Phil Roberts, A New History of Wyoming
Chapter 4: Territorial Life
Daily life in territorial Wyoming amounted to a physically hard existence for most people. No paved roads or streets existed, sanitation was poorly engineered, and city services in the few small towns were meager. In Cheyenne, wealthy cattlemen and a few professionals built mansions, patterned after homes in the East, along what was to become Carey Avenue (then Ferguson Street) and known locally as "millionaires' row.") They joined the Cheyenne Club where members were fed on imported china, drank expensive wines from crystal glasses, and heard music played on a grand piano by a trained impresario. Consumer goods from the East were readily available, but only in Cheyenne and the other towns along the Union Pacific Railroad. The farther from the railroad, the more difficult it was to get goods shipped.
For those living far from the railroad, diet was very basic with much game meat, canned goods, biscuits and few vegetables (only during the growing season) served for most meals. Officials noticed the gross abuses of hunting and fishing by passing the territory’s first game and fish laws in the 1st session of the territorial legislature.
Wyoming’s First Game Laws, 1869
Game Law. Chapter 12.
Sec. 1. It shall be unlawful for any person or persons to offer for sale any elk, deer, antelope, mountain sheep, or young of their kind between the first day of February, and the fifteenth day of August in each year.
Sec. 2. It shall be unlawful for any person or persons to kill, trap, or ensnare any pheasant, quail, prairie hen or prairie chicken, or sage hen, in this territory, from the first day of February until the fifteenth day of August of any year.
Sec. 3. It shall be unlawful for any person or persons to take, ensnare or trap trout in the waters and streams of this territory otherwise than by hook and line or such other mode by which fish can be singly obtained.
Sec. 4. Any person who shall violae any section or sections of this act, shall forfeit and pay the sum of fifty dollars, one-fourth to go to the informer and the remainder to the public schools within the county where the offense was committed…..
Approved December 1, 1869.
General Laws, Memorials and Resolutions of the Territory of Wyoming Passed at the First Session of the Legislative Assembly (Cheyenne: S. Allan Bristol, Public Printer, 1870), pp. 289-90.
People living in the “Union Pacific” towns had access to fresh oysters in season as well as a wider variety of canned meats and vegetables. Every town of any size had a bakery and a restaurant. The railroad stops had modern hotels, most with quality restaurants on the bottom floors.
Even though there was a higher incidence of women in the railroad towns than away from the tracks, the society was geared toward men. In 1870, men outnumbered women by a ratio of six to one. Many women stayed home caring for children although there were a number who operated businesses such as dress shops and curio stores. Prostitution was common in most towns in the territorial period although, by the 1880s when the “railroad towns” were maturing, brothels no longer operated in the main business districts. Few made any effort to ban prostitution, but in 1884, the legislation passed a law making those “keeping a bawdy house” subject to a misdemeanor. The effect was move houses of prostitution to an edge of town or into a “red-light” district so that “respectable women” would not have to encounter the denizens of the “demimonde.”
Drinking alcohol was commonplace in 19th century America. Gov. John A. Campbell, in his message to the second territorial legislature, commented on the need to establish rules for alcohol consumption if they didn’t wish to adopt an all-out ban:
The expenses of the courts in conducting criminal prosecutions for offenses against the territorial laws during the past two years, have absorbed a large share of the revenue collected. I have been assured by officers of the court that in every case that has been tried, in at least one of the counties, the origin of the crime could be directly or indirectly traced to the use of intoxicating liquors. I believe that a close investigation would show that at least 9/10s of the crimes in the territory can be traced to this cause. No comments of mine can add weight to the terrible significance of these facts. The remedy is at least partially in your hands, and I trust you will not hesitate to meet faithfully and fearlessly the responsibility. If it is impossible to prohibit or restrict the sale of intoxicating liquors, it is at least practicable to compel the vendors to make some return to the treasury for the expense they cause.
Gambling went along with drinking in most Wyoming towns. “Casinos” provided a vast array of games of chance. Just as with alcohol, the territorial legislature passed laws to regulate gambling. One law made it illegal to play three-card monte on transcontinental trains passing through the territory.
Theatrical entertainment featured some of the most famous acts of the day because traveling thespians often passed through on the transcontinental train. Some reasoned that since they had to stay overnight somewhere on the continental trip, why not make extra money by performing in the town? Consequently, all of the towns along the Union Pacific built “opera houses.” Despite the name, vaudeville acts were more common than operas.
The more popular acts also were popular in the East. In essence, people recreated the culture from where they had come. Shakespearean actor Edwin Booth played Hamlet on stage at the Cheyenne Opera House in 1887. Sarah Bernhardt appeared their later the same year. P. T. Barnum’s circus played at several Wyoming towns en route to the West Coast in 1870. In July 1880, Barnum’s circus returned, again following the Union Pacific Railroad route with performances in several towns. Legendary beauty Lily Langtry performed at the Cheyenne Opera House in 1884, but she was in town primarily to visit her friend Moreton Frewen. Oscar Wilde made a brief appearance in Cheyenne in 1882. The Fourth of July was the most universally celebrated holiday, but schools were the focal point for commemorating other occasions.
For the average worker, Wyoming was a very unstable place to live. The primary industries were mining, ranching, and the railroad. All three were subject to fluctuations of a “boom-and-bust” economy. Workers in all three industries were subject to dangers that could be life-threatening at worst or career-ending at best. Highest paid were machinists and other skilled workers employed at the various Union Pacific Railroad roundhouses and machine shops. Train engineers and conductors also earned good wages. Track repairmen and freight loaders—the unskilled workmen—fared much worse.
Similar pay scales separated ranch foremen from the itinerant cowboys who occupied the bottom rungs of the social and economic ladder. With little money and poor educational backgrounds, cowboys were considered wage workers who were expected to provide hard physical labor in seeing that cattle were cared for. Work was irregular. Sometimes, workers were at a premium, but most of the time, many were forced to “ride the grub line”—move from ranch to ranch, ostensibly seeking work, but arriving in time for a free meal before returning to the road.
The job was hardly romantic and probably few considered themselves romantic Western figures or “independent” men on horseback. It was an existence and, for most of them, the only life they knew. In Wyoming, many cowboys came from agricultural backgrounds—sons of small farmers in the Midwest and border states. In the 1870s and 1880s, a number were Mexican-American or African-American. Many communities disliked having cowboys in town because they were thought to be particularly violent, rough, and often drunk. Nonetheless, in territorial times, many of the “main street shoot-outs” were perpetrated by railroaders in the “Union Pacific towns.”
Some of the more stable jobs were in government—federal, territorial or county. Every town tried to gain designation as county seat, location of a federal land office, or home to a territorial institution. Jobs in those facilities paid well and rarely went to anyone outside of the community. Because they were subject to federal government appointment, post office and land office appointees retained their jobs as long as the President who appointed them remained in office. These and other “patronage jobs” went to party loyalists who knew their very jobs depended on helping elect fellow party candidates. Newspaper publishers were highly partisan, knowing that the chief source of revenue came, not from store advertising, but from the “legal advertising” that was awarded by local politicians to the paper working for the incumbent party.
The territorial House and Council were non-paying positions, beginning a still-existing tradition in Wyoming of a “citizen legislature.” The territorial legislative sessions were authorized for 60 days every two years, but most sessions lasted fewer than 40 days. The lack of remuneration (except for per diem expenses) meant that few Wyoming working people could afford to take time off from work to serve. Even in territorial days, most legislators were ranchers, lawyers, or self-employed businessmen. There was a high turnover with only a handful of men serving more than one or two terms. Two Albany County legislators were exceptions—W. H. Holliday, a Democratic furniture/lumberyard owner, and Republican lawyer Stephen W. Downey. Holliday served one term in the House and five terms in the Council; Downey, three in the Council and two terms in the House.
Wyoming voters had a say in selecting only one territory-wide officer—the Delegate to Congress. Even that position had little stability with only the final delegate before statehood, Joseph M. Carey, serving more than two terms. (Carey had been the first territorial attorney and, later, an appointee to the Territorial Supreme Court). The first three men elected to the position each left the territory at the expiration of his term, one to Utah; the second, back home to Indiana; and the third, to Deadwood, S. D.
Local officials were elected by the population, but territorial officers were appointed in Washington. Consequently, few officials gained much trust or allegiance from local citizens who saw them as political hacks, appointed to pay off political favors and who had no regard for working in the interest of the territory. Most of the territorial governors had not been to the territory prior to their appointments. Some had never before been West. Local people resented being governed by individuals they believed had no understanding of the west or Wyoming.
In 1885, Francis E. Warren, a mercantile store owner and former mayor of Cheyenne, became the first locally appointed territorial governor. He and the territorial delegate elected the following year, Joseph M. Carey, became the two most powerful figures in Wyoming’s political history. They were to dominate the political stage at the beginning of statehood and determine the state’s political fortunes into the first 30 years of the state’s existence. Both men were members of an organization that gained substantial power in the territorial period—the Wyoming Stockgrowers Association. Only the Union Pacific Railroad exercised similar influence over the territory’s politics.