Wyoming Voices; 102; Part Two: A New Century, 1892-1942

Wyoming voices has been funded in part through a generous grant from the Wyoming Department of Education and by the Wyoming Council for the Humanities. And through the generous support of members of Wyoming Public Television. Thank you. Who who. The completion of the Transcontinental Railroad and 1869 and settlement along its

path led Wyoming to statehood in 1890 fronter lawlessness gave way to settlers and a flood of foreign emigrants success in Wyoming required a strong back tenacity and willingness to take risks. Prosperity greeted the newcomers but dry weather and hard times right. The 19 they cleared the land and they've worked from sun up till sundown so the most important thing in this little godforsaken place was get the oil out no matter what it took. We would not have been affected I don't believe with the depression if it had the bed that it got so dry from the exit. Brunt of a new century took the steps of the Great Depression. This is the story of the people and the land. The place we call Wyoming

the American West has become one of the nation's most popular entertainments. By the time of Wyoming statehood Buffalo Bill Cody is Wild West show with its history of the West Settlement the Indian Wars and rambunctious riflery was world we now. He started his Wild West show in age of three and it became within a couple of years an enormous commercial sensation. He asked Sitting Bull in 1885 he would like to accompany him on the tour and was very impressed with something about that and the draw of the Lakota. You know so recently from the Indian Wars was unmistakable by 1887 he was invited to take the show to Anglo as one of the principal features of Queen Victoria's golden jubilee. My grandmother was having been a child she

had gone with the first time in England and all over the United States had been presented to the queen of Queen of England Queen Victoria. And she must have been five or six at the time. In the newspapers of the time they called her the favorite among the royal court because she was probably a precocious little girl spoiled Annie Oakley would babysitter. She said she'd gotten to spend the night with Annie Oakley and that she'd been spanked by her so she had wonderful stories. Buffalo Bill's Wild West captured the world's fancy. But the real West with its spectacular landscape and abounding wildlife continue to hold the nation's attention. The mood to preserve its unique features began an eight hundred seventy two. With the creation of the country's first national park Yellowstone Buffalo Bill actively worked to develop its potential as a tourist draw. At

that time in the late 19th or early 20th century the only tourists were people who could afford it. Buffalo Bill is trying to figure out a way to bring these people with money into the area. Drop your bucks and go on into Yellowstone. That was his idea. Aside from Buffalo Bills enterprising tourism idea has Yellowstone's primary purpose had been to preserve the magnificent lands and wildlife throughout the 1870s while Yellowstone was a National Park it was perfectly legal to hunt quite a few market hunters use the park hunting elk bison for example and one one hunting season they killed over 2000 animals in Yellowstone Park itself. When I first started studying the wildlife in Wyoming I was shocked because we were down I think to about 15000 antelope in the state of Wyoming at the turn of the century 1900.

They were practically gone. There were a few buffalo in Yellowstone. So you know Roosevelt really pioneered the conservation movement. The idea was that you would scientifically manage western lands. Roosevelt wanted to make sure that wildlife would be available for future generations to Hutch. Roosevelt's ideas included predator control. He recommended his old hunting guide John Gough be hired as a game warden for Yellowstone Goff was instructed only to kill about lions hunting deer big horn sheep with the mouth lines were killing elk and they were to be left alone. That point time Roosevelt was very concerned that the elk numbers were becoming too numerous over grazing the park. By 19 0 to only 23 Buffalo remained in Yellowstone Park

the stage was set for a debate that would occupy the state and the nation for the next century. How best to manage wildlife and federal lands Buffalo Bill's idea of the West captured the world's imagination and Wyoming capitalized on it. Over the next 20 years tourist numbers increase dramatically. The Wild West Yellowstone and Wyoming wildlife became a part of the state's economic foundation. My grandfather went into the cattle business after he came to Roland and then he decided there was more money and cheap braising. When the price of wool goes up you'll be surprised how quick a cattleman can start raising sheep. Yeah I remember that dad used to say that public

lands were open to whoever got on and there was no control over them. We had up to eight hundred thousand sheep Cross Green River but Green River City in the fall. They would cross the little color red to the Red Desert. They would go clear to the green fairs. North of Robin Hood. By 19 0 to Wyoming range land held one million cattle and six million sheep the sheep wagon a Wyoming invention was a home on the range for sheep herders. Many of whom were newly arrived immigrants. When my dad came here he took sheep money and go all over the country and their sheep man didn't have money enough to pay cash for the cattle and sheep war did occur but for the most part it was a

war over transient sheep herders who violated either fence lines or who made it rough on the homesteaders and cattle man. The Cowboys had a proud furrow through the phone so that the present almost always exact location of their state. She could not cross the plowed for ORD but the cows could come over but she couldn't. The conflict ended in 1909 with a midnight raid outside 10 sleep in the foothills of the Big Horn Mountains two sheep men and their herder were killed and their bodies burned. The men responsible were sent to the state penitentiary in Rawlins sutlers and juries and of the Range Rovers. Once called The Great American Desert the arid western states knew their future depended on water. The problem with

settling out here was how were you going to bring water to the land how are we going to be able to irrigate and how are you going to be able to grow crops out here when you don't have any rainfall in 1894. A group of investors was looking at coming to the Big Horn basin and starting irrigation projects. And they invited Buffalo Bill who was fresh from his 1893 season in Chicago and rolling in money. They invited him to invest with them. Coincidentally at the same time the federal government passed what what's called the Carry Act which was a measure designed to encourage states to develop their desert lands. It was fairly successful in Wyoming because we have a number of communities in Wyoming that are you can directly attribute their existence to the Carry Act. One of the first things that helped

the project along was momen migration into the Big Horn basin both Kodi himself and. Officials of the state of Wyoming talk to Mormon groups in Utah to encourage colonies to come into this area and the Mormons were noted for their ability to build canals and. In fact it's kind of a standing joke that Mormons could make water run uphill. The farmer soon discovered canals were not enough for Wyoming's desert climate. Long term water storage was needed. The Congress passed the Newlands reclamation but that reclamation Act established the Bureau of Reclamation and set up a system whereby the federal government could build dams and all these rivers in the West. Buffalo Bill had

a dream to irrigate about a hundred thousand acres of land around Cody and he was going to do it with a series of canals. He didn't. You invision a damn. He simply couldn't put the money together. It was just too big a project for any individual. So Buffalo Bill relinquished his water rights and the state of Wyoming and the reclamation mation Service came in. Reclamation dams and irrigation projects led the state engineer to predict that within the next 10 years Wyoming used to be one of the most important agricultural states in the West. Wyoming as did Montana and the Dakotas enjoyed prosperity from 103 to right after the end of the First World War.

That was really a boom but that's when agriculture really had its heyday in Wyoming. With that prosperity came new residents to the state between one thousand nine hundred one thousand nine hundred ten the Northern Counties increased 140 percent. My grandfather and my Uncle Sam came to one and one to no six. They cleared the land and they'd worked from sun up till sundown. Jesse Hampton who used to own wash the trading store here and she used to tell me about my grandfather when he was here couldn't speak English and she was tell me one time about a story where he had bought long underwear in the winter and wore it on the outside. Innovative farmers planted sugar beets and discovered they flourished and while the crop was labor intensive and migrant workers were contracted vole good Germans from the steppes of Russia poured into Wyoming. They had large families seven eight and ten kids and whole families would get on

on the train with a small amount of belongings some of their own food and they would get on the train and they would then come in two then western Nebraska and into eastern Wyoming. My parents were able to come to this country and became good citizens here and they loved this country because it was. They're green to be free and they were able to be free. These people and I really had a sense of the feel for the land and it's and it's amazing. The short amount of time maybe three four years they're able to buy a little bit of land on their own then of course the whole family works the land. And usually you started out thinning meat between the ages of two and three when you were old enough to be controlled in the field and so on. And I remember my mother she was always in charge of this crew and she would go out in the mornings

with the crew get them started. And she always used a long handle. Oh and I and my older brother would thin behind her you know growing up with my mother. All I ever saw her do was work in 1017 when America entered World War One agricultural prices dropped calls for increased production and labor right across the state. Prosperity had arrived and seemed destined to stay. Why 19 0 3 10 percent of Wyoming workers were coal miners by 1910 coal production had doubled and immigrants from around the world arrived to work. But I was told later by some of these immigrants is when you could went to work in one of those communities. Now you might say well gee I want to live over here. They said this is the house we have

available and you will be living between people from Croatia and and the Piedmont of Italy or something like that and you better learn to like it. Those houses were not well built either. They look good on the outside but they didn't have insulation. The rent was nominal but you paid the rent before you get anything else you had to shop at the company store. They had electricity in Rock Springs by 1896. You had to buy the electricity from Pacific. You had to buy water. They made as much money mining the miners is a good mining of coal. Now this is my grandmother's story came on the train into Rock Springs. She just was unbelievable. And she kept saying not a blade of grass not a tree. And now and then my grandfather was there with a wagon and horses to take them to souper which is about 20 miles out. And it was a rough ride.

She always said that she cried for a year. My father I've got a picture of him working in the coal mine. I understand unease because the coal was so low and they had to you know dig it out. My uncles all of them but one worked in the coal mine at the age of 14. And so it was really rough on those kids. My. Dad you're so always talk about going to work as a young fellow. See mine in superior and they went into the mine it was still dark and it was dark when they came home. When they came home they had they were black me just black. Their faces you know from the coal dust their clothes were were just black from that cold when they dug coal they had to dig it and put it in a bucket.

They called it. And they had to field so many buckets to get their pay. That's what they paid him by. It was not a highly mechanized although Union Pacific mines were really the most progressive in the country probably. And it was very very dangerous now here in Rock Springs if you'll go down to the railroad park you'll see a monument with four or five hundred names of individuals killed in the coal mines. Not a big explosion here just one two at a time one two at a time when they moved into that house. That's when she took in the borders. We called bachelors at that time and they lived in these shacks and she had five of those and she would feed them and wash their clothes. So she had the boarders plus her sons. To take care of all the types of batterers.

They were a bunch of really characters they loved a good type. They had friends that were always coming there and they did a lot of singing and they had people the instruments but they sang all the songs across Wyoming coal miners were tarred and played hard. Built a better life for themselves and their family and created a legacy for generations to come. I think as we talk about Pioneer people are overlooked as first generation because of a bill to really hard work a foundation of success for myself prosper. When the Indians come across here and they use this crude oil that was laying on the

ground on their bodies so that they could put paid over that and the rain wouldn't even wash it off. Across Wyoming like freshwater springs while Sea to the surface from underground pools Indians and pioneers alike found uses for the Bozeman trail in the Traverse came from back east. They were all used to turn in vegetation when they came here there was nothing but oil gas chemicals. The land they are always laying on the ground so they picked it up put it in buckets and put flour and used it for x rays. Also for medical purposes up to about the 1850s. People in America are reliant on whale oil for a source of illumination for lights and burning in their house. And Rockefeller finds out that you can take oil and you can refine it and you can get numerous different

by products and kerosene was one of them. And it's cheaper than whale oil. So I was born and raised in Titusville Pennsylvania where the great well was drilled in 1859 and he came out here to this country as a place for Miner and 1886 he came across this path of oil and sage rice and immediately knew it and I'll feel so he sent a telegram to Rockefeller Sinclair and Shannon and Titusville Pennsylvania come quick Jeff on another oil field. You see about eight hundred eighty nine that early people are coming in and drilling some wells in Salt Creek area. Initially those people would literally put the oil in barrels and put together what they called a string team a B team of about 18 horses and haul it in wagons back to Casper where they established the first

refinery in the state. Speculation took off. There was money to be made with Wyoming oil. My grandfather was the first post master and lead and then later he would build a grocery store in 1900 he moved into Wyoming. At that time you could file a placer claim on an oil wells and so he filed a class or claims on oil with some of his business associates all over Weston county and even some in CT County. I still get income from some of that early mining Wyoming's early limited oil production change with the development of the automobile in 1910 sales from gasoline passed kerosene. Three years later there were enough automobiles in the state to require registration and regulation. Oil production of one and a half million barrels grew to

13 million people are staking their claims. In the teens and even a little you know nineteen nine thousand nine hundred ten most of the claims are staked by the teens. But if you're not there it was not uncommon to have somebody come in and you may come back a week later after you filed your claim at the courthouse and have somebody else sitting there or drilling a well. And so Salt Creek in particular people in the in court for years decades fighting over who actually owns a claim the gusher at Salt Creek in 1908 began the wild Wyoming boom and bust right the first houses were built here and up until then they lived in pants. So they built houses they built the houses and then we had cut houses and we had a cook house that 900 men an

hour. The oil was hauled south to Casper. Oil companies from across the country located there increasing the city's population over 300 percent. Men poured in ready to find work in the economic boom. The sheep in wolf's town soon became known as the oil capital of the Rocky Mountains. In the spring of 1917 the United States joined the war which had been raging in Europe for two and a half years. Wyoming National Guard members were called to duty along with other Guardsmen across the nation. Eventually 12000 Wilding men would fight for their country. The Wyoming economy during World War 1 was really brought along because the railroad was doing well it was hauling goods back and forth across the country and of course it was a wartime economy where we needed lots of agricultural produce and so agricultural

prices went way up. U.S. farmers and ranchers in Wyoming where we extremely well very well were watching the war effort created a bonanza for wild sugar shortages led to the building of sugar beet processing factories. Coal production increased dramatically and oil production doubled becoming the state's second biggest industry. Why only as newspapers and pamphlets bragged about the prosperity. Every possible advantage every possible asset was blown way out of proportion it was it was touted as being a great source of mineral wealth. We were going to have oil wells all over the place. It was to be a great source of of other kind of mining. It was to be a real garden spot where you could grow any kind of a crop that could grow. Because you know we never have failures. World War 1 ended on November 11 1918 and Wyoming along

with the rest of the nation celebrated the victory. Good fortune shining on Wyoming's future. After World War one they created then the legislation to allow veterans to get land virtually for very little price and the result of that is we have increasing populations and the small tells look like they can really even take off a lot of people who are wanting in on these great prices of these agricultural goods and so consequently homesteading in Wyoming just boomed in 1900 in one thousand twenty. My dad planned to go to Dwyer while the first of the land office was closed there that day so he came on through Douglas. And he met with a bad guy Mr. Givens who took about

the place. We've always kidded him about it because it had no spring on it but it was close to town six miles. Mr. Givens was paid but later armed with 12 chickens. When my dad first came here he lived in a little sac about 8 by 10 and lived on jack rabbits and potatoes. How and where he got the data's been anyway that's what he lived on in the first five or six years. We had wonderful crops. I have memories of gardens that were dry like gardens and had lots of squash potatoes. I remember helping shock core grain. I remember seeing the Perris just wavy like with law grass waving like ocean waves I guess. Oh hard to

believe. Unfortunately the prices started to decline at the same time the weather started to change in Wyoming and so we have a period about one thousand nine hundred twenty when suddenly those very dependable rains that would come in the growing season ceased and drought started striking vast areas of Wyoming. Most of most of the 24 just Richard for Wyoming agriculture. I've just read about we had some of the lowest number of stock cattle on record that wheat prices for some years are just dreadful. And of just what happened to banks and while I think the numbers were we had one hundred fifty one banks in 1919 and I think we had 69 in 1932 when the Agricultural Depression of the night of the 20s came which was much more severe than the Great Depression that we hear about

nationally in the 30s. Over half of those banks that were chartered failed. There was even one day in July of 1904 that I believe there were seven or eight banks that failed in one day around the state and they weren't necessarily connected they were just just all failed in July. One hundred twenty four. And there were cars being built and they all had to have. So the most important thing in this place was the Teapot Dome incident was the biggest national scandal. The next biggest national presidential scandal until Watergate. I had the complete history. I have pictures.

My version of the story begins with the U.S. Navy which began to change its coal burning ships to ones the burned oil to prepare for a possible oil shortage. They reserve the land and Teapot Dome. And so this area in theory was supposed to be set aside. Nobody was supposed to drill there. It was going to be administered by the Department of the Navy. And the department the Navy would watch over it until it was needed for in case of national emergency. This sensible plan ran amok when Warren G Harding was elected president and picked his friend Albert fall to serve as secretary of the interior. Albert turned to Sinclair. Well one day in the early 1920s another oil man by the name of Leslie Miller who later became governor happened to be up in the area around Teapot Dome and he noticed a bunch of trucks from Sinclair

oil company going into the Naval petroleum reserve and he said hey what's going on here. Albert fall had taken bribes to sell the Teapot Dome oil and the scandal reached all the way to the president spent six months in jail. Three hundred five. Sinclair had a hundred thousand he put in but he was he would not speak up. So they got him one for keeping his mouth shut when he should have opened it. At the same time the Teapot Dome scandal was brewing while Ming was making national headlines for a quite different reason. Nelly Ross was a typical woman of the time she was a kindergarten teacher. Nellie Davis Tayloe was her name and she met a guy named William Ross and they were married and Ross established a law firm. Ross decided to run for Wyoming governor in one thousand twenty two and was elected by a mere seven hundred votes.

He has a lot of good ideas. He one of the things that he pushes for early on is a severance tax. The Republicans think this is ridiculous and we don't get a severance tax in Wyoming until 969. But he's effective as effective as a Democrat can be in a heavily Republican state and within a year and a half of taking office he develops appendicitis and he dies. His young wife Nellie was asked to run for the governor's seat. Reluctantly she accepted the nomination of her party and so her opponent was a Republican named Sullivan. He'd been tied to Harry Sinclair in the Teapot Dome scandal so he's kind of got some problems there and she defeats him by

more than 8000 votes in the election that is now in a corner office of course and she was our first born governor and she was always my hero. Ever since I can remember everybody was excited about it. You know to people in Wyoming she's a real person. She's an affective administrator. Yeah but outside it's well you know just a novelty two years later in her run for re-election. Now he was defeated. She's a Democrat in a Republican state and the Republican rift healed itself. The split that enabled her husband to be elected and so she has an uphill battle from the beginning in 1033 President Franklin Roosevelt in Washington D.C. the first woman to hold that title Mrs. Ross

held the position for 20 years. I am agriculture barely scrape by the cowboy and wild west group as a symbol for the state. People would come out here to enjoy the National Natural Wonders Of course of Wyoming Yellowstone National Park. And so these communities who would see these tourists driving through they said well why can't we find a way for tourists here a little while so that they spend some money in our community. And the obvious choice to everyone was of course to use the tomboy image the wild west image. And so you see an influx of rodeos being staged during the summer months. Of course the granddaddy of them all shy an affront to your days had been started at the turn of

the century by the twenties its fame had spread nationwide. My grandmother was princes Bluewater And also known as Rosa and she first came as part of a contract group back in the 20s to Cheyenne Frontier Days and one of the things she did was insist that all of the not only herself but all of the troupe that would come from Pine Ridge for frontier days that they all were. The wreckage was immaculate. They were wearing their best interested in providing a good show for the audience. Tourism in Wyoming was becoming a multimillion dollar business. One of its attractions dude ranches have been brought to the state by three brothers from Pittsburgh at the turn of the century. But we didn't advertise for quite a while. I'm not sure though

in my 20s when we first started putting out folders and little wrangling notes back then the people expected to do most of the things on their own I mean there was the bathrooms was they'd have to go half a block to get community bathroom for the men and one for the women that then people would get together in the evenings and tell stories or just play cards or anything like that. It wasn't just the dude's who knew how to entertain themselves. That was the way things were done across the state during the 20s and you know weekends we used to have a lot of down country dances and go to certain people's house and move the furniture out of a couple rooms and have some pick up music and he go was there with that Damon bug when I was just a baby.

There were dances in the Penrose church and my mother and father and the older kids would go and I can remember my mother stacking up several cults and making a bed for me to sleep through the day. Travel remained an adventure throughout the 20s with the roads providing plenty of challenges. The roads in those days were not very good. It's now 18 26 and many of the roads in Wyoming were the main highways. Many of them were still gravel. We have a place that was about 20 miles south of Rolla and took half the day to get there. The roads were just we have a Ford would be a pickup and it had screened of society had to keep the children penned into only one jumping out

and we were driving somewhere and it had. Places could hang along with their hands and well it was felt like a prison education had its challenges too. My first grade teacher at Cornell it had taught my dad in Laramie and he was near retirement but they didn't have retirement for teachers in those days they just worked until they got so tired they couldn't go anymore. But I was able to catch the school bus early in the morning. But we got school well before the teacher so we had to build the fire and I had a neighbor. There was a neighbor boy who really knew how to build far we had this old pot bellied stove sitting out in the middle of the room and in ten minutes he would have that cherry red. He poured kerosene No wonder we didn't burn the place down.

Well we had to walk to school. Oh shit time we'd have to kick rattlers. Life in Wyoming during the 1920s depended a great deal on where you lived. We didn't have electricity we had it we didn't have running water either. And so we had just life in the towns and cities was a completely different story. Everybody here was to have their yard beautified and if you had any for one week if your kids got into trouble because they were you or if you were somebody or that you were drunk you were 19 20.

Everything was modern. We had had electricity and our streets were paved. In the general election of one thousand eighteen watts of Wyoming soldiers were away or away from Wyoming voters in Wyoming passed the Prohibition Act and that went into effect in 1980 Wyoming was last in the Rocky Mountain west of prohibition. Necessity is the mother of invention bar owners found other means to make a living or they found other means. I remember my father cursed. He had the bar in 1900. Well prior to 1990 when you bought the bar he built in addition onto it. And so we had a bakery and an ice cream shop. Fact is

we sold bread to Riverton in Lander from our big shop there in Hudson. And then when prohibition was over we peeled any old in the bargain. My father and mother come over Greece in 1980 and he moved to minor so he worked in the mine there for quite a while and he got hurt in a mine in the good company. Prob if you know you start peddling booze in the making line. We had a little house about a block away and that's where they come by a court of lying yellow wine quarter whiskey. Good lord we had stuff coming out a cairn in here mentioning any names. But they had their springs all built up

loaded in their cars and bring it down from Canada. No no and then of course the moonshine Kember finest moonshine in the world. Yeah but the drink got to build they'd ship a carload of grapes from California every year they were called Xanth the graves Lang grapes and practically every family by the ton. You know I think this one time there was about fifty three box carts of grapes because everybody made wind. I mean not only the Italians but you know the Slovenians and all the rest of them made their wine too. And normally. We stumped him barefooted. Somebody gives a report on why she stopped and didn't like that. So at 10 a great hundred fifty gallons of wine and from the

wife comes and we had to go in the basement. That was step that. Then once in a while my dad spent a few days in jail especially want to stick him in jail tonight. But they're letting him out during the daytime so it coming through another batch of beer before he had to go back to jail. The drought continued through the 1920s and so the problems

got worse and worse and worse and the Union Pacific Railroad was was losing money and they were laying off a lot of their their employees. Lots of the coal mines in Wyoming were closing down and add to that the decline in fuel prices in petroleum prices. You could buy a barrel of oil for 19 cents. And so every every sector of the Wyoming economy was in absolute ruins by the time the stock market crashed in October of 1909. But the great wins it started in the candidacy and went into Wyoming. And there's essentially the light to part of the oh the farmer just blew away it blew her down to hard pan and it was they were not in and she will never forget

my mother. She couldn't keep dirt out of a bull right through. We would have been affected I don't believe with the depression and the bag the failures on Wall Street. If it had the bid that it got so dry no longer could we have enough grass to support the cattle. I remember Baghdad oil out after having planted his corn crop dig up the kernels. They would be sprout it had tears running down his face. You take a ride on a horse and go out in the hills or back of the ranch and there was just nothing. He put the sheep in the timber and I need a good turpentine and sheep are so hungry they read by you as if you're dying to meet them. Turbo somehow 1935 and in 1932 the depression had really hit us hard

hit hit the stockmen very badly and the bank foreclosed on many many many of our friends. What was happening in 132 was that an estimated 25 percent of the population was unemployed. That's one in every four people in Wyoming was unemployed in 1932 during the Depression. There was a railroad that went through Hudson. And these weren't hobos. These were people who were looking for a job. And they would tell the next group if you go to Hudson there's a White House on the Hill and she will feed you. And I go remember some little girl we always had strange people sitting at our table eating because my mother never turned anybody away. One of my earliest memories is eating corn meal mush. We had corn me a mush if you didn't eat it all at breakfast it was no be fried and served to you later for lunch or dinner as we called it then or and we didn't do it then you go have a for supper.

All these people are without jobs and we were all lining up for food and sugar and peanut butter and things like that. In 1932 the country said that's enough and elected Franklin Roosevelt Pres.. Do you have some specific memories of when Roosevelt was first elected and how pleased our community and my family particularly were of the Democrat grandpa was a Democrat. I've been told he served a prison term for his polygamy. He was branded by the Federals and sent to prison for unlawful cohabitation. And then after he got out because he was a convicted felon he couldn't vote or hold office. And Grover Cleveland President Cleveland issued a

pardon for all of these old Mormon convicts which he restored to civil rights and in the family it said that made a Democrat out of Grandpa. Some of us have never up. The four months between Franklin Delano Roosevelt's election in 1932 and his inauguration in March of one thousand thirty three were the most difficult of the Depression. But during the first 100 days of his administration a string of new programs emerged 19 CCC camps that were established around Wyoming and you could sign up with the CCC and they would send you out to a place out west near a national forest or a national park and you'd be put to work building trails and and doing conservation activities. My father had been active politically in various things within the

state. They contacted him and asked him if he would be the superintendent of one of the camps. So the first camp that they assigned to him was at Saratoga Wyoming. And the Army was in charge at the camps. Now when they were paid they were paid $30 a month but they were the same 25 of that home. Most of them had never been out of their backyards. And so this is quite a traumatic experience for those young fellows because they all they knew was their immediate family. He said they came through Wyoming thinking oh my goodness look at this barren land and then they came through the Wind River Canyon and it's remop us and thought Boy we've got a nice place to stay. Then they train kept going they landed in deeper. Oh my. They just didn't know what to think because there was nothing there but it was obvious that the young people didn't have proper clothing and didn't know a

lot about taking care of themselves and they were very very thin. Some of them were really quite gaunt. They just did amazing things to these young men. At the movies on the radio and in the newspapers while being watched as the rest of the nation struggled with unemployment and hunger. Not that their own situation was easy. It just seemed better than the cities. And so long came a lot of these new deal programs that became extremely important to the survival of people who's managed to who wanted to stay in Wyoming. They receive welfare check every two weeks. There were certain pay for it and then they would get it for what you might call a credit card a day to buy food to

shift or say it was tough for many people. Other families were able to survive without using the relief program but everyone felt the sacrifices made. You know no one had any money but they never went on relief. That's when my dad would go to the woods he called it in California. Sure there's a picture of him with a red wood that he saw down with a hacksaw you know just a cross cut with another man on the end works so hard just to make it to make the mortgage payment so that we wouldn't lose the farm. I had a little daughter and I used to take what they called a seven second hand full of eggs over to the prairie store and felt great and I'm stance so that I could get cod liver oil and

Maureen fairs. We weren't but we were poor but proud and we wouldn't take any. And one time I can remember going down we went far north place from the one at home and kids were playing. Bowl with oranges and every time they'd point against the oranges that's better. It just made me feel so bad I think. I didn't read them but they happen. But it just was too bad. And my mom used to always say how she she said we never had a nickel we never had a nickel. That was her way of saying that they just didn't have any money and I told her three years later when she would bring that up I would say Well mother you are the only ones that didn't have a nickel it was it was everybody. I don't know if she

wasn't aware there was a depression or but it it didn't affect us. Little kids don't realize as long as you have food and you have parents who love you and. And you have clothes to wear and a house to live in. We never felt like we were going to any depression. The people of Wyoming whether a first generation immigrant or homesteader survive the Great Depression with the same qualities that had shaped the state from the start. Hard work tenacity and faith in the future world events would soon require those same qualities of Wyoming and the nation. Wyoming voices has been funded in part through a generous grant from the Wyoming Department of

Education and by the Wyoming Council for the Humanities and through the generous support of members of Wyoming Public Television. Thank you.