Doris Shannon Garst - Wyoming Writer

With the dreary weather and snow in the forecast, I spent the morning looking through a few old Wyoming reference books. It’s always fun to see how the stories of Wyoming change from one generation to another. Some accounts from the past become more important and others less so.

 I spent an hour or more paging through, and reading parts that struck me, a Wyoming History book that I believe was used for eight grade classes. I base this assumption on the fact that there is a name written in pencil on the first page followed by, 8 grade, and 1948-46. (In my years of teaching I numbered books by year, and then numbered them consecutively, so this made sense to me – Purchased in 1948, book number 46)

The Book, The Story of Wyoming And Its Constitution and Government, was written by Doris Shannon Garst was published in 1938, and printed by the Douglas Enterprise. It is a slim volume of 179 pages and is somewhat unusual in size, especially for a textbook, at 5 X 7.

Doris Shannon Garst

According to Garst’s, Wyoming Authors Wiki page, she was a teacher and principal but became a full-time writer after publishing her Wyoming History book. The Wiki site relates that she was told she would not be taken seriously because no one would read a western book by a woman. The settled by dropping the Doris and publishing the original as by, Shannon Garst. My copy, probably new, when numbered in 1948, does have her name as Doris Shannon Garst.

I think the writing and storytelling in this one holds up pretty well for being 78 years old. The beginning of each chapter is a bit more folksy and personal than I see in today’s texts, but I liked it. Here is an example, one I think students today would enjoy reading.

In fact, the mountain men got so that they weren’t at all particular about what they ate. Joe Meek, one of the famous trappers says: “I have held my hand in an ant hill until they were covered with the ants then greedily licked them off. I have taken the sole off my moccasins, crisped them in the fire and eaten them . . . the black crickets which are found in the country were considered game. We use to take a kettle of hot water, catch the crickets and throw them in, and when they stopped kicking, eat them.”

Ms. Garst, who spent the rest of her live in Douglas, went on to write many more books after her successful Wyoming Text Book. Amazon lists over 90 titles, some with co-authors and many are still available from used book stores. 

I found Doris Shannon Garst,  to be such an interesting person one that I plan to write another in another post –Coming soon!

Winter - A Great time to sit back in my recliner and read

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.