During April in 1884, I took Horace Greeley s advice and headed for the big, open spaces in Wyoming. After dodging brakemen night and day, sleeping in boxcars, and living on crackers part of the time, I arrived in Cheyenne, after being incarcerated in a boxcar of lumber for twenty-four hours without food or water. Oh, yes, the old stomach felt as though it had gone on a prolonged vacation, while thirst had become a habit. Searching through my pockets, I found a lone fifty-cent piece, the only cash between me and starvation. Leaving the station yards, I found an eating joint where I filled up, but when I left that restaurant, I was broke and no job in sight. Roundups, trail drives, a lynching, mail-order romances, blacksmithing, Indians, the blizzard of 1885-86, bunkhouse humor, Calamity Jane, cattle barons Reuben Mullins experienced the West as it will never be again. This first-hand account, told by a man who lived the life, has become a respected range classic.

Pulling Leather: Being the Early Recollections of a Cowboy on the Wyoming Range, 1884-1889

Biographies & Memoirs

Mullins, Reuben B.

Historical

High Plains Press

Candy and Flossie Moulton present the story behind this horse whose likeness is the symbol of Wyoming seen on the state s license plates and as the University of Wyoming logo. The book traces the history of the bucking horse from his youth on the Two Bar outfit of the Swan Land and Cattle Company through his rise to the undisputed World Champion Bucking Horse. Was Steamboat the horse who wouldn t be rode? Which men climbed aboard the horse? Who is the cowboy atop the horse on the famous logo on the Wyoming license tag? How is Steamboat connected to Cheyenne Frontier Days, the notorious range detective Tom Horn, and the Irwin Brothers Wild West Show? You ll find the answers here.

Steamboat, legendary bucking horse: His life & times, and the cowboys who tried to tame him

Moulton, Candy Vyvey

Petticoat Prisoners of Old Wyoming

What offenses did these women commit to cause them to be locked away for the protection of the citizens? These twenty-three women, wearing frills, lace, and their best bonnets, became guests at the Gray Bar Hotel in early Wyoming. Some of these petticoat prisoners may have been a threat to society: Anna Bruce baked poison into her father's plum pie; Eliza "Big Jack" Stewart shot a man in the neck at a dance. Others seem only to have been at the wrong place and time.

History

BROWN, Larry

Americas

Finalist, 2001 Willa Award for Memoirs and Essays, from Women Writing the West! There once was an old woman who lived in the eye of the wind. Breezes swirled leaves in whirlwinds down her street and gales scoured the prairie, ripping the shutters of her neighbor s house, but her yard and house were unscathed. Her house was a rosy sandstone fortress that budged not an inch under the raking teeth of the Wyoming wind, though year by year its stony walls lost grain after grain of pale pink sand. The stone was the pink-orange color of sunset, quarried from the hills east of Laramie. The woman and her husband had built the house long ago when they were young. Growing up on the edge of Laramie, Caroline Marwitz felt lost among the housing tracts that were swallowing up the prairie she loved. But she found her compass in a woman her grandmother s age who taught her about courage and curiosity. Through this friendship, forged on the Wyoming winds, she looks closely at where she lives, its natural and human history, and earns the right to call it home.

Naming the Winds: A High Plains Apprenticeship

Marwitz, Caroline

Community & Culture

The story of Fort Fetterman is one of hardship and hard luck, but it is also the story of a frontier military post too tough to die, at least for a while. Throughout its active life, location worked both for and against it, too often the latter. Author Owen Wister visited Fetterman and used it as a basis for his fictional town Drybone, thus the title for this book. Crazy Horse called it a source of irritation, the one thing he objected to in the Treaty of 1868. But author Lindmier calls Fort Fetterman full of excitement and challenge. He calls it an important frontier military post. Established in 1867 to protect travelers on the Bozeman Trail, Fort Fetterman was under siege nearly constantly. It soon became the launching point for General Crook's 1876 campaigns that eventually led to the Battle of Little Big Horn. But by 1880, with the Indians confined to reservations and the territory peaceful, the fort's usefulness was diminished. It was soon abandoned. Unlike most abandoned frontier posts, however, Fort Fetterman refused to die. Civilians in the area, already accustomed to the place, immediately moved into the buildings. The buildings took on new life the post was reborn as a rowdy shoot-'em-up cowtown occupied by squatters running bars, brothels, markets, stables, hotels, and even a hospital. When the railroad bypassed Fetterman in 1890, its residents packed up and moved down the road, and Fetterman, almost overnight, was once again abandoned. This time for good.

Drybone: A History of Fort Fetterman, Wyoming

Tom Lindmier

Staking Her Claim: Women Homesteading the West

Instead of talking about the rights of women, these frontier women grabbed the opportunity to become landowners by homesteading in the still wild west of the early 1900s. Here they tell their stories in their own words-through letters and articles of the time-of adventure, independence, foolhardiness, failure, and freedom.

Hensley, Marcia

When Mary Lou Sanelli saw the cover painting by Lois Silver, Girlfriends, she longed for the intimacy these women share. So she set out to compile a collection of poems that captures the feeling the painting expresses--that innermost connection between people. Here are those brief conversations that make us whole--small talk brimming with complexity, humor, fear, and life.

Small Talk

Mary Lou Sanelli

Summer Range

Peggy Simson, Curry

"Camp Douglas, located in Wyoming, was used to house Italian and German prisoners of war. Very little evidence of this camp still exists, but this history recounts all of its important moments"--

Camp Douglas: Wyoming’s World War II Prisoner of War Base Camp

Siebken, Lee Ann

Butch Cassidy: The Wyoming Years

"Biography about the exploits of outlaw Butch Cassidy during his time spent in Wyoming, written by his great-nephew W.J. "Bill" Betenson"--

Betenson, Bill

Regional U.S.

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