All text Copyright ©2022 Richard Olsenius, American Landscape Gallery. Cowboy Field Notes by Dave Arnold and Richard Olsenius. Fast impression in 1990 not meant to editorialize but spur of the moment impressions used to shape the story. To be clear, these are raw notes without editing for corrections or syntax.
Some Impressions from the road in the American West. (Mainly Wyoming)
l. Midwest. An old oil town, once 10,000 population, now considerably less. A funky mill town, houses all variations of the same cookie-cutter stamping. Still working wells whine away close—in on the town, including one outside the church and others close to the school playing field. The post office contains surprisingly good old photographs of the town during its heyday (which ought to be copied if anything is done on the town). No one I asked knew where the original negatives might be, but the local history expert is Pauline Schultz, and she might ultimately have the answer. Like a lot of Wyoming towns, there is an override of a better and bigger past on this one, and one wonders what, ultimately, its fate will be. In the meantime, during this Saturday's visit, the school plays nine—man football on a field just cleared of snow to a small but raucous cadre made up mostly of mothers; the expectation is that the excitement will be just as great when basketball season starts. The senior citizen room of the town hall building feeds the*old folks this lunchtime, as it does every day. There's even a golf course, snow—covered now, set among the pumpjacks. The town feels lively and friendly and supportive of itself despite its fragile—looking existence. Assistant principal gobp Iszler, took a brief break from the challenge of thawing the sideline markers and walked up to offer help in any way. "This place is unique," explained Iszler, whose origins were elsewhere. "Totally unique." Midwest is a place where the football coach's wife runs the hotdog stand under the announcer's booth, calls every customer by name and teases the referee at half—time as if they are old friends (and they probably are).
Perhaps because Midwest was the first such place I saw on my tour, I like it. The dynamics of the place seem good, and so does its plain-Jane visual character. The link to the past through the old photographs is a big bonus.
2. Midwest to Buffalo. My scribbled map notes say this is nice bare and rolling country. I encountered a number of sheep around Sussex, just before Kaycee. Also some highway-sitting farm geese who begrudgingly gave the road over to me.
3. Buffalo. There's big action every morning, so the waitress confirms, at the CENEX truck stop just off the I-25 exit. I was there at 7 a.m. and again at 9 a.m. and both times the place was jammed with furrow-faced rancher guys filling the air with cigarette smoke and talk of cattle prices. You could cast a Western with these fellows. The light is good, the tables are crowded, amd most of the boys wear cowboy hats, not baseball caps, and the waitress acts like an old buddy to them all. A nice little bit of town- centered rancher activity, from the look of it. She says there's the same crowd every morning but that they linger longer on Sunday (when I was there)
There are some good old photographs on the wall here too; they're nice images, well printed, and, I think, are local scenes. The town itself seems fairly well endowed, with a neat- looking row of downtown storefronts.
4. Buffalo to Sheridan. Some nice—looking ranches, cozy among the cottonwoods, nestled in the valley to the west of the Interstate, with the Bighorn Mountains as a backdrop. Because of the trees, I suppose, the area has a certain New England character. Back in the little settlements of Banner and Story are small log homes, some of them probably weekend or vacation retreats, but all contributing to a tucked into the woods alpine feel, distinctly different from the rest of the state.
S. Sheridan. Didn't see anything very unique or really have time enough to ask about the place. My feeling is that it could be skipped and never missed.
5. Sheridan to Gillette. Pretty, sweeping-along country containing some cattle and sheep herds. My first encounter with the coal trains was along in here, and I didn't really lose them until I had worked around to the northwestern part of the state. Their constant presence, the fact that they will appear in almost any scene in just a minute or two, makes them—-or the railroads in general——seem a necessary part of the story. There's energy here, both in andion these rail—riding snakes, and they seem to be a particularly. virile survival of a transportation system that was so important to the region in the past. If you miss one, just wait a few minutes; there'll be another.
(At Clearmont or Leiter was parked a Burlington Northern work train, a motel on wheels, and I thought, hey, why not, that's a life—style you don't hear about much.)
7. Clearmont and Leiter. Any of these kinds of settlements—— dusty, roughened, clinging to the highwayside but ready to blow away with the next passing semi—-will do as well as any other. Take what's visual and accessible is the feeling I had. If it's not immediately accessible there on the streets, it will be for the inquiring, is what I came to» feel as I traveled around. Scratch at any of these places and you will find life. A lot of it will of character, and most will be in—character; that's what is nice about this state..’
8. Spotted Horse. Couldn't get my speed down fast enough to stop at this little five—stool—bar town, population l2, so I just looked at the little gas station/post office/cafe/store as it shrank in the rearview mirror. The guide book says it's worth a stop, and I should have (I almost U—turned but, dammit, there was a car coming). Again, the feeling is that no matter where you find something or somebody it will be good and, again, in character. I would take it wherever and whenever and virtually every timefl you find it. As they say they used to do out there, shoot first and then ask questions; don't allow them to set up on you.
9. Recluse. Just for the name of it, I had to go have a look. Picture a lot of derelict vehicles and old drilling machinery lying around, dumped around and behind the few houses and trailers, of which the inhabited ones are almost impossible to distinguish from the otherwise, and few of either set absolutely on the level. But just a short distance down the gravel—covered gumbo road is one of Wyoming's always surprising new schools, bigger——and this one has only a few rooms——than any immediately apparent population could possibly fill.
My thought: the schools seem a part of this story. I guess oil built them back during the last boom. Now in many places “they are almost all the town has left that looks halfway decent and modern. Also, the effect of education seems somehow more apparent in Wyoming than elsewhere. With so few people so widely spread you'd expect a big share of scant- brained, ill—informed yokels, but where are they? Someone- ‘ said Wyoming is number—two in education in the country, however that is measured. I like the idea of rural schools (which is probably nearly all of them) which pull their kids in from thousands of acres away, probably on long bus rides that end finally in the purple gloom of winter late- afternoons. (Someone also reminded me about in—home teaching, once born of necessity, now sometimes still a necessity but sometimes also a bit of fight-the—system independence.
10. Gillette. Didn't go searching out the mine for the time it would have taken touring it. I was drawn instead to the visual oddity of suburban split—levels jarringly set against a background of once—open sage and grasslands. They all look as if someone with a conceptual impediment tried to copy the house-style symbol of the 50's good life and got it all mixed up. Houses don't seem to have roots in Wyoming-—every town history seems full of houses and stores that have been rolled from one place to another—-and these look like no one wants them to root either: even the little landscaping there is looks like it hasn't escaped its burlapped rootballs. Besides, the sense is that no one wants to root anyway; they'd rather be out shining geir new 4WD or boat or snowmobile, possessions built,easy getaways. People here, and even more so in Wright (see later), seem still to have money to spend, or at least to have had some recently, and don't mind showing it.
Question: where to go coal mining? I don't think it really matters, except in what works visually. I began to feel in Gillette--and it built steadily as I traveled-—the sense of kinetic energy and rugged vitality in those businesses that move the earth around. Forget the environmental worries for a moment, these are the industries we used to learn were the guts of American wealth; we tore it out of the ground and we used it to make something else. They still seem larger than life (nearly) in Wyoming. Big drag buckets rip the ground, long trains move tons of stuff around, liquids and gases are pumped or piped out the ground, steam plumes from generating plants shoot into the air, hoppered semis with trailers themselves are everywhere with their dusty cargoes. But there's a weirdness of scale: close, these things suck the breath away and shake the heart, but in a ten—minute drive the vast landscape has closed around them and they seem only remote surprises on the land.
ll. Gillette to Wright. There's a big buffalo herd on the east side of the route 59 highway, not too far north of the turnoff into Wright. From the looks of it it is easily as large, if not larger, than the South Dakota herd used in "Dances with Wolves". It supplies meat and skins, and possibly animals for special hunting, so say a couple of people around the state who know the herd. In the winter the buffalo apparently bunch up, which is how I saw them, briefly, before they headed for the hills.
12. Wright. In the toss-up between Wright and Gillette I think Wright wins. It was nearly dark when I first saw it, but even then I sensed it was more newly put—down than Gillette. I came back the next day and had those feelings confirmed. It's the 1990's version of the towns in those old photographs that sprang up as soon as oil or minerals were found, or the railroad laid its tracks. It looks catalog- bought, next—day shipment please, just put it anywhere when it comes. Please send a little mall while you're at it. And a school. Do you have anything in sports facilities? And how about directions for playing "town"? It's the town that in a hundred years people will find going to dust, and somebody will find a picture in an old Geographic and say, wow, look how big it was then. Even more so than Gillette, there's ~ evidence of conspicuous consumption: boats, trailers, snowmobiles, big 4WD's, motorcycles. Coal still means money, I guesss. Whatever grabs you, Wright or Gillette, but Wright gets me first.
13. Wright to Newcastle. Dark when I passed this way (70 miles and four cars) but there were blazing islands of light, like little cities, along the first part: two big coal mines, especially the Black Thunder Mine, the world's largest. I imagined great potential for picture—energy there, especially at night. Nothing seems to stop; the coal trains were still moving through the dark into the blazing mines and again there was that sense of vitality and importance. I thought: why not at night? The feel and look would be different, the visual possibilities greater, the sense of never—ending work greater.
14. Newcastle. A dusty, coal—smoky town with about half the stores on the main street empty. There's a "last picture show" there, however, as there are in a surprising number of little towns. The biggest and most frequent thing that seems to occur here is the half—hourly division of the town by the massive coal trains rumbling through.
l5. Wright to Douglas. You can play chase with the coal and freight trains here, especially from Bill south. This looks like you want the west to look: wide—open, empty, rugged, stretching to the horizon, with a railroad track that says you can come from anywhere and go anywhere, although these days you'd have to run like the wind and ride on a seat of coal. At one point south of Bill you can get double your energy in one shot, as the coal runs right past a pumpjack.
16. Bill. I had high hopes for this town of two. Originally, the guide book says, there were four Bills, so what else could the name be? A grubby little store and postoffice are there, and they sell T—shirts picturing the Bill Yacht Club, but there's an oil camp of trailers a couple of miles down the road that spoils the isolated effect.
l7. Douglas. (Were there four guys called Douglas?) Nothing very notable here; just another town.
18. Douglas to Lusk. Once again some wide vistas of coal trains and grasslands—-that incessant movement of coal. Once inside Niobrara County the good grasslands start and the land becomes very empty, the holdings seemingly bigger. Several good examples of abandoned homesteads are along inhere, just west of Keeline, lonely old houses against the sweep of sky and grass and wind, but the windmills are broken—bladed and still. Wind: It was windy while I was here, and I remembered things I had read about how people have been broken by the wind out there, have become addled by the incessant noise and pressure and the difficulty in doing routine things. How great to be able to picture the effect of wind in some graphic way, somewhere.
l9. Lusk. Dark when I got there, but the town, with its agricultural base, seemed a little richer and better kept than most.20. Bartville and Sunrise. I don't know if I actually found both of them in the dark, but in the apparently mordant Hartville (population seemingly on its way to zero), surrounded by miles of empty darkness, a little curtain parted and a bit of life showed: on the tiny £lag—bedecked stage of a V.S. of A. local (I still don't know what it stands for) five or six men, cowboy—hatted, bent over a table in quiet meeting, discussing, taking care of business. Life in an empty town in an empty state: scratch and it will be there.
21. Wheatland. Not much of a town in any visual way, except for the fairly impressive Laramie River Power Station, which takes at least some of the coal trains‘ cargoes and makes vast amounts of (clean—looking) smoke and cooling—tower condensate out of it. It's a grand effect on a cold winter morning, and the highway sign warning of fog and ice on the road seems to promise something dramatic at times, whenever conditions are suitably bad (or good).
22.'Torrington. I didn't get there, but in that town is the biggest livestock auction housee——and, I'd bet, one of best collections of faces—-in the state. Sales are at ll a.m. on Thursdays, noon on Fridays.
23. Cheyenne. I didn't get there either, but Abercrombie says he's heard that hobos can be found riding the freights which come through that major rail junction.
24. Wheatland to Boslgr. Dramatic alpine—looking climb on route 34. Past one ranch snugged down into a vast bowl in the mountains. Past the Sybille Canyon Game and Fish Reserve, where I didn't stop but was told later by someone who used to live there that I should have because it's the one place where the endangered black ferrets are being bred for reintroduction to the wild (the first batch was released this summer). Past the one bar on the entire route (I think it's called the Shannon) where I also didn't stop but was told I should have because it's “the best little bar in the state". And onto an amazingly high and flat plateau, blown by the wind, where absolutely nothing seems to be, except some ranches way off in the distance.
25. Bosler. Well, I happen to think this is the best wide spot in the road that I saw in the entire state. It looks like someone came through not too many weeks ago and chased everyone out and left the few houses to rattle by themselves in the wind. Or as if everyone thought at the same time there was a better place to be and said the hell with it and went. Houses, the stub of a motel and garage, bright, sharp- edged rectangles, sit on either side of the wide highway, down which cars come almost less frequently than the coal and freight trains down the tracks behind the town. A brick two—story school, still sturdy and square, sits off by itself in a field of blowing grass, its desks and chairs placed almost in an arrangment outside against a distant background of mountains. Rusty old cars and trucks sit in the grass; a child's swing swings in the wind; and wooden clothespins still hang on the line. Thrones of outhouses are still there, but the privacy is gone.
A bent—up red Volvo leaves the last building up the road, a black dog left barking in front, and comes down the road to the one building that looks like it might have life in it. By gosh, it does! Inside, what is it, a bar or an appliance store? A cavernous place, rough—finished in old barn siding, it's jam—full of stoves and refrigerators——aQQ a bar down one wall. Two men are sitting at it, eating cheese crackers. One of them, missing two teeth beneath his tongue and a bit of hair on his head, asks can I help you, and I buy a Pepsi (but I think he hoped to sell me a refrigerator). "Welcome to Bosler", he says. "Population three", the other guy interjects. And continues: "I'm one of them. Bob here lives too far down the road and doesn't count. The boss——he'll be _back in a minute——owns the town and lives out in the back. The third one is a disc jockey in Laramie, plays jazz, and rents a room here." I've got to talk to the boss, I'm told, and while we wait I'm given the tour by the guy with the missing teeth, the one named Bob. Down hallways covered-— floor, walls, ceiling——with carpet fragments, past rooms full of new furniture too poor even for late—night TV ads, out into a kind of warehouse dripping with more carpets, crammed with lamps and more misaligned furniture veneered with walnut formica already scratched and even more stoves and refrigerators. The second guy, whose older jowliness gives him a friendly look, is working on a shiny red Ford pickup truck—-announced to be a '53 in restoration——in an area kept free of the ranks of appliances and plastic- wrapped sofas.
Who are they? Well, Bob, who used to be a Kirby vacuum cleaner salesman——his last name is Allen——seems to be the sales manager of whatever business we're in. He talks, with surprisingly good diction and intelligence given the bizarre context, of having had a good bit of money once, but what the hell it's better to be down here in Bosler, 20 miles from nowhere, listening to the occasional car roar by, selling cheap cardboard furniture. The other guy, Ron Gardiner, came out of Montana about eighteen months ago. He drives the beat—up Volvo and lives in the last building down the road ("Five bedrooms," he later boasts, but I can't remember having seen even four complete walls). His wife is going to come join him soon, and I'll bet she'll love it. I never do figure out what his function in this place is, but whatever it is he's proud of needing to do it only four hours a day. And then in walks the boss, talking even before he fully arrives with an out—the—side—of—the-mouth, snake—oil selling hard—edged voices that makes you wonder if he's a "most— wanted" somewhere. The stubble on his face doesn't help. On up the road a couple of days someone asked me how I ever got out of there, and it was difficult, because "Doc" (Thomas E.J. O'Connor) provides no gaps between his words to leave during. The history of the place comes out without punctuation: "brothel dancehall mercantile town offices town used to be four miles further west but was moved when the railroad was realigned in the early 1900's I own most of the west side of the town some other guy owns a few places on the other side of the road Amtrak comes through here twice a day I used to employ 26 people up in Colorado made a million bucks a year and had a chauffeur but I got fed—up with the ratrace and like it here and would like to see the town built back up no stoplights maybe but built up when I first got the place I wanted to have dancing girls and went up to Denver and got me five or six and there were three hundred cars in the parking lot until the cops closed me down I tell you the wind really does blow around here." Zbout here the telephone rang, and after Doc talked a bit he came back and said well there goes twenty—seven sofas for the University, not bad for an afternoon's work. "Speaking of which," I finally found the space to say, and left. (Later he called my office to find out if I was for real.) (Thomas E.J. O’Connor——74S—4242)
26. Rock River. This town hasn't quite blown away, but almost. More nice false—fronted buildings and an old brick bank that you almost expect outlaws to come shooting their way out of. There's the usual too—big school, that a newspaper article later made out to be all jumpy about being closed and consolidated.
27. Medicine Bow. It's hard to know whether the town has been made out of fiction or fiction out the town. The Virginian Hotel looms up over the sagebrush and grass barrens around it, over the flimsy houses and the gravelly streets, and you'd like to believe that cowboys and outlaws are resting with their spurs dug into the bedcovers in the rooms upstairs and there's going to be a cardgame going in the bar and some pretty girls in red and black dresses and a guy with garters on his sleeves playing the piano. Well, it's actually a jukebox that entertains the bar, but there §rg_guys with cowboy hats, and a trio of local girls (one of them trying to lay low from her chaperoning brother) who seem to be real friendly with some construction guys who've been living at the hotel for three months while they install a compressor in a gas field, and there is a kind of outlaw- looking guy, long black hair in a pony—tail, who works in the place and is probably a Viet Nam dropout. From the drifting in and out of all kinds of folks, ranchers and business types on their way somewhere, you gather that this place is really what it seems: the only place to get social for miles around.
The waiter, when asked, however, replies: "What goes on in the winter here? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Straight cabin fever. Cabin fever all the way." But then he makes a liar out of himself by describing things like this: There's high school basketball in the little town school. There's the Lions Club that meets (even now they were doing so) in the funky Victorian hotel dining room. There are pool teams (sponsored by the local bars). And winter dances that all the ranchers from round—about come to. And people coming to the bars to sit around and talk and watch TV, just to get away from the home place. And ranchers coming in to meet for long, slow breakfasts, glad for the warmth and company. And hunting.
At the bar a guy on his way to Laramie (another ex—Kirby vacuum cleaner salesman who now owns his own computer company) gives me a couple of quick insights on Wyoming: "These days," he says, "your Harley is your horse. You ought to see them all, how they dress them out." And: "Wyoming is a survivalist kind of place; it takes a tough person to make it here." And: "Most of us out here don't want to want for a lot. We just want for enough to be comfortable and have some freedom."
At the bar a local guy offers a sincere invitation to the gas—line crew: "Why don't you come around and have dinner with us Saturday night?" (You get the idea that the transients, from outside, might actually have some entertainment and education value.)
In the Virginian bar a highway construction foreman, rough— faced and lean under a black cowboy hat, also a boarder at the hotel, complains about having got stuck with a mostly female crew over the summer: "They sure as hell make peeing difficult. Men can't just go, they've got to go behind something or the women get all pissed, and the damn women take ten minutes each just to go back to the portables.”
Overtones of some weirdness in the town: talk of some strange people in one of the houses, "like that bunch down in Jonestown" and cars parked out front with foreign licenses.
Across the road the next morning is a surprisingly good local museum in what was the old railroad depot. Howard I. Smith, an old—time rancher and cowboy——he was the state's brand inspector for quite a while—-lets me in. He's got his hat and his boots and his jeans and a black bandana around his throat-—and a great face and a body still lean and spare. He know a lot from way back. "No, there never was any real violence around here," he tells me, "except for the time when a fellow accidentally shot his ear off. And there was a man who shot a house up once when he saw his wife inside with another man.
And the cattle and the sheep people didn't have much love for each other at first, but then someone realized you can graze them both on the same grass and they'll eat it differently and get along." A passing freight rattled the windows of the old depot. "I remember the last time the passenger train stopped here," Howard tells me. "Back in 1979. The school oratorical team needed to go to Laramie, but the roads were bad with snow. The kids had come into town and gotten stuck at my house, so I just called AMTRAK in Omaha and they told me exactly where to stand the kids on the platform. Sure enough the AMTRAK stopped——it didn't stop for long, I tell you——and the kids scrambled on and off they went. That was the last time."
The museum has a nice collection of old photographs of and 'from the town, including a raw—looking overview of the town just after the hotel was built (1911) and a shot of the interior of the old general store (which still stands) about the time that writer Owen Wister had to sleep on the counter because the hotel was full and then went on to lead off the most popular western ever published with that event. A shot of the interior of the Virginian bar includes a picture of the great great grandfather of the present owner, Scotty; the two are look—alikes. Five miles up over the hill facing the town is the one surviving wind generator, a thing with blades as big as B-52 wings, which taps another Wyoming resource, the wind. Wondrous—looking technology set without visible preamble in the middle of a vast sagebrush prairie, it seems somehow a g product of another world.
28. Rawligs. Simply an ugly, depressing place, without apparent interest.
29. Lamont to Atlantic Pass. (Routes 287 and 28.) This is a long-running stretch of vast, grand scenery, almost too big to cope with with one eye looking through a camera. Mountains, plains, and splitrock formations dwarf the highway. The immense sense of space and man's tiny marks on it pull at the stomach. Not too many miles south beyond the 287-28 junction is a giant bowl set in the mountains, spotted with a few ranches, rimmed on one side by the highway that pulls laboring hopper—trucks up and over and on their way to the soda ash mines of Green River.
30. Jeffrey City. Now this is spooky-—a town ghosting away almost as you watch, uranium miners almost gone, the only work left to fill in the mines and restore the land. Weed- grown roads and sidewalks and mobile-home pads, picket fence remnants. An abandoned air strip. And towards the heart of the place, if it ever really had one, an extensive townhouse complex with doors and windows sheathed in plywood. In among the tall-now grass commons of the townhouses a mule-deer steps gingerly, as if unsure it is yet safe to return, as if expecting children yet to come banging out from the front- doors beyond it. Sure, there are still a few people in the town, most of them in a scattering of suburbia—type houses at one end, perhaps there still because they are too expensive to give up and impossible to sell. One family, it seems, remains in a still—neat mobile home set among those abandoned or gone or gone from their pads—-or did someone simply forget to turn off the porch light when they left? The school-—no question about this one being too big--still seems to be hanging on, at least to judge by the three or four cars parked where there is room for many. (A teacher in another town later along the road, in defense of diminishing populations, was able to quote the bright side: "Class sizes iare“nice and small.") And there is still a small church, set
apart, a fragile-looking structure like this whole place is, nothing but a comma, really, in the longer story of the mountains and the plains that dominate all. This may be the place, in fact, to see that last person to leave turn off that final light.
31. Atlantic City and South Pass City. Only dim impressions of these old mining settlements in the middle of nowhere were made here, impact overshadowed by quick—£al1ing darkness and my wonder about when the tires were going to fail to find a grip on the snow and ice the last time.*But, my thoughts: Atlantic City seemed too scattered about to be visually interesting. And South Pass City: although in the beam of my headlights it looked more substantial and seems to have a remaining mine structure, it is on the historic site list, and I wonder about its having gotten too "pretty" and maybe too well—known. (Abercrombie tells of a fellow and his family who is single—handedly restoring Atlantic City.
32. Bock gprings. No commanding or redeeming features that I could see, although I must admit I didn't look very hard.
33. Green River. A nice—looking valley here with bare and bold sandstone bluffs. Below them the town nestles alongside its river, and through them threads the Interstate and the railroad. The land has a distinctly southwestern look.
34. Green River to Little America. What are those great billowings of steam and smoke away across the sagebrush desert, right and left off the Interstate? Feeling the resource energy of the state again, I haul off the highway and follow the smoke—signals to a county—road junction that points to Fortune 500s in every direction: Tenneco, Church and Dwight, FMC, General Chemical. I pick one, and as I round over the curve of the earth stacks come over the horizon, then elevators linked by mazes of pipes and diagonal augers and pressure spheres and lagoons. The scale is strange; it looks mammoth but seems small in the endless sagebrush Red Desert. It also seems important—-otherwise why would anyone come to this barren place——and more and more well—executed the closer it looms: is this where the might of America used to come from, or still does? I stop finally at the gate, knowing it would take only a word for them to be thrown open, but I want just to admire the scale of the place and the excellence of its having been put together, and to imagine, inside, the men who have jobs to do and know how to do them, miniatures of people among the modern- sculpture piping, dusted with the soda ash the place produces, checking valves and conveyors, producing. Strangely, I find myself feeling proud these places are here; there's might in them, and what harm do the antelope grating in the nearby sagebrush desert feel?
35. Little America. Well, here's a place that works well too, and has the might. Is it the nation's biggest truck stop? It's got to be close, at least. Just a wheel—turn off I-80, it pulls like a magnet the double—trailered long—hauls (and retired gramps and grannies too) into an oasis of service: 65 fuel pumps, telephone rooms, motel, restaurant, gift shop, and god knows what—all. This is no pie—crumbed, worn-through boomerang—design formica kind of place; this is a Hilton of a stop. The big truck wheel in and out like cars in a shopping mall, pros working like pit crews filling tanks and cleaning windshields, getting the axle numbers down on the paperwork. Truck dogs are walked here, tires are thumped, road journals brought up to date, showers taken, clothes changed. A young black woman, whose bottom in tight, neatly pressed jeans thankfully had not yet been deformed by her seat, swung down out of the cab, and, sparkling with a smile, headed off to sign her fuel bill. "Hey," she turned to say, "ain't this great?”
I wondered if she meant the setting. Again the land makes a dwarf of the giant. Trucks thunder in and out, but their sound is soon lost in the wind and the suck of space. Plateau-set, windswept, Little America looks like it might take a hit from winter storms. I asked a driver, tire- thumping as he approached, when it was winter got bad. "About right now," he answered. "I had to sit-out four days here a couple of years ago when the Interstate was blocked." I could think of worse places.
36. Kemmerer. I didn't see it directly, but if you read the guide book you'll sense the energy here too. A trio of "largests": coke plant, coal strip mine, helium plant, appropriate components of the resource—rich southwestern corner of the state. I keep wondering about the people who work them, these resource—diggers: if you have it use.
Kemmerer itself is not a bad-looking place. Tree-lined streets lead down hills toward a downtown with an actual square in it (well, call the square a triangle). J.C. Penney got its start here, but the original store seems to have just a new store inside. A sense of some money in this town.
37. Kemmerer to Big Biney to Big Sandy to Pingdale. This is Green River country, where the land looks well enough watered finally, and the grass gets better—looking, and the vast flats on either side of the river get to be full of cattle. If you had cattle, this looks like the first place you'd want to put them. The winding Green is quite pretty, all thicket— and tree—lined in places. The wildlife likes the area too: waterfowl on the river, antelope, deer fording the stream in purple twilight.
Big Piney and Marbleton combined look fairly prosperous, 'relatively speaking, but the locals say otherwise: that they are just echoes of the last oil boom. (Further down the line, in another town, a fellow voiced what sounded like a universal Wyoming prayer: "Give us just one more good boom, Lord, and this time we'll know what to do with it!”)~
38. Boulder to Big Sandy. This looked like really nice—1ying country, even as darkness was descending, with broad flat ranchlands stretching to their backdrops of mountains. A good cover of snow was already on the ground, seeming to promise that winter here can be seen as well as felt. An eighteen—wheeler hay truck coming up the road seemed to . indicate winter-feeding of cow—calf operations, and out in a couple of pastures ranchers were feeding by the light of their pickups.
39. Pinedale. Ranches. I had begun to wonder about them: where they were, who was good. At breakfast at the counter of the Wrangler Cafe the next morning, a place thick with cigarette smoke and conversations back and forth, and greetings every time the door opened, I asked the first tentative question of the man on my right, who introduced himself as Stuart Thompson (367-2502). I don't think I could have picked better, for he turned out to be not only a rancher himself but also a snow—avalanche consultant and a designer/builder of log buildings (like those that gave character to the street outside). AgQ_he explained well how Wyoming could survive both weather and economy given to booms and busts: "It takes a special person to live here," he said, "and when things get hard the people who don't really belong here can't handle it and leave. Those of us left, we kind of hunker down and maybe find several kinds of things we can do to make a buck, and we survive." Pinedale, he said, is a town like that: overly dependent on no one thing, it can ride through boom and bust better than many. There is an easiness about the place that is tangible. But ranches. "You're looking for family ranches," he confirmed. And these, with some help from his friends at the counter, were some suggestions: "Sprout" and Jane Wardell, third or fourth generation ranchers down between Pinedale and Big Piney. On the Green River. They've got kids who are active on the ranch. *
Norm Pape over in Daniel, also on the Green River. "Real typical of third or fourth generation ranchers." Their kids are still there helping out.
Phelps and Sally Swift, down by Boulder on the East Fork River, about a half—mile past the Boulder store. "Good examples of people who've come from the outside and really settled." Their daughter married a local man; their son practices law locally. The Phelpses are full—time and totally integrated in the community. im Miller on Horse Creek Road over in Daniel (I came across his name again, over there). "Moves his cows around a lot. Drives them."
John and Suzie Blaha, over in the Boulder area. Suzie is a large—animal vet. Donnie Rogers, over in Boulder. "He's a big tough, mean- looking guy with the softest heart you'd ever see, a typical Wyoming guy. He's got a wife and kids, and one son is just back from a kidney transplant." On my left, a guy in a Pendleton shirt, who as a sometimes ranch hand, mechanic, and hunting guide, seems to be one of he multi-purpose survivors Stuart Thompson mentioned, gave me a typical winter day's worth of ranch activity: (His name, Craig Lancaster.)
—Wake up at five or five-thirty
——Harness the team
—-Put hay in the sleigh if not already there
——Sleigh out and feed the cattle _
——Milk, then feed calves
-—Start whatever vehicles might be needed and let them run to warm up
——Go in for breakfast
--Hitch the team and go out into stackyard for.hay '
——Lunch -—
Doctoring if needed and "catch up" work
——Load hay for the morning
——Chop wood
——Do any mechanical work that needs doing
—~Dinner (about 6 p.m.)
I sketched—in this quick picture of Pinedale: '
The little town (1,000) has two national super schools. It's got a full—facility retirement and senior citizen center. It's got a resident moose (or mooses) which hang out just outside town and sometimes come ambling in. Same with a deer herd that Nick Stadler (above) feeds from his back—door. An accessible elk herd. Winter time there are firemen's balls, basketball games and other school functions; there's ice- fishing, cutter races, snowmobile racing both drag and circuit; there's a snowmobile club (the Snow Explorers: 367- 4858); live performances sponsored by the fine arts council; church socials and live music in the bars on the weekends; and‘sometimes, if someone gets around to organizing it, an informal winter carnival. There's some classy scenery (that I verified) out the Soda Lake Road; out back of town in Elkhart Park ("better than the Tetons in winter," it was described); and out the road past Cora into the high mountains of the Bridger Wilderness. The little town feels oriented toward the outdoors and winter; one of the locals sounded relieved telling how the first cold weather drives out the "hanky—heads" (i.e., yuppie backpackers). The local general store (Falers) has a taxidermy display on its walls that makes you think you've wandered into a museum of ~ natural history. (Abercrombie mentioned hearing of a planned snowmobile expedition between Pinedale and Dubois. He wasn't sure in town it would originate.)
(Going to check out the scenery past Cora, I ran instead . into yet another rancher—candidate, moving cattle. Four riders eased 400—plus cows down about a mile of pasture drive—way, then onto the county road for another three- or four-mile amble to a less snowy pasture. Kip Alexander of Cora and his wife, his daughter, and a hired hand: a handsome, healthy—faced group.
40. Daniell. You wouldn't think there was much here, and I got a couple of miles past the Green River Bar before I realized how enticing the red neon beer sign had been in the empty country and U—turned back. Inside it felt as cozy as an English country pub. We all said "hi" and introduced ourselves at the bar, and then they said "why, you've got to stay for the birthday party", and so I did. The place filled up: Kathy Rouse, a newcomer from Georgia, waiting for her husband to come up with the furniture; Bill and Max Goede, recently retired from AT&T; Larry and Cindy Miller, newcomers still with AT&T; Irv and A.J. Parke, newcomers from Illinois.
A school librarian down at Big Piney hefted in some cast—iron pots of stew and set them up on the. woodstove. Some local boys arrived, all ranchers: Joe Boroff, Jim Greenwood and his wife Suzie——handsome rugged individuals. It felt like a club, but open to all, old friends amazingly and excitedly glad to see each other on a wintry Friday night. They did say it was "club night", a regular Friday thing, but special tonight for the birthday. Rounds of drinks were exchanged. At one point I had asked what Daniel people do during the winter. Ice—fishing, group ice—skating parties, snowshoeing, and snowmobiling were the answers. But then Pat Walker, the barkeeper (and owner, with husband Hack) detached herself and waved me over. "You wondered about winter. Come here". She led me around a corner, past some guys playing pool, and there, when the light clicked on, was a room absolutely walled with books: paperbacks stacked horizontally, cramming the shelves, floor
to ceiling, stuffed in like insulation.
"Welcome to the Daniel library," she said. "Take what you want, leave what you want; just remember the rule——there are no rules." Turns out the library had been seeded years before by an old cowboy who felt that both he and the settlement needed something to read, and just grew from there. Among the birthday crowd I asked the magic question-— ranchers?—-and got some answers:
Joe Boroff, of course, who with his wife Diane and two daughters ranches on land his grandfather homesteaded. Butch Baines. A "character", says Joe Boroff. "He'll either welcome you or chase you off." He feeds 200—plus cattle six months a year, back on land that commonly has three and a half feet of snow on it. It's tough country, a hard environment. No electricity comes in, but he generates his own. He often can't, or doesn't, come out in the winter. For help he has his young daughter and her husband. There's Jim Greenwood, a strapping, friendly guy, and his wife Suzie, who you could easily love for her vigor and country beauty. They winter-feed 800 cows on 5900 deeded acres with four head of horses, working out of a 100 year old house in a place formerly called Halfway, Wyoming. His mailbox is an old upright freezer. Lots of moose on the place, he says.
There are Drew and Louis Roberts, brothers who ranch together in Daniel. Drew went to college on a rodeo scholarship and is a champion roper, and his wife and kids are both active in the local rodeo club. The Roberts brothers have five kids between them, all active on the ranches."These guys look like you'd want them to," someone recommended. "Western to the bone." Where they ranch there's 30 inches of snow on the ground on average "and the moose are always playing hell with the haystacks."
(Winter ranching is tough, all agreed, but the worst is calving season, March and April. "Wake up every three hours to go out in thirty—below and check the cows. It gets you.”)
Next morning I stopped in Daniel on the way out of the area and at the bar met Kathy Miller, another rancher. She's built like a field—hockey player, but cute and twinkly under her winter cap. Turns out she ranches—-mostly by herself but with help from brothers when she needs it—-one part of a huge family ranch once owned by Miller Land and Livestock. Her grandmother, a Mickelson (the name calls up a note of respect among the locals) instead of selling out to a corporate ranch operation, broke it up among five Miller family members.
41. Bondurant. Nothing special.
42. Jackson. After miles and miles of "real" Wyoming, Jackson struck me at first as a depressing intrusion, both on the rough—and—ready, relaxed Wyoming style and on the land itself. Its apparent function is to "cater to", and I had seen little of that in Wyoming; it didn't seem the Wyoming way. But, it does have a unique visual character, nearly as distinct in its way as Santa Fe in New Mexico, and in the winter might come across as "charming", full of warm lights against the snow and ruddy-faced outdoors—people. Finish the ski run at the backyard edge of town and you can just about limp to the apres ski activities.
The Tetons: awesome and beautiful, of course, but of course they are virtual cliches. I watched for an hour the clouds play around among their summits and then the mists rise off the snowy ground at their bases and thought that if you just look for the weather and not for the mountains the cliche might be avoided.
43. Jackson to Dubois. Passed over the pass after dark, unfortunately, but a note on my map, courtesy of Casper Chamber of Commerce, says that in winter a cannon is used to bring down avalanches. (Abercrombie has the name of an avalanche expert.)
44. Dubois. This town and Pinedale are considered sisters, both with frontier feel. Dubois feels a bit like it's trying a little too hard to catch the tourists on Main Street on their way to Yellowstone, or, in the many taxidermy houses, the hunters out of the mountains, but the off—streets are gravel and the houses are reminiscent of those raw boxes in early photographs of Wyoming towns. From up by the water tower the view is of a town, complete with cattle grazing at one edge, nestled between the mountains and the beginning of the Wind River badlands.
45. Wind River Badlands. A beautiful stretch of them runs along the river, another special chunk of Wyoming geography.
46. Crowheart to Riverton to Shoshoni. Beginning not far from the prototypical Crowheart country store, chockablock with all the necessities, the country relaxes into broad flatlands, irrigated and otherwise well-watered, supporting almost the first crop—based agriculture I've seen so far: hayfields, then further on some cornfields and even some dairies. In contrast to what has come before, it feels quite lush, even in November.
47. Riverton. The town, when I came to it, seemed spic and span, Sunday bright, Sunday empty, few cars on the streets except in front of the churches. Wide streets, tidy houses, grafn elevators, and a relaxed feeling of there being space to spare give it a midwestern character and a four—square impression of permanence, unusual for the usual Wyoming town. Visually, it seemed a big stage on which, when Monday came, the players of the town would appear, small figures against a big backdrop, caught in the raking spotlight of the winter sun. -
Among other things, the town is home to the County Fair and the Riverton Livestock Auction, where on Tuesdays through December three to four thousand head of cattle go on the block. In the dead of winter volume is down considerably. Sheep and horses will appear at a special sale December 14. Manager Mel Fausset (856-2209) is a friendly guy, but doesn't have too much friendly to say about the Indians of Wind River Reservation who in trying to reclaim Wind River water they say is rightfully theirs are hurting the cattle- growers and the hay—raisers, says Fausset. "They say they need it for their fishery," he said. "Do they ever fish?" I asked, imagining a picture. "Oh yeah," he answered, "in the Safeway.”
Fausset also had something to aim at those newly concerned, -among other things, about the damage cattle do to public rangeland. "Look," he said, "they need to consider that there used to be an animal here, by the millions, with feet made just the same as a cows, that eats the same way as cows, and ask did all those millions do that much harm?"
48. Shoshoni. A dried—up little place with the usual overgrown school, with a main street of derelict store fronts that halt at the edge of the prairie as if, having lost their courage, they were afraid to venture further. A railroad marker by the side of tracks long-abandoned to the grass heralds the town name, but it's been a long time obviously since a whistle blew here. Yet all is not lost. Go back to the corner, past the empty stores, and go into the corner place called Yellowstone Drug. 1hat'§ where the world is this Sunday afternoon, squeaking back and forth on soda- fountain stools waiting for Marjorie Frymire and her several assistants to coax their ozoney Hamilton Beaches through syrup and ice—cream on their way to superlative milkshakes, the kind you thought had gone out with the '55 Chevy. Frymire's had the business a lot fewer years than that, but it's been in the town, beginning across the street, since 1906. Where she is now used to be the bank, but the bank left its vaults, and Frymire still uses them.
No wonder: one magic Memorial Day Frymire and crew whipped up 544 milkshakes between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. And making her shakes is no stick-it-on and let—it-churn operation; they help with some laborious hand-mixing between churnings—-something that would get old real fast. On this famous 544—shake day they dug out 34 three—ga1lon tubs of ice—cream, pulling them out ‘of the soften—up freezer so fast that in the end the Hamilton Beaches were smoking against hard ice cream and her crew's arms had turned to jelly. "Oh, we could have gone on and on," Frymire said, "but I finally just couldn't ask my girls to do any more.”
49. Shoshoni to Ihermopolis. Burlington Northern and the highway thread the dramatic Wind River Canyon, which dwarfs them both. A tunnel or two for each of them along the way. Trains pass through about six times a day, three each way, a truly western scene as they snake along the river, squeezed up against the canyon walls. The grade looks steep for a loaded freight, down or up, but apparently there is only a 400—foot difference in elevation between the two towns. The dam for the Boysen Reservoir used to be in the narrowest choke of the canyon but was moved upstream a distance after it began to leak. Two prospectors, man and son, dashed up to chat as I stood looking at the choke. "I'm William Olah and this is my son, Camel." (Honest.) They'd been knocking around the canyon rocks, looking for gold. "Some there, all right," Camel said, "only problem, it belongs to the Indians."
Burlington Northern Trainmaster Lou Ann Tompkins knows the freight schedule through the canyon.
50. Tngrmgpglis. Hard to miss the hot springs on a cold winter.evening, their mists laying low over the town, making an island of Roundtop Butte, if that's what it is called, behind the town. Visited the venerable-looking Star Plunge (mostly because I could stand and watch people in the outdoor pool drifting in and out of the clouds) and chatted with Roland Luehne (loin—uh), one of the sons of the owner. The hot springs, it turns out, are not just for the tourists but for the locals. Star Plunge has 500 annual memberships active, and Tuesday and Thursday mornings one bunch of them, the senior citizens, wade in for water aerobics in the outdoor pool, never mind the weather. The local hospital's pain clinic conducts therapy sessions there. I asked him _ about winter. "Doesn't make much difference," he said. "Thirty—below and snowing, people will still be out in the pool.”
LouAnn offered to take me to the "hobo baths" ("hardly anybody knows about them") down alongside the railroad tracks. ggmgpgdy carved them out, he claimed, and the local belief is that the railriders did. "An hour or two of cleaning them out and they're as good as new. In Thermopolis, I'm told by Susan Eastman of High Island Ranch in Hamilton Dome, is a fellow named Paul Gallovich. He's an expert on elk habitat, knows where they hang out, and can chirp—in the cows like you wouldn't believe. (Eastman says you can see 400-600 head of elk wintering on the“High Island place.)
51. Hamilton Dome. Now here's an oil patch. I'm not sure what dragged me off the main highway, but the county road eventually took me to this desolate scene where the pumpjacks stood closer together than any I'd seen. It looked like the scrubby land grew them better than it did any vegetation. Not only were they planted, but most of them were working, again far more than I'd seen anywhere else. And there was some life in the place-—a little post office, a school of course, small but new, a few houses scattered across the oil-wasted soil, and ARCO's maintenance buildings. There was so much oil around you could almost ignite the smell, but the antelope which chomped around the bases of the pumpjacks didn't seem to mind. Talk about no- man's land in Wyoming, this is it. Someone told me later that the Hamilton Dome field, projected to have 20-years worth of oil when it was first drilled back in the '20s, is one of the most enduring of the nation's oil patches._How any place so barren and gloomy could be worth a visit, I don't know, but it is.
More ranch fodder: A listing in the Hamilton Dome phone book (phone page) gives the AragahQg_gangh with the following phone breakdown: commissary and office, ranch foreman, cow foreman, bunkhouse (payphone, and cook house. Turns out it's part of the Wind - River Reservation. It's a successful operation, apparently , with a manager who's white. They do a great job with their horse herd.
Coming out of Hamilton Dome, I ran across a bunch of cattle being truck—loaded and stopped and introduced myself to a George Nelson III, co—owner with his father George Nelson Jr. of the High Island Ranch of Hamilton Dome. He said he'd just been to Washington, flown there by CBS to tell a talk- show where the movie "City Slickers" had got things right or wrong about guest—ranches. High Island is a 91,000 acre working ranch that takes guests and uses them to help out, including riding along on a couple of 38—mile cattle drives in June and July. The ranch is old, but George and his * father (the latter a Boston metal fabricator) have had it for only about six years. Young George, who looks the cowboy part except for a stud in one ear, is learning the ropes.
52. Cody. In a lot of ways it struck me as a scaled-down Jackson, given over to tourist expectations. The big sprawl of new suburban "ranches" between Cody and Powell and the endless stretch of McDonalds and Hardees seemed depressingly reminiscent of suburban areas all over the country, except that the setting might be better. Like Jackson, it seemed a jarring and inappropriate insult to the landscape of Wyoming, and I began quickly to long for the open spaces and the rough-edged towns I had seen so much of.
53. Powell. Big—time agriculture (as in growing things) makes its mark here, but the land just lays down and gets boring (I thought thank god I didn't start my trip up in this part of the state). Powell, however, is OK, a midwestern—feeling place with its grain and fertilizer elevators, its sugar—beet piles, its grid of neat streets, and a robust—seeming downtown filled, more than I had seen, with people going into stores and buying things. It did seem kind of a "towny" place, and that along with the agriculture made it seem somehow set apart from the rest of the state. It had a different feel.
54. Lovell. For the hell of it, and hoping to see sugar all over the place, I barged into the Western Sugar sugar mill and got the grand tour. Unfortunately, it's mostly an internal process, except for the part where the beets come in the by truckload and are flumed and cleaned in the "trash house" on their way to the shredders, and end up on the conveyors belts bound for the extracting vats, looking like an infinite fast—moving stream of uncooked french fries. The sugar—making season is called a "campaign", and this one will run until mid—February. Beets are the third-biggest source of agricultural income in the state. One beet yields approximately one teaspoon of sugar. An interesting product of sugar beet waste is cattle feed pellets, most of which is exported to Japan. (I did see a big pile of sugar at the end, but it was a mistake; normally it all disappears directly into railroad cars or storage containers.)
56. Greybull. I had been alerted to, but probably could not have missed anyway, the surprising assemblage of piston- engine transports and WWII-age bombers lined up in the airfield on the way into town. I turned in and got directed up to the office-cum—control tower of Hawkins and Powers Aviation and waited until Dan Hawkins, co—owner, got off the phone. Another Wyoming character well cast, he looked like he could go barnstorming, or bombdropping, or cattle driving with equal ease and skill. I think he wasn't so sure about me, at first, but maybe he's one of those guys who doesn't talk much, just does things. What Hawkins and Powers does is supply fire—fighting planes and helicopters on contract to various agencies: BLM, Forest Service, etc. The agencies get planes and pilots, who park close to where they're needed during the fire season. During the winter all the aircraft—— there's 70 or so of them——are brought back into Greybull for maintenance and refurbishing. It's here, also, that Hawkins and Powers retrofits slurry—dropping systems into old bomb- bays and performs other aircraft modifications (they'll tack on an extra engine or two) to meet the unique demands of fire—fighting. And here, too, the pilots——new ones especially-—train. "We get a lot of military pilots," Burden told me. "They come in thinking they know it all already, but they soon learn it's a different kind of flying. They also learn they've got to work on their own planes. It's different.”
Hawkins and Powers does regular commercial flying as well. After lunch he was booked to fly some Canadian pipeline folks to survey the route of a controversial new line that will connect Calgary and Opal, Wyoming, where it will link v with an existing line into Los Angeles. "They'd better put some Wyoming gas in that pipe," Hawkins muttered. -Another time they dropped in an entire oil rig, with all itsrelated machinery and equipment, by helicopter. "The company was told ‘no road‘, so we set it in there as neat as you could want. People drive by on their way to Yellowstone and never know it's there.”
57. Worland. The guidebook says something about "prosperous, with a midwestern feel", but it was hard to tell from the grit and dust. There is a graphic bow to the plow in this agriculture—based town: a welded steel—plate sculpture, slightly larger than life and left to rust, of a farmer plowing behind a team. The spirit, dynamics, and detail of it are excellent.
(In Worland I realized I had been seeing roller—skating rinks in a bunch of Wyoming towns——here too, of course—and began to wonder if they helped define the place and times, like a kind of "last picture show" for skaters. I'm not sure what the answer to that is, but later, in a history of the "ghost" town of Lost Cabin, I came across an excited- sounding reference, c. 1900, to a place where one could "skate with rollers”.)
58. Kirby. From the looks of the place, this might be the last time it is ever mentioned, period. Except for a couple of houses, a couple of mobile homes, a bar that will probably be for sale until it collapses, a town hall of faked stone that is as isolated from the rest of the settlement as it can get, this place is gone. What grand illusions, however, in the street—naming: Sixth Street East, for example, whose gumbo mud grabbed at my tires as if making one last desperate effort to repopulate the place.
59. Bonnieville. Gone from the state, at least according to the roadmap, this place exists now as one tiny set of two buildings still proclaiming "Bonnieville Bar. No shirt, no shoes, no service." Oh, and some railside elevators where, I learned later, soda ash trucked—in all the way from Green River (which is served by the Union Pacific) is loaded onto Burlington Northern hopper cars. Cows graze (or rather hunt for grass) all over Bonnieville, except where concrete foundations rise. Unbelievably, for the look of that wasteland, Bonnieville was once an important railroad settlement, with repair yards and a roundtable for reversing the steam locomotives. With the coming of diesel locomotives, which run backwards just as well as they do forwards, the need for Bonnieville disappeared.
60. Lysite. Hauled into here towards dark and thought as I approached Lysite that a little bit of the entire state seemed to be here: cattle, oil exploration, the sheep business, scenery, railroad, fading towns. Abercrombie later told me that the area (even the ranch on which he was staying) was the site of a major natural gas field and some deep—well oil exploration. And one of the ranches, run by Greg Gardiner, had just staged a 50—plus mile cattle drive down from the high pastures. So I can't help wishing I had been able to spend more time here. Lost Cabin looked enticing in the twilight, worthy of another look certainly. Bill Rammage, owner of the Lysite Store, pulled down an interesting panoramic shot of the town, taken three years after the railroad came through; the railroad, of course, was the real beginning of the town.
That’s it for the field notes, warts and all. Just to reiterate, these are raw notes from Dave Arnold and Richard Olsenius without editing for corrections or syntax. Hope you enjoyedthem