Guernsey Dam, History of The National Park Service
Guinard's Bridge, North Platte River WyoHistory.org
Hanna Mine Disasters, One Family's Story Tom Rea
High, Dick, Casper Star-Tribune editor Kerry Drake
Huidekoper, Virginia, Jackson Hole News co-founder Kerry Drake
Indian tribes, trade among Samuel Western
Jackson Hole Guide Kerry Drake
Jackson Hole News Kerry Drake
Jackson Hole News & Guide Kerry Drake
K-N Energy, Casper Star-Tribune and Kerry Drake
Mary Hughes was just 17 years old in 1908 when the No. 1 Mine exploded twice in one day—and for the second time in five years—in Hanna, Wyo. Her story shows the devastating impact that coal mine accidents had on families like the Hugheses across Wyoming's mining communities, and reveals her determination to survive disaster.
Read more about Thunder under the House: One Family and the Hanna Mine Disasters
The vivid, charismatic J. B. Okie raised sheep near Badwater Creek at the turn of the last century, and was so successful he was called "Sheep King." A businessman with great vision, he soon owned half a dozen stores in small towns in central Wyoming, and eventually an equal number in Mexico. Lost Cabin, Wyo., named for the legendary Lost Cabin Mine, was his base. Okie built an opulent mansion there, a big bunkhouse for employees, bungalows for guests, an office building, a roller rink, a golf course and an aviary full of birds of paradise (left), cockatoos and macaws.
Read more about J. B. Okie, Sheep King of Central Wyoming
Grass was free and profits enormous in the cattle business in Wyoming Territory — for a while. The business dates to the 1850s, but the boom came after the Union Pacific Railroad connected Wyoming ranges to eastern markets. For a time it seemed as if every investor got rich. Finally, a weakening market and the overstocked range could not withstand two years of drought followed by a terrible winter. The big boom busted, following an economic pattern repeated many times since in an economy still based heavily on natural resources.
Read more about The Wyoming Cattle Boom, 1868-1886
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.
Read more about The Wyoming Sheep Business
A late-1960s Atomic Energy Commission plan to extract Wyoming natural gas with five underground nuclear explosions won strong initial support from the oil and gas industry and the federal government. Finally, however, the idea stalled, thanks to the emergence of more information on possible dangers, to Washington politics, and especially to intense local opposition in Sublette County, Wyo., where the devices were slated to be detonated.
Read more about The Wagon Wheel Project
Rock Springs, Wyo. traces its origins to a coal mine established there in 1868 to serve the still-building Union Pacific Railroad. Ever since, the town has been enriched by the people who came from around the world to live and work there—in coal mines, on the railroad and, in recent decades, in trona mines to the west and the oil and natural-gas fields to the north. Rock Springs boasted 56 nationalities by the 1920s. Its political and economic fortunes have closely followed all these industries' cycles of boom and bust.
Read more about Rock Springs, Wyoming
The Jonah Field and Pinedale Anticline: A natural-gas success story
Natural gas has been flowing from the Jonah Field and Pinedale Anticline in western Wyoming since the early 1990s, bringing with it substantial profits, tax revenues, prosperity, social change, air pollution, and declines in local mule-deer populations. The story goes to the heart of Wyoming's oil and gas culture, and raises important questions about energy production's long-term costs and benefits.
Read more about The Jonah Field and Pinedale Anticline: A natural-gas success story
Road to Rendezvous: The Rocky Mountain Fur Trade in 1834
As soon as Europeans came to the coasts of North America, they began trading for furs with the people who already lived here. On the first of June 1834, about 60 men and a caravan of horses and pack mules splashed across the Laramie River. They were headed for rendezvous in the mountains — the big summer fur-trading fair — and they were late.
Read more about Road to Rendezvous: The Rocky Mountain Fur Trade in 1834
Wind is constant in Wyoming, but ways of harnessing its power have changed substantially over time, from wooden windmills pumping water for railroads and livestock, through small, wind-charged battery plants on 1920s ranches to the huge wind turbines spiking our skylines today.
Read more about Pumping Water to Powering Homes: Harnessing Wyoming's Wind
The story of uranium in Wyoming is a high-stakes drama whose cast includes fever-driven prospectors, ranchers defending their property rights, government officials intent on national security, entrepreneurs, engineers and world-class mining companies.
Read more about Wyoming's Uranium Drama: Risks, Rewards and Remorse
Encyclopedia | 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.
Encyclopedia | 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.
Harold Van Buskirk on Running a Bighorn Basin Grocery Store
Oral Histories | Harold Van Buskirk, born in 1897, worked in a grocery store in his youth in Wyoming's Bighorn Basin.
The Burlington Route: Wyoming's Second Transcontinental Railroad
Encyclopedia | Since it first entered the state in 1890, the Burlington Railroad has helped connect Wyoming with the world. Burlington officials were drawn here by Wyoming's marketable natural resources and by its geography: Wyoming offered the best routes for transcontinental lines from the Midwest and South to the Pacific Northwest.
Encyclopedia | Prospectors first struck oil in the Salt Creek Oil Field in northern Natrona County, Wyo. late in the 1880s. The first gusher came in in 1908. The subsequent boom lasted until the late 1920s, peaking in 1923, when the field produced more than 35 million barrels of oil. Tom Wall, who went to work in the field in 1917, stayed for decades and in the 1970s wrote out his memories of life in the oil patch through boom and bust. After 125 years and thanks to new technologies, the Salt Creek Field continues to produce today.
Encyclopedia | Natural gas has been flowing from the Jonah Field and Pinedale Anticline in western Wyoming since the early 1990s, bringing with it substantial profits, tax revenues, prosperity, social change, air pollution, and declines in local mule-deer populations. The story goes to the heart of Wyoming's oil and gas culture, and raises important questions about energy production's long-term costs and benefits.
Encyclopedia | The construction of the Union Pacific in 1868 gave rise to the towns, geography of settlement and the economy of new Wyoming Territory in 1869. Obstacles to construction were both physical and financial, and the railroad overcame them with sometimes slapdash results—hastily laid track and rickety bridges, watered stock and Congressional corruption. But the Union Pacific contributed enormously to Wyoming's growth and development, made its modern economy possible and continues today as an economic power in the state.
Encyclopedia | As soon as Europeans came to the coasts of North America, they began trading for furs with the people who already lived here. On the first of June 1834, about 60 men and a caravan of horses and pack mules splashed across the Laramie River. They were headed for rendezvous in the mountains — the big summer fur-trading fair — and they were late.