Lex Anteinternet: March 1, 2020. Railroads Revert To Civilian Control.

Lex Anteinternet: March 1, 2020. Railroads Revert To Civilian Contro...:

March 1, 2020. Railroads Revert To Civilian Control, Caroline Lockhart hits the Screen.

On this day in 1920, the railroads, which had been taken over by the U.S. Government during World War One reverted to civilian control.



The country's rail had been nationalized during the war and then run by the United States Railroad Administration as the system was proving to not be up to the tasks that were imposed upon it due to the crisis of World War One.  Additionally, concerns over pricing and labor unrest called for the action.  Following the war there was some serious consideration given to retaining national control over the lines, which labor favored, but in the end the government returned the system to its owners.

While U.S. administration of the railroad infrastructure was a success, it was not repeated during the Second World War when the rail system was just as heavily taxed by an even heavier wartime demand.  There proved to be no need to do it during World War Two.



Not too surprisingly, the news featured prominently on the cover of Laramie's newspapers, as the Laramie was, and is, a major Union Pacific Railroad town.

Union Pacific Depot in Laramie, Wyoming.

On the same day a movie featuring Wyoming as the location (which doesn't mean it was filmed here), was released.

The 1916 vintage Burlington Northern depot in Casper, Wyoming.

Likewise, the reversion was big news to the double railhead town of Casper.

Former Great Northwestern Depot in Casper.

The Fighting Sheperdess was the story of just that, a fighting female sheep rancher was was struggling to keep her sheep ranch against raiding cattlemen.

In reality, the sheep wars in Wyoming had largely come to an end by this time, although it was definitely within living memory.  The Spring Creek Raid of 1909 had only been a decade prior, and there had been two more raids in 1911 and 1912, although nobody had been killed in those two latter events.  The peace was, however, still an uneasy one, perhaps oddly aided by a massive decline in sheep, which still were vast in number, caused by economic conditions during the 1910s.  By 1914, the number of sheep on Wyoming's ranges had been cut 40% from recent numbers. World War One reversed the decline, and then dumped the industry flat, as the war increased the demand for wool uniforms and then the demand suddenly ended with the end of Germany's fortunes.  Colorado, however, would see a sheep raid as late as this year, 1920.



The novel the movie was based on was by author, Caroline Lockhart, a figure who is still recalled and celebrated in Cody, Wyoming.

Illinois born Lockhart had been raised on a ranch in Kansas and was college educated.  She had aspired to be an actress but turned to writing and became a newspaper reporter in Boston and Philadelphia before moving to Cody, Wyoming in 1904 at age 33, where she soon became a novelist.  During the war years she relocated to Denver, but was back in Cody shortly thereafter, until she purchased a ranch in Montana, showing how successful her writing had become.  She ranched and wrote from there, spending winters in Cody until she retired there in 1950.  She passed away in 1962.



The Fighting Shepherdess was her fifth of seven published novels, the last being published in 1933.

Lex Anteinternet: The Wyoming Legislature 2020, Part Two: Wyoming legislature passes bill requiring trains to have two crewmen.

Lex Anteinternet: The Wyoming Legislature 2020, Part Two: February 28, 2020

In other legislative news, a bill that would require train crews to be no less than two passed.

Former Chicago & Northwester Depot, Lander Wyoming.

Up until now, I've somehow managed to miss putting up a photograph of this former Chicago & Northwestern Depot in Lander, Wyoming, which now serves as the Lander Chamber of Commerce building.  That may be because, as these photos suggest, downtown Lander, in spite of Lander being a small town, is pretty crowded in some ways and I missed the depot early on, and had a hard time catching it in a photographic state later.

Indeed, I never really did catch it in an ideal state to be photographed.

Lander was the western most stop on the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad.  The line sometimes called itself the "Cowboy Line" and this lent itself to the slogan "where the rails end, the trails begin".  In 1973 the railroad abandoned the stretch of the line between Riverton and Lander, and since then of course it's ceased operation entirely.  The railroad, which like many railroads, was the product of mergers and acquisitions and was doing that right up to the late 1960s when its fortunes began to change.

In Wyoming its line ran astride the Burlington Northern's in many locations but it alone ran on to Lander.  Starting in the early 70s, it began to contract in Wyoming and then pulled out altogether.  The Union Pacific purchased its assets at some point, although its now the case that all of its old rail has been pulled.  Indeed, unless you know that the CNW had once run to Lander, you wouldn't know that Lander had once had rail service at all, let alone that it had it as far back as 1906.

Holscher's Hub: Pentax: Built like a tank

Holscher's Hub: Pentax: Built like a tank: So states a professional photography blog naming the Pentax K1 full frame one of the three bests cameras of 2019. And they are. The revi...

Lex Anteinternet: November 28, 1919. The Union Pacific Gives Up, Me...

Lex Anteinternet: November 28, 1919. The Union Pacific Gives Up, Me...:

November 28, 1919. The Union Pacific Gives Up, Mexico erupts, Ships launched and Heroines

The Union Pacific declared that it was giving up the search for Bill Carlisle on this post Thanksgiving Day (prior to it being Black Friday) and it was blaming Wyomingites for that.  It held that they were too sympathetic to the train robber and lambasted the state's residents for that in no uncertain terms.

Today In Wyoming's History: November 21. Trains and Depots in the news.

Today In Wyoming's History: November 21:

Trains and depots figure in Wyoming's history for this day.

November 21

1887  The Wyoming Central Railway opened its line between Douglas and Glenrock, thereby extending its rail service to the state line.

1919  Chasing Carlisle. November 21, 1919

The Hole In the Wall Country, November 2019.

On this day in 1919, the newspapers were reporting that Bill Carlisle was headed for a location that was the archtype of destination for regional bands. . . some twenty years prior.

The Hole In the Wall.

After all, where would a Wyoming train robber on the lam go, other than to the same place that Butch and Sundance had?

Scene from the Red Wall Country, November 2019.

Well, it was a romantic notion.  Wyoming in 1919 wasn't the Wyoming of 1899, or even 1909, no matter how much the thought of a wild flight to the Hole In The Wall might have been fancied the imagination of a people for whom that region had been an impenetrable criminal fortress only a couple of decades prior.

In 1919, the territory was still wild in many ways.  Indeed, the first decade of the 20th Century saw an ongoing range war in the form of a cattlemen v. sheepmen killings.  As late as the latter part of the first decade of the 20th Century a criminal escapee simply disappeared forever.

But by the same token, by 1919 the criminal sanctuary no longer was one. There was no more Hole In The Wall Gang.  Most of the former members of that group were dead, in prison, or reformed.  Following the Tipton train robbery by The Wild Bunch, the authorities were no longer willing to tolerate the lack of law enforcement that allowed it to continue to exist and were willing to expend the resources necessary to penetrate it.  Prior to that happening, the badmen dispersed. Some would return, and as late as the 00s, but they weren't hitting trains.

Carlisle was.

Buffalo Creek Canyon, December 2019.

Indeed, part of the appeal of the Carlisle story is that he was already an anachronism, in his own time.  In 1919, the year after the Great War had ended, a war which had featured aircraft and submarines and mass violence on a mass scale, Carlisle was out on his own, in the vast countryside, raiding trains, badly.

People were sort of rooting for him.

Even as they knew, he'd be caught.

1940  Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn were married in Cheyenne.  The wedding took place at the Union Pacific Depot dining room.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.