Welcome And What’s Ahead

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Good morning and welcome to Let's Talk Wyoming. I'm Mark Hamilton, your host. Today we'll be taking a look at our Wyoming weather. We'll be taking a look at stuff around our state. We'll talk about some graduations and other happenings. We'll talk about data centers, of course, and we'll also want to wish our mothers happy Mother's Day. We'll have an ode to oil, and we'll also have an Encore presentation of Tom Horn. Thanks for joining us today, and we hope you enjoyed the vibe. Taking

Spring Heat Swings And Dry Winds

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a look at Wyoming weather here on the 14th day of May. Hope that everyone is having a great May. Going by pretty quick. It's gonna be Memorial Day weekend coming up, and the month will be over, and on to summer we go. Here in Wyoming, our weather has been again, I always say strange, but we have probably been the coolest weather we've had is since about end of March in the month of April. We've had a little bit of everything. About a week ago, we had almost a half inch of rain and two storms, which was a record for us. Now this week we've warmed up. It was cool. I had to run down to Cheyenne last weekend, and it was cool all the way down and a little bit rainy and wind blowing as coarse as always. And then this week it's warmed up and it's been hit 90 with the wind blowing all the time. Looks like it's gonna start to cool down a little bit for the weekend. Then I see on Sunday, which is graduation day, which we'll talk about here in a second, it looks like it's gonna be a cooler day, so that might be a plus for some of these locations. I know a lot of these gyms are not air conditioned, and a really hot day could be pretty brutal. And I think Wortland still does an outdoor graduation, so we'll see how that goes for them. I think they're one of the few around that I'm aware of that uh does the outdoor graduation. So, weather again, we're gonna be hot, and then the weekend comes, and Sunday, Sunday night, and Monday it's gonna be cool with a little rain and snow and then cooling down. So go figure. I guess, like you said, just wait around and we'll see what happens. Again, talking about weather, it still is dry out there with just these little storms, but of course we're getting these major winds, and there are some fires in the area, mainly grass fires in other parts of the state, and which is bound to happen with these conditions out there. Went to Riverton yesterday, and at the causeway, if you're familiar with that, where it goes across the one end of the south end of Boyson Reservoir, the cows were out there grazing on the one part of the lake on that south end from on the causeway. And you know, it doesn't look like there's much in the way of relief coming, and it's states around us are having the same issue with this drought.

Graduation Weekend And School Wrap-Up

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So other news graduation is this weekend here in our area. Hot Springs County, Washkey County, Bighorn County, most all the schools in the area um are having graduation on Sunday. It varies where you go, but um big day for those graduates. I can remember a long time ago graduating from high school, too long ago to even remember. But uh kind of an exciting time looking forward to what some of these young people are gonna do. What are their plans? What are their goals? What do they want to do with their lives? So wishing all those graduates out there good luck and man dream big. The sky's the limit, we always say. Also, school will be finishing up. The elementary, junior high, high school will be finishing up here next week in all the state here. And it's on to summer. You know what summer's like, it's long but not very long because before you know it, it's uh gonna be fall and everything else starting up. So uh track, I haven't say state, that's one week off. It's a regional track meet this week. Soccer, softball are taking place, and they'll go the next couple of weeks. There's always been a problem with track with um graduation. A lot of these kids will be graduates, and then if they make state, they'll be actually running after graduation.

Activity Cuts And School Priorities

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The other thing going on in our state, they're looking at some money shortfalls for our education, and it came out for our athletic programs, extracurricular activities. There's gonna be a shortfall. It looks like they're gonna be okay for this upcoming year, and then they're gonna make some cuts. A lot of things have been thrown out on what to do. I think we've got too many sports and travel too much and get a little carried away with it myself. They had uh started a fly fishing uh sport in the high schools here. I know they have trap shooting in Montana, and I don't know, maybe in uh other states, but I did see that they've started flag football for girls, and I did see a girl from Billings, I think it was, got a scholarship to play flag football at the University of Montana. So we just keep adding activities, and there's just not enough people going around to take care of these, and it costs a lot of money for these activities to fund them, and so they're looking at maybe reducing some of it, which in my opinion, a lot of people are opposed to that, but maybe we need to cut back a little bit and worry about school activities and getting in the classroom, and that is pretty valuable too. So that's gonna be coming up. What are you gonna do for summer vacation? What are the plans? I'm kind of curious what happens with summer vacations.

Gas Prices And Summer Travel Doubts

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Filled up my truck on Saturday in Casper, and I think the gas was four dollars thirty cents, I think, for unleaded. It was $122. I had to do a double take, it's been a while. My truck has a larger fuel tank, and so it can run it up, and I haven't seen that price for a while. So I don't know, filled up my wife's truck, it takes premium and it's five dollars a gallon, and I know diesel's up over five and probably gonna be getting to six pretty quick. So I don't know what the vacation plans for a lot of people are gonna be. People just gonna go ahead and have at it, go and go on the vacation, I guess, put everything on your credit card and worry about it when fall comes around. But I don't know about vacation plans. Uh I have not seen a lot of people yet. Memorial Day weekend, that's usually when the tourists start showing up. But in past years, I've seen people out on the road in May, late April, May, and I have not seen many tourists. Have not seen much of anything of people going down the road, just coming back from going to Cheyenne and then coming back, um, going across from Casper to Shoshone is usually pretty busy, and you'll see a lot of uh out of staters, but I did not see a lot, so we'll see what uh happens. But again, vacations, those summer times, what do you do for vacation here in the state?

Cheyenne Data Centers And Man Camps

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And finally, I'm gonna be very brief on it, but data centers are still in the news here in the state. They have a big issue going on in Cheyenne. They are going to put in a man camp for the one data center going in, and I guess the city's gonna put this in, supposedly, for these 5,500 workers that are gonna show up. And a person on Cowboy State Daily, a publication here in the state, had made the comment that's bigger than 85% of the towns in our state. You know, with 5,500 people, they're gonna have to flush the toilet, they're gonna have to use the city services, it's gonna have an impact. And I don't I think the the people in the city council and commission don't really look ahead to what's gonna happen. Just like the one in Utah, uh the Box Elder AI, fifteen billion dollars. Are you kidding me? And it's down in an area where it's in a drought. They're gonna use twice as much, at least twice as much power that Utah uses. I don't know if if a lot of these are gonna get to the point that they actually get them built. But the one in Cheyenne, those fifty five hundred workers are coming from out of state. So they're gonna be staying in the man camp. Yeah, they'll go out and go to Walmart and maybe buy different things at night, partake. But none of that money is really gonna stay here in the state. Those workers are sending those paychecks home or back to where they're ever they're from, and they leave, and then suddenly you've got a man camp and an impact, and then everything else starts happening. So I don't know. I I've seen places where they've um talk about having moratoriums on 'em. And I know the people in Utah are just totally against the data center there. It was kind of pushed through by the three commissioners. It's pretty easy to buy off three commissioners to put something in like that, but we've got a problem. We've got a problem, Houston. What are we gonna do? But here in Wyoming, into that drought time, but again, it's still pretty out there with the rains we've had. It's green right now, so now's the time to get to the state. Get here before it gets to the middle of July, and we get too warm and it starts drying out. But the most beautiful time to be in our state is right now. Plenty of space, a lot of room. Get in the car and come on out and enjoy the great state of Wyoming.

A Belated Mother’s Day Message

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And finally, I p wanna make sure I almost forgot. Wish everyone a belated Mother's Day, happy Mother's Day. Last Sunday was Mother's Day. My mother's passed quite a few years ago. Of course, my kids have a mother and all the great mothers out there. Everything that all these women have done in our lives and what they've done for us. Some pretty important people. We would not be here without 'em. So again, just remember all those mothers out there. Happy Mother's Day, and I love you, mother. She's the only one you got. Today

A 1919 Ode To Petroleum

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I'd like to share a poem that I found, and this comes from a publication from the Lusk Standard of August 1st of 1919, Lusk, Wyoming, and the Less Standard paper. And it's called An Ode to Petroleum, and the author is unknown. I am the blood of the earth, the fount of prosperity flowing through fortune's fields into the treasure house of courage and industry. I have transformed humble wage earners to wealth kings. The magic of chemists revealed my hidden secrets and unleashed my mighty power. The sciences, arts, mechanics, and professions pay me homage. Merchant princesses, as well as humblest laborers, are my servitors. My advent awakened invention, stimulation, and mechanical progress and put the motion and the hum into the wheels of industry, enables Earth's children to outclass the eagle and fly to dizzy heights and incomparable distances, having already spanned the almighty Atlantic in days' time, and as yet I only am an infant. I have made it possible for man to explore the depths of the earth and its great oceans, made nature respond with more beautiful crops, lifted irksome burdens off the backs of the worthy tillers of the soil. Hear the tired horses neigh, a welcome to the farm tractor, made alive and ready to serve by my spirit. The city and the country shake hands together now, for with my breath in your auto, distances shortened to pleasure jaunts. Lovers coup behind me. Likewise, thrift delights in my speed and strength. I am Aladdin's lamp multiplied a million fold to lighten the modern world. Without me, nature would be asleep, and the wheels of progress muffled or paralyzed. A pall of stagnation descend upon dust. So appreciate me. Now that's an outstanding ode to petroleum. It

Fossil Fuels And Modern Reality

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may be something that we need to relate to where we are today. Even though that was written a hundred years ago, it still holds true. And that's why I question these people that think we're going to shut down our industry. Right now, 79% of our energy is provided by fossil fuels. And so if we suddenly would take that 79% of that fossil fuels and shut them down, what would we have? We would have an absolute collapse of our economy, collapse of the world. The amount of people that would perish would be astronomical.

Tom Horn And A Controversial Hanging

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Today we want to take a look at a story from Wildhistory.org. Tom Horn, a Wyoming Enigma. And this was by Chip Carlson. It was published on November 8th of 2014. Tried, convicted, and hanged in 1903 in Cheyenne for a murder he almost certainly did not commit. Tom Horn was an enmatic range detective in the 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. Horne remained controversial for two reasons. First, because of doubts that he actually killed fourteen year old Willie Nichols at the Iron Mountain northwest of Cheyenne on july eighteenth, nineteen oh one, 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 eighteen oh six, Horne left home at the age of fourteen, according to his own accounts, and ended up in the Arizona territories by way of various livestock and stage driving jobs. In Kansas and New 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 Shiber, Chief of Scouts for the US Army in its campaign against the Apache. In eighteen eighty six, Horne escorted the Army Column that captured the famed Apache leader Geronimo for the final time. In eighteen ninety one, the Pickerton National Detective 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 Pinkertons. Tom Horne came to Wyoming in the late eighteen eighties, early eighteen nineties. His service apparently solicited secretly by prominent ranchers, ranchers Ora Haley, John Colbel, and Col's partner Frank Bosler, and probably the huge Swan Land and Cattle Company almost certainly were among his employers. At

Cattle Wars And The Rise Of Vigilantes

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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 eighteen eighties, 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 eighteen eighty six, eighteen eighty seven, the cattle business was nearly wiped out. Many ranchers went out of business. Many longstanding cowboys and more recent immigrants to the territory took up homesteads and other small land claims of their own. 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 lynched Homesteader Ella Watson and Jim Averell on the Sweetwater River in 1889. When that crime went unpunished, leading men of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association led a private army of fifty 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 Sturgis echoed a 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. 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. Public outcry against the sweetwater lynching and the Johnson County invasion was widespread. After the invasion, in the elections of eighteen ninety two, 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, enter Tom Horne. While no fixed date was established for Horne's arrival in Wyoming, the correspondence of U.S. 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 at the same time. In eighteen ninety five, 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 pharaoh 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 and a subpoena to appear at the coroner's inquest in Cheyenne. More than a dozen witnesses testified, including Horne and rancher William L. Clay. Clay and Horne both testified that Horne had been in the Bates Hole south of Casper at the time of the murder. Horne was exonerated. Two months later, Fred U. Pal, who homesteaded west of Laramie Range and in Elban County, was shot and killed. Pal'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. Pal'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 Horne 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 Horne's trial years later, would use it against the detective. Despite Billy's sudden outburst, Horne was not charged in connection with the Powell murder. But these crimes and rumors of other killings had by 1895 already solidified Horne's intimidating reputation. In nineteen fourteen, Philadelphia physician Charles Penrose, who briefly accompanied the eighteen ninety-two invasion of Johnson County but left before the killing began, wrote his recollections. Penrose included a vivid description of Horne as he was in 1895, as told to him by W. C. Billy Irvin, president of the Wyoming Stock Growers 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 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, Irving told Penrose, and we discussed the situation quite 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 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, Horne perfectly cool. He generally 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 three hundred and fifty dollars advance to buy two horses and a pack outfit. When he had finished the job to the governor's satisfaction, he should receive five thousand dollars 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 Horne left, and 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. Many historians have included Horn murdered two suspected cattle thieves, Matt Rash and Islam 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 of Cheyenne hired sometimes stock detective and sometimes Deputy U.S. Marshal Joe LaFors 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. LaForce forward the letters to Tom Horn apparently to induce him to respond. Apparently taking the bait, Horne went from John Cobble's place in Bosler, where he had been living at the time, to Cheyenne on Saturday, January 11th, 1902.

The Recorded Remarks That Convicted Him

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Probably stayed up all night drinking and accompanied LaForest to the U.S. Marshal office on 16th Street, now 210 West Lincoln Way. The next morning, LaForce secreted two people, a stenographer and a witness behind a locked door. Over the course of a couple hours, LaFor led Horne into making a series of incriminating remarks about the nickel killing. The most damaging was it was the best job 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 Horne's trial. 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. Horne'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. Horne oversized ego apparently caused him to challenge the prosecutor, and Horne's own testimony destroyed his alibi, placing him twenty miles from the site of the murder just an hour after it happened. Horne's lawyers closed by emphasizing that all evidence was circumstantial and that Horne'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. Horn was hanged at the Cheyenne Jail November 20th, 1903. Although

Why The Verdict Still Feels Unsettled

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he might have murdered Woolie 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 LaForce was given while he was drunk. Horne was a known boaster, and neither LaFor 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. Horne 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 Horne, a 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. Another great story from Wylehistory.org.

Closing Thoughts And Wyoming Pride

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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. As

The Roaring Twenties Built Modern Wyoming

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the 1920s began, the Bighorn Basin was still a relatively isolated place here in the state of Wyoming. World War I had just ended and the Spanish influenza still lingered in memory. The region depended almost entirely on farming, ranching, and mining. Most families traveled to church and school by wagon. Roads over the Bighhorns were little more than muddy trails, passable only for brief windows in the summer. The route from Cody to Yellowstone's east entrance was rough, often requiring pack horses and a guide. By the middle of the decade, the Bighorn Basin was roaring, but not in the way of the Great Gasby with champagne and city lights. The roar here came from the road construction. Men with picks and shovels, horses, pulling graters, and early gasoline tractors. It was the sound of blasting, bridge building, and carving roads through the forest. By the end of the decade, that sound had shifted to the steady hum of automobiles, reshaping everyday life. It wasn't just the wealthy. Farmers hauled products. Families went camping, couples, honeymoon, and even European royalty came west staying in a dude ranches. The sound carried over the mountains of the Bighorn Mountains, through the Wind River Canyon and into Yellowstone, from Bahaskatepee at the entrance to the park, to Shell, and from Franny to Thermopolis, everything was transformed through Buffalo Bills, Vision, aggressive local commerce clubs, and a Wyoming legislature willing to invest in roads. Highways replaced wagon trails, mountain passes became drivable routes, the Wind River Canyon, once a barrier, became a gateway, and most importantly, Yellowstone's east entrance became a viable route for tourists. The Lincoln Highways establishment in 1913 was the nation's first transcontinental automobile road. Though it did not pass through the basin, it funneled Americans into Warming and onto its new roads. Just fifty years before, Waming was something that Americans had to get across headed to Oregon, Utah, or California. But now a new pattern of migration was established. Towns like Tentsleep and Shell followed the pattern. The process was not carefully planned, but it reflected the best of the American dream. A small town a little more than a post office and a church, if it was lucky enough to sit along a highway to somewhere began to change almost overnight. When a few cars a day started passing through, transformation followed. A roadside stand appeared, then a woman with a vision opened a small cafe. A man with a mechanical skill started a repair shop. A rancher with a bit of extra land charged a few quarters for travelers to camp. As for traffic increased, small motels were built, and gas stations soon followed. Over time, travelers realized that Wyoming was more than a way west. It was a way of life they loved, and they never left. Communities adapted in practical ways. One report noted tensleep farmers expanding into beans because they were compact and can be transported to the market quite cheaply. Others turned to turkey production, making the town a general farming locality of importance to the state. Roads were reshaped, both daily life and livelihoods. The stories of those early travelers mixed hardship and wonder. We rattled and we bounced half the way one visitor wrote, but by heaven we made it over the mountains in a motor car. Another noted every mile of road felt like a victory, and every turn showed us a country most folks had never seen. What had once been a barrier were becoming attractions. Those hills used to keep people out. Now they're bringing them in. For many Yellowstone was the destination, but Wyoming became the experience. We came for the park, one tourist admitted, but the ride through Wyoming was the real surprise. Along the way, strangers became neighbors. We camped by the road with dozens of other families, all of us sharing the same adventure. Some stayed longer than planned. We meant to stay one night, and we're still here forty years later. As one traveler put it, the West didn't get louder with music and parties, it got louder with engines. Beyond cafes and garages, towns crew, grocery stores, bakeries, and auto dealerships appeared. Cali had an opera house, Matizzi and Deaver had their own newspaper, Manderson had a Ford dealership, and Grable had a semi-pro baseball team. Near every town also had a hidden bar to skirt prohibition enforcement. Was it too much? Too fast, historians will debate the air forever. But the prosperity of the Roaring Twenties did not last. Almost exactly a decade after World War I, the stock market crash of October of 1929 and the Great Depression brought uncertainty to communities across the country.

What Legacy Will We Leave Next

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As you are reading this a hundred years later, we are the beneficiaries of the vision and impossible hard work of those who came before us. They conquered distance, carved through mountains, built bridges over rivers, and laid down the highway we still rely on today. The question is no longer what they built or the legacy they left, but what we will leave behind. How will our children and grandchildren look back from the roaring 2120s and measure what we have created for them? That is a great story of the development of the state. And I've had other stories, and T.A. Larson had talked extensively on this and a lot of people and everything impact it's had.