Laramie…A Widely Popular Name

 

My recent release, Eveleen, is set in Laramie City, Wyoming, in the town’s early days. The word ‘city’ was added because so many other places (mountain range, peak, river, plains, Army fort, county, city) held that name and references to the town needed to be distinguished. The name derives from a French-Canadian trapper, Jacques LaRamie, who disappeared in a mountain range in the area in the 1820s. Hence, the name. Features named after LaRamie are only second to those named after Jim Bridger.

Laramie Peak courtesy Wikipedia

Grenville Dodge served as the chief engineer for the Transcontinental Railroad and was responsible for the initial layout of Cheyenne (1867), Laramie City, Rawlins Springs, Julesburg, and Dale City (all in 1868). A tent city sprang up on the Laramie Plains in early 1868 along the Overland Stage Route, in anticipation of the railroad coming through. Not far away to the south stood Fort Sanders. As was typical, supplies arrived at pre-determined spots, followed within a few days by the arrival of the crews building the tracks. Along with the crews came saloon owners and the ladies of the night who set up their tents, often for as short as a week before moving on. Mr. Dodge labeled the rag-tag settlements as Hell on Wheels* because no law enforcement was present in these gatherings of several hundred people.

from Carbon County Museum website

Possible because of the protected location of the high-plains town being surrounded by mountain ranges, Laramie City dug in roots and remained after the railroad builders moved west in May 1968. The first train arrived on May 4, and by May 10 when regular service was established, permanent buildings were already being built. Lawless and dangerous at first, the town struggled to find an adequate sheriff. The first mayor quit after six weeks because the other council members didn’t support him. The first marshal, “Big” Steve Long, also owned a saloon, Bucket of Blood. With his two half-brothers, he used harsh tactics to force people off their land, often through the challenge of a gunfight. By October, he’d killed 13 men.

My first story in the Rescue Me Mail Order Brides, Treise, featured an honorable lawman who took the job in 1869. I like to think the town was better for Paxon’s presence. In Eveleen, the hero is a dairy farmer, who I see as a settler of the Wild West.

*an acclaimed TV series of this name ran for five seasons starting in 2011

BLURB

Eveleen Murphy works as a maid in the house of a Philadelphia lawyer. Amiable and fun-loving, she is a favorite in the household. But when her employer’s younger brother moves in, she is confronted at every turn by his unwanted romantic advances. When her cousin’s in danger, she takes in Treise. The women make a plan to answer ads for mail-order brides in the small city. But when jewelry goes missing and Eveleen is blamed, she has to go on the run. With only one letter from a potential husband in hand, Eveleen sets out for Wyoming Territory.

Dairy farmer Bjorn Omdahl has been content to work the family dairy farm with his younger brother. Knowing after his twin’s marriage, Einar will move to his wife’s farm, Bjorn places an ad for a mail-order bride, hoping for an experienced farm woman. The first woman to reply is from the city, and he doubts the wisdom of his communication. When he’d faced with the woman’s arrival at his farm, he has to decide to move her into his home or fund her ticket home. With such a tenuous start, what hope does this relationship have?

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Yampa River, Colorado by Zina Abbott

 

 

When I first traveled to Denver, Colorado, to visit family who recently moved there, I saw frequent references to Yampa. I thought, that is an interesting name. Where did that come from? I learned quite some time later it comes from the name of a river that rises in the Colorado Rocky Mountains and ends at the Green River, just before that river leaves Colorado and continues into Utah.

The Yampa River flows 250 miles (400 km) through northwestern Colorado in the United States. It starts in the Rocky Mountains, and is a tributary of the Green River as well as a major part of the Colorado River system.

 The name, Yampa, is derived from the Snake Indian word Yamparika, meaning “yampa eaters,”  for the Perideridia plant, a member of the carrot family, which has an edible root highly prized by Native Americans. John C. Frémont was among the first to record the name “Yampah” in entries of his journal starting in 1843. He found the plant to be particularly abundant in the watershed.

Bear River Source

Early 1800s fur traders thought Yampa was the Ute word for “bear.” On some earlier maps, the river was labeled the Bear River. There is a Bear River, which The Bear River which flows from a source at Derby Peak in the Flat Tops Wilderness. The river now known as Bear River is part of the headwaters of the Yampa River, which starts at the confluence of the Bear River and Phillips Creek near the town of Yampa. The headwaters of the Yampa are in the Park Range in Routt County, Colorado.

1903 Yampa River at Steamboat Springs

The Yampa River, it flows north through a high mountain valley, through Stagecoach Reservoir and Lake Catamount, before reaching Steamboat Springs, where it turns sharply west. Below Steamboat Springs, the Yampa flows through a wider valley in the western foothills of the Rockies. It receives the Elk River from the north, then passes the towns of Milner and Hayden.

After entering Moffat County, the Yampa passes the town of Craig. It is joined by the Williams Fork. West of Craig, the Yampa crosses arid, sparsely populated sagebrush country for about 50 miles (80 km) before reaching Cross Mountain Canyon, where the river slices a 1,000 ft (300 m) deep gap through the namesake mountain. Below Cross Mountain the Yampa enters the open valley of Lily Park, where it is joined by its largest tributary, the Little Snake River.

If you would like to learn more about the Little Snake River, particularly in southern Wyoming, please refer to one of my earlier blog posts, The Little Snake River Valley by Zina Abbott, which you may find by CLICKING HERE

Farther west, the Yampa River enters Dinosaur National Monument. From there, it traverses more than 40 miles (64 km) of rugged canyons and rapids. The Yampa joins the Green River in Echo Park at Steamboat Rock, still in the center of Dinosaur National Monument, at about 5 miles (8.0 km) from the Colorado–Utah border.

Overlook of Yampa River

The Yampa River passes through two counties in the northwestern corner of Colorado. It is sparsely populated. The Snake (Shoshone) and Ute Indians dominated the area until 1881, when the Utes agreed to move to a reservation in northeastern Utah. Although there was some white settlement as early as the 1870s, most did not begin until 1881. The majority of the land was used for cattle ranching (as was Brown’s Park, Utah, of Butch Cassidy fame, and the Little Snake River Valley, Wyoming). The area also attracted gold seekers, sheep herders, and homesteaders. However, movement in and out of the region was limited by the lack of a railroad. The first railroad arrived in Steamboat Springs in December 1908, which opened the area to coal mining.

Confluence of Yampa River and Green River

The Yampa River is one of the few remaining free-flowing rivers in the United States, which makes it an attractive destination today for those who wish to fish its waters or travel its length by boat, canoeing or tube.

 

I researched this area for my most recent book, which releases today, Sabrina, Rescue Me (Mail-order Brides) Book 19. It is set in 1883 in a fictional area of Colorado, which I loosely based on Moffat and Routt Counties with the biggest waterways being the Yampa and Little Snake Rivers. To find the book description and purchase options for Sabrina, please CLICK HERE

 

 

 

Sources:

https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/yampa-river

https://www.craigdailypress.com/news/history-in-focus-to-name-a-river/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yampa_River

 

 

 

Book Review: Hearts West by Chris Enss

 

A source that I have found useful when writing mail-order bride stories is this slim volume subtitled True Stories of Mail-Order Brides on the Frontier. The premise of why the author wrote the book is sweet: she didn’t have a date for the Junior-Senior Prom and advertised that fact in the high school newspaper. The ad set out a meeting place and fourteen other girls in the same situation showed up. The one guy who showed up was looking for a different meeting.

The irony here is how the ratio was switched from the late 19th century when American frontier towns experienced a minimum of fifteen men (often as high as fifty) to one woman. An enterprising businessman, Leslie Fraser Duncan, started the Matrimonial News in England in 1870, then opened offices in San Francisco and Kansas City, Missouri, the following year. For a set fee, men could advertise for a wife with anonymity, and the newspaper would facilitate correspondence with women who responded. The goal of the newspaper was stated as: “To cultivate the noble aim of life and help men and women into a state of bliss is our aim.”

The weekly newspaper remained in print through the 1890s, although toward the end, some of the ads were merely pranks. But the newspaper was successful enough to spawn many other similar publications. Each operated in a slightly different way, with some covering regional areas.  

Some women had more time to prepare for the eventual match and would sit for photographs that could be included in a letter to a prospective mate. Others were in a hurry to leave a bad situation, so they responded to several ads and possibly matched with the first man who replied.

The book includes stories of individual women, why they responded to such ads, and the outcome. A few examples of the ads are included.  I value the book because I learned that a wide variety of individuals at various stages of success used these publications which were the early version of ads in the contemporary personals column.

In my forthcoming novella, Triese, part of the Rescue Me Mail-Order Brides multi-author series, she fits into the “in a hurry” category.

Triese O’Hara watches as her father’s newspaper office is vandalized, and he’s beaten and hauled away with the thugs stating they’ll bury him. She needs to disappear far away and with a different last name to escape detection. But she vows to make the man responsible pay.

Sheriff Paxon Waldemarr struggles to control the lawless element in Laramie, Wyoming Territory. After a tragedy, he becomes guardian to his young niece and needs a wife to make a home. When he marries his mail order bride, he has no concept of this woman’s determination to avenge her father’s death. If her actions reflect on his career, how will their marriage survive?

Preorder here

Do you think you would have ever sought out such an arrangement to find your wedded spouse?

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The Bloomer Women Who Walked to Wyoming Territory by Zina Abbott

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While researching Wyoming Territory history for my recent book, Lauren, I came across an account of two women who made an impact on early Wyoming history. I saved their story for Women’s History Month.

Mary Jane Bloomer was born in Mina, Chautauqua, New York in 1842. She was the daughter of Alice Willing-Bloomer. She was married three times.

She and her first husband, James Morey, moved to Galina, Illinois, prior to the American Civil War. One of her aunts lived there. She became a friend of the Grant family. When the Civil War came, James Morey served as an officer under U.S. Grant. For a short time, Mary Jane served as Grant’s personal secretary. During the war, her husband was shot in the head, but survived. His discharge papers stated he suffered a "brain hernia," which meant that his brains were hanging out of the hole in his head. He was admitted to an insane asylum in Washington D.C. where he later died. He was buried at Arlington Cemetery.
 
In 1867, with her husband totally disabled and unable to support her, Mary Jane abandoned him. She and her mother, who was also widowed during the Civil War, walked from New York to Fort Laramie, Wyoming Territory, with an oxcart and Mary Jane's three-year-old son, Frank Morey, who was born in Ohio during the Civil War.
 
Both mother and daughter knew General Grant, General Rawlins, General Sheridan and other officers from the Civil War era. Since many also ended up being in charge of the Transcontinental Railroad construction, it is assumed they were offered work before leaving New York for Wyoming Territory. Still,  it was a heroic undertaking for two women to travel alone with a child that far into a frontier. Many white men there were rough and uncouth, and many hostile Native Americans, very unhappy that the stagecoach routes followed by the railroad crews disrupted their hunting grounds, would kill any white person they came across they considered an enemy.

The three arrived at Fort Laramie. The following spring, the two women worked on the railroad construction sites as cooks. They started from the newly formed town of Cheyenne west to Carbon, not far from present day Elk Mountain. (It is now gone, but, at the time, was a lively city due to its role of providing coal for the railroad.)

 In late 1868, Mary Jane married her second husband, William Stimpson, a merchant from England, in Cheyenne. They appeared on the 1870 census operating the Union Pacific Railroad Percy Station, Carbon County, Wyoming near Fort Halleck (north side of Elk Mountain) and Carbon. Her mother, Alice, was operating the nearby Dana Station.
 

Benton

In 1868 the next Station to the west near Fort Steel was called Benton. Benton was recorded in history as perhaps the worst of the worst "Hell on Wheels" towns along the Railroad Construction. There was no law enforcement of any kind in this short-lived town.  It was essentially three large brothels and several bars. It attracted every evil character known in the west with every kind of indecency you can imagine going on. Every weekend the town was filled with drunken railroad workers, miners, professional gamblers, swindlers, and cowboys engaging in hard drinking, gambling, open prostitution, fights, gun battles, murder etc. In only four months of existence, the graveyard at Benton interred over hundred dead, most of them due to shootings.

The residents of Percy Station, which included both Mary Jane Bloomer Stimpson and her mother, Alice Willing-Bloomer, got fed up with the murders and cleaning up after Benton Station. They literally gathered up a lynch mob of people mostly—from Percy and some friends from Carbon and Fort Halleck. Heavily armed, they traveled to Benton.

The operators of Benton found out that the mob was on the way so they quickly packed up and fled to the west down the tracks. Only one brothel operator stayed to protect his establishment. When the mob arrived the operator managed to shoot one of the lynch mob before he was killed. The mob then burned the entire town to the ground.

Freighters picking up supplies for railroad

In October of 1868, Alice Willing Bloomer traveled from Percy Station to Fort Halleck to pick up supplies. While on the trail, she witnessed a band of Indians attack a freight train of five men hauling ties to Percy Station. The men killed three of the men and two others managed to shoot their way into a ravine and escape toward Fort Halleck. The three dead freighters were the first three burials in the town of Carbon to the west.

Drawing of Fort Halleck north of Elk Mountain

The Indians drove the oxen into the lake and hamstrung them. They left the livestock in the water to bleed to death. They then took the mules and fled before soldiers arrived from Fort Halleck. This became known as the Bloody Lake Massacre. Bloody Lake, two-and-a-half acres, is now dried up most of the year. It is north of both Elk Mountain and the former Fort Halleck. This incident became known as the Bloody Lake Massacre.

The lake was given its name by John Sublette, a government scout turned construction worker turned rancher, was in the Percy area and would soon be responsible for the naming the lake. According to his obituary printed in December 1928, he was a participant in an “Indian uprising,” with a non-specified number of U.S. soldiers in October 1868. The soldiers didn’t fare too well, but Sublette survived. He named the lake because of the gore that discolored it that day.

Map courtesy of Google Maps

Alice Bloomer saved arrows from the site, which were passed down through the family. She became a primary source of information regarding what took place. The discrepancy between her description of freighters versus Mr. Sublette’s description of soldiers is probably due to the fact she viewed the scene from a distance. Frontier soldiers, unless they were part of a formal review, often did not wear regulation uniforms while performing other duties.

Alice died four years later on August 1, 1872. She was buried in a shallow grave surrounded by sandstone slabs. Her burial place is identified by descendants as “Turtle Rock” ridge, the location where she witnessed the battle between the Indians and the freighters. Based on her assumed line of travel and the locations of the former Fort Halleck and former Percy Station, I was unable to identify on the map a location the family identified as Turtle Rock. However, the family is working with the Bureau of Land Management to erect a historical marker at her gravesite.

There is more to Mary Jane Bloomer Morey Stimpson’s story—she was quite the entrepreneur—but I will save that for next month’s blog post.

 

Lauren, Book 2 in the Rescue Me (Mail-order Brides) series, takes place several years after these incidences. However, Mary Jane was still alive and active in that general region of Wyoming Territory during the timeframe of this book, which is available. To read the book description and find the purchase options, please CLICK HERE. 

  

 

Sources:

https://cowboystatedaily.com/2022/10/06/on-the-road-wyomings-bloody-lake-has-a-grim-history-and-likely-grim-fishing-too/

https://sites.rootsweb.com/~wylaratp/html/_ox_cart_trip.html

http://genealogytrails.com/wyo/carbon/bio3.html

https://www.familysearch.org/service/records/storage/das-mem/patron/v2/TH-904-69401-62-33/dist.txt?ctx=ArtCtxPublic

https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/territorial-empire-trabings-and-their-freight