Wyoming's enduring rural western image was created by cultural forces as longstanding and national in scale as the forces that left Wyoming economically underdeveloped. State promotion of Wyoming's traditional image in the inter- ests of economic development is not nostalgic under these circumstances.
diversified economy, including both rural and urban development, were rapidly and consistently accompanied by cultural images of the state as "western." For insiders and outsiders alike, these images identified Wyoming with beautiful natural scenery and the world of the range cowboy-in short, as an undeveloped, even undevelopable place. The cultural forces that shaped Wyoming's state identity have been as powerful, longstanding, and national in scale as the economic forces that tapped Wyoming's resources but failed to plant large urban manufacturing centers there. Any successful effort to create new images of the state and to develop a viable economy must begin by understanding the national scope and resonance of Wyoming's cowboy image. After a hundred years, Wyoming state officials were left holding the bag of antici- pated progress that never materialized. Why did this happen?State economic planners have grappled with the question, but their answers have traditionally laid the blame on economic forces that were either beyond the state's control, or were misshapen by state tax and economic development policies.' Contemporary state planners have focused on identifying what is structurally wrong with Wyoming's economy, em- phasizing-for obvious reasons-what the state could do differently to promote busi- ness, to create new kinds of jobs (especially in telecommunications and information
--"------""--" FRIEDAKNOBLOCHteaches American Studies at the University of Wyoming. She thanks Robert Johnston, Catherine Stock, and many UW colleagues for their close reading. T. A. Larson, History of Wyoming (1965; reprint, Lincoln, 1978). Larson returns to the theme of unrealized progress throughout the book. See his discussion of post-World War Two eco- nomic development assessment, 506-10.
Western Historical Quarterly 32 (Summer 2001): 201-221. Copyright 02001, Western Histow Association. 202 SUMMER 2001 Western Historical Quarterly
technologies), and to redistribute the tax burden from the minerals industry to other industries.' State planners today quietly concede that, in addition to economic face tors, the state's rural culture may be to blame for lack of de~elopment.~In May 1998, the New York Times reported that state officials: "have to deal with Wyoming's standoffishness about change," a "stubborn streak. . . captured by the image of a cow- boy on a bucking bronco," a mythical image belied by the "reality . . . that only 4 percent of residents work on ranches or farm^."^ The state's economic policy makers have been criticized for clinging nostalgically and ineffectively to the state's "wild west" image in its quest for development. A "native" wrote anonymously in The Economist in 1998 that "Wyoming clings to the Hollywood version of its history," and maintains "old-West nostalgia as legitimate public policy."5 But images of promotional value that identify the state's rural culture represent what has been economically realized in Wyoming more accurately than nineteenth- and twentieth-century genuflection to urban, industrial progress ever could. Wyoming's "undeveloped" rural culture was in fact created, not by misguided Wyoming insiders, but by the same American industrial development that linked Wyoming's resources to commercial and industrial centers elsewhere. Romantic responses to American industrialism-originally from outside Wyoming and pronounced after 1890- created enduring cultural associations of Wyoming as rural. Wyoming's chronic under- development and cowboyification happened simultaneously in the last decades of the nineteenth century. In 1868, Wyoming territorial organizers had every reason to expect the rapid growth of urban settlements and economic activities. They believed they were on the cutting edge of the expansion of industrial development, not waiting in a rural backwater for industry to come their way; industry, in the form of Union Pacific railroad construc- tion and maintenance, precipitated political organization. Territorial Governor John Campbell noted that "[flor the first time in the history of our country, the organization of a territorial government was rendered necessary by the building of a railroad. Here- tofore the railroad has been the follower instead of the pioneer of ci~ilization."~The earliest issues of the Cheyenne Leader, begun in September 1867 just before the arrival of the Union Pacific tracks, give some indication of the forms of progress early Wyo- ming citizens grandly imagined. Cheyenne was an "infant prodigy, and railroad city of
--..-"-".""-""-....-" """- ' Steering Committee for Business Development, "Vision for a New Economic Future." Available [Online]:
... " . -. "-""-.".-... Cheyenne Leader, 19 September 1867, I "bid., 4. Ibid., 26 October 1867, 1. '"bid., 2 November 1867, 1
" Ib~d.,26 October 1867, 1. Ibid., 28 September 1867,4.
l3 Ib1d.,22 October 1867, 1. 204 SUMMER 2001 Western Historical Quarterly
1868 was willingly given up by Dakota because the Union Pacific connected Wyo- ming more directly to other territories than it did to Dakota itself, and subdivision of the "illy-proportioned and extensive area of Dakota1' was "ine~itable."'~Wyoming citi- zens had a political and economic vehicle to promote their interests as distinct from the interests of citizens elsewhere. An early and comprehensive promotional document, Laramie newspaper editor Robert Strahorn's 1877 Hand-Book of Wyoming, indicates that the seeds of Wyoming's later identity germinated immediately, but alongside the now-common associations of the place with mountains and plains and natural resources, lay the fervent belief that many thousands of people would come to build cities and factories. "The natural capa- bilities of few regions are so generously and favorably diversified as in that embraced within the limits of Wyoming," Strahorn wrote. "Forest and [pllain, mountain and valley, water-course and upland alternate and unite to furnish the most accessible field for the speedy creation of a large and prosperous ~ommonwealth."'~ Cataloguing the existing resources and industries of the territory, Strahorn de- scribed "what inducements her great natural wealth has held out to capitalists." Wyo- ming offered grazing area, timber, coal, iron, precious metals, marble, soda, oil-bearing shale, along with a "fine system of rail, stage and telegraph."16 Agriculture was also promising in 1877, but mining and stockraising still claimed "the greatest attention."" Along with the ranches, farms, mines, and timber cutting, manufacturing and vital urban development were sure to come. "In Wyoming, as in other Rocky Mountain Territories and States, there exist hundreds upon hundreds of germs which at no very distant day will give life to the grandest of manufacturing enterprises, and make new cities quiver with proud activity. Nature paved the way along the western ranges for the sway of the forge, the shuttle and the loom as she never paved it in the older states and world^."'^ Strahorn lamented that "a few of the eastern States are swallowing the major part of the results of our best western enterprise and energy, with the inevitable sweep of a grand industrial maelstrom." On the matter of manufacturing, he concluded that "home production is the only solid foundation for perfect and permanent pr~sperity."'~Aware that Wyoming resource extraction and industrial development were part of a national process, Strahorn understood that the most desirable form of development would not
---"--"-"----"-
l4 "A Memorial to the Fortieth Congress by the Dakota Legislative Assembly," in Wyo- ming Historical Blue Book: A Legal and Political History of Wyoming, 1868-1 943, Mane Erwin (Den- ver, 1946), 142.
l5 Robert Strahorn, Hand-Book of Wyoming (Laramie, 1877),2 1.
l6 Ibid., 21-5.
Ii Ibid., 47. '"bid., 79.
l9 Ibid., 79, 83 Frieda Knobloch leave Wyoming merely a rural supplier of raw materials. That was, however, the exact fate visited upon the state in the decades to come. In 1889, a similar promotional document compiled by the secretary of the terri- tory reiterated the value of Wyoming's natural resources, again noting that farming was "carried on only to a limited extent, the chief industry being stock raising," though irrigation would eventually bring many more acres under cultivation. There were min- erals aplenty, but with "the exception of coal hardly any of the mineral wealth of Wyoming" had been developed.'~histoo was expected to change: "The raising of live stock [sic] is the principle industry of Wyoming, not because she has no other resources, but simply that they have remained practically undeveloped to the present time, for the want of interest, capital, and transportation facilities. Before another decade has passed, however, our immense deposits of coal, iron, copper, oil, soda, marble, etc., will undoubtedly have attracted the attention of the world and stock raising will no longer remain the chief industry of our pe~ple."~' Governor Frances Warren's 1889 appeal for statehood, delivered as his inaugural address in Cheyenne, recounted the familiar roster of riches, again predicting an occu- pationally and economically diverse future for the state. The new governor acknowl- edged the historical importance of stock raising, but included a wide range of equally important opportunities: "We should deal fairly with all, the settler who is struggling for a foothold, the stockman who as pioneer has paid largely of the taxes and has made later settlements of the country possible, and who now divides the land with the farmer, the railroads which under proper laws and restrictions largely develop our material interests, the miner, the manufacturer, the laborer and the capitalist-these each and all of them are alike interested in public economy and in creating a sense of safety and security, such as can be obtained only by impartial execution of the law."22Clearly, the role of a new state government would be to aggressively facilitate the growth of a diverse "public economy." But economic growth was not especially promising by 1890. Promotion of the territory to settlers and investors had yielded few results; the cattle industry had boomed and busted spectacularly; manufacturing, dependent on distribution by rail to distant and uncertain markets, was difficult to establish; mining remained dominated by coal production; farmers "swarmed into Nebraska" but not into Wyoming in the 1880s; banks failed; jobs were scarce. State historian T. A. Larson argued that the governor "was not indulging his imagination when he cried depression and poverty during the 1888 legislative ~ession."'~
--we------'". D. Shannon, territorial secretary, ed., Resources of Wyoming, 1889 (Cheyenne, 1889),3. Ibid., 14. '' Governor Frances Warren, in Erwin, Blue Book, 584 " Larson, History of Wyoming, 158. See 159-62 for more information on Wyoming's economic situation in the 1880s and 1890s. 206 SUMMER2001 Western Historical Quarterly
Nevertheless, in 1890, in his appeal to Congress as a territorial delegate on behalf of Wyoming statehood, Joseph Carey presented the familiar list of Wyoming resources and the desire for a diversified economy. Noting progress in most extractive endeav- ors, he said expectantly of industry: "Manufacturing establishments come with capital and a considerable population. Yet Wyoming has already made progress in this direc- tion. In the Territory there is already a rolling-mill, large machine and railway repair shops, flouring-mills, a glass factory, tanneries, planing-mills, foundries, harness and saddle factories." Carey continued, "No country offers better facilities for manu- facturing. The raw materials are irl abundance for the creation of trade and industrial establishments. Within 10 miles of a large glass factory at Laramie City are all the products that enter into the manufacture of glass, of the best quality and in abun- dance." (The glass factory would soon close, but Carey utters no discouraging word here, in Congress, with statehood at stake.24)Again proposing an economic structure for the state that would include both rural and urban development, Carey said, "The greatest nations are those that have a great variety of resources. The same is true of States. The rolling-mill, the furnace, and factory give employment for the masses. If for any reason there is a loss in one branch of industry, it is compensated by the profits of some other industrial e~tablishment."~~ The expectation was clear: capital would come, people would come, factories and cities would follow. Wyoming did gain statehood in 1890, but expected growth-espe- cially in urban settlement and industrial development-remained elusive. Far from nostalgic, promoters (including state government officials) believed Wyoming to be perpetually on the verge of great progressive change throughout most of the twentieth century. In 1908, the Department of Immigration advertised the state as "The Unde- veloped Empire on the Continental Divide," offering "the greatest opportunities for active development of undeveloped natural resources of any of the great Western state^."'^ The same rhetoric appeared throughout the twentieth century. In 1930, the Department of Commerce and Industry wrote that "the Wyoming of Today may be recognized as a state advancing rapidly in the development of extensive natural resources and industrial opportunities," and "upon the threshold of increasing devel- opment," but that "new capital in large amounts" would be needed. Wyoming was "just entering into an era of manufacturing, and while outside of the petroleum and beet sugar industries, its manufacturing enterprises [had] not as yet become large"; promoters were certain "that manufacturing [would] greatly increase in the next few years."" --"".,"""-
'+ Ibid., 161-2.
?j Joseph Carey, in Erwin, Blue Book, 680. 'Wyotning Department of Immigration, Wyoming in Picture and Prose (Cheyenne, 1908), inside front cover. :' Wyom~ngDepartment of Commerce and Industry, Wyommng-Worth Know~ng(Chey- enne, 1930),np. Frieda Knobloch
The same claims were made with renewed hope after World War 11, but through- out the twentieth century, economic disappointment was chronic, and the state's de- pendence on natural resource extraction became deeply entrenched. In the mid-1940s, planners were optimistic: "Wyoming has made a notable impression on industrial minds from coast to coast and border to border, and men with foresight and ambition have focused their attention on our great state. Through the Commissioner's efforts, these industrialists have begun to realize that opportunity lies within this new frontier for indu~try."'~Post-war mineral production soared, especially oil, gas and coal, support- mg a substantial economic boom in the 1970s. Still, even in the midst of relative prosperity, industrial growth did not materialize." And of course the boom did not last. The mining sector lost over one-half its jobs between 1981 and 1996.j"n 1997, state planners had to concede that Wyoming had "no business image nationally," that the economy remained "rooted in basic agriculture, mineral and energy extraction, and tourism," and that no "major urban center" had emerged "as a focal point and generator for the state's economy."" No longer on the threshold of growth, "Wyoming has failed to diversify its economy," and sustains in the present day an economy "so small that it lacks critical mass in any area."j2 Like earlier generations of disappointed promoters, current ana- lysts blame lack of water, lack of markets, lack of capital, federal control of resources, and high production costs for the absence of manufacturing. However, they add that the "rural culture that is Wyoming" is a possible culprit as well, a nod to what had become not only an economic but a cultural reality by the end of the twentieth cen- tury. In any case, economic development in the future, analysts agree, will have to build on the industries already in place, and support telecommunications infrastruc- ture to make new businesses possible in such a "remote, rural" state without large cities or manufacturing centers.j3 Today no one looks forward to making cities in Wyoming "quiver with proud activity." In fact, more likely the opposite: "There are all the- people here now that I care about," a resident told a Wall Street Journal reporter in 1968, a sentiment that can be heard regularly in the present.j4 In a state repeatedly
""-""""'""""-"" .'.."." 'Wyoming Commerce and Industry Commission, "[First] Biennial Report, 194748," (Cheyenne, 1948), np.
'9 Larson, History of Wyoming, 508-23. '"teering Committee for Business Development, "Vision for a New Economic Fu- ture," 7. The mining industry, the economic mainstay of the state's general fund for most of the twentieth century, lost over 22,000 jobs in 15 years, and was the only sector in the state that lost jobs between 1993 and 1996.
'I Steering Committee for Business Development, "Vision for a New Economic Fu- ture," 4.
" Quoted in Larson, History of Wyoming, 510. 208 SUMMER 2001 Western Historical Quarterly
described as uniquely rich in resources, the optimistic belief in just-around-the-comer industrial development gave way to a different assessment: Wyoming is not merely "undeveloped now, but remote and rural for the foreseeable future. The forces of preservation and the attendant tourism, in place since territorial days, worked powerfully against a Wyoming identified routinely by its cities and facto- ries and provided a fund of images upon which state economic development has al- ways depended. The rectangle that was Wyoming on the map after 1868 would have been, under the best circumstances, a poor symbol of state identity and pride. It is no surprise, then, that graphic representations of the state now include the irregular mar- gin of Yellowstone Park even though some of it lies in Idaho and some in Montana. "Big Wonderful Wyoming" mudflaps, visible on trucks all over the state, offer this enhanced outline to guarantee that the Park is a defining element of the state, no matter where its real limits lie. Even state documents use this outline of Wyoming on their covers. Mudflaps and other Wyoming graphics further add the bucking horse and his rider. Taken together, the boundary of the state including the entire Park, under the sign of the bucking horse, pretty well sum up the cultural associations Wyoming acquired after 1868. The importance of the park would not have surprised territorial boosters in the 1870s, but the bucking horse certainly would have. The existence of Yellowstone guar- anteed that visitors, and potential investors, would come to the state. The cowboy, on the other hand, was originally one worker among many in Wyoming, not iconographic in the least-entirely absent in nineteenth-century promotional material. He was the one who would take his place in the imagined diversified economy to come. But between 1870 and 1900, a generation of writers, artists, and wild-west performers popularized the cowboy West (and Wyoming) just as decisively as park promotion made Wyoming scenery familiar throughout the U. S.35 The establishment of Yellowstone Park in 1872 guaranteed a stream of visitors to the state and represented a peculiar resource: remote, spectacular landscapes to be enjoyed precisely because they would never be "developed." Strahorn understood the significance of the park quite clearly. In 1877, he wrote that the new park contained "the most striking of all mountains, gorges, falls, rivers and lakes in the whole Yellowstone region"; traveling to the park was still inconvenient (including a 155- mile wagon trip north from Green River, and 150 miles further with pack animals to Yellowstone Lake), but the whole route was "noted for the grandeur of its scenery, its ever present and beautiful streams, and its superb, continuous hunting grounds."36 Strahorn anticipated more convenient access to the park with the completion of pro- posed wagon roads and railroad lines, in both Montana and Wyoming. He quoted an
ji For a discussion of the changing status of the cowboy as emerging state symbol, see Peter Hassrick, "The Wyoming Cowboy's Evolving Image," LVyoming Annuls 65 (Winter 1993- 94): 8-19,
'6 Strahorn, Hand-Book of Wyoming, 112, 122-3. Frieda Knobloch engineer working on park access: "There is good reason for believing that the Yellowstone Park will in time become the most popular summer resort in the country, perhaps the world. This of itself is a sufficient reason for opening the way to it at ~nce."'~A park of national-indeed international-interest catalyzed the tourist in- dustry in Wyoming as surely as the Union Pacific had catalyzed settlement and pro- vided an occasion for the map of Wyoming to become flooded with images tourists wanted to see. The industrial magnates had not come, but hunters and fishers, hikers, and campers certainly did. So, eventually, did the dudes, and by 1900, the Wyoming of wide open spaces, spectacular nature, and the cowboy was complete. In visual art, fiction, film, and autobiography, many people created the Wyoming that appears stubbornly antithetical to progress, development, and even prosperity, and they were rewarded handsomely for their efforts. Artistic and literary outsiders hit pay dirt in Wyoming as surely as the coal companies, and private promoters used emerging-and unquestionably popular-images of Wyoming to their advantage. The intensely commercial production of landscape images and western literary icons, espe- cially after 1860, directly fed Wyoming economic development and symbolic identity, for better and for worse, as state agencies and officials themselves adopted them. Many of the artists who captured and interpreted Wyoming scenes for eastern audiences were brought to the area in the company of explorers, surveyors, missionar- ies, and wealthy travelers, underscoring the connection made by Albert Boime be- tween western landscape painting and the commercial, political, and cultural forces that were at work in western expansion.38Some of the most well-known artists to come to Wyoming were Alfred Jacob Miller, Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran, and William Henry Jackson. State and private promoters came to rely on the images these artists created and popularized. Bierstadt made a trip to southern Wyoming in 1863, producing one of his most famous paintings, Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak, which he exhibited in 1864 and sold for $25,000-an unprecedented price for an American painting.?' His work made audiences "proud of their country and its West," and importantly, he "also made them want to go there."4Bierstadt received a commission from the Central Pacific Railroad to paint scenes from their route in 1871, confirming the artist's power to motivate tourist traveL4' Thomas Moran also helped motivate tourists' curiosity about the West, and his images of Yellowstone were instrumental in lobbying for park status in the
" - "Captain William A. Jones, quoted in Strahorn, Hand-Book of Wyoming, 126
j3 See Albert Boime, The Magisterial Gaze: Manifest Destiny and American Landscape Painting c. 1830-1 865 (Washington, DC, 1991).
l9 Gordon Hendricks, Albert Bierstadt: Painter of the American West (New York, 1974). 94, 111, 141, 154.
Nancy K. Anderson and Linda S. Ferber, Albert Bierstadt: Art and Enterprise (New York, 1990), 268-9,272-83. 2 10 SUMMER 2001 Western Historical Quarterly
early 1870~.~'William Henry Jackson familiarized the same Yellowstone setting in photographs. (Interestingly it was Moran's painting, not Jackson's photography, ac- cording to art historian Mary Panzer, that "soon became the standard by which all other Yellowstone images, including photographs, were judged."4i) Although few Americans could see Yellowstone for themselves in the 1870s, they learned to recog- nize its unique features through assiduous railroad promotion and the popular press. The images Jackson and Moran captured of Yellowstone, in the hands of North- ern Pacific railroad promoters, transformed what had been the area's grotesque or even hellish curiosities into a "wonderland" of tourist attractions. From Strahorn's 1877 Hand-Book, and in every state promotional effort that followed, the geysers, hot springs, lakes, mountains, and falls that the artists popularized became the Yellowstone attrac- tions. In 1908, the pamphlet Wyoming in Picture and Prose offered a photo of Jackson Lake (not named for the photographer) and Mount Moran as "one of the grand views" for which the area was "justly famous."44There is no credit given to the photographer, and it does not much matter whose it was. Jackson had taken a photograph at the same location, but by 1908 so had others, including Cheyenne photographer and sometime employee of the Union Pacific, Joseph Stimson. The images had become iconic by this point, not associated with the men who composed them, but with the Park, and by extension, with Wyoming. The standard views thousands of Americans had learned to recognize as Wyoming attractions were not Bierstadt's or Moran's or Jackson's, nor were railroads their only promoters; by 1930, they were "Nature's Gorgeous Paint- ings," accessible not only because of obliging railroads, but also because of new high- ways in the state of Wy~ming.~' Nature's gorgeous paintings had been supplemented with other attractions as well, including the spectacle of western adventure and the possibility of recreating cowboy life on one of the thriving dude ranches in the state. These new attractions drew on the popularity of western adventure writing, which was well developed by the time Wyoming became a territory in 1868, and remained so through the turn of the century.
iL Jon1 Klnsey, "Thomas Moran's Surveys of Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon: The Coalition of Art, Busmess, and Government," 31-2, in Anne Morand, Joni Kinsey and Mary Panzer, eds. Splendors of the American West: Thomas Moran's Art of the Grand Canyon and Yellou~stone(Seattle, 1990), 2942. See especially Aubrey L. Haines, The Yellou~stoneStory, (Yellowstone Natlonal Park, 1977), 1: 84-173. Haines provides, in considerable detail, the histoq of the private and federal Yellou~stoneexpeditions, including the complex relationships among f~nanciers,artists, scientists, and the milnary that made the expeditions and profitable. '' Mary Panzer, "Great P~cturesfrom the 1871 Expedition: Thoinas Moran, William Henry Jackson, and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone" in Splendors of the American West, ed. Morand, Kinsey, and Panzer, 43, 54. 'Wyoming Department of Immigration, Wyoming in Picture and Prose, 33
+' Wyomlng Departtnent of Cotnmerce and Industry, Wyom~ng-Worth Knowlng, np Frieda Knobloch 211
Adventure writers were something of a nuisance to Wyoming territorial boosters. Strahorn's 1877 survey reflected anxiously and at length on the threat posed to territo- rial development by thoughtless, popular writers from the East. In a section describing Wyoming's "Manners and Society," he wanted to correct western images that went "far beyond the pale of truth." Eastern readers "demand experiences from the western plains and mountains which smack of the crude, the rough and the semi-barbarous," wlthout paying any attention to "our model men" or "their carefully constructed en- terprises," or their churches, schools and clubs, he said. "It is also quite the fashion," he continued, "to create thrilling episodes from whole cloth, in which the savage plays a prominent part, and is valiantly assisted by the writer," filling genuine would-be settlers with "unfounded dread." Strahorn was clearly familiar with generic western images when he wrote that audiences craved lots of Indians, violence, and implausible drama, characters "armed to the teeth," and eccentricity for its own sake. "Our settle- ments are full of odd characters, as are the eastern," he wrote. But writers, always looking for the "real frontiersmen," routinely gravitated toward "the swagger and swell of a recent heavily-armed and buckskinned arrival," someone just two months out of Natchez calling himself Buckskin Jack, for example, who was nothing but a "first-class deadbeat."'6 For Strahorn, the only story worth telling was the story- of Wyoming's promise and enterprise. Buckskin Jack was not, however, a cowboy. Owen Wister and Frederick Remington would help change that. Wister and Remington individually and in collaboration sold tales and images of the cowboy West to popular journals. Privileged young eastern men at loose ends, educated at Harvard and Yale respectively (though Remington never graduated), both friends of Theodore Roosevelt, they traveled west for familiar reasons: Wister to re- cover from depression and Remington to make money.4i By the late 1880s, Remington had established his reputation as a popular illustrator of military, cowboy, and Indian themes. At the time, Wister had no success as a writer. He returned yearly to Wyoming after 1885 to maintain his health, and had been working on western stories developed from his own experiences in Wyoming, two of which were accepted by Harper's (Weekly and Monthly) in 1892: "Hank's Woman," and "How Lin McLean Went East." The two men's collaboration began in 1893 with the publication of Wister's story "Balaam and Pedro," accompanied by Remington's picture of a horse sale, in Harper's Monthly in De~ember.~"
'' Strahorn, Hand-Book of Wyommng, 105-6
?' Wister, Remington, and Roosevelr were all products of eastern univers~tieswhere they were "invited to the best parties in Boston." See Frances Stokes, My Father, Owen Wister (Laramie, 1912), 9. Remington collaborated with both Roosevelr and W~ster.For a discussion of Rernmgton's collaboration with Roosevelt and his use of photographs (including Roosevelt's), see Estelle Jussim, Frederick Rernmgton, The Camera t3 the Old West (Fort Worth, 1983), 49-52. '"en Merchant Vorpahl, My Dear Wister: The Frederick Remington-Owen Wister Letters (Palo Alto, 1972), 7-31. 212 SUMMER 2001 Western Historical Quarterly
Wister is, of course, best known for his 1902 novel, The Virginian, set in the Big Horn country he knew well. The book includes versions of stories he had sold sepa- rately in the previous decade. Though a frequent visitor, Wister was never a resident of Wyoming. Still, the University of Wyoming's literary journal is named for him-The Owen Wister Review-suggesting how warmly he was adopted as a literary figure of the state. Remington contributed an icon perhaps equally as important as Wister's work in the cowboyification of Wyoming when he completed his first bronze in 1895, a copy of which he gave to his friend Theodore Roosevelt. "The Bronco Buster" is all action and imagc without the clutter of background or ~ontext.~' While Remington struggled with the new medium of sculpture and Wister con- tinued to publish stories, they worked together on a long essay, "The Evolution of the Cow-puncher," illustrated by Remington. This essay confirmed the arrival of the cow- boy as a symbol at the same time as it signaled the demise of the world in which real cowboys actually lived. Originally, published in Harper's Magazine in 1895, "The Evo- lution of the Cow-puncher" presented the cowboy as a kind of natural nobleman who had appeared throughout history in various guises: Sir Francis Drake, Magellan, and Daniel Boone-all "the same Saxon" throughout time. By 1895, this occasional out- law and sometime-wrangler had been "dispersed" by "Progress" (in the form of the closed range)-though one might catch a glimpse of the original cowboy from time to time. The essay could be called Wister and Remington's cowboy addendum to Frederick Jackson Turner's 1893 elegy for the American frontier, without, of course, Turner's scholarly restraint, such as it was. The arguments of the two pieces are remarkably similar. Both rescue a western "past" in a moment of rhetorical creation, which is at the same time the signal that this past is forever lost. The career of the symbolic cowboy, however-a singular icon associated with the open-range past and American frontier experience in general-had just begun. As guests who enjoyed the landscape and the well-appointed ranch homes of their hosts, as well as what was, for them, the spectacle of ranch work, Wister and Remington collected the raw material for their cowboy~.~"The~were not the only western travelers to do so in the 1880s and 1890s. The roots of dude ranching lay in the scenic appeal of the Rocky Mountain West to eastern visitors, the abundance of big game in the area for hunters, and the temporary primitivism of camp life that many wealthy visitors intentionally sought out. Western travel before the completion of extensive railroad networks, and even to some extent after, was confined to the wealthy, or specially organized private or federal expeditions, or the overland travel of
4' From the preceding paragraph, see Owen Wister, The Virynian (New York, 1902) "Evolution of the Cow-puncher" was reprinted with Remington's illustrations in Vorpahl, My Dear Wister 81, 82, 94. 'Wiscer was a guest chrough his physician's connections in Wyotning. Remington used his impressions of life on Montague Stevens's SU Ranch in New Mexico in his work on "The Evolution of the Cow-puncher." See Vorpahl, My Dear Wister, 37. Frieda Knobloch emigrants. Accommodations were minimal for expeditions and overlanders. Even the most privileged had that 305-mile wagon and packhorse trip to contend with if they wished to reach Yellowstone through Wyoming in the 1870s. But the inconvenience of travel and pack trips, and even the possibility of pitching in somehow in the daily operations of a working ranch, was part of the charm of these trips. Lawrence Bome discusses the word "travel" in relation to the ranch visitor willingly giving up the comforts of more passive tourism: as much as breathtaking Rocky Mountain vistas, travel, as "travail," is what elite western guests sought." Wealthy tourists might stay as private guests of friends or might call on their more remote social connections with ranch owners in the West to wrangle an invitation. Though western settlers all over the region entertained guests, Wyoming and Montana were the cradle of the dude ranch industry for two reasons. First, before 1885, many wealthy hunters had established hunting lodges, or even ranches of their own, amidst the more permanent settlers in these territories. Established hunters-turned- ranchers organized hunting and pack trips for their friends every summer and fall. Second, many Montana and Wyoming ranches were within pack-trip distance from the new Yellowstone Park, an added attraction to this particular comer of the Rocky Mountain West. Word spread of the lavish accommodations, good hunting, spectacu- lar scenery, and the profitability of the ranch business itself, bringing more visitors and not a few investors back again.'' Hunters not lucky enough to know one of the promi- nent ranch proprietors could stay with strangers, either paying cash or occasionally off-setting the cost of their meals and lodging, as well as the use of a horse, by supply- ing the ranch with fresh game.j3 Prosperous ranch homes and rangelands became havens for wealthy young men in need of time and space apart from their eastern or European families. Either paying their way to strangers, or, like Owen Wister, setting up in the home of a family friend, these "remittance men" lived on generous allow- ances, encouraging ranch owners to arrange for their comfort and amusement.54These travelers sought vigorous activity, fresh air, and independence in an era increasingly preoccupied with the revitalizing power of nature and "frontier" activities. The proprietors of the famous Eaton's Ranch, established at Wolf, Wyoming, in 1903 and still operational today, understood explicitly what the dude experience represented to their guests. The Eaton brothers got their start in the West hunting buffalo. Eventually, they established a successful cattle and sheep ranch in North Da- kota in the 1880s. Like other early dude ranchers, the Eatons entertained their own
-----".-.-"--
j1 Lawrence R. Rome, Dude Ranching: A Complete History (Albuquerque, 1983),1-18 and discuss~onof "travail," 5.
" Ib~d.,15-6. '' Ib~d.,16-7.
54 Ibid., 17-8. 2 14 SUMMER 2001 Western Historical Quarterly
friends as sportsmen." By the time the Eatons moved their operation to Wyoming in 1903, their experiences with visitors led them to create a ranch that would satisfy specific demands. They had begun printing brochures in the 1890s, advertising their place as "one of the most delightful summer resorts in the northwest," featuring over- land pack trips, clay-pigeon shooting, baseball, billiards, and a ranch library, which included a growing collection of "western adventure, history, and travel books."i6 Their successful business was relocated to Wolf in order to be closer to Yellowstone Park. Scenically, historically, and logistically, "it was an area that showed considerable prom- ise."ii They knew their visitors wanted to immerse themselves in the western past- including the study of Indian lore and some contact with actual Native Americans, a ranch life that was both real and a recreational throwback to an earlier time, and natural scenery that was both famous and as hard to get to as it had been for earlier explorers. It is important to remember that dude ranching as a business was based on experi- ence with informal visitors and increasingly structured by the demands of paying cli- ents. It began to flourish just as the cattle market collapsed, as the open range closed in Montana and Wyoming, and as the success of artists like Wister and Remington was secured. During the mid- 1880s, hosting visitors could augment otherwise slipping cash receipts from the stock part of the ranch, as it would again in the depression of the 1890s and throughout the twentieth ~entury.~%y1900, emerging dude ranchers could thank writers like Wister (who experienced ranch life and Wyoming scenes first-hand as a "remittance man") for popularizing what they offered a new generation of travel- ers. As with landscape painting and photography, promotion of the state's interests used frontier and cowboy icons that had been developed privately. By the 1920s, the State Department of Agriculture itself was advertising the "splendid hotels, summer resorts and ranches throughout the entire state," offering a sunny photograph of about a dozen "summer visitors at a Wyoming Ranchn-clearly paying dudes rather than family friends-among all their other information on weather, alfalfa, highways, schools, and (of course) Yellowstone Park.59 Early twentieth-century Wyoming promoters had other frontier-associated attractions to offer as well. These were contrived for the benefit of tourists, reinforcing Wyoming's association with the open-range and frontier life, and completing the
" . . . ".. ., " ..- " . ....'
j5 Bucky King, The Dude Connection: A Brief History of Dude Ranchlng in Sheridan and Buffalo, Wyoming and Birney , Montana (Laramie, 1983),1-2. '"bid., 26-7.
ji Ibid., 27. jqorne, Dude Ranchmng, 22 and King, The Dtlde Connection, 54 'Wyoming State Department of Agriculture, "Wyoming" (Cheyenne, 1924),np. These riders look very much like slender Theodore Roosevelts in their khakis and rounded canvas hats. Frieda Knobloch association of their state with a partly remembered, partly made up, frontier past. Pro, moted by the Union Pacific and local boosters, Cheyenne sponsored its first Frontier Days in 1897. This festival was modeled somewhat on the traveling Wild West shows, which had also become popular by that time. (Buffalo Rill's Wild West Show made its Cheyenne debut in 1897, too.) Rodeo events and horse races were complemented with stock western tableaux-a pioneer wedding, an attack on an emigrant train, and stagecoach holdups-but, significantly, also "re-enactments of the first election in Wy~ming."~"f Wild West performers commingled, as Cody did, the real and the fic- tional in their performance of ostensibly historical dramas, Cheyenne Frontier Days adapted the new performance medium to the history and character-not of a person, nation, or region-but of Wyoming itself. After only nine years, the governor used Frontier Days as a lure to Wyoming in his booklet offering "reliable information" on the state and its resources. Frontier Days was "one of the most thrilling and interesting shows that has ever been enacted in our country," with a "national reputation" for its program of "frontier sports." Wyoming citizens "take great pride in participating," he said.61By 1922, the celebration put local citizens on stage in a new way: the organizing committee asked business owners to don brightly-colored western-style shirts and "four-gallon hats," because "we want [visi- tors] to know that they are out west."62The head of the state's Department of Com- merce and Industry in 1939 again urged local people at Frontier Days to wear "western garb," to "give our guests what they want."" Frontier Days even found a place in the textbooks of the state by the 1920s, where one author justified its inclusion in an imagined, edifying air-tour of the state. A photo of bronco and bull riders at Frontier Days illustrated Cheyenne on the imagined tour with the explanation, "In early days, Cheyenne was in the center of the range country, so it is a very good place for such a show, reminding us of the old west."64 Of course, "in the early days," Cheyenne was in the path of the Union Pacific, in a setting as promising for industry as it was for anything else. Moreover, in the early days of the show the "Old West" was already old. But by 1930, frontier images slipped rather easily over the memory of that other Wyoming that state promoters and busi- nessmen had hoped to build. The popularity of self-styled western attractions in a state that (at least at the beginning) shunned its "hell on wheels" past and any remaining hint of the wild and woolly in its growing settlements, has to be laid at the feet of an interrelated set of actors: artists, railroad promoters, cattlemen and their guests, writ- ers, and travelers. Together, their mutually reinforcing interests identified Wyoming as
6"arson, History of KJyoming, 343. '' Governor Bryant B. Brooks, ed., The State of Wyoming (Sheridan, 1905),113-5 6' C:ommittee member quoted in Larson, History of Wyoming, 424. "' George Houser, quoted in Ibid.
61 Lews Tidball, Geography of Wyommng (Laramie, 1927),8, 10. 2 16 SUMMER 2001 Western Historical Quarterly
where Yellowstone Park was, and where ranches and their cowboys flourished-if not always in the agricultural economy, at least in the economy of images. In the twentieth century, the Wyoming Commerce and Industry Commission picked up where private development efforts and scattered immigration recruitment left off, paradoxically offering the by-now familiar rural-cowboy Wyoming as an ap- propriate setting for industrial and urban development. In 1947, their ads appeared in national periodicals, including Business Week, Fortune, Newsweek, Time, and The Wall Street Journal. Each ad featured some westernism in language and in image. One of- fered an overturned cowboy boot as the horn of plenty, spilling factories, livestock, railroads, timber, coal mines, potatoes, and oil derricks. The campaign called Wyo- ming the "New Frontier for Industry," proclaiming "Wide Open Spaces are Open for Business"! But, at the same time, Wyoming's business frontier was "new"; Wyoming itself was "old" in a curious twist of frontier logic: "Hit 'Pay Dirt' in Old Wyoming," the ad exclaimed. Wyoming was "old" because it was associated with a frontier past that was more remote every year; yet Wyoming's lack of industrial development meant the frontier had, in some sense, never closed. In case the western angle failed to im- press potential investors, the ads reminded readers that Wyoming had (and still has) "no state income tax on corporations or person^."^' Behind the scenes, even official promoters encouraged each other as pioneers: "Just as the march of cattle from Texas to Wyoming began a half century ago [giddily displacing the beginning of the range cattle industry to the 1890~1,Wyoming will have an industrial march which, though fewer in number [sic], will bring great wealth to our state."66 By the 1940s, University of Wyoming athletic teams had been wearing bucking horses and cowboys on their jerseys for twenty years; Wyoming license plates had cir- culated the same image for a little more than a decade; and one governor had appeared in promotional materials photographed astride a bucking horse him~elf.~'Wyoming was captured in the historically confusing image of the cowboy-male of course, but ~---""-.-".-
65 Needless to say, the absence of a state income tax has failed to attract significant investment or industrial development. The Steering Committee for Business Development's "Vi- sion for a New Economic Future," 8,notes that corporate taxes allow states to provide "incen- tives," a development tool Wyom~nghas prevented itself from using. 6Wyoming Commerce and Industry Comtnission, "[First] Biennial Report," np. " The bucking horse appeared on the Wyoming license plate in 1935. Wyom~ngwas the first in the nation to include a picture of any kind in addition to the license number itself. The picture is based on a photograph of a famous rodeo horse, Steamboat, in action at Cheyenne's Frontier Days earlr in the twentteth century. See Erwin, Blue Book, 1381, and A. S. "Bud" Gillespie and R.H. "Bob" Burns, Steamboat: Symbol of Wyoming Spirit (Laramie, 1952). At least one protnlnent Laramie citizen rejected the logo by painting over the logos on his plates every year, argulng that it merely advertised Cheyenne's Frontier Days, and not the state's virtues as a whole. See Larson, History of Wyoming, 47 1. Governor Frank Emerson appeared as a broncobuster in the Department of Commerce and Industry's 1930 pamphlet, Wyoming-Worth Knowing. This particular plece of promotional material was among the most graphically sophisticated Wyoming had ever produced. It appeared as an 8 " x 11" booklet, with the title, various Indian and indus- trial symbols, and the Great Seal of Wyoming, embossed on the heavy paper cover. A rectangle of Frieda Knobloch strangely old and young at the same time, referring to an imprecise but remote past through the image of a staged rodeo event, identifying twentieth-century Wyoming as a still-open nineteenth-century frontier. Listen, however, to the language of Joseph M. Carey and Francis Warren as they made their case for Wyoming statehood in 1889 and 1890: Warren described Wyo- ming as among the "young and sparsely settled territories" whose advocates effectively "developed among the people a powerful sentiment that an American should in every section of his country be entitled to home rule." Should Wyoming "enter the union of states," presumably its status as both "young" and "sparsely settled" would change. There is no frontierist rhetoric anywhere in his inaugural speech-no "frontier" at all, no West, no pioneers, no rangemen as heroes-only the concern that the United States offer citizens of Wyoming the rights, protections, and responsibilities afforded Americans elsewhere in the nation. Where the young and sparsely settled territories were-the West-was inconsequential. These territories were expected to participate in the body politic of the nation as equals among other states.'jRJoseph M. Carey, addressing the House of Representatives as territorial delegate, pointed out that the territorial government established in 1868 was understood to be "temporary," in ac- cordance with the Ordinance of 1787. He said, "The act [establishing Wyoming] could have been as properly entitled 'An act to govern the child Wyoming until she is of age to enter the sisterhood of States.' Not unlike many Territories that have preceded her; not unlike her sisters who have not yet formed a union, she has been required to serve a full term of pupilage. Before Wyoming, under the provisions of this bill, can consum- mate her union she will have turned the twenty-first milestone in her history."69The young territory here is female, eager to assume her majority, among her siblings, in an American nation at large. Although Wyoming did achieve her majority in 1890 and L'~on~~mmatedher union," this girlish Wyoming on the threshold of an adulthood that would be frustratingly incomplete throughout the twentieth century is rather like Dickens's Miss Havesham, trailing around in her old wedding dress. Not much promotional value in that image, to be sure. And yet the cowboy announces basically the same predicament. Something went dramatically wrong by 1900-so the critical economic analyst might argue-distorting the future promise of a resource-rich state who entered the nation as a sister among sisters, but lives out her days in the costume of the wild west. Among all the riches Wyoming offered to outsiders-investors, prospective set- tlers, and travelers alike-it was the mountain scenes, ranch experiences, and cowboy spectacles that captured the nation's popular attention by 1900 and that formed the basis of a tourist industry the value of which, unlike that of agriculture, the extractive
the cover was cut away to frame a photo of Jackson Lake on the first page inside, as if the booklet itself was a window on the "real" Jackson Lake, which in turn had already been captured artisti- cally many times by 1930.
"Warren, Inaugural Address, in Erwin, Blue Book, 582-5.
69 Ibid., Carey's speech, 664 2 18 SUMMER 2001 Western Historical Quarterly
industries of the state, and sketchy forays into manufacturing, has never significantly declined. This is not to say that tourism ever was, or could be, or would even be desirable as, the "major" industry of any state. But the persistent growth of Wyoming tourism from the establishment of Yellowstone Park forward, demands the constant definition and promotion of scenes and activities that visitors expect of Wyoming as a place, and provides a continuous cultural means of identifying Wyoming as a place someone would want to visit or live for any reason. Worth $100 million in 195 1, tourism was recognized as a valuable industry, which could be actively promoted: "Tourist business is like any other business. .. . If you want it, you have to go after it aggressively," state officials concluded.'The Wyoming Commerce and Industry Commission (formed in 1947) focused almost exclusively on promoting tourism, and in 1955, they changed their name to the Wyoming Travel Commission." The Travel Commission calculated the value of tourism in 1956 as $136 million; it climbed to $155 million in 1957 (a particularly good year) with "no ceiling in ~ight."'~Tourism is not measured as a separate sector of the economy, but the commission attempted to calculate its value. By 1978, a detailed account of money spent in various locations by tourists suggested the industry brought almost $552 mil- lion into the e~onomy.'~In comparison with Wyoming's other industries at the time, that figure would identify tourism as one of the three largest single industries in the state-worth considerably less than mining, but on a par with wholesale and retail trade (which of course itself must include some activity counted elsewhere as "tourist"), and more than twice the value of the farm sector.j4 In the 1990s, tourist promotion strategy encouraged visitors to spend more time in Wyoming outside of Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. While still advertising the parks' scenic grandeur, promoters wanted to alert visitors to the wildlife, cowboy heritage, and the
'Wyorn~ngCommerce and Industry Commission, "Wyoming: A Story to Tell, Third Biennial Report, 1951/1952" (Cheyenne, 1952), np. State of Wyoming annual reports indicate, in hrief, the histories and missions of various state bureaus, commissions, and departments. The Wyoming Natural Resource Board, estahlished in 1951, promoted non-tourist mlneral and industrial development untll 1968. This task was assumed in 1969 by the Department of Economic Development and Planning. Overall promotion of both natural and cultural resources was reunited in a new Department of Commerce in 1990, which includes the old Travel Commission. All the economic development work of the department is to be taken over by the Wyoming Business Council, established in July 1998, in an effort to partially privatize Wyoming economic development. "Wyoming Commerce and Industry Commission, "Fourth B~ennialReport, 19531 1954" (Cheyenne, 1954),np; Wyoming Travel Commission, "Fifth Biennial Report, 1955-1956" (Cheyenne, 1956), 5-6. The renamed commission simply picked up the hiennial series of reports where they left off, suggesting that the "new" emphasis on tourism was actually a confirmation of the direction the commission had been going through the 1940s.
j3 Wyoming Department of Economic Planning and Development, Industrial Develop. ment Division, "The Wyoming Travel/Tourism Industryn (Cheyenne, July 1980), 27. "Estimate based on Wyoming Department of Administration and Fiscal Control, Research and Statistics Division, "Pictorial Overview of the Wyoming Economy and State Rev- enues" (Cheyenne, 1987),graph: "Gross State Product Contributions by Sector/ Component," np. Frieda Knobloch
"wide open spaces and . . . pristine nature of. . . rivers and streams" they could enjoy throughout the state. In 1998, promotion sounded like it had for decades: "Wyoming's license plate features a cowboy, and the 'cowboy image' is a major draw for Wyoming. Rodeos are a major attraction. Traditional dude ranches are a strong segment of the industry. . . . We can and do provide a 'real,' 'quality' western experience." Conflating the "real" with the "mythic," the promoters continued: "Since the livestock industry is easily the largest segment of the state's agricultural industry, seeing real cowboys work- ing cattle along any road in Wyoming is not ~nusual."'~No bright shirts required. That this "tourist's" Wyoming is not what territorial boosters imagined is clear. That it may not be a place lots of people want to live is also clear. But the reluctance to give up the cowboy version of the state is not, given the uncertainty of other industries, an exercise merely in nostalgia. Moreover, Wyoming residents have had to live with and within it for over a century. And certain manifestations of the "real" make cowboy country, as made up as it is, impossible to dismiss. The data that state policymakers, residents, and entrepreneurs look at to deter- mine any course of action to develop the state's economy and entice or retain residents and businesses is complex. Changes in the relative value of various industries in the state, as contributors to the gross state product, provide one picture of the state's eco- nomic structure. Mining, for example, has long been the most valuable industry in the state; agriculture was worth about one-sixth the value of the mining industry in 1976, and only about one-thirteenth by 1985." The number of people employed in each sector provides another kind of economic information. Though mining is the more valuable industry by far, it employs only 7 percent of the people, and agriculture only employs 2 percent. By contrast, retail trade employs 19 percent, and government of- fices employ 22 percent.'' Clearly the state does not employ many cowboys, nor are their ranges especially valuable; even mining does not support a large percentage of the state's population, whatever it may be worth to the general fund; and many resi- dents work in the unremarkable business of retail sale and (predictably) government service. So much for the "myth" of Wyoming, one might say. But how the physical area of the state is divided provides still another index of the state's economic activity and its place within a national economy-one that speaks directly to Wyoming's persistent image as a rural, agricultural state where reminders of the frontier past and specimens of the West's scenic beauty occupy the landscape.
,-."--'..-'."+"".*.,..-. ..," .-.
'j Wyoming Department of Commerce, Division of Tourism, "Wyoming Travel Mar- ket~ngPlan, 1995-96" (Cheyenne, 1995), np and "Marketing Plan: Wyoming Division of Tour- ism, July 1, 1997-December 31, 1998" (Cheyenne, 1997), 7.
jh Wyoming Department of Administration and Fiscal Control, Research and Statistics Division, "Pictorial Overview," graph: "Gross State Product Contributions by Sector/Compo- nent," np. ?." National Conlmunity Development Serr~ces,"Wyoming: A Background Report" (Cheyenne, 1997). Ava~lable[Online]: Wyoming consists of about 62 million acres of land. Just over half of the state's land is privately owned; 48 percent, about 30 million acres, is federal land, including about 12 million acres in national parks, monuments, forests, and the Wind River Reservation. The Bureau of Land Management manages about 18 million acres of range and min- eral lands (as well as 11 million acres of "mineral estateH-mineral rights retained by the federal government on otherwise private land). Most of these 30 million acres are in the western half of the state, material testimony to the Native American past (and present), the visibility of the scenic West, and the predominance of the range in actual Wyoming as well as its "mythic" history. What of those non-federal acres?The U. S. Census Bureau reports that Wyoming farms occupied over 30 million acres throughout the 1990s-not counting federal land leased for grazing. Although over 10 million acres of land under irrigation were prom- ised long ago, only about 1.5 million acres are irrigated now.'8 Most crop production takes place on that limited acreage. About 3 million acres are classified as "cropland," some of which is harvested and some of which is used only for pasture. The rest, over 28 million acres-nearly half the area of the state-is predominantly private range- land.79Wyoming farms (including land in crops, pasture, or grazing land) are among the largest in the country. The average size is nearly 4,000 acres. Only Arizona has farms of larger average ~ize.~*lthough65 percent of the population lives in cities, the cities are small: Cheyenne, (pop. 50,000), has the largest population of any of them. Only Vermont has a smaller largest city. The overall population density of the state is less than 5 people per square mile.K1Discounting Wyoming city-dwellers, the rural 'W.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1997, 117th edition (Washington, DC, 1997), table 1087. The reported acreage in farms, 35 million acres adds up to more than the total amount of non-federally-owned land in the state, and presumably includes farms on the Wind River Reservation. The reservation itself, however, occupies only 2.3 million acres. It is not clear how the Census arrived at this figure if they were not counting leases on pub- lic lands. The 1992 Census of Agriculture reported 32.9 million acres of farmland in Wyoming on "all farmsn-including "abnormal farms," which in turn includes all farms on the Wind River Reservation-the total of which was down from 33.6 million acres in 1987, and 33.5 million acres in 1982 (U. S. Department of Agriculture, 1992 Census of Agriculture, Table 7: "Land Use and Acres Diverted: 1992, 1987, and 1982," 14 September 1998 " Hell's Half-Acre, a particularly-bleak but fascinating wrinkle in the landscape near Casper, may become more widely-recognized after having been filmed as "Planet P" in the 1997 Columbia TriStar movie, Starship Troopers. "Like No Place on Earth," indeed, as one of Wyoming's recent mottoes has it.