A Dam Drive

During Tuesday's visit to Old Trail Town Denny stopped to tease a man working on a stone structure at the far end of the town.  The gentleman told us he was a stonemason volunteering his time to rebuild a monument to some of Wyoming's mountain men that had been torn down due to a property line argument.  A native to the area, the man (I neglected to get his name) talked to us about Bob Edgar, the man who created Old Trail Town and his expertise with a gun--any kind of gun.  According to this man, Bob could shoot an elk at 750 yards with a Colt 45--pretty fancy shooting.  In talking about shooting, mountain men and area history, the stonemason told us of a friend who was exploring deep into the mountains on horseback when he discovered a shell casing from an experimental rifle that was issued specifically to Custer's men who fought at Little Big Horn.  It seems this type of rifle had a tendency to jam when fired and needed a special tool to eject the live shell so another could be used.  Unfortunately the government only issued one shell ejector for every four or five men, so in the heat of battle when their rifles jammed they had to find someone who had a shell ejector.  Can you imagine?  "Uhh, guys, time out--my rifle's jammed and I don't have the ejector."  So the stonemason's friend assumes that some of the Native American's involved in the Battle of Little Big Horn confiscated one of the rifles and carried it over 200 miles to the Absaroka Mountains in Wyoming.  I imagine there's a whole lot of items to be found in the mountains around here.

Our stonemason friend then told us that if we had the time we should drive down South Fork Road to see the mountains and valleys there because that's where he lives.  So yesterday that's what we did after first driving over to the Buffalo Bill Dam.  Because I just enjoy learning about the dam things.

  Unfortunately, due to the continuing threat of sabotage, you have to take pictures of the structure from inside the visitor center so there was window glare in this photo.  Strangely enough, you can still walk along the top of the dam and look down.

Originally called the Shoshone Dam, the Buffalo Bill Dam was finished in 1910 after being worked on for six years by three different contractors.  At the time that it was finished, it was the tallest dam in the country at 325 feet which made it taller than the Capitol building in Washington.  What is surprising about the dam is that there was no sand available locally to make concrete, so the workers had to ground up local granite instead.  There also is no rebar or steel support involved in the concrete; the dam was built using layers of granite rock submerged in the concrete as support.  At times the workers were laying concrete in temperatures reading -16 degrees, so they had to use coal fires and create steam by covering the concrete with tarps to keep the concrete warm enough that it set up properly and maintained its strength.  The purpose of the dam back then was simply for irrigation although later a small power plant was added to create hydroelectricity. 

The Shoshone River reservoir.  Our parking area is on the right.

The original of this tunnel was cut by men using pick axes, shovels and black powder.

After wandering the exhibits at the Visitor's Center, we decided to drive down South Fork Road for a bit to view the scenery.  Unfortunately the camera battery died on me so I didn't get the shots I wanted since it was a beautiful 40 mile long dead end road of lovely farms, meadows, valleys and mountains.

I apologize for this post being all over the place today, but Denny and I have been up since 3AM due to high winds shaking the trailer while attempting to rip our slideout awning toppers off the slideouts.  And it's still at it at 9AM.  It's going to be a long day.

We Go to Prison

The Wyoming Frontier Prison Museum, that is. The original prison was completed in 1901 and had 104 cells.  There was no running water, no electricity (there would be no electricity until the 1950s) and little heat.  And let me tell you, the building was extremely cold when we visited when the outside temperature was in the mid-50s so I can't even imagine what it would have been like when the winter temperatures dropped below zero.  The building was in use from 1901 to 1981 when it was closed and the prisoners were transferred to a new penitentiary.  In 1987 the building was used in the filming of a low budget horror movie and a lot of damage was done to the building which the film company was not required to repair.  In 1988 the prison was established as a museum and daily tours of the premises are held with the Halloween tours being very popular.  I won't tell you what they do on the Halloween tour, but let me tell you I wouldn't want to have done the tour then!  Our tour guide was very knowledgeable about the building, its former inmates and the grounds and made the tour very entertaining.  One fact I found interesting is that there has never been a formalized search of the buildings and grounds for artifacts--the tour guides just wander around on their time off and have found weapons, diaries, paintings on the walls, prisoners' personal belongings, etc.  These items have been placed in a small museum within the building and are quite fascinating on their own.  There is also a tiny Wyoming Peace Officers museum inside.  While I'm not a history buff per se, I find the way we treat our fellow man fascinating and the tour included information on some of the prison's more interesting inmates.

The windowed side of the original cell block A, four tiers high with 104 individual cells.

The back side of cell block A where the interior of the cells were so dark the guards couldn't even see if the prisoners were inside, which led to the prisoners on this side being able to hide contraband.

Prisoner artwork in cell block A.

The Julien Gallows in the Death House.  Touted as a "humane" method of hanging prisoners because it involved no action on the part of jailers--the weight of the prisoner caused him to hang himself.  The prisoner stood on a platform with the noose around his neck, a weight was placed on another platform and water was poured into a bucket on another side.  Once the spout on the bucket was opened, the water emptied out a hose into another container and the weight that was attached to the now-emptying bucket slowly raised until it hit the point where it pulled on the jointed supports of the gallows, causing the joints to collapse, the gallows platform door to open and the prisoner to drop down and be hanged.  (You can see the slightly bent jointed supports above, as well as the weight).  Unfortunately, usually the prisoner's neck didn't break as planned but they strangled slowly so the gallows was replaced with the gas chamber.

A working model of the Julien Gallows in the museum.

The gas chamber, which used cyanide pills dropped into a container of water.  The windows on the rear are for viewing by witnesses to the execution. Note Denny seems to think it was an electric chair rather than a gas chamber.

 All of the prisoners were expected to work in the factories or cafeteria or gardens, but there was a one-armed prisoner who was asked to paint the walls of the cafeteria due to his disability.  Fortunately, he appeared to have been a decent artist and the variety of paintings ranged from big horned sheep to a Tuscan style patio scene to a jungle bird to scenery similar to an Arizona desert.  There is no information that explains where he got his inspiration but the artwork is surprisingly good.  Only one prisoner ever refused to work and he was so hated and so disagreeable that he is the only prisoner in the state ever to have been granted a pardon based on his bad behavior.  The agreement was that he leave the state of Wyoming and never return.

For an hour's tour and the ability to wander the two small interior museums you get a lot for your $7 ($6 for seniors) entrance fee.  There is a lot of information to browse on the lives of the prisoners, some of them quite interesting in that if all that ingeniousness and creativity had been channeled for good, they could have been outstanding citizens and inventors. The Wyoming Frontier Prison is definitely worth a stop.