed to reopen until March 13th. The Farmer State Bank and JM did not receive word of this, so it stayed open. The bank was robbed in 1935. The bank was sold to the first national bank of Torrington in 1945, but it never reopened. At one point, the post office was located in the front corner of the bank building. And there's also a house still in JM. There's a very simple one-story frame house on a concrete foundation. There was also the restaurant feed store post office general store. This multipurpose building consisted of two and a half story gabled roof frame buildings connected by a single-story flat roof link. The left side of the structure, built in 1935, replaced the grocery store that was originally in the Lake's home. People were allowed to charge their groceries and dry goods. The hall above this store was used for Sunday school, church meetings, and as an apartment. The right side of the building, also called JM Hardware, it also had a soda fountain and gas pumps. Town meetings, social, and even rifle practices were held in the hall above the store. Located between the grocery and hardware store was a cream station that at one time shipped out more cream than any other station in Wyoming. There also was a repair garage, and this was a one-story wood frame building with a front gable overhanging to create a sheltered drive-thru. James Schoutz was the first proprietor from 1928 to 1945. 1928 to 1945, calling it Shoutz Garage, from 1946 to 1960, it was called Wolf's Repair. A black shop was located in the rear. There also is a gas station, which was a one-story gabled wooden frame and shiplap structure. The gable end is extended to create a drive-thru carport. And also, the Lake Harris House was an irregular mass one and two-story wood framed house. There are three interior brick chimneys and two porches, and the house is built over the original dugout with an owl wall still in evidence. Today JM is called home to about 15 people. A non-denominational church and a post office remain open. JM is located 23 miles south of Lusk, Wyoming, just off Highway 85. And it might be an interesting place to stop by and visit. We want to thank Kathy Alexander of the Legends of America for this story. Today we're going to take a look at a character Big Nose George. And in this article from Lori Van Pelt from wildhistory.org, Big George A Grizzly Frontier Tale Big Nose George. A phrase walk in my shoes takes on chilling connotations when the shoes are made of human skin. And although the creation of such a pair sounds so gruesome to be unbelievable, the shoes exist and are displayed at the Carbon County Museum in Rollins, Wyoming, where additional items reveal more of the story of this mysterious outlaw big nose George Parrot. All's physician John Osborne had the shoes made from Parrot skin after his march twenty second, eighteen eighty one lynching and wore them to his eighteen ninety three inaugural as Wyoming Governor. Osbourne later served as a director in the Rollins National Bank and displayed the shoes in a glass case in the front lobby there. What led George Parrot to such a grisly inn? Even before he died, he was known for frontier crimes. He had been arrested for horse thief, tried by Justice of the Peace, and acquitted. He was also believed to be have kept his headquarters in the hole in the wall country, west of present day KC, Wyoming, with a number of other outlaws of the time. His name perhaps was a reference to his large, beak like nose. He developed a reputation for stealing from travelers on stagecoaches and then progressed to train robberies. In August of eighteen seventy eight, Big Nose George and his gang, which included Dutch Charlie Burris, planned a theft from the Union Pacific Railroad pay car near Como, Wyoming, east of Medicine Bow. At that time, the UPR carried cash via the pay car monthly for its own company payroll. The bandits loosened a spike in the rail, wrapped it with telegraph wire, and hid in the sagebrush, planning to tug the spike and dislodge the rail to derail the train so they could ascond with the money. But sharp eyed railroad employees spotted the wobbly spike, repaired the damage, and alerted Lawman before the train arrived. Big nosed George and his men fled to Rattlesnake Canyon at the base of Elk Mountain, about twenty five miles southwest of the crime. Carbon County Sheriff Deputy Robert Whittlefield and the Union Pacific detective Henry Tip Vincent tracked him there. The outlaws killed them. The murders occurred august nineteenth, eighteen seventy eight. Big Nose George and his gang were later reported to have stolen several thousand dollars in cash from the Miles City, Montana Territory merchant named Conn when in the spring of eighteen seventy nine Conn accompanied the military paymaster wagon train from nearby Fort Keogh to Bismarck, Dakota Territory. Conn was traveling to the east on a purchasing errand. The soldiers were headed to the Northern Pacific Railroad to refunds to be distributed at the fort. The outlaws eluded capture for a while, but it appears Dutch Charlie was caught early in eighteen seventy nine. Tensions ran high in southern Wyoming along the Union Pacific Railroad. People were incessed about the murder of the lawman. On july twenty third, Charlie was being transported from Laramie to Rollins for trial when the locomotives stopped for coal and water at Carbon. There a mob board the train, dragged him off, and hanged him on a telegraph pole. He was not considered worthy of burial in the Carbon Cemetery, where Deputy Whittlefield was laid to rest. Dutch Charlie's unmarked grave is located somewhere in the sagebrush outside the cemetery boundaries. One account indicates the criminals apparently bragged in Mile City bars about their recent successful exploits, including the Wyoming territorial murders. Someone wired Carbon County Sheriff James Rankin, who headed to Montana in July of eighteen eighty and brought Big Nose George back to the Wyoming Territories. Two other members of the gang had escaped. Rankin escorted his charge first to Laramie and then rode with him on the train headed to Rollins. On september thirteenth, eighteen eighty, Big Nose George was arraigned in Rollins. He told his lawyer his name was George Francis Warden, who reported his birth date as being on April of 1843 in Dayton, Ohio. He first entered a guilty plea and then changed his plea to not guilty. On November 16, 1880, the jury was sworn, and two days later, George again changed his plea back to guilty. A motion was filed for arrest of judgment and sentencing, and the court took him under advisement but denied the motion on December 15, 1880. At that time, death by hanging was the punishment for those found guilty of murder. Big George was sentenced to hang on April 2nd, 1881. Ten days before the scheduled execution, Big Nose George tried to escape from the local jail. He had used a pocket knife to saw through the rivets on the heavy leg shackles that bound him and stuck jailer Robert Rankin in the head with him. Rankin's wife, Rosa, discovered the attempted jailbreak and managed to close the outside door. She fired her husband's revolver in the air, and men came running to help. Big nose George's hands were tied behind his back and a noose secured around his neck. The mob made him stand on an empty kerosene barrel and tossed the rope over the crossbar of a telegraph pole, but the rope broke. The bandit fell, begging to be shot. Instead, the lynch mob replaced the noose and made him climb a twelve foot ladder. This time with repaired leg irons weighing him down, climbing was difficult. Finally he choked to death. One report estimated a crowd of as many as two hundred people were in attendance to watch. No one came forward to claim his body. Dr. Osborne, who had been asked to be present during the hanging to ensure the outlaws was dead, and another Rollins doctor, Thomas McGee, a Union Pacific Railroad physician and surgeon, claimed the corpse for medical study. Osborne made a death mask and had the outlaws skinned and the shoes made. McGee studied the criminal brain. Big nose George's skull was cut into two pieces. McGahee gave the top half to his protege, Lillian Heath, who later became Wyoming's first female physician. The lower skull half was buried in a whiskey barrel with the rest of the outlaw's bones. In 1950, the whiskey barrel was discovered in Rollins when workers were excavating for a new department store at Fifth and Cedar Streets, and the skull halves were briefly reunited and then split up again. The skull cap is now housed at the Union Pacific Railroad Museum in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and the lower half of the skull is displayed at the Carbon County Museum in Rawlins. Renowned forensic anthropologist George Gill and Wyoming State Archaeologist Mark Miller reunited the halves of big nose Georgia skull in 1995 when they worked on a study of frontier violence with the University of Wyoming graduate student Christy McMahon. The study confirmed that the skin on Arsborne's shoes were indeed human, but neither the shoes nor the small piece of skull on the skull cap were tested biochemically because such testing would have destroyed them. Gill hoped to match the skin on the shoes to the skin on the skull and to prove that the skin did indeed belong to the man known as Big Nose George. Throughout the years, several people from throughout the United States and Canada who believed they might be relatives of the outlaw have contacted Miller and his historians at the Carbon County Museum in Rollins. Miller, who recently retired a state archaeologist, also had his family connection to the story. Miller's great grandfather, IC Miller, served as Carbon County Sheriff at the time of Big Nose George's lynching, but was working in another area of the county that night. Miller and Gill haven't any work on the case since the McMahon study. Miller explains that they are proceeding with caution regarding any further DNA testing. There is no such DNA match yet, and there likely won't be one soon. Questions about who George Parrot actually was have complicated the matters. Miller suspects the man did not lie to his lawyer when he gave a different name, but needs to know more about who the man actually was before pursuing familiar links. An incorrect assumption could lead to wrong results, and with the small size of the skin sample that's available, the scientists might not have a second chance to prove the identity of the man. In fact, we may not be able to submit a sample for study because we don't have much, Mueller said in a twenty fourteen email interview. I don't know that we have new research available for years or more. Again, quite a gruesome story on the fate of big nose George Parrot and his execution. And again, it was rather interesting that our first Wyoming physician used part of his skull as a planter. Thanks for joining us today, and we hope you enjoy our podcast. As per the coat of the West, we ride for the brand and we ride for Wyoming.