john b. okie

In 1901, a Casper newspaper ran this account of a 140-mile stagecoach trip from Casper to Thermopolis. The journey lasts a night, a day and another night. Rough roads make sleep impossible. But the food is pretty good and the service friendly at the ranches along the way.

Wyoming’s sheep business never had the fame or cachet of Wyoming’s cattle business, but at the turn of the last century sheep raising was more widespread and probably more lucrative. Cattlemen, however, reacted violently to sheepmen’s entry onto the public range, and for a time deadly raids by cattlemen on flocks, sheepdogs and sheepherders were chronic. A gradual decline in wool and lamb prices since the 1920s has left only about a twentieth as many sheep on Wyoming ranges now as there were in 1909.