Memorial Day Tribute And Anthem

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We'd like to start today's show with the honoring of America, with the playing of the national anthem with our upcoming memorial day.

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Mr. Rose need to be listening rather than spoken to privilege being given to the MEF commander General Purchin.

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Does seem amazing that civilized nations should continue to adhere to war as an element of national policy. The people who complacently submit to unreasonable demands of a commerce minority will certainly become the prey of a dictator. This nation, as one of the great powers, can do no less in the fulfillment of its manifest duty to humanity than to make the most earnest and devoted effort for the preservation of world peace.

A Memorial Day Message From Wyoming

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And it's a time that I guess as you get older and you really start to think of the sacrifices that were made, that how important it is that we remember the observance of Memorial Day, those people that have made the ultimate sacrifice. And I want to read uh some parts of a story that came from Travis Detai. Travis is the state of Wyoming chairman of the Wyoming Veterans Commission. And this was written back in twenty twenty, May twenty third of twenty twenty. And so I'm gonna skip through parts of it 'cause it relates to COVID and go really to the heart of the message that he wrote. Regardless, we will still pay homage to those who laid down their lives in our great country throughout the course of history. From our war of independence to the Civil War and World War I, from World War II to Vietnam, from Korea to Iraq and Afghanistan, time and again Americans have found themselves standing against the evil forces of oppression and tyranny, and time and again they have risen to the challenge because the freedom we have and hold so dear is worth fighting for and worth dying for. On the lawns of the Wyoming State Museum, in the shadow of the Wyoming State Capitol in Cheyenne, stands a Wyoming Fallen Warrior Memorial. The inscription reads Wyoming Remembers, dedicated to the many soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen and coast guardsmen, and their families from Wyoming who made the ultimate sacrifice while in the service of our state and nation. Flags will be flying on residential streets, classes will be raised and some tears will be shed. We must always remember that our freedom is not free. Freedom carries a very high price, and it is worth paying, as Rudyard Kipling wrote so eloquently. All we have of freedom, all we use or know. This our fathers brought us long and long ago. There is no doubt we have our trouble today, but I for one feel blessed to live in this wonderful country and am thankful for the glorious freedoms and rights that every American is guaranteed life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And I'm thankful to the countless men and women who have given so much, many that last full measure of devotion to pay for the freedom we all enjoy. In the book of John, Jesus said, Greater love has no man than this, that he lays his life down for his friends. It is the right that we, as free people, pause to take stock of the price of Memorial Day and the honor of the memorial, and honor the memories of those who have paid it for us, those selfish heroes who have laid down their lives for us and something greater than themselves, why am we indeed remembers. And it was well said and we all know someone in our past that has been affected by service and has paid the ultimate price. And always remember that we do have a Veterans Day where we salute all those that have served. And today is that day for Memorial Day that we recognize those people that made the ultimate sacrifice and the families that have lived through that. And you think back, there's a lot of people that have given their life for our

Remembering Sacrifice In A Divided Time

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country. And so I think here we are in 2023. It definitely is a troubled time in our country right now. We have a lot of things going on, a lot of issues that divide us. It really breaks my heart sometime to think about the people that fought for our country, what is taking place in our country. I think we've lost this respect for our country, a lot of people with what is taking place. I still get back to that point we have to remember about what Memorial Day means and honor those people that made that ultimate sacrifice, knowing that this country was worth giving their life for and that we have a lot to do and we continue to remember and work on improving our country so that these people that made this sacrifice didn't do it in vain. Again, make sure that you remember May twenty ninth, Memorial Day here in the United States. God bless all those people that gave their life. Also, we'll talk about Wyoming weather. We'll talk about some happenings in the state with summer coming on, and finally, we'll talk about our favorite highway, the black and white highway, across the Bighorn Mountains. Thanks for joining us. Hope you enjoyed the show.

Heat, Wind, Gardens, And Water Worries

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The hot weather has finally started here in our area. Started yesterday, had our cool down last week. Wednesday, Thursday, I guess it'd be. Thursday went up to Billings, Montana to do some shopping. And before Matitzi passed Cody away, it uh ran into quite a bit of snow. It was this kind of a rainy, cool day. Just a gorgeous rain. Really helped the countryside around here. It stayed cool and then started gradually warming up on Saturday and Sunday. And here in Memorial Day, looks like uh summer's a abound and right here ready to take off, even though we haven't hit summer. But right now the forecast is for the next five days is temperatures in the 80s in the afternoons. Of course, we're still getting that darn pesky breezes all the time, which dries stuff out. But we're right now, we're getting to that point. Got some of the gardening done, got some potatoes in the ground finally, waiting for it to warm up and did the potatoes. And I I hope that we have a good crop. Got kind of a cross-section of different potatoes this year, so I'm kind of excited to see how they will do, and then we'll start planting some of the other stuff that I have started in the garage and and get on going with that uh gardening. A lot of other projects trying to finish up some work around here and on some other projects that I have, that just trying to find contractors to do some work on a couple of these sign jobs I have out on the road and and such, but it's just a great time right now. Now the tourist was up, of course, through the Cody Way and been up in the basin up to Basin, Wyoming a couple times. So it looks like there's a few people, but not really a big pickup yet. But I think after Memorial Day is when we'll start seeing the uh tourists show up. Our schools are officially out here in the state of Wyoming. Last Friday, Thursday, and Friday was the last day for our schools here. Of course, graduation was the week before those kids off they went with graduation, got a chance to take in the basin graduation. It's a really good time, a lot of great kids in that bunch and have uh enjoyed all of it. So school's out, just getting self-prepared for summer, a long summer. And then when I say long, it'll be really short. Just hoping we get some moisture over here at Boyson Reservoir is really low right now. We did get some snow in this last batch, but I don't know if it's gonna do much. I know some of the farmers up in the basin that are questioning about getting water in certain areas, are not even gonna grow a crop because there's no sense of it. So it's just crazy right now. We'll just keep on top of it. But warming weather, uh sunny out. One thing here, it does cool down at night, which is a blessing. So right now we're getting ready for summer weather to start, and we'll see what happens from this point on.

From Track Finals To Fly Fishing

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In high school sports, I just wanted to touch base on that quickly. Concluded here in the state of Waming. Last weekend was the state meets for track. They also had state soccer and state uh fast-bit softball for the girls, so they ended up um throughout the state. I know they had some weather delays at the state track meet with the cold temperatures and such, but they did get everything in. That's quite a long event. I was at a awards event the other night, and the track coach had made the comment about how long a track meet is. And I just never really thought about it that way, but they are. They're an all-day event that can go from early in the morning till later in the afternoon or early evening, and that's kind of the way they ran stuff because they're doing all classifications 1A, 2A, 3A, and 4 a.m. the track. So it can be a long weekend, but that is concluded. The softball, you know, there's only that is a limited amount of teams to do that. Now, it's the same with the soccer. A lot of the small schools just don't have enough kids to do the soccer and softball. Sometimes those kids will go to a school nearby that has those events, but those also finished up. So high school sports are in the books now in the summer. They'll have all-star games in July. There are some basketball here in June where they'll have the Woming, Montana All-Star Game for the boys and girls. So they'll get into that time of year. Here in the state, we do have Legion baseball. Not a big contingency of baseball, a little bit. Uh when we used to live in Montana and Billings for 15 years, always was down watching the games there. The Scarlets and the Royals were the two Legion teams, and boy, they play a lot of baseball, do a lot of traveling. So, but it's that time of the year, off season for those kids to start working on stuff. There'll be a lot of camps going on, a lot of activities. Everybody wants to get those kids in the gym and get them working on stuff. So it's that interesting time of the year, of course. Uh, also here, not high school sports, but just sports. Yeah, fishing's gonna start picking up with these warm temperatures, warming up a little bit. As I said, the fly fishing is just going hot and heavy here in Hot Springs County on the Bighorn River. See a lot of fishermen last weekend heading over to land, or there was a lot of people in the Wind River Canyon. Of course, that's it needs a tribal permit, but it was packed there and of course packed here in Thermopolis. So fun time up in the mountains. There'll be opportunities with the weather warming up in a lot of those areas, getting back into those campgrounds in a lot of areas will be opening up pretty quick. And I there might be spots where you can get in if you have the right vehicle. But all those activities now, Boyson Reservoir is going to be a little bit of a downer with the water levels really low. I talked to someone last year and I asked how he was water skiing out there because there was all these new islands everywhere, and it was you had to be pretty careful watching where you were going so you didn't hit one of those, popped up out of nowhere because of the low levels. But summer activities will be really going hot and heavy again, also. So into high school sports until the fall, and we're getting ready for those great days of summer. And I'd be totally remiss if I didn't mention our another sport here in the state that's always big in the summer is a rodeo. Our rodeos will start picking up, especially as closer we get to the 4th of July. So if you're into rodeos, you'll be able to take those in all over the state.

Driving History On The Black And Yellow Trail

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With the travel season upon us, I'm gonna go to a story from wildhistory.org. Talked about one of my favorite, my wife and I's favorite trips is across the Bighorn Mountains here in the northern part of Wyoming. Going across from Oreland to Tan Sleep to Buffalo, and that opens up so many other ways you can go. You can go north into to Sheridan, back across on 14, or when you're in Buffalo, you can continue on to the Black Hills and just some beautiful country to travel. And in this article that I'm referring to, I'm gonna go back to just a segment of it. But the story was Let Us Ramble, Exploring the Black and Yellow Trail in Wyoming. And this is by Robert G. and Elizabeth L. Rosenberg. And they talk about the travel back in the early 1900s. And I'm not gonna read the full article, but I want to go back to a point is when they start to talk about the route that coming from the Black Hills across Wyoming, the northern part of Wyoming. And coming from the route from where they were crossing the Bighorn Mountains. And from this story, the most challenging segment was crossing of the Bighorn Mountains between Buffalo and Tensleep. In nineteen fifteen, before the era of federal aid projects, August Hedinger of the Buffalo District of the Bighorn National Forest met with local officials to offer an allocation of fifteen thousand dollars to construct a portion of the road within the forest boundaries. Work began that summer on a two-mile stretch of an existing county road in Moser Gulch west of Buffalo and was completed by October. Given the difficult nature of the route, engineers speculated that it might be possible to construct twenty miles of road the following year. In nineteen seventeen, a ten thousand dollar survey was completed for the forest road from Buffalo to Tansleep. The portion was located in the forest qualified under the Section 8 fund of the Federal Aid Act, which provided federal funding for forest roads. In 1918, $20,000 was spent on building five miles of this 75 mile roadway. Construction was divided into two sections, the 22 mile Buffalo to Sourdough section, which was the approach up Clear Creek from Buffalo, and the 53 mile sourdough tent sleep section. In May of 1910, a cooperative agreement between the state of Wyoming and the Secretary of Agriculture enabled the Buffalo Sourdough section to be built by the Forest Service at an estimated cost of $105,000. The Forest Service is part of the Department of Agriculture. Wyoming's share was $25,000. The next section, West, sourdough to Tensley, would be built by the Forest Service at an estimated cost of $210,000, of which the state would pay $85,000. Wyoming divided its costs among three counties involved Johnson, Bighorn, and Washakie. By 1920, 90% of the black and yellow trail had been completed in Johnson County portion, but only thirty five percent had been completed in Bighorn County. The county line runs along the mountain crest. It appears then that the road was generally built east to west. The entire Buffalo to Tensleep Road was finally completed by September of 1922, a grated gravel road without an oiled surface, constructed with a combination of horse drawn equipment, caterpillar trucks, graters, and dump trucks. Auto tourists who crossed the Bighorns via the black and yellow trail proceeded west from Tentsleep to Worland, where they joined the Yellowstone Highway. This road was conceived about the same time as the trail. A good roads club convention was held in Douglas to promote a north south route to Yellowstone National Park from Denver, Colorado, and the delegates from Buffalo were sent to encourage a link up of the two highways. The Yellowstone Highway, today's US Route 20, passed through Douglas, Wyoming, Casper, Shoshone, the Wind River Canyon after 1924, Thermopolis and Worland, where it joined the Black and Yellow Trail, then north through Basin, Grable, and Cody, and on to Yellowstone. The two routes therefore were the same from Whorland to the east entrance of Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone was subject to early legislation prohibiting steam vehicles within the park boundaries. This was meant to ban steam trains, but later interpreted to include all powered vehicles, including cars. Some Yellowstone personnel felt that auto's would ruin the park. However, the numerous Good Roads clubs were determined that auto tourists have access to Yellowstone, and they had a strong influence on the park policy. Also, the officials realized that allowing access to cars would generally increase visitation. Auto tourism Yellowstone was inevitable, and the park welcomed the first cars at the east entrance in 1915. This policy led to improved roads both within Yellowstone and leading to the park, such as the Black and Yellow Trail and the Yellowstone Highway. But this devils agreement would haunt some Yellowstone officials far into the future. Almost two decades after the first cars passed through the East Entrance, Sanford Hill, landscape architect for the New Deal's emergency conservation work, lamented in his 1934 report. In the early days of the park, the stagecoach and the pack outfits were the mean of transportation. The stories told by these early adventurers are indeed very interesting, and it seems that the pleasures and thrills they enjoyed were lasting memories of their lives. They were fortunate, however, in seeing the park in its natural state. The progress of man has chained this picture until now people rush to the park seeing only a few of the many wonders. High speed highways and automobiles have no place in the picture painted by Mother Nature. The writer strongly recommends the return of the station. Coach and pack outfits. Today, with yearly visitation exceeding 3 million, can foresee a future where the park could prohibit private auto traveling, granting Sanford Hill's wish. The Black Hills and the Yellowstone Highway Association set May 16, 1921 as a day for the Boy Scouts and the Good Road Club and other civic groups to erect signs along the Black and Yellow Trail. In July, a group of 200 Boy Scouts from Clinton, Ohio traveled the route in 60 automobiles passing through Buffalo and over the Big Rorne Range en route to Yellowstone National Park. In 1925, the federal government recognized the need for a national system of highway marking. The new system designated east-west routes with even numbers and north-south routes with odd numbers. The standard U.S. route markers became a shield bearing the number of the route, the letter U.S., and the name of the state in black on the white background. The black and yellow trail was designated U.S. Route 16. During the mid-1920s, the Wyoming Highway Department made a concerted effort to oil the major roadways with gravel and crushed rock surfaces. Early efforts proved unsatisfactory as the surface disintegrated within a few months, creating a very rough roadway. Starting in 1927, a new oil formula proved more durable. Known as the Asphalic Oil Treatment, or more commonly as Blacktop, it was soon in use on roadways across the state. By the end of 1926, the highway department had improved the trail from Wyoming, South Dakota border westward to its connection with Yellowstone Highway in Worland. However, the highway consisted of segments of varying condition ranging from unimproved to surfaced or paved highways. In 1913, the trail from Buffalo over the Bighorn Mountains to Tensleep was described as all-weather road that was not paved or oiled. In 1931, $128,000 became available to regrade and oil 11 miles of the road from the North Fork of the Clear Creek to the crossing of Sourdough Creek. The 1932 highway map of the state of Wyoming depicted U.S. Route 16 as gravel or crushed rock surface from Gillette to the Sheridan County line. Federal aid projects reconstructed the road between Tentsleep and Worland in 1936. As a result of this upgrade, portions of the original roadway were relocated and a new truss bridge still in place today was constructed over the Nowood River just west of Tentsleep. In the 1960s, U.S. Route 16 was reconstructed between Tentsleep and Worlin, generally north of the 1930 highway. The trail became a County Road 580A and included the Truss Bridge over the No Wood River. In the mid-1930s, two highway projects began applying asphalt oil treatment to the trail between Buffalo and Tansley. A 2.5 inch oil mat was laid over a 3.5 inch gravel base completed by September of 1940. This work also involved grading and overall improvement of the roadway surface. From 1935, from 1939 to 1941, the trail from Gillette to Arvara was improved in a similar manner. Other improvements include grading, widening, overall upgrading of the roadway surface, new concrete bridges, and some major realignments of the right-of-way. The portion of the black and yellow trail over the Bighorns did not receive any further improvement until after World War II. In the early 1940s, the road had suffered from neglect due to the war effort. However, in 1946, first five miles of the roadway up Moser Gulch was reconstructed with reduced grades, channeler curves, and wider road surfaces. By the end of the summer of 1946, a heavy asphalt mat was laid on the new road. Finally, the construction of Interstate 90 in the 1960s fundamentally changed traffic patterns between the Wyoming South Dakota Line west to Buffalo. It provided a more direct link between Gillette and Buffalo, and the black and yellow trail, U.S. Route 1416, through Spotted Horse, Arvada, Claremont, and Ucross became a secondary route. The northward curving section of the trail between Sundance, Carlisle, and Moorcroft suffered the same fate. Although a portion of it is used today to access Devil Tower National Monument, today's U.S. Route 14 and 16 split at Lucrosse. U.S. Route 16 generally maintains the original route of the Black and Yellow Trail over the Bighorn Mountains. U.S. Route 14 continues northwest to Sheridan, Wyoming, and then crosses the Bighorn Range via Dayton and Burgess Junction to Lovell to the Bighorn Basin. Both routes ultimately access the east entrance of Yellowstone National Park. Due to the wide open and undeveloped nature of Wyoming's landscape, the adventurers can still find and explore remnants of the historical road. So go ramble. And it's an outstanding story when you read through this. The one correction I would put is on this Route 14, which they talk about in the story goes from Dayton to Burgess Junction to Lovell. It also goes to Shell and to Grable. The 14A route is the one that goes into Lovell, and the 14 is the one that goes directly into Shell and Grable. But it's an outstanding story. And it's amazing when you think back of what we did in this country with our roads and across the United States and what it really did to help develop our state. And now that you drive across there, and it's just a beautiful route going across those descriptions and hearing about how they built the roads at that time. When you come to Wyoming, you definitely need to go and explore the black and yellow trail here in our great state of Wyoming.

Ride For Wyoming Closing

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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.