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Center Street at Second St., looking south, Casper, May 17, 1907. Grand Central Hotel
on right.
Ah, Spring time in the Rockies! Actually, not all that unusual, but nevertheless,
the weather in the Casper area has been a topic of discussion since at least
1865. The 1865 diary of a Civil War soldier, Elijah Nelson Doughty, on patrol
and camping in the Platte River Valley near present day Casper contains the
following entries:
April 19: Snowing, in camp as usual. We have eat our breakfast. Have tied our
horses out in the brush to browse and shelter from the storms of this
country. It is now getting late and we have brought in our horses to feed
and groom them. We have eat some hard tack and bacon and will soon crawl
in our tents to shelter us from the miserable
snow storms of this country.
April 20: Got up to roll call and found it still snowing. It has now been
snowing for the last forty eight hours and no prospects of quiting anyways
soon. We have tied our horses in the brush as yesterday. Have eat our
breakfast and are now setting around our fires trying to keep warm. It is
now getting late and the snow fall as usual. Six of our boys started on
a three days hunt this morning.
April 21: Still snowing. One man killed and another wounded by the Indians
12 miles from here while carrying the mail from here to [Fort] Laramie.
The Indians were repulsed by six soldiers. The Indians numbered twenty
or more.
April 29: Remaining in camp. The weather has the appearance of spring.
The grass begins to grow slowly and has the appearance of summer.
May 2: The weather remains like summer. The boys are swimming Deer creek [Webmaster's note:
This would place the camp at present day Glenrock, about 26 miles east of
present day Casper. See photos of Glenrock at bottom of page.].
The water cold as snow. We have guard mount drill once a day. The boys makes
a skift out of a beef hide and quite a number of the boys has been ducked
by the use of their new skift.
May 4: A.D. 1865: Warmer yet today and lazy weather for shaved heads.
Our boys who was left at Riley came up with the mail party except a few
to wit: B. F. Norton, W. H. Norton, N. H. Norton, Grerry W. C. Haselwood,
S. Barker, J. A. Norton and James Hames. The above named soldiers will be
discharged. the water still keeps up.
May 5: This morning a detachment of thirty men from each Co., of the Regt.
starts to Powder river on a ten day scout to break up some Indian
villages which are said to be out there. It snows and rained here last
night and consequently the weather is quite cold today.
May 9: Snowed last night and is still snowing. We have eat our grub
and again taken refuge in our poor though quite comfortable tents
considered by us at this late hour. It is now night and the snow has
fallen all day and looks like winter.
May 10: The sun shines out brilliant this morning, again assumes the
appearance of summer. The grass went up the spout last night you bet.
The snow is fast melting this nice morning.
As suggested in the diary entries, problems with the Indians were beginning to come
to a head. As related on the discussion of Indian Wars, later in 1865 the Fetterman massacre occurred with the subsequent withdrawal
of military forces from Fort Kearney. In the area of present day Casper
the problem with Indians also arose. With the Treaty of Fort Laramie, Fort Caspar was abandoned.
Casper, 1907
In the 1880's the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad, under the leadership of its general manager, Marvin
Hughitt, began a vigorous expansion of its system. A subsidiary, the Fremont, Elkhorn & Missouri Valley Railroad Company,
began pushing westward through the Dakotas and Nebraska heading for the Black Hills. By
1885 it had reached Chadron, Nebraska. In Wyoming, the railroad pushed along the Niobrara River in search of
coal near present day Shawnee. With the expansion of the cattle industry, Hughitt determined that the
western terminus should be on the north bank of the North Platte west of Fort Fetterman. This would provide
a convenient terminal for the loading of cattle from the great ranches in Powder River country.
C Y Ranch, undated
Railroads in the 1880's were as much a real estate venture as they were a transportation companies.
Each railroad had a subsidiary which as the railroads were constructed laid out townsites and sold
lots. In the instance of the Fremont, Elkhorn & Missouri Valley, the real estate subsidiary was the
Pioneer Townsite Company. Thus, it became imparative that the terminus be located in an area where a good fee simple
title could be obtained. An examination of real estate records indicated that the
only area on the north bank of the Platte where good title had been obtained was the
C Y Ranch owned by J. M. Carey and Brother. Thus, two quarter sections were purchased from
Carey as the site for the new town. The railroad arrived in 1888 and the town laid out.
Center Street looking south from approximately the present location of the Townsend Hotel, Casper,
approx. 1893. The three story building on the right at end of the street is the Grand Central Hotel.
John M. Trevett, born in Ireland, operated a confectionary store and later was the contractor for
St. Anthony's Roman Catholic Church and a rancher.
The town failed to impress some. In 1891, Owen Wister passed through town. The comments in his
journal were terse: "June 13: In Casper. Hotel food vile. Town of Casper, vile."
Center Street, Casper, 1890, looking north.
The year following the arrival of the railroad, Natrona County was formed with Casper competing with Bessimer Bend to be the seat.
Bessimer Bend is now a ghost town. But like a number of other end-of-the-track towns, Casper tended to be a bit rough. Hence, newly elected
sheriff, William W. Jaycox, had his hands full. During the Indian Wars, Jaycox had served as a packer in Gen. George Crook's
campaign in northern Wyoming and Dakota Territory. Two popular establishments in the newly-formed city were Louella Polk's dance hall and sporting establishment and
"Black Dogue" Lee's saloon. For a while, Dogue acted as Louella's paramour, but her eyes turned to John C. Conway, one of her bartenders in her
sporting facility.
In a moment of jealous rage, Dogue kidnapped Louella. An impromptude posse of Louella's customers was organized to give chase. As the posse
neared, Dogue forced Louella to dismount from the horse and threw her on the ground. If he could not have her, he determined that no one
else would want her. Dogue then proceeded to conduct surgery on Louella's nose with a pen knife. Dogue then departed, not to be seen again, leaving
Louella to be returned to Casper by the posse. Efforts by a physician to sew the nose back on proved to be unsuccessful.
As a form of recompense for her disfigurement, Louella took over operation of Lee's saloon. Conway served as one of the bartenders.
To prevent things from getting completely out-of-hand in the saloon, house rules required the customers to check-in their
hardware when they entered. For the protection of the bartenders, however, Louella had a suitable firearm beneath the bar.
One night, an F L Cattle Company cowboy named A. J. "Red Jack" Tidwell and the bartender Conway got into a merry little
fistfight. Conway, seeking to end the melee, perhaps unfairly, reached for the gun below the bar. When the firing started,
all the customers, including Tidwell, rushed for the doorway. Unfortunately in the stampede, Tidwell accidently stumbled, tripped, and fell into the path of one of
Conway's bullets from the effects of which Tidwell expired.
With Jack Tidwell lying dead in Louella's new saloon, things began to get a little heated. The cowboys began to organize a festivity featuring a rope in
Conway's honor. Sheriff Jaycox was able to spirit Conway away. The Sheriff returned Conway to town only after things cooled down.
Nevertheless, Conway was indicted for the first degree murder of Tidwell. He pled not guilty. His lawyer for some unexplained reason suddenly and without
notice then vanished.
In order to avoid a possible death penalty, Conway's new
lawyer was able to convince Conway to plead to second degree murder. When asked whether he agreed to withdraw his
not guilty plea, he was loudly sobbing, in tears and wailing. All agreed, however, that he had nodded his head yes. When sentenced to twenty-five years
in the State Penitentiary in Laramie City, Conway demurred and indicated that he had not agreed to withdraw his not guilty plea. The
recantation of the plea was denied by the judge. On appeal, the Wyoming Supreme Court held that if there is no record, the remembrance of
the trial judge must be upheld. Since the nodding of the head was not verbally expressed, there was no record upon which to
overturn the sentence. Accordingly, the sentence and prior law relating to the necessity of a court record
was sustained. See State ex rel. Conway v. Blake,
5 Wyo. 107, 38 P. 354, (Wyo. 1894).
The law in mysterious ways its wonders work. After a slight but decent interval, Conway was pardoned.
While Conway's adventures were pending, Sheriff Jaycox, in the word of the Board of County Commissionrs, "fled" town for Montana* without bidding his friends "goodbye" or, for that matter,
even having the courtesy to telegraph back a resignation. In Montana, Jaycox was employed as a foreman for the American Cattle and Loan Company in Valley County, Montana.
Casper historian A. J. Mokler indicates that the reason for Jaycox's hasty departure was
unspecified "domestic troubles."
[*Writer's note: Mokler does not indicate to where the Sheriff fled. BLM land patents indicate that William W. Jaycox
homesteaded land near Glasgow, Montana. See also American Live Stock & Loan [sic] Co. v. Great Northern Ry. Co., 48 Mont. 495, 138 P. 1102 (1914).
"Dogue" is usually defined as a type of mastiff.]
Casper, undated
The CY dated to 1876 when Joseph Maull Carey (1845-1924) trailed 12,000 head of cattle
up from Austin, Texas. CY Avenue in Casper is named after the
ranch. J. M. Carey came to Wyoming upon his appointment as District Attorney by President
Grant in recognition of his services in Grant's presidential campaign. Subsequently he became
an associate justice of the Wyoming Supreme Court. He thereafter retained the title of
"judge" throughout the rest of his life notwithstanding his election as United States senator as a Republican in 1890
and governor as a Democrat in 1911. He also was one of the organizers of T.
Roosevelt's Progressive Party in 1912. Judge Carey also served as mayor of Cheyenne, territorial delegate to Congress and was
the author of the bill granting statehood to the territory. During the debate over
statehood he claimed that Wyoming had a population of over 110,000. The population estimate
was able to persuade the winning margin for the bill in the House of Representatives. The
following year the U. S. census revealed that the actual population was somewhat less--62,555.
Judge Carey was a founder of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association and the Cheyenne Club. Ultimately, he
turned management of the family business, J. M. Carey and Brother Cattle Growers, over to his son
Robert D. Carey (1878-1937) who followed in his father's footsteps serving also as both governor and United
States Senator
Wool Train, Casper, approx. 1900.
With the arrival of the railroad, Casper also became a prime shipping point for wool. Nevertheless, the
town grew but slowly. In 1890, it had a population of 544. Ten years later it had grown to 883.
Wool Warehouse, Casper, approx. 1900.
Casper Photos continued on next page.
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