I’ve been preparing for a talk I’ll give at the National Historic Trails Center in Casper on July 21. I was contacted by a representative from the museum and asked to speak about how I came to write “Wyoming Range War,” my book about the Johnson Coun...

As I indicated in an earlier column back in 2016, I entered the first grade in Worland on Sept. 2, 1949, and, except for six weeks in the fall of 1960, attended Worland schools for the next 11 1/2 years. During that time I think I attended every...

I’ve been suffering from a nasty cold/flu bug the last week or so. It’s not terribly serious, but enough to make life relatively miserable and to stop me from some of my normal routines. Of course, my medical situation is not life threatening, wherea...

I had a brief career as a basketball coach. Back in 1964, when I drove to New Hampshire to teach algebra II in the New Hampton School, I had no idea I’d be assigned coaching duties. But it turned out that New Hampton (a private, college p...

I had a brief career as a basketball coach. Back in 1964, when I drove to New Hampshire to teach algebra II in the New Hampton School, I had no idea I’d be assigned coaching duties. But it turned out that New Hampton (a private, college p...

When I grew up in Worland, we had no squirrels in the town. I know there were squirrels in Thermopolis, as we’d see them when we went to the state park. I also think there were squirrels in Basin and Greybull, I believe because I saw them, but my mem...

I caught an article in the Daily News this past Saturday (Feb. 17), addressing school financing. It stated that Affie Ellis, a state senator from Cheyenne, had filed a Joint Resolution that would amend Wyoming’s constitution “to specify that the Leg...

Last week I wrote about the “Washakie Day” celebrations first had in 1913, when Washakie County began operation, and I stated that after four years of exuberant celebration, the event was not held in 1917. The reason for this decision was that the...

The Wyoming State Legislature enacted a statute in 1911 authorizing the establishment of Washakie County as a new county in the State of Wyoming. This news was greeted with enormous enthusiasm and approval by the citizens of this new county to be. Th...

I’m still reading a lot of books, some of which are very good. I checked out two books from our library which impressed me. “Eyewitness to Power” was written by David Gergen and it’s a first-rate memoir by a man who worked directly for presidents Nix...

It’s a long story how I came to research January, 1950, but, generally, it came about because I wanted to learn in detail about the big move of the Lower Hanover Canal in the 1940s or 1950s. That resulted in a wild goose chase that had, as an i...

I’ve been reading a lot of odds and ends in the last month or so, I suppose because Celia and I have been so busy that I just grab what reading I can fit in. That trend is unlikely to change soon: We plan to go to Jackson Hole at the end of the w...

I’ve mentioned in earlier columns that I delivered the Northern Wyoming Daily News for four years. That period began on June 1, 1956 (when I was 12 and headed into the eighth grade) and ended on June 1, 1960. For some reason I recently started t...

After the great eclipse trip, my next trip (only four days later) was considerably longer, to Seattle, to visit my daughter and her family. Celia and I have five children between us and they are scattered all over the country. The closest one is in...

When we first thought about the coming eclipse, my wife and I felt that the experience of an eclipse was over-hyped and that we could enjoy it as much on TV as seeing it live. And we sure didn’t want to drive through areas that promised to be chaotic...

I usually send in my column on Friday, for publication on the following Tuesday morning. From the moment I hit “Send” on my computer, I’ve got one week to submit another column. That one week limit is usually not onerous, but it is a persistent respo...

This last Saturday (July 15) the Washakie Museum held its annual Washakie Museum Paleontology and Archaeology Symposium. I’ve attended these through the years, and they’ve been wonderful sessions. I learned that the Big Horn Basin is considered to...

I’ve been doing a lot of reading in the last few weeks, and most of the books I’ve read are about the World War II era, especially the Battle of Britain. There are times in history when events are so chaotic and momentous that fate teeters pre...

As I’ve stated in early columns, I’m not what you would call a birder, but I still watch for birds whenever I’m out. A few days ago, I took a walk over the old bridge and then came back to Worland via the new bridge. While crossing the new bridg...

Three weeks ago I wrote about all the rain we’ve been getting in Worland. Most of the rain fell in March, and I assumed that the unusually rainy March meant a drier April. It seemed that the season was just getting ahead of itself, that we were h...

As I’m writing this column (on Tuesday, April 4), we seem to be in the middle of our monsoon season. By my count, using figures set out in newspaper weather reports, we’ve received over 1.4 inches of precipitation since the middle of March. Somewhere...

I’m not what you would call a “birder”; that is, a person with a deep fascination with birds, who invests a lot in seeds and binoculars, but I do notice birds, especially in the spring. And what I’m seeing recently are creatures that migrate; somethi...

The other day one of my readers stopped me, said he’d enjoyed my columns about gas stations, and suggested that I write about the history of Worland’s downtown. I was immediately intrigued, although knowing that a discussion about property owned over...

As all of you know who read the Daily News, Roger Youtz died on Feb. 24 in Billings. Roger was one of my favorite people and I was distressed that he’d passed on, even though he was 93. I first met Roger in the fall of 1958, when starting my s...

The beauty of living in Worland is that you’re so far from major population centers. So, we can enjoy the advantages of small town living, such as knowing your neighbors and having their friendly support, a lower cost of living, and avoiding the c...