1880's Tourist of Wyoming
The crackling fire, quiet song of the cowboy, the soft call of the cattle and the Wyoming wind blowing over the prairie soothed the soul of the wanderer.
The tourist from Pennsylvania was a true pioneer of Wyoming.
The Pioneers of Outlaw Country.
Cowboys, Lawmen and Outlaws… to the businessmen and women who all helped shape Wyoming.
Here are their stories.
Owen Wister, The Tenderfoot’s Arrival in Wyoming
Welcome to another episode of "Pioneers of Outlaw History," where we delve into fascinating stories from Wyoming’s past that often go unnoticed. I am your host, Jackie Dorothy, and today we are traveling with a young Tenderfoot to the territory of Wyoming.
Lost for 65 years in the top drawer of a writing desk, Owen Wister’s journals of his trips to Wyoming and in other Western towns reveal the stories behind his Western fiction. The penciled scribbles give us insight into what life was like on the frontier, in this wild and woolly Wyoming territory through the eyes of a tourist.
Owen Wister arrived on the train from Pennsylvania in the summer of 1885, a young rich man with his health broken but a thirst for life. He was visiting the Wolcott’s, wealthy friends of his family and owners of a massive ranch on Deer Creek in the remote territory of Wyoming.
This 25-year-old Harvard student came back west to heal after a nervous breakdown and left with his vocation – to write the ultimate Western - although it would be years before he decided to become an author. For now, he was writing in his journal as part of the ‘camp cure’ his cousin and doctor had assigned him to help with his healing. A world traveler, Wister was in awe of his surroundings and captures his fascination in his journal which begins July 2nd, 1885.
“One must come to the West to realize what one may have most probably believed all one’s life long - that it is a very much bigger place than the East, and the future America is just bubbling and seething in bare legs and pinafores here. I don’t wonder a man never comes back East after he had once been here for a few years.”
July 3rd
The country we’re going through now was made before the good Lord discovered that variety is the spice of life. But it is beautiful. It reminds me of the northern part of Spain. The same vast stretches of barren green back to the skyline or to rising ground. We stopped at North Platte for breakfast. I paid twenty-five cents and ate everything I saw. Some of it was good.
Just now we stopped at a station where a black pig was drinking the drops that fell from the locomotive tank, and a pile of whitened cattle bones lay nearby. Here and there, far across the level, is a little unpainted house with a shed or town and a wagon. Now either a man on horseback or a herd of cattle. We’ve passed a little yelping gang of collies who raced us but got beaten.
The sky – there is none. It looks really like what it scientifically is – space. The air is delicious. As if it had never been in anyone’s lungs before. I like this continual passing of green void, without any growing things higher than a tuft of grass.
The night has descended, and we are approaching Rock Creek. God knows what we shall find to sleep in there. Have said farewell to my various train acquaintances. Sorry to leave the train. Had begun to feel as if I grew there. A sort of Eastern air-feeding orchid.
The remains of the moon is giving just enough light to show the waving lines of the prairie. Every now and then sheet lightning plays from some new quarter like a surprise. The train steamed away into the night, and here we are. We passed this morning the most ominous and forbidding chasm of rocks I ever saw in any country. Deep down below, a campfire is burning. It all looked like Die Walkure – this which is much more than my most romantic dream could have hoped.
It’s a quarter of twelve. We start for a fifty-mile drive tomorrow at 6am.
July 6th
Off on stage, 6 a.m. 9:30 a.m. stopping for the one meal we’ll get – this station is the middle of all out of doors. Inside in the “Smart room,” where canvas covers the wood and mud of the walls, a man is playing the fiddle to the guitar accompaniment of a red and black chap. There’s a collie, three pups, a tame young antelope, and the coffee mill is nailed onto the side of the house. The mountains to the N.E. are serrated and lovely. In the sleeping apartment of this station hang the skins of various animals unknown to me. Have seen heaps of antelope and wild dog or prairie wolf, or coyote.
I can’t possibly say how extraordinary and beautiful the valleys we’ve been going through are. They’re different from all things I’ve seen. When you go for miles through the piled rocks where the fire has risen straight out of the crevices, you never see a human being – only now and then some disappearing wild animal It’s like what scenery on the moon must be. Then suddenly, you come round a turn and down into a green cut where there are horsemen and wagons and hundreds of cattle, and then it’s like Genesis. Just across this corduroy bridge are a crowd of cowboys round a fire, with their horses tethered.
July 7th
Been here at the ranch a day and a half. Everything is immense, including my case of sunburn. Major and Mrs. Wolcott are delightful hosts. House a sort of miracle for these parts – so clean, comfortable, pretty. I sleep out in the tent and take a bath every morning in Deer Creek. Yesterday go on a bronco for the first time. The animal undertook to lie down with me. But after that, we got on well – I didn’t get off. I like this scenery. As for game – ducks, curlews, snipe, prairie chickens, grouse, sage hens, antelope, and rattlesnakes. If I don’t learn to shoot, it won’t be the fault of the wild animals of these parts.
Saw the calves branded and cut yesterday – in all, seventy-nine.
July 8th
This existence is heavenly in its monotony and sweetness. Wish I were going to do it every summer. I’m beginning to be able to feel I’m something of an animal and not a stinking brain alone. Nailed up a strip of cloth over the crack of the big dugout door to keep the flies from the meat.
Today, these journals of Owen Wister and the desk where they had lay forgotten for over 65 years are at the American Heritage Center in Laramie, preserved for future generations. The family gifted the journals to Wyoming where they felt the small books belonged.
Owen Wister’s observations are a window into Wyoming’s past and are considered by many, more valuable than gold.
Thank you for listening to Outlaws of Pioneer Country. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of this historic series. The stories of our pioneers were brought to you by Hot Springs County Pioneer Association.
This program has been made possible through a grant from Wyoming Humanities.
This was a production of Legend Rock Media.
