August marks the 147th anniversary of the Wagon Box Fight, wherein soldiers from Fort Phil Kearny defended themselves against hostile Sioux and Cheyenne forces by means of a small corral of wagon boxes removed from their axles. WyoHistory.org, along with app developer TravelStorysGPS™, brings an audio narrative of this and seven other historic Indian Wars sites in Wyoming to smartphone users and to our website.
 
This month, WyoHistory.org also features stories of how rural electrification changed Wyoming’s farms and ranches, how early day oil fields transformed the state’s economy, and finally an essay on how errors in newspaper articles can distort history for decades.
 
Historic Indian Wars Tour narratives can be downloaded now
WyoHistory.org recently teamed with an app developer in Wilson, Wyo., to create GPS-triggered audio narratives for eight sites featured on our Historic Indian Wars tour. These narratives, together with photos of places and people important to each of the historic sites, are available now to smartphone users who download the TravelStorysGPS™ app.

Visit the TravelStorysGPS website to download the FREE app through the Apple Store or Google Play.

WyoHistory.org Assistant Editor Lori Van Pelt narrates the audio segments. The locations include forts Laramie, Caspar, Phil Kearny, Fetterman and Reno as well as battle sites from the 1860s and 1870s, including the Fetterman Massacre, Wagon Box Fight and Connor Battlefield.
The tour also locates three other places travelers might want to stop—the National Historic Trails Center in Casper, and the Wyoming State Tourism information centers in Sheridan and Cheyenne. Anyone driving a north-south route through Cheyenne, Fort Laramie, Douglas, Casper, Buffalo and Sheridan will find the route easy to follow. We hope the tour will attract history buffs bound for the Custer Battlefield site in southern Montana—and anyone else interested in the Indian Wars and in Wyoming’s past.

The effort is further coordinated with our recently released, QR-coded Travel the Historic Indian Wars sites brochure, which can be used at the locations themselves or downloaded from WyoHistory.org prior to a trip. Look for the brochures this summer at tourist stops, history museums and visitors’ centers, too.

Rural electrification, early oil fields transformed state’s economy 
Rural electrification brought welcome changes to farms and ranches throughout Wyoming in the 1930s and 1940s, despite numerous early challenges—including opposition from existing utilities— that threatened to thwart the effort. Read more in journalist Kerry Drake’s article “Rural Electrification Changed Farm Life Forever in Wyoming” at
http://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/rural-electrification-changed-farm-life-forever-wyoming.

Natrona County’s Salt Creek Field is best known of Wyoming’s early oil fields, but five others—two in Park County and one each in Hot Springs, Niobrara and Converse counties—played important roles in the state’s 20th century transformation from an agricultural to an industrial economy. Learn more in writer Rebecca Hein’s article “Five Wyoming Oil Fields and the Transformation of an Economy” athttp://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/five-wyoming-oil-fields-and-transformation-economy.
 
We send special thanks to the University of Wyoming’s School of Energy Resources for support for the rural electrification and early oil fields articles—part of a series on the history of Wyoming’s energy and extraction businesses.
 
Newspaper errors distorted history for more than a century
News stories published about the July 20, 1889, hanging of Ella Watson and Jim Averell contained inaccuracies that historians and others accepted as fact for more than 100 years, leading to a variety of misunderstandings and resulting in questions about truth and history that haunt researchers today. See more in WyoHistory.org Editor Tom Rea’s essay “Covering Cattle Kate:  Newspapers and the Watson-Averell Lynching” at http://www.wyohistory.org/essays/covering-cattle-kate.
 
Special News—C-SPAN’s 2014 Cities Tour in Wyoming
Wyoming historians, authors and dignitaries welcomed producers from C-SPAN’s 2014 Cities Tour for interviews in Casper and Cheyenne for American History TV and Book TV in early July. As of press time, broadcast dates were slated for the weekends of Aug. 16-17 for Casper coverage and Sept. 5-6 for Cheyenne coverage. For more information and updated broadcast schedules, visit the C-SPAN Book TV website closer to air time at http://www.booktv.org and the C-SPAN American History TV website athttp://series.c-span.org/History/.
 
C-SPAN Cities Tour Producer Ashley Hill provided this list via email of people who were interviewed and the topics discussed.
 
For the Casper coverage for both Book TV and American History TV:

• Geoff O’Gara on the life of former Vice President Dick Cheney.
• Author John Davis on his book Wyoming Range War.
• Rick Young, Fort Caspar Museum director, on the history of the fort.
• Author Sara Wiles on her book Arapaho Journeys: Photographs and Stories from the Wind River Reservation.
• Casper Mayor Paul Meyer.
• Mike Abel at the National Historic Trails Interpretive Center about Casper’s place on the pioneer trails.
• Author Candy Moulton on her book Valentine T. McGillycuddy: Army Surgeon, Agent of the Sioux.
• Author Ben Kern on his and Moulton’s book Wagon Wheels: A Contemporary Journey on the Oregon Trail.
• WyoHistory.org Editor Tom Rea on the newspaper coverage of the lynching of Ella Watson and Jim Averell.
• Salt Creek Museum Curator Sandy Schutte and Midwest Town Councilman Everett DeWitt on the history of the Salt Creek Oil Field.

University of Wyoming History Professor Phil Roberts on the history of the Teapot Dome scandal, and on papers pertinent to it at the American Heritage Center in Laramie.
 
Hill also explained, “We learned about the Johnson County War for our American History TV programming,” but said interviewee names for that segment are not currently available. Producers visited Wind City Books in Casper for Book TV coverage.
 
Cheyenne coverage includes:

• Interview with Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead.
• Cheyenne Mayor Rick Kaysen.
• Tour of the Wyoming Capitol with Lynette West.
• Wyoming State Historical Society President Rick Ewig at the historic Governor’s Mansion on Wyoming Gov. Nellie Tayloe Ross, the nation’s first woman governor.
• Author Rodger McDaniel on his book Dying for Joe McCarthy’s Sins: The Suicide of Wyoming Senator Lester Hunt.
• Author Marcia Hensley on her book Staking Her Claim:  Women Homesteading the West.
• Author Sue Castaneda on her book The Hitching Post Inn: Wyoming’s Second Capitol.
• James Ehrenberger, local train historian about Cheyenne’s history as a rail town.
• Ed Dickens, Union Pacific Engine Restoration, about the restoration of the Big Boy Steam Engine.
• Author and WyoHistory.org Assistant Editor Lori Van Pelt on her book Capital Characters of Old Cheyenne.