Wyoming Newspapers

Wyoming’s first newspaper was published in 1863 in Fort Bridger. The paper, the Daily Telegraph, was one small sheet, two columns printed on one side. The paper printed on 6 ½ by 10 ½, a bit smaller than most of today’s 9 by 11 computer stock paper, contained mostly news of the great war in the east.

Hiram Brundage was the editor, writer, owner and likely also the printer of the one-sheet newspaper.  According to Douglas McMurtrie’s, Pioneer Printing in Wyoming, there was only one advertisement which read, “Job work of all kinds done at this office.” A job advertising the newspapers, job printing, availability to the locals.

Douglas McMurtrie

Within four years, six more newspapers were started in what would become Wyoming, three in Cheyenne. By the time statehood reached Wyoming in 1890, dozens of newspapers had start-ups in the state. Many were short-lived, others combined forces and a few continued for years. But it was not until Edgar Wilson (Bill) Nye arrived that the Wyoming newspaper business took off.

Nye had read for the law before and after reaching Cheyenne in 1876, but it took his friend and mentor in law John Jenkins, the United States attorney for Wyoming Territory, to get Nye into his true calling, the newspaper business. Jenkins sent Bill Nye over the hill to Laramie, and as I hope they never say in the Newspaper business, the rest is history.

Bill Nye went to work for Laramie’s morning newspaper, The Sentinel, as an editor for $12 a week. According to Nye, “We printed it before sundown and distributed it before breakfast, thus it had the appearance of extreme freshness and dampness.” After five years, Nye left the Sentinel and started his own paper, The Boomerang, still going strong today

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Nye named the paper after his mule, Boomerang, and started the paper in the loft of a livery barn. Nye hand painted a sign, placing it at the bottom of the stairs leading to his office and the press upstairs, it read, “Twist the gray Mule’s tail and take the elevator.” The first issue came out on March 11, 1882, and the rest, well, the rest really is history. 

Bill Barrow and his Sagebrush Philosophy

I have made several posts in the last few years about Edgar Wilson (Bill) Nye. Nye was one of the most famous newspaper columnists of the late 1800s. So famous he went on humorous lecture tours and shared billing with Mark Twain. His Laramie Boomerang writings appeared in papers throughout America and overseas. Seems unlikely that a state as small as Wyoming could have a newspaperman of such prominence, but they did, and they also had another.

Merris C. (Bill) Barrow was nearly as well-known as Bill Nye. He came to Wyoming in 1878 and after a few months was working for Bill Nye who was then the editor of the Boomerang. He worked in an entry-level job in the papers make-up department but in a few years he was running the Douglas Budget.

Barrow wrote two segments for the paper that were widely circulated and appreciated. Authoring both, Sagebrush Philosophy (once a month) and his weekly column, Bill Barrow’s Budget. Barrow’s folksy cowboy philosophy was a hit. He advertised his newspaper as, “five the chunk”, (five cents each) or, “two plunks per” ($2.00 a year), and reported it was printed on, “prickly pear papyrus.”

He reported his sagebrush philosophy, was “pungent yes, but palatable.” The paper did well, for a small town paper, but it was Bill Barrow and his words that were sent around the country.

I am not sure today if newspapers present the type of vehicle a writer needs to become known worldwide. A few columnist writing for papers with circulations in the hundreds of thousands are well known but not the superstar writers of the old days. Today we reserve that status for our favorite novel writers.

One of a group of horses and mules from Rocky Mountain National Park that winter each year at Fort Laramie.

Me and Bill Nye

Bill Nye, as frequent readers of this blog know, is one of my all-time favorite Wyomingites. His columns, written over one hundred years ago still make me smile. On June 1, 1877 his column topic was a recent Laramie jail break. Never one to miss a chance at humor, he picked on not the jail breakers but the people that were worried that something might happen to them because of the jail break. The old, they might come to my house idea. Below are excerpts from his column.

“Different rumors pervaded the town last evening between the hours of 8 p.m. and 10. Some had understood that the jailor had been struck in the cerebellum, others that he was struck in the act of locking the iron gate. It was earnestly reported at one time that the court house had been surrounded by a large Russian force, and that some were rushin’ in and others rushin’ out.”

“He ends the column as only Bill Nye could. “Two hundred and eleven women looked under two hundred and eleven beds before retiring, and the man of the house put his trusty Smith and Wesson under his pillow where it wouldn’t be stolen. During the still hours of the night he would feel that he must shoot somebody, and as a slight noise greeted his ear he would creep to the door and shoot a hole in the rain-water barrel.”

I have twice used a photo of Edgar Wilson, ‘Bill,’ Nye, so thought you might enjoy a Wyoming sunset – I took this photo about seven this evening.

It's Spring Time In Wyoming

Over the past two years I have blogged several times about one of my all-time favorite western humorists, Bill Nye. Nye started a newspaper in Laramie, Wyoming, a paper with possibly the most unusual name for a paper in America, The Laramie Boomerang. (Named after his mule that no matter how many time he sold it or gave it away it kept coming back).

Am I going to get around to something here? Well, yes. Nye was a humorist who reveled in poking fun at himself and Wyoming. Living in Wyoming the weather is at best unpredictable, went to bed last night as it started to snow, yep, snow in May. Still snowing when I got up this morning and been snowing on and off most of the day.

On June 10, 1880, Bill Nye wrote in his book, Forty Liars and Other Lies, about the weather. “It has snowed a good deal during the week and it is discouraging to the planters of cotton and tobacco very much. I am positive that a much smaller area of both these staples will be planted in Wyoming this year than ever before. Unless the yield this fall of moss agates and prickly pears should be unusually large the agricultural export will be very far below preceding years, and there may be actual suffering.”

I feel about like that today looking out at my garden covered in snow and dreaming of sometime actually planting on a warm sunshiny day. Nye, later in the article went on to say, “Again the early frosts make close connections with the late spring blizzards, so that there is only time for a hurried lunch between.”

Warm weather and summer will come, I am just not sure when. So why would an old gardener like me live in a tough to grow state like Wyoming? Well, as real-estate agents are happy to point out, “its location, location, location.

And the view ---

View of our little town from Powell Mountain, 5 miles away

Looking north (away from town) from Powell Mt. Guernsey State Park

 We love our view.

Elk at sundown last evening in Sybille Canyon


 

 

 

Wyoming Wind and a Plug Hat

Wyoming Wind and a Plug Hat

Bill Nye, my all-time favorite western humorist, like the rest of us who live in Wyoming often made a few unpleasant comments about the Wyoming wind. February seems to always be the bleak month in the Cowboy state. Cold and wind dominate.

 Nye entitled one of the short stories in his book, Forty Liars and Other Lies, “The Plug Hat in Wyoming,” and you guessed it, the wind is the antagonist.

Here is what he had to say –

“In the first place, the climate of Wyoming is not congenial to the plug hat. You may wear one at 1 o’clock with impunity, if you can dodge the vigilance committee, and at three minutes past1 a little cat’s paw of wind will come sighing down from the Snowy Range, that make the cellars and drive-wells tremble, and the hat looks like a frightened picket fence.”

He also plays with the idea of the hat maybe being too much of a dudes head topper to be worn in the rough and tumble 1870s – 80s Wyoming. “In former years they used to hang a man who wore a plug hat west of the Missouri but after a while they found that it was a more cruel and horrible punishment to let him wear it and chase it over the foothills when the frolicsome breeze caught it up and toyed with it, and landed it against the broad brow of Laramie Peak.

He does mention that the hats can be found as long as you are willing to travel fifteen or twenty miles, “as the crow flies,” to find it.

In the end he explains the hat of the day, the western style of hat. “Time may overcome at last the public disfavor, but until the Rocky Mountain wind is lulled to repose, so that a plug hat will not have to be tied on with a wrought iron stair-rod, the soft hat will be the prevailing style of roof.”

Bill Nye lived all too short a life (1850-1896) and unfortunately his very popular newspaper column was only partially saved over the years. Reading him today, more than a hundred years later he is still funny, no wonder he traveled the lecture circuit with Mark Twain.  

Wyoming Humor - Edgar Wilson (Bill) Nye

Like all states Wyoming has had its share of colorful characters, none more colorful than Edgar Wilson (Bill) Nye. Nye came west to Wyoming in 1876 and stayed seven years until 1883. He settled in Laramie and found his true passion and maybe what he was put on this earth to do – writing humor.

Nye practiced law, became postmaster of Laramie and worked for the local paper before started his own, The Laramie Boomerang,  (still a six day a week paper) his newspaper columns became so popular that they were reprinted far from the small town in Southeast Wyoming being picked up by papers all over America and reprinted by more than a dozen newspapers in Europe.

Nye was indeed a first rate humorist, one of the best of his time, later in life he often shared the stage, and equal billing with Mark Twain. Unfortunately Nye’s humor has not been as lasting as Twain’s but in the last quarter of the 1800s he was one funny guy.

One of my favorite excerpts from his writing follows. This writing explains his resignation as Laramie’s Postmaster.

 It is a full newspaper column I have reduced to only four of the thirteen paragraphs.

 Enjoy!

                                                                        Postoffice, Divan, Laramie City, W.T.

Sir.—

I beg leave at this time to officially tender my resignation as postmaster at this place, and in due form to deliver the great seal and the key to the front door of the office. The safe combination is set on the numbers 33, 66 and 99, though I do not remember at this moment which comes first, or how many times you revolve the knob, or which direction you should turn it at first in order to make it operate.

You will find the postal cards that have not been used under the distributing table, and the coal down in the cellar. If the stove draws too hard, close the damper in the pipe and shut the general delivery window.

Tears are unavailing. I once more become a private citizen, clothed only with the right to read such postal cards as may be addressed to me personally, and to curse the inefficiency of the postoffice department. I believe the voting class to be divided into two parties, viz: Those who are in the postal service, and those who are mad because they cannot receive a registered letter every fifteen minutes of each day, including Sunday.

Mr. President, as an official of this Government I now retire. My term of office would not expire until 1886. I must, therefore, beg pardon for my eccentricity in resigning. It will be best, perhaps, to keep the heart-breaking news from the ears of European powers until the dangers of a financial panic are fully past. Then hurl it broadcast with a sickening thud. *

*Excerpt taken from—Bill Nye’s  Western Humor

                                                        Selected and with an Introduction

                                                        By T. A. Larson

                                                       University of Nebraska Press

                                                      Lincoln, NE  1968

If you would like to see the letter in its entirety you can find it here- http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/10/here-roads-seem-to-fork.html