William Henry Jackson left Vermont in 1866 at age 23 to travel west as a bullwhacker. He had to endure a monotonous diet that eventually made him sick, watch oxen die of exhaustion and see one of his fellow teamsters killed by lightning near Independence Rock. This was the beginning of his long, active career centered on the American west.

Last week we attended the annual Native American Education Conference, held this year at Central Wyoming College in Riverton.

“Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.” It’s an appealing idea, but if you want to know what really happened, you might have to prepare for some surprises. So it was with me and the tale that Father Pierre-Jean De Smet once approached a bison bull, laid his hand on its head—and wasn’t gored.

In arid, sparsely populated Wyoming, water law has evolved differently than in Colorado, California and Arizona. In her recent book on water rights in the west, Anne MacKinnon comments, “Wyoming is therefore ideal territory for documenting how western water law developed independent of the pressures of urban and industrial growth.”

Two Oregon Trail state-boundary monuments between Nebraska and Wyoming sit only a couple of hundred yards apart from one another with one placed on the shoulder of a Nebraska public road and the other on the state border sitting on private land.

Hollywood westerns were populated by many actors who could not ride a horse. Legitimate riders who earned their spurs the hard way worked as trainers, extras, stunt performers and in other ways to give an element of realism to Hollywood westerns. Many of these men and women had connections with Wyoming.

Starting with a brief, unvarnished history of the Pony Express, the author Scott Alumbaugh then plunges us into his adventure. His projected route is St. Joseph, Missouri to Salt Lake City, riding a mountain bike and pulling his gear-laden trailer.

We were lucky last weekend to visit Star Valley for the Wyoming Historical Society’s annual trek. During two days of talk and bus rides we learned about the area’s history, geography, beauty—and isolation. Only two paved routes lead there.

On June 15th, 1889, around 100 women in Cheyenne gathered in a mass meeting to demand woman suffrage be included in the Wyoming Constitution. One hundred thirty-four years and two days later, on Saturday—June 17th, 2023—the Wyoming State Museum will be hosting another large gathering in Cheyenne to kick off Civic Season.

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