A story about Wyoming.

For those of you that have never been to or lived in Wyoming and attending the Rally in Gillette, I thought you might like some history of the area and state.

You will find that the eastern part of Wyoming is plains. Not a lot of trees, but a lot of rolling hills, sage brush, and scrub cactus. The trees can be found near the few creeks and water ponds. The one way you can get grass and trees is by planting them in the residential areas. One of the most common tree found is Cottonwood which will grow fairly easily in this area.
</SPAN></SPAN>
A lot of cattle drives were made from Texas to Wyoming and Montana. If you ever saw the movie Lonesome Dove this is how a lot of cattle ranches were started here. There are a lot of cattle and sheep ranches in this part of the country. Normally the summers are pretty dry and the winter is very cold. In the winter the cattle would bunch togeather in groups for warmth but the snow would drift deep enough to cover them up and they would die from the cold and suffocation. Times were very hard but the ranchers persisted.
</SPAN>
We stayed in Lusk Wyoming before we drove to Gillette. Lusk is a good example of the old west ranch areas. There are a number of ranches around Lusk and their history includes a lot of cattle drives and the trains later that would carry cattle to and from these areas. Today even Lusk still has the culture of the old west in their people and the way they live. Many of us have heard of the Texas and all the western culture and people there but in Wyoming the people and culture here still exists. I was raised in the small town of Midwest Wyo. until I graduated from High School I rarely wore anything but western boots, blue jeans and a western hat.


In Lusk their history is shown by some of the older attractions. One is an old Redwood water tower that was used for the train that ran through the town. There is the stagecoach museum showing the last stagecoach to travel between Cheyenne and Deadwood. Each year on the second weekend of July, the town of Lusk celebrates the Legend of Rawhide. </SPAN>
</SPAN>



In Lusk one of the ranches is the Boner Ranch which has a history there for many generations. If your interested you can download a PDF file about the Boner Ranch. I could not attach it here so use this link to access the PDF file. Boner Ranch PDF.

Here is a little snip about the ranch.</SPAN>
The Boner Ranch is one of the last legacy ranching operations of its size situated on the hard grasses of Niobrara County, Wyoming. This crown jewel has been in the Boner family since patented in 1902. It consists of approximately 32,878 deeded acres, 3,360.56 State of Wyoming lease acres and 3,000 BLM lease acres, more or less. The boundaries contain a contiguous block of hard grass prairies on new pipeline infrastructure. The vast majority of what is known as the Seaman Hills break up the skyline of the Southern boundary of the property. There are approximately 25 pastures each having reliable windmills, reservoirs, wells, springs and/or new or reliable pipeline infrastructure supplying stock water to all pastures.</SPAN></SPAN>

While we drove around Lusk we went through the Lusk Cemetery. We saw numerous grave sites of the Boner family. If I remember correctly they were born from the 1850 and the latest that died was in 2010. While driving around we were able to see some interesting head stones that reflect their strong western culture. Here are a few photos of the grave stones.


If you get a chance to drive through Lusk stop for a day and just look around at the people and their town. You will see some modern young people and still some of the old west culture still prevalent. </SPAN>

For some history buffs there is an old ranch about 20 miles north of Casper named Tepot Ranch. It is owned by Billie Jean Beaton. She was one of my teachers in High School.


Billie still goes for a mule packing camping trip at the age of 90+

Some of you know about the Watergate Scandal, but have you ever heard of the Teapot Dome Oil Scandal?

I hope you enjoy the state of Wyoming. It has a lot of western history as well as modern scandals.

I hope you have enjoyed this tread.

BC

We're not even going to Gilette, but this was good just the same.

Interesting, thanks TxBobcat

A funny thing about the Teapot Dome story, is that there is aTeapot Dome area in Central California, near Porterville. This is right around the other California oilfields mentioned in the story.

Thanks Bob, interesting story & photos!