Northern Wyoming News - Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years

People often ask me where I get ideas for the columns I write. Usually, they come from my own experiences, but sometimes my readers suggest things I might write about. The other day, while I was at the Worland Post Office, Jerry Doerr said I should go talk to Archie Harvard at the Beehive Homes. Archie, said Jerry, was as sharp as a tack at 95 and had led an amazing life.

Intrigued by Jerry’s enthusiasm, I called the Beehive Homes and made an appointment to see Archie. I found him in his room, in remarkably good fettle for 95 (actually 96), and we started talking about Archie’s life.

Archie was born at a ranch just upstream from the site of the Spring Creek Raid on December 31, 1919 (10 years after the raid). He noted that his father, Lewis Harvard, was “implicated” in the Spring Creek Raid because his father’s employer, Milton Alexander, rode Lewis’ horse on the raid. Archie also declared that his birth was the last good thing that happened in 1919.

Until he was 5, Archie lived at the family ranch on Spring Creek in the Upper Nowood. Then he moved to Ten Sleep with his family, and from there to Yakima, Washington. When he was 14, he got into a bit of trouble in Yakima, and Archie remembers a woman judge sternly asking him from the bench whether there was some place he would rather go than to reform school. “Yes,” said Archie, “with my grandparents, in Wyoming.” Well, a few days passed, during which the judge inquired into the feasibility of sending Archie back to Wyoming. Soon, however, she reconvened court and advised him that he was, in fact, returning to Wyoming.

So, Archie came back to the ranch in the Upper Nowood. He first attended school at a one-room schoolhouse on the Nowood River about four miles downstream from Spring Creek. He rode his horse there every school day. And then the school was moved to the Spring Creek area and so Archie went to another one-room school closer to his home. He remembers a number of his schoolmates, including those from the Geis, Wilkinson, and Cheeney families. When Archie finished the eighth grade, though, he decided he’d had enough schooling.

Archie first worked on a ranch and he recounted with some pleasure that he was earning men’s wages. He also recalled that every evening he would ride his horse out to get the milk cows. When he was seventeen, Archie helped build a long fence to George Taylor’s ranch (on the old Jacobs place). He was asked by Taylor to take over two bands of sheep. So he got on his horse (that’s how everybody traveled then) and headed toward the mountains and assumed the responsibility for those sheep bands, lambing, docking, and shearing them.

Archie remembers what he and his brother would do on weekends. They’d go into Ten Sleep, catching a ride if they could, but, if not, just walking the whole way (nine miles) and walking back the same way. They were looking for dances, either at homes which had been cleared out or at the Princess Hotel, which had a big dance floor.

Sometime around 1940, Archie started working around Worland, for Agee and Jack Rebidaux at the Tie-Down south of Worland. Something else important happened after 1940: Archie married Pauline Warren on Dec. 9, 1941. Just one month later, however, on January 9, 1942, Archie left Worland after having been drafted, and he didn’t return to Worland for four years.

NEXT WEEK: Archie goes to war.

John Davis was raised in Worland, graduating from W. H. S. in 1961. John began practicing law here in 1973 and is mostly retired. He is the author of several books.