Episode 250 – Lets Talk Wyoming History on our Last Episode with Kylie Louise McCormick

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past 250 episodes, which has been over the past four and a half years.

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Thank you, Michael.

Couldn't have done it without you.

And this is my last episode of the Jackson Hole connection.

Since I started this podcast, I never thought I would be going 250

episodes, four and a half years.

I really didn't know what I was gonna be doing.

but I kept it going and I've loved speaking to every one of the

guests and I've added several items to my list of responsibilities.

And now it's time for me to take that time which I allocate to the

podcast and allocate it to some of the other new commitments that I have.

I am joyful and sad to call this an end to the Jackson Hole connection.

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Maybe with the added time that I have, I.

Might come up with a new podcast.

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listening, remembering, and sharing, please, if you take some things away

from, 250 episodes I've hosted.

I ask that you find joy, gratitude, and love in life.

Find the opportunity to speak to people with a curious mind.

You have a curious mind in the conversation.

Speak to somebody that you don't know.

Say hello to somebody you're walking down the street and find someone.

That you want to say I love you and share with them regularly that you love them.

I'm grateful to you all for supporting me.

And now today's episode, episode 250, and my guest today is Kylie

McCormick, who is a Wyoming native.

Born and raised in Casper, Wyoming, lives in Casper, Wyoming.

Now Kylie has been building her career in Wyoming after returning

from graduate school in the east.

And Kylie is a historian and I connected very strongly with Kylie

cuz I'm a person who loves history, which you'll certainly hear today.

And I used to love listening to my grandmother tell stories of growing

up on a farm in rural Arkansas.

Also listening to my grandfather's stories of growing up during the

Great Depression in Mississippi.

history is alive within each of us, and Kylie has some stories of her own

for you today, some of which we had similar experiences being raised in

small towns as a religious minority.

Collie also has several stories about Wyoming history to share with you.

And one final note before we begin.

After recording, Kylie emailed me to let me know she had a date incorrect

in the interview and the date was incorrect for the Johnston County Wars.

she had stated in the interview.

And here we go.

Highly welcome to the Jackson Hole Connection.

It's delightful to be able to have this opportunity to sit

down and talk to a historian.

I love history.

I so love history.

So thank you for your time today.

Yes.

Thank you so much for having me today, Stephen.

you're welcome.

So We start every episode with a little background, some history about you.

So Kylie, where were you born and raised?

We haven't all grown up.

And, how did you land?

You don't live here in Jackson.

You live in another part of Wyoming.

You can share that with us, but I'm delighted that we get to talk.

So what is your history and background to Wyoming?

I grew up in Casper and that's where I was born and raised.

And I wanted to get away from Wyoming when I, when I went to get my education.

So I went all the way to Virginia to a small all women's university

called Holland's university.

And then I.

Came back home for about a year before leaving again to go to the

University of Nebraska Lincoln, where I earned my master's degree.

And then I bounced back home to Wyoming.

Wyoming has quite the, quite the draw.

I couldn't get it out of me.

And so I was very happy to end up back in Casper, and

that's, that's where I'm at now.

Awesome.

And how did your family land in Casper, Wyoming?

That's a great question.

My mother, she grew up in St.

Joseph, Missouri.

And my father, he was born in Valentine, Nebraska and raised

in North Platte, Nebraska.

And they met here in St.

Joseph going to college together, um, in theater class.

And my father, they were working here in Missouri.

They had opened up the Bernstein family bakery again, and we're running that a

little bit with one of my aunts in town.

And my father couldn't, couldn't handle the humidity, but it gave him

terrible headaches and everything else.

So his best man had actually moved out to Casper, Wyoming, and he said,

there's work out here in Wyoming.

And so my, my parents both came and they fell in love and they.

They've been there ever since.

Oh,

beautiful.

and growing up in Wyoming, and in Casper, you grew up as, as a minority, as well.

So, and, and where I grew up in Mississippi, I grew up as a minority.

I grew up in a town called Brookhaven, Mississippi, and we were,

at that time, the Jewish family.

in in Brookhaven.

if anybody knew that anybody was Jewish, they just asked for the Abrams family.

the Jewish kids were my sister and I, we drove an hour every Sunday to go to

Sunday school to Jackson, Mississippi.

and my brother as well.

So it's my brother, my sister and I, so what was it like growing

up Jewish in Casper, Wyoming?

There is a small Jewish community in Casper, which I was really grateful for.

and some who were in similar age range as me, but no one in my, in my class.

And we would get to go to Cheyenne occasionally for things like the Jewish

rendezvous, that the celebrating Penny Wollin's book of the Jews in Wyoming,

that pictorial book, that's so well done.

I got to go there right about the time I was 10 years old and

learned some traditional dances.

Whenever we'd come back home to, or back to my mother's home in St.

Joseph, we would get to, attend her synagogue that she grew up in.

And I'd be surrounded by my aunts and cousins, but in Casper, there

weren't, there weren't a lot of us.

And I was the only one in my class always growing up.

I think that my classmates enjoyed it because my mom would

come in and say, well, we've.

You're not just getting Christmas, you're going to hear the story of Hanukkah

too and incorporate some of that into elementary school, which was really nice.

That's beautiful.

I'm glad that it was embraced and your mom came and did that, for, for your class.

And I went and spoke about Hanukkah to my boys classes this past year, and,

and they were super stoked about it.

I think that's really important.

I will say that there was a shift, after my sister's classmates, I have

an older sister, just two years older than me, and it's just the two of us.

Um, but after her class, learned about the holocaust.

And then after my class learned about the holocaust, we both

experienced, a surge in anti semitism that was really, really negative.

I think that that was, it's really made me think about how we, how we talk

about horrific events like genocides and slavery and And things like that,

that we, we need to teach these in a way where it's not going to result in more

bigotry or more harassment and more anti Semitism, which is unfortunately what

my sister and I experienced after our classmates learned about the Holocaust,

which would have been right about, I'm forgetting if it was seventh or

ninth grade, it's, it's in junior high, I think when we, when we did that.

Do you feel comfortable sharing what were some of those, actions or, how did you

feel as though you started feeling some anti Semitism after, the Holocaust was

taught?

Yes, definitely.

But, um, we, we vandalized with swastikas.

and a death threat.

We had, I've, I had people come up to me and, and call me, pardon, pardon

my language, um, call me a kike.

And I, I had a lot of my, my friend group just thought that it was funny.

I'm, I'm from the generation that really grew up with South Park.

And that idea of I can make fun of everybody and I can make fun of

anything and nothing's off the table.

And so things like, there weren't enough seats in the car.

And so one of my friends said, Oh, that's okay.

Kylie can ride in the ashtray.

And so things like that, that I had to deal with.

I've been happy to tell my friends I'm not comfortable with this and

ending up losing most of my friends from that was a hard experience in

high school, but an important one, it taught me how to stand up for

myself and to find my voice, I guess.

Thank you for sharing Kylie.

I didn't experience quite that, level of anti Semitism,

but, I appreciate you sharing.

And yes, all of.

The bad things that happen in the world to genocide around the world

in history should be taught and it's important that it's taught in a

fashion that it doesn't reinvigorate the same type of negative feelings

so we don't, it doesn't happen again.

Right.

And I think that there, there is an attitude I know, I don't think that

Jackson Hole has quite the same problems that Casper has in terms of, um, we have

a very high youth suicide rate in Wyoming in general, but especially in places

like Casper, and I, I'm quick to link that to the sort of attitude of nothing

matters and I can make fun of anything.

And the, that jokey.

sort of approach to, horrific history that I think I'm not sure if you're

familiar with, um, there's a wonderful historian named Doris Bergen, and she

wrote a great book called A Concise History of the Holocaust, and she opens

it with a metaphor of a house burning down, and she says that several things

are required for a house to burn down.

You need the, environment that is conducive to it, that's dry, and She

says that World War Two created an environment that was conducive to this

violence and accepting that violence.

She said you need a spark to set it off.

She calls the Nazi regime and Hitler that spark that set it off.

But you also need dry timber, and I think that that dry timber is something that

we often overlook in our, in our culture and our society, and that is that those

jokes that everybody thinks are just harmless that it's just a joke, and it's

not that big of a deal, but that they actually are a big deal once we get those

other two elements in there that it makes it makes people more willing to accept.

the targeting and murder of certain groups of people.

And we need to be very mindful of our dry timber in our, our communities

and work hard to clear it out.

Just like good, good forest management.

Indeed.

I appreciate that assimilation and, and the recommendation of the book.

I have not heard of Doris Bergen's book, so I will certainly look

that one up and, and Kylie.

You are a historian and you're a Wyoming historian and that's where you

place a lot of your energy and time.

And again, as I said in the introduction, I love history.

about, I mean, he died at 96 and the changes that he saw growing up.

So I am thrilled.

to learn a little bit about Wyoming history, what you have

been learning and teaching and talking about throughout the state.

So, where do you want to begin?

What do you want to talk about for some Wyoming history, Kylie?

Yes, definitely.

I I started digging into Wyoming history when I moved back home to Casper in

2017 and that is, was the, oh, what is it, the 100 year anniversary of the

Wyoming state flag and at the time I was struggling a little bit with my health

and so I was substitute teaching to have a little bit of flexibility there.

And I needed something because I was used to doing all of this great

research and digging into history.

And so I needed something to keep my mind active.

And I found myself in the Natrona County Library looking through

a book of Casper memories.

And there I found an anecdote by the woman who designed our flag, Verna Keys.

spelled differently, but keys, keys, and she was talking about designing this flag.

And she said that this woman named Grace Raymond Hebert was responsible

for flipping the bison that originally that she had the bison facing the other

way on our flag to represent freedom.

But Grace Hebert preferred it with the bison hitched towards

the flagstaff as it flies today.

And that's, that's the way it was.

I had run into Grace T.

Bird while I was working on my master's degree.

I was writing a article about women office holders in the West.

And wanted to write about Esther Hobart Morris as the first woman justice

of a piece in South Pass City, but in order to write about Esther as a

judge, you have to first deal with this controversy looming over her as to

whether or not she had anything to do with bringing suffrage to the territory.

I didn't want to deal with that controversy.

I wanted to deal with her as an office holder and a judge.

And so I just sort of accepted what those secondary sources were telling me about

that story and what the standard, what, what the published standard is today on

woman's suffrage in Wyoming, which is, oh, she didn't even know William Bright

until after that legislative session.

She had nothing to do with it.

And Grace Raymond Hebert is the one who, who made it all up.

And she was a, a suffragist, desperate for a heroine who needed to put

a woman into that oversized role.

So here I was running into Hubert again, and she's changing our

flag, and I thought, well, just who did this woman think she was?

And so I started digging into her files.

She has over 80 boxes at the American Heritage Center down in Laramie.

And as of March of this year, I have photographed all of her files that

have not been digitized and digging into her correspondence and digging

into the work that she's done.

I've made some really incredible discoveries and have really found that

this woman has gotten quite a bad rap that she doesn't, doesn't quite deserve.

Well, why does she get a bad rap that she doesn't deserve?

Well, I think that she is, um, she was a very powerful woman at a time

where not a lot of women had power and she had a lot of institutional power

behind her and a lot of, um, support from men and women in power in Wyoming.

And she, she accomplished a lot of things, but when you accomplish a lot of things,

you are also going to be stepping on some toes and doing things that other

people disagree with and don't like.

And so she, she gained a little bit of a reputation,

especially after she passed away.

Um, she's done wonderful things for our state.

She built up the university library from about 500 books to over 60, 000 books.

I mentioned, she's responsible for us having the state flag that we have.

She's the one who sponsored that contest while she was state regent of the

daughters of the American revolution.

And she wrote some of our first child labor laws.

I, I often say that if there's a pie baking in Wyoming,

she had her thumb in it.

what help people have a little bit of relevance here of this time frame

of when she was doing this work.

So when was she born?

When did she pass away?

When was this time frame that she was doing a lot of this work?

Yes, definitely.

One of 42 draftsmen.

She wasn't the only woman in the office, but she was the only

woman working as a draftsman.

So that means that she was basically a cartographer that she is taking

the surveyors notes and drawing the maps of what would become

the future state of Wyoming.

Wyoming women got together to advocate for women's suffrage in the state.

And she helped to draft their resolves that they were only going to elect

pro suffrage, delegates to the Wyoming Constitutional Convention.

She was, then after the verge, she moved to Laramie and became essential

in the building up and establishment of our state university, sat on the

And so it, it really started off as a hobby, me looking into the

keyboard and the flag and just something to keep myself interested.

friends at the National Historic Trails Interpretive Center had asked me if I

had anything I had been researching that I would be able to do a presentation on.

And I said, well, I've got this.

Thing on the Wyoming flag that I've been working on.

So I put that together and the presentation and I decided, you know,

what, what if I try and tour this around the state and what if I make some

greeting cards and some stickers where I can sell them at my presentations?

And so I started offering it to libraries, um, Crook County up in Sundance and

Hewlett where some of the first libraries to hire me and bring me up there.

And it's been, A lot of fun.

jumped in, full time and to being a public speaker, but I'm been very

fortunate to be able to make it work.

And from what was originally designed.

So that our flag, when was that officially stated, Hey, this is our flag.

into law on January 31st, Oh, beautiful.

John Kendrick.

Okay.

Yes, it has.

That is actually when the bison was changed.

If you look at the description of the Wyoming flag, Grace

Hebert, she is responsible for that technical description.

And you can definitely tell because of the word buffalo, the

designer of her flag, she always referred to the animal as a bison.

Um, except for in one speech that she gives in her hometown of Buffalo,

Wyoming, where she calls it our buffalo.

It's really sweet.

But she always calls it a bison, their letters back and forth are a little, a

little tense and biting, especially, Verna Keyes, she was a young woman when she

designed the flag, she had just graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago, and

she had won a contest, and so she was feeling like a very, a previous contest

with the Burlington Railroads, she was feeling, Like a very successful artist

and then here's this older woman coming in and changing her design and hey,

what right do you have to say over this?

but Grace Hebert, I think she, she just preferred that bison

with his nose into the wind.

Okay.

So she didn't include any kind of technical description as to

which direction the bison faces.

And so it was when the flags were first.

Manufactured for the two gentlemen responsible for the law, John

Kendrick and Senator William Daly.

And Grace Hebert, she had Vernon make the flag or manufacture the flags from

the Chicago, George Lauder company and those flags were made as Hebert preferred

with the bison towards the staff.

I love it.

So, what other...

Notable items that you've learned in your research about Wyoming

history that if we weren't talking to you today, we wouldn't know

to put you on the spot.

Yes, well, I actually found I have something very exciting

to share with you actually.

Oh, please.

suffrage bill for us, William Bright, he was in Washington, D.

C.

at a national women's suffrage convention.

For a pioneer evening and on stage for all of these pioneer women who

had these oversized amazing roles in the movement, including Susan B.

Anthony and Susan B.

Anthony actually recognized William Bright from the crowd, which is quite

remarkable all in its own right.

She, she knew him by sight and she called him up onto stage and asked him

to share why he introduced that bill and he gave credit to Esther Morris.

He said that.

He knew next to nothing about woman's suffrage before he met her

and that she loaded him down with it before he went to the legislature,

which are really key words there.

And so for me, this is definitive evidence that Esther Morris, she is

the first successful advocate of a lasting woman's suffrage in the United

States, and that we have it direct from the man who introduced her.

the bill himself, that that's where his inspiration was coming from.

This also does mean that Esther Morris, a woman who is known to have been anti

slavery and to have, her neighbors and possibly she had helped out on

the Underground Railroad, according to Catherine Swim Cummings research and

her excellent book on Esther Morris.

That does mean that Esther Morris would be responsible for making that really racist

argument that convinced William Bright.

he was a pro Southern, Democrat who was against the 15th Amendment, which would

recognize Black men's right to vote.

And he, advocated against that amendment in South Pass City.

And what, whenever he was asked about why he believed that women's suffrage was

just and something that needed to be done.

He said that it was because he believed his wife and his mother were more

capable and intelligent than the, recently enfranchised black men.

Hmm.

And so that's, it's a good, um, balancer on Esther Morris that we get to, to really

look at her as, in a complete picture, I

think.

So help me unwind this a little bit.

William Bright, he, was he a U.

S.

Senator from Wyoming?

So he was a, he, he was born in Virginia and he did serve for

the Union during the Civil War.

And after the Civil War, like several, several Southerners.

He came West.

when we are becoming a territory.

President Grant, he appointed an entirely Republican executive

branch for our new territory.

So our, everybody was Republican at the, at the start and the

executive branch like Edward M.

Lee, who was a, Secretary for the Secretary of State, and they determined

that they were going to the 15th amendment had not yet been ratified.

And they said, but it's the law of the land and the territories,

and we are going to live up to it.

And so they actually sent a militia to South Pass City to serve as a protection

for the black men who were there, about nine black men, I believe, were

first territorial legislature.

And it was entirely Democratic, that there were no Republicans elected.

And the Democrat Party, they were the pro self, pro slavery, anti

And that's who William Bright, he was a, he was a Democrat who was elected to

that first territorial legislature and served as president of the council, which,

would be the head of the Senate today.

Okay.

And then Esther Morris, you mentioned her with.

having involvement with underground railroad.

Was she a Wyoming resident?

At the time she had moved to Wyoming.

She had been living, I believe in Illinois.

Think that's where she was coming from, but she had spent about eight months

actually in New York city, living with her niece Libby and Libby was working

as the private secretary to Susan B.

Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton while they published

the nation's first suffrage.

Newspaper called the revolution and it's really wonderful.

A lot of those, if you look at the first edition of the revolution,

the lays out the platform of the women's rights movement.

And a lot of those platform planks are actually incorporated into the

laws that are passed by that first territorial legislature that they pass

a law where they recognize married women's right to hold property.

They recognize women's rights to their children that today it's sort of weird

And so, if there was a divorce or her husband left her for some

reason, he had the entire legal claim over, over their children together.

So this recognized, women basically became independent.

We were no longer dependent on our husbands or fathers in Wyoming.

We were recognized as full citizens.

And they did some things that, You know, you've got these great ideals, but aren't

necessarily always followed through.

to be treated or to be paid the same amount, which is really quite incredible.

And I think there were some communities who embraced that and did that.

And then there were other communities who said, oh, but the man needs to be bringing

home more money, obviously, and, and pay their male teachers more despite that law.

I love this.

Thank you, Kylie.

We're going to take a quick break to get a word from one of our sponsors.

And then I want to learn more, a little bit more about South pass.

Cause you've mentioned South pass several times, so we'll be right back.

Oh, definitely.

Kylie.

Welcome back.

Learning so much about the importance that Wyoming is a territory and its

citizens had on women's suffrage and equal rights for women, in the history

of our country is fascinating and several times you've mentioned South Pass.

Give us some background about what South Pass is, where it is, but what was the

significance and what is South Pass now?

Yes, definitely.

South Pass at the time would have been one of the major cities in, in the area

and if you're looking at all of the surrounding cities, um, Miners Delight

and Atlantic City and South Pass, you're looking at roughly the same, a little

bit less of population in that area.

And so you can imagine the people who are moving there.

Yes, they thought that this might become one of the major American cities and in

cities like they were growing back east.

And the big draw to South Pass were, uh, were the mines, the, the gold mines.

There's the Clarissa mine that you can still go and tour through today.

And there are some, I've, I've heard some rumblings as I've been touring

around the state and sharing my research.

There have been some of my audience members who tell me that there's

people out there who are staking claims today and who are still

out there trying to, to find gold.

South Pass City, it did not go the way of Denver.

It did end up, um, going through its bust and just about everybody

left the town except for one family.

The, oh, let me see if I can remember their names all of

a sudden ran away from me.

But

about one family stayed in, in South Pass City, Janet Sherlock Smith.

And her sons, it was interesting.

She, she became blind in her old age and one of her sons, he also lost

his eyesight in a mining accident.

And I often think about them as South pass became this ghost town and.

Whether or not it would be easier to stay in a ghost town where you don't

have a lot of people, but you're very familiar with it as a disabled person who

is losing your eyesight or who has lost your eyesight, or if it would be better

to move to a larger city like Cheyenne or something like that, that would have

more people and more, more accessibility.

Um, it's just, it's interesting to me to think about the, the Janet Sherlock

Smith family and their decision to stay.

Do they still have

descendants?

I'm not sure about that.

possibly in the area.

I hope so.

They do have if you go and visit South Pass today, it is a state park and I

recommend everybody go and check it out.

And a lot of buildings have been reconstructed.

Esther Morris's cabin has been reconstructed, but it is not

the floor plan of South Pass.

When she lived there, it's just a, a structure that is in the general area

where we believe her cabin was, but there are some original buildings and

all of those original buildings are associated with the Janet Sherlock Smith

family like their, their hotel and their dry goods store and things like that.

Now,

if South Pass when Wyoming was a territory.

Was such a booming community.

How did it compare to how did Cheyenne compare to it?

And then how did Cheyenne end up becoming the state Capitol and correct me if

I'm wrong for a long time, Cheyenne was the largest populated community

and then it became Casper, but it could have been some other places.

In between that were larger than those places at some time.

Yes, definitely.

Well, Cheyenne, it's quite an interesting city.

I think that they definitely earned the nickname Magic City because one

day Cheyenne wasn't there and the next day it was that the railroad came

through and pretty much instantaneously.

There was a city.

What's been fascinating to me is that as I, as I've gotten more into

Wyoming history, um, it's sort of a similar story as my academic career

where I, I was looking at slavery and religion in the United States

and looking at Christianity and the impacts of the Second Great Awakening.

And then I said, well, what about Jewish slaveholders?

And now I'm finding myself that I'm at the point in my research in Wyoming where I'm

saying, well, what about Jews in Wyoming?

What, what were Jewish people doing here?

And as I dig into the history of Cheyenne, Jewish people were there immediately.

They play a major role in, um, establishing the town councils,

establishing the volunteer fire And building up businesses and

taking part in all of the commerce.

And so there's a really rich Jewish history in Cheyenne

that helped build up that city.

I believe that it is still the, largest city in Wyoming, right?

About 60, 000.

I think they bounced between 60 and 70, 000 people today.

And Casper were usually between 50, 000 and 60, 000 people that

were, were pretty close in size.

And as far as becoming the capital, I believe that's because it was the first

stop on the railroad and that Governor Campbell, he stepped off the rail.

This is an anecdote.

I don't know if I don't have any, any real evidence or to back this up yet.

But the story that I've always heard is that he stepped off of the train and

said, Oh, this will make a great capital.

And that's how it, it became the capital.

Fascinating.

I heard a tidbit for the railroad going through Wyoming that there's all of

these towns that you look like at I 80 and all those towns along I 80 and,

and that's basically pretty much about where the railroad goes, but you have

these towns that were created and it's like, why, why is there a town out here?

And it was, what I heard was it's where the railroad had stops.

To get more water and fuel for the train.

Yes.

And even I'd go even earlier than the railroad that if you, if you're

looking at the south of our state, you're looking at the overland trail.

And if you look at what comes through Casper where the railroad

and the interstates come through, um, in central Wyoming, you're

looking at the Oregon, California, Mormon and Pony Express trails.

And so these migration trails are really what becomes our future

interstates, highways and railroads.

And, going even earlier, those trails, they were animal trails

and they were Native American trading and hunting, trails.

And those really become our, our main highways and roads.

I think the, the small community of Glenrock, Wyoming, which is today, mostly

a, a bedroom community at Casper, but most people just commute into Casper

for work if they're living in Glenrock.

But Glenrock, it was.

At one point, more major stop than Casper was that you had Deer Creek Station

there and you had the upper Platte River Indian Agency there with Joseph

Bissonette was at the Deer Creek Station and Thomas Twist was at the Indian Agency,

and both of those men had at least.

25 children each, and they had Native American wives, there was

another little Lakota group that was living right in that area.

And so you can imagine that there was actually a really bustling community

And so all of these communities, they grow up and then eventually, Glen Rock,

I think it goes through that same path.

Oh, the railroad doesn't go through Glen Rock first.

And so the community really dies down.

And then the highway, to Yellowstone comes through the Yellowstone highway

and it builds back up and then the interstate comes and it dies back down.

So you see that boom and bust cycle when you talk about the movement

of people through our state.

It's that

migration route.

Oh, yes.

And it's very interesting, I think, to think about people as they moved

through, um, it's known as the largest unforced migration in the history of

the world, about half a million people, 500, 000 people, um, walked through the

Wow.

Half a million walking.

Oh yes.

Most of them walking the entire way.

Some of them got to ride or drive the wagon, but most of them walking.

And Wyoming, you mentioned South Pass as a ghost town, and that it's a state park.

Is it known to have more ghost towns?

Are you aware?

I'm not sure if we're Um, if we're known to have more or less, but we do

have quite a few, around the state and I, I know, um, close to me is Jeffrey

city and Jeffrey city is sort of a half ghost town, half active town.

And they were around with the uranium mining is how the Jeffrey city really

had its big boom and it's great big population move for all of that

mining and then once they close down the uranium mine and they've.

Done some nice work reclaiming the land around there and trying to turn

it back into more of a natural habitat.

The city has, has largely emptied out and so it's sort of an odd town to

drive through that you can see that there's some people who are moving

in and trying to take advantage and, make opportunities out of it.

And then you can also see that for the most part it's been abandoned.

Interesting how you would describe it as half ghost, half um, active town.

Yes.

a, it's a weird sort of feeling I think when you're driving through.

When looking at the history of Wyoming, what was the importance of the

ranchers as far as establishing some of these communities and these trade

routes, in, in the, in our history?

And did they have influence in other ways as well that, that are notable?

Oh, yes, definitely.

But, um, quite, quite a significant history with the ranchers, especially

with a lot of the cattlemen who are coming up from Texas and

taking advantage of the open range.

And then once you have the Homestead Act, actually come into Wyoming and you have

homesteaders coming in and disrupting that open range has led to a lot of the early

conflicts that we have in the state when we're not, talking about the Indian Wars.

Of course, the Indian Wars are, the earliest conflicts that the

United States has in, in the area.

But talking about the Johnson County war in particular is thinking a lot about how

we're shifting from open range into These homesteaders coming in, um, Ella Watson

and Jim Arville are great examples of that in Natrona County, that they, they

come in and they, um, they are a married couple and they do what a lot of people

do, which is try and cheat the system.

They went in and they both applied for.

Land and receive their 150 acres and a very nice choice property

right on the Sweetwater River.

There were some large ranchers in the area who were paying their, cow, cattle

hands to go out and make those claims so that way they could buy them from them and

amass a large ranch in order to maintain their cattle and maintain their herd.

Which requires a lot more land than 150 acres for sure.

and Ella Watson and Jim Arville, they didn't want to sell out their land.

And so their neighbors, they send them poison pies that they didn't eat.

They fed to their dogs and killed their dogs.

And Ella Watson, she had purchased some cattle that had been passing through on

a cattle drive and they had hook rot.

And so they wouldn't have been able to complete the drive.

So she had several cattle with different brands on them.

And they use that as an excuse to say that she was wrestling cattle

and they grabbed up her and Jim and they were apparently just going to

try and scare them a little bit.

And She was trying to get them to drive down to Cheyenne to prove that

her bill of sale was legitimate.

And she was known as a, a woman who she wasn't going to sit quietly for sure.

She was going to tell it how it is.

And.

that, that got her into more trouble than she bargained for that night.

They took her, it's, very close to Independence Rock, actually.

If you're standing on the boulder where they were, that you can

see Independence Rock from there.

And they lynched both her and her husband.

before the Johnson County war broke out and the violence just north of

Natrona County over the same issues of.

accusations of cattle wrestling, but the accusations of cattle wrestling

were really, masks for land grabs that were happening and then poor

management of herds with some really hard winters that the cattle barons were

starting to get a little bit greedy in Wyoming in the 18 seventies that they.

We're putting cattle into the market that were too young and trying to inflate

their numbers and after several hard winters and they weren't able to reach.

The numbers that the Eastern markets were expecting, that's when they start

blaming all of these wrestlers that are around stealing these cattle.

And that's where the cattle have gone, not, not the hard winters and not

their poor management of the herds.

And that results in a, in a great deal of violence.

And that violence is what you're talking about is the Johnson County wars.

Yes, that's right.

Could you expand on what the Johnson County wars?

Were a little bit more than the time range of that.

Yes, definitely.

really looking at a lot of, um, government corruption also that there was an

invasion that happened, but they brought in a lot of the, former Texas Rangers

and people from out of state who they had convinced that they were going to.

Come in here as a, that they needed them as a militia to, tamp down

these wrestlers that were coming.

And they had a, a hit list of people that they wanted them to go after.

And some of those people were one of the people at the top of the

list was a man named Nate champion.

And he was an outspoken critic of the cattle barons.

He was someone who was willing to testify in court against them.

And he was at the top, the top of their list.

And so this invading army, they come up, by train from Colorado and.

There's evidence that they were supported by not only the Wyoming

Stock Growers Association, but also by the governor at the time and some

of our state senators at the time.

And they did things like they knew that the sheriff.

And Douglas would be very much opposed to this.

And so they had him, conveniently out of town on a meeting when

the train came through Douglas.

And then once the train was in Casper, they, they got off the train and

they started on horseback up towards Buffalo, Wyoming, and they were on

their way to Buffalo when they heard that Nate champion and a friend.

Were at a ranch nearby and so they went to, they surrounded him, he had a diary

and he writes, about how they shot and killed his companion and he drugged

his companion into the cabin with him.

And he's writing this diary about how he's going to try and make a break

for it once the sun goes down, and he hopes that he'll be able to make it

out there but he doesn't think that he's going to be able to make it.

And he does, he makes his break for it and they, they shot him down dead.

And then at that point, the citizens in Buffalo had learned about this invading

army and they came to confront them.

And so the invaders, they ended up, sequestered out on a ranch, trying

to protect themselves in a defensive position, and they were surrounded by.

basically the citizens of Buffalo that were saying, we're not, we're not

going to allow you to come in here.

And, at that point, our governor started to panic.

And he is asking for a militia to come in and, they actually, I believe that they

had to, that one of our state senators had to like try and go and wake up the

president, um, in order to get the U.

S.

militia to, to come.

They arrested the, the invaders.

and brought them to one of the forts where they were held mostly

for the invaders protection.

And most of those invaders that they did not see any sort of, legal

repercussions for their actions there.

Quite the

event in Wyoming history.

Yes.

Yes.

I could listen to you and talk like this all, all day long.

I love it.

I would recommend, um, reading band Didi of the planes.

It was written by, Asa Mercer.

He's a, he was a journalist at the time and he was absolutely

disgusted with what had happened and with what he, he was witnessing.

And so he writes this book.

And it was, banned in Wyoming.

There's a story about a, a wagon full of them being taken out of the state under

gunfire and them trying to destroy all copies of the Spandidi at the Plains book.

but it's, I would highly recommend it.

They hit.

It's quite good.

And then John Davis is also, he's a recent historian.

He's currently working in Wyoming and he's written a fabulous

book on the Johnson County War.

Um, and that's the latest scholarship on it.

And I would highly recommend that book as well.

How do you spell

ASA's first name?

ASA.

And it's Mercer, M E R C E R.

Okay.

And so he wrote that, when did he write that book about the Johnson County wars?

He wrote it,

right about the same time that it was all happening.

Um, right after it happened is when he wrote that book.

So that's, um, contemporary with the

event.

You can still find a copy at the library?

Yes, you should be able to find a copy in the library.

It is a little bit harder to find in Wyoming than outside of the state.

or it used to be.

I think it's easier today than it, than it

was.

Oh, interesting.

Well, have you written a book?

I mean, how can people follow some of this work that you that you're doing?

Oh, yes, definitely.

I I've written several articles now with wild history dot org.

I started last september as an assistant editor with them.

They're a project of the Wyoming Historical Society.

I think that if you want to support independent scholars like me or support

just scholarship on Wyoming history, that the best way to do that is to join

the Wyoming Historical Society, that they are a wonderful institution and

they have also given me a great deal of support as I have started my own business

and started to dig into the history that I, I received a Homeshore Research

Grant for my work on women's suffrage.

And again, working for them as an assistant editor

has been really wonderful.

So I've written several articles about women office holders in

the West, like Ethel Stoner.

who, had a street brawl trying to, enforce prohibition in Cokeville, Wyoming.

And there was, Elizabeth Wiley in Greybull, Wyoming, who she ran

And she was successful, which is amazing.

And she, um, served for several, several terms as mayor in Greybull.

And so I have articles about them and an article about the

state flag up on wyohistory.

org.

I'm hoping to write some more articles about women's suffrage

and some of these other topics.

I also have several presentations that I do, commissioned presentations,

that's how I learned about Glen Rock community, that the Converse County

Library commissioned me to do a history on Converse County for their libraries.

And I have some presentations that I already have done and

ready that I have one on the state flag, several on women's suffrage.

And I also have one where I do talk about my experiences growing

up Jewish in Wyoming and that dry timber of the Holocaust.

And, I'm happy to drive all over the state and come to your community that

the county libraries are a great place.

They usually have the budget to hire me and Help make that affordable

and help me pay my bills, which is important as a historian.

I hope everybody knows that even historians need to eat.

and that I would love to, I would love to come to your communities and to, to

share this history and to talk with you.

Well, Kylie, I'm so grateful that you're doing the work that you're

doing, finding this history and bringing it back to life, um, giving

it a life, in today's modern time.

And if people wanted to reach out to you and connect with you,

what is a great way to do that?

Oh yes, you can send me an email at klmhistorian at gmail.

com or you can check out my website kyliethehistorian.

com and there is a way to contact me on that website as well.

Super.

Well, I hope we get to meet someday that you're brought out here to

Jackson Hole to speak about Wyoming history or some, some other history.

And so thank you for your time.

This has been an absolute joy, uh, getting to learn more about Wyoming

and getting to connect with you, Kylie.

I appreciate it.

Yes.

Thank you so much for having me.

I really appreciate, this opportunity to share with your audience and, I look

forward to keeping up with your podcast.

I've enjoyed listening to some of the past episodes.

Thank you.

You're

welcome.

Thank you, Kylie.

Great to see you today.

To learn more about Kylie McCormick and Wyoming's Vast and colorful

history, visit the Jackson Hole connection.com, episode number 250.

I am very grateful to everybody who's helped me keep the Jackson

Hole connection on the air.

The support that my wife Laura gives me every day I.

The love and caring and of course loss of hair and new gray hairs that my

boys, William and Lewis helped me have.

And of course, Michael, who has been the editor and marketing

director for so many years.

For me, your time is important and I am grateful and appreciative

of you sharing your time.

Get out there and share this podcast.

Get out there and do something.

Rattle the world a little bit.

Be kind to folks, get out there, have conversations, and who knows?

Look for me down in the future and I'll let you know what comes up next.

In signing off for the Jackson Hole Connection, I'm Stephan Abrams.