History
Beating the computer…sound impossible. Well for most of us, it probably is. Garry Kasparov would be the exception to that statement. Still, it was not a common event…even for Kasparov. On February 10, 1996, at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, Kasparov was beaten by a computer called Deep Blue in the first game of a six-game match, marking the first time a computer had ever beat a human in a formal chess game. Prior to that time, most likely no one had programmed a computer to really play chess. So, it was experimental. Since that time, computers have improved significantly, and today they can easily surpass scores of 3500, while the current all-time human record is 2882. Not being a chess player, I can’t exactly say that that I know about the scoring system.
Being beaten at chess was not something Kasparov took kindly to. After all, he was a world class player. Nobody was supposed to beat him, much less a machine. He could hardly stand it. It became an obsession. He was determined to beat the computer. Then, on February 17th…the final day of the tournament, Kasparov actually beat Deep Blue. It was the final game of a six-game match, and IBM’s chess-playing computer finally lost. Kasparov won the match, 4-2. While he had his victory, the sweetness of it was short lived, because the 
following year, in a widely publicized rematch, Deep Blue once again went on to defeat Kasparov.
Kasparov was born April 13, 1963, in the Russian republic of Azerbaijan. In 1985, at 22, Kasparov became the youngest world champion in history when he defeated Anatoly Karpov. The computer, Deep Blue can also be traced back to 1985, when Feng Hsiung Hsu, a Carnegie Mellon University doctoral student, began developing a chess-playing computer called “ChipTest,” which later became known as “Deep Thought,” after a machine in the science-fiction novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. IBM saw value in Hsu and his collaborators, Murray Campbell, and Thomas Anantharaman, and later hired them, to continue to work on the chess-playing computer. Deep Thought evolved, but in 1989, Gary Kasparov easily trounced it when they met for a 2-game match. Not giving up, the IBM team continued to refine their supercomputer. In 1993, it was renamed “Deep Blue,” a combination of Deep Thought and Big Blue, which was IBM’s nickname.
“Deep Blue” was capable of evaluating 100 million different chess positions per second. Nevertheless, the IBM team wasn’t sure how the computer would perform in competition and Kasparov was favored to win. How odd is 
it that a man was favored to win over a computer. Still, it was so. In a frustrating turn of events, Kasparov lost the first game to “Deep Blue.” Not to be outdone, he came back and won the second game. The third and fourth games ended in a draw, and Kasparov won the fifth game. On February 17, the human chess master triumphed over Deep Blue in the sixth game and took the match, with a final score of 4-2. Of course, computers have evolved over the years, and these days it is believed that no human cam beat the computer. I guess time will tell if that is the case. As for Kasparov, well, he retained his world chess champion title until 2000. In March 2005, he announced his retirement from professional chess.
Potatoes weren’t very popular in France at first. This changed when Antoine-Augustin Parmentier took matters into his own hands to promote the potato as a food source for humans in France. He’d surround his potato patch with guards during the day, to suggest valuable goods were growing there, and then remove the guards at night so people would come and steal the potatoes. You might ask why he would do such a thing. Well, during the Seven Years War, when Parmentier was a prisoner of war, he was given potatoes and discovered their nutritional value. Before Parmentier’s efforts, the French thought that potatoes were poisonous and disgusting. Parmentier’s potato patch was a plot of land near Neuilly, west of Paris. There he grew potatoes to promote their consumption. Parmentier’s efforts were successful in making potatoes a staple of the French diet.
While trying to promote potatoes, Parmentier did crazy things, like holding dinners where he served potato dishes. I can only imagine how hard it was to get people to try 
his dishes. He also gave bouquets of potato flowers to the king and queen…seriously!! I wonder how the king and queen reacted to that!! Parmentier also surrounded his potato patch with armed guards during the day, and instructed them to let thieves steal the potatoes at night. That way, the people thought the potatoes were some kind of exotic good of great value. He also published a Treatise on the Culture and Use of the Potato, Sweet Potato, and Jerusalem Artichoke in 1789. This man was totally dedicated to the potato.
Born on August 12, 1737, Parmentier was a French pharmacist and agronomist, who was best remembered as a vocal promoter of the potato as a food source for humans in France and throughout Europe, but his many other contributions 
to nutrition and health included establishing the first mandatory smallpox vaccination campaign in France (under Napoleon beginning in 1805, when he was Inspector-General of the Health Service) and pioneering the extraction of sugar from sugar beets. Parmentier also founded a school of breadmaking and studied methods of conserving food, including refrigeration.
Parmentier died on December 13, 1813. He was 76. He is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. His grave is ringed by potato plants. He was also honored with his name given to a long avenue in the 10th and 11th arrondissements (and a station on line 3 of the Paris Métro). His bronze statue was placed at Montdidier and surveys Place Parmentier from its high socle, while below, in full marble relief, seed potatoes are distributed and another monumental statue of Parmentier, by French sculptor Adrien Étienne Gaudez, in the square of the town hall of Neuilly-sur-Seine.
Lawmen are supposed to be the keepers of the law and the protectors of the people, but that is not always the case, in the Old West or even today. One such group was the Dodge City Gang, comprised of a group of notorious Kansas gunfighters and gamblers who dominated the political and economic life of Las Vegas, New Mexico in 1879 and early 1880. Their leader was Hyman G Neill, better known as Hoodoo Brown, had managed to secure the position of justice of the peace in Las Vegas, Nevada. Brown quickly put together a gang of unlikely lawmen, including fighters from the recent Railroad Wars of Raton, New Mexico and Royal Gorge, Colorado. These included John Joshua Webb, “Dirty” Dave Rudabaugh, and Mysterious Dave Mather. Doc Holliday was in town at that time, and he was friendly with gang members, though he is not generally listed as a member of the loose-knit association. At the time, Las Vegas was booming and was thought to be the future metropolis of New Mexico. As with many a boomtown, it attracted a number of opportunists and outlaws, making the need for lawmen very important, and that meant they weren’t always chosen for their lack of criminal record.
Along with known gunfighters, the gang also managed to get their friends into local law enforcement positions too. The idea of the Dodge City Gang was, for the most part, that their actions were to control the gambling establishments and rake in huge profits. However, some of the members, notably Dave Rudabaugh, seemed unsatisfied with that, and felt like they should have special privileges. They were suspected of several stagecoach robberies and other criminal acts. I guess the good thing about hiring criminals is that they don’t mind committing crimes for you, provided they get a cut!!
Due to the town’s rough reputation, there was always a criminal element there. Men like, Billy the Kid passed through in 1879, as did Jesse James, although neither was ever a known part of the gang. Still, a local legend has the two famous outlaws meeting for dinner in the Old Adobe Hotel in nearby Hot Springs, New Mexico. Supposedly, at that meeting, Jesse invited Billy to come to Missouri and join his gang, but the Kid declined, but there is no real proof of that claim.
Sooner or later, people get tired of corruption in law enforcement, and in 1880 the tide of public opinion turned against the gang. Webb was arrested for his involvement in a shooting that might have actually been self-defense. Nevertheless, his association with the gang backfired on him, and he received a jail sentence for the shooting. Rudabaugh was also jailed due to his involvement in criminal acts. Both men eventually escaped. Jails weren’t as difficult to escape from back then. In the face of the negative public opinion, many other members of the organization left town. The power of the gang had lasted only a matter of months. In the end, the gang was doomed by the greed and excesses of its members, as well as their inability to disguise their acts. Oddly, 
this wasn’t the only “Dodge City Gang” because the name could also be associated with the informal group who dominated Dodge City, Kansas in the 1870s. At one time or another that group included Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Doc Holliday, and Luke Short. When you think about it, calling the La Vegas, New Mexico gang the “Dodge City Gang” really made no sense at all. Nevertheless, that was the name given.
While I’m not a bicycle fan, I know that a lot of people really love to go cycling. In the United States, the recreational bicycling fad began on February 11, 1878, when the Boston Bicycle Club became the first organization for recreational cyclists. The fad caught on, and the following year, a club was also formed in Buffalo, New York, followed by a club in New York City in 1880. Soon, clubs were starting up everywhere, as middle-class participation in cycling grew. There were literally hundreds of cycling clubs formed across the United States.
Once formed, the Boston Bicycle Club organized various rides. They quicky organized events…from tricycle races to 100-mile rides. The trend caught on and less than 20 years after its founding, more than 100 cycling clubs had formed in Massachusetts alone. In fact, according to the Massachusetts Historical Society, the clubs catered to rider expertise, gender, nationality and more. The early bicycles resembled what we might view as a tricycle today, with an oversized front wheel. Nevertheless, they still only had two wheels, and not the three that are found on a tricycle.
In October 1879, Boston Bicycle Club members rode an 87-mile round trip course through the city and its suburbs in an event with the Massachusetts Cycling Club. For short distances, the cyclists achieved speeds of 16 mph, according to the Boston Post. While the club was not necessarily considered an exercise club, the members did a lot of training to prepare for the different events. Of course, when you think about it, you would 
need to practice and train to get used to the Victorian-style penny farthings, as they are called.
Over the years, the two-wheeler evolved, and the oversized front wheel became a thing of the past, except on vintage bicycles, called Victorian Style Penny Farthings. The changes to the bicycle became a great improvement over the course of a century, thanks to several different inventors. Every so often, someone might decide to test their horses against the bicycles, such as the man in Watertown who was “driving a spirited horse engaged in a race with the riders and was beaten by Terront, the French rider, in about three-quarters of a mile,” according to the Post. It’s funny that the old “horse and buggy crowd” would feel the need to pit their horses against the bicycles. Still, you would have expected the horses to win the race and maybe they would have in a longer distance. Or maybe the horses were a little bit spooked by the contraption beside them. Either way, they lost the race that day.
In 1896, Boston highlighted the club that bore their name. The Boston Globe highlighted the work of the first club in the United States. Since then, “The name and fame of the Boston Bicycle Club has gone all over this fair land, and is spreading to foreign shores, whither some to its members have carried it.” The early bicycle clubs were great advocates for better roads that would be safer for bicyclists. When the automobile entered the scene, bicyclists would quickly find themselves caught between the road, and the cars that now 
occupied it with them. Many is the bicyclist that has lost his life at the hands, or wheels of a car. Of course, with the rise of automobiles early in the 20th century, the popularity of recreational cycling declined. In more recent years, bicycling as started to make a comeback, both in the exercise arena and the recreational arena.
Paris has long been known as the “City of Love” and is visited by many couples. I’m sure it is the Eiffel Tower that stands out for so many, and it is beautiful, but there are many other sights to see as well. Paris is, after all, one of the top honeymoon destinations. I can’t say it is any more romantic than any other city, but then I have never been there, so I would not really be the best person to say. Paris is not only dubbed the City of Love but also the art capital of the world. One of the most famous artistic styles that flourished in the city is, you guessed it, Romanticism. I can see where art would be a big deal there. Some of the landscapes and cityscapes are stunning. Paris was a city of many things. One of the many forms of love that came out of Paris was the Love Lock Bridge. Unfortunately, this one wasn’t totally a great idea.
It seems that as the many honeymooners and couples in love wanted to leave a lasting expression of their love. The arches of the Pont de Arts bridge, located in the heart of Paris have carried couples across the Seine since the early 1800s. Its original design included trees, floral beds, benches and other park-like amenities. Unfortunately, the original design was altered, due to boat collisions and two world wars. Even though the bridge didn’t take the couples to a romantic destination, it was still viewed as a romantic place due to its 
stunning views of the Eiffel Tower. The bridge still attracts visitors from around the world. It also attracted romantic gestures, but that is a relatively new tradition.
In 2008, something strange started happening. The visitors began engraving their names on padlocks, attaching the padlocks to the bridge, and throwing the keys into the river. It was a romantic gesture symbolizing never ending love. At first, nothing was done about the practice, because officials thought it was a fad that would quickly die out. It did not die out, and by 2017 there were about 700,000 padlocks secured on the bridge. That was how the bridge got its nickname…Love Lock Bridge.
Even with all those locks on the bridge, the fad continued. In fact, it literally exploded. At one point, it was estimated that there were over a million locks on the bridge. A section of the bridge railing actually collapsed under the weight of the extra load in 2015. A board was placed there as a temporary repair. At the point of the rail collapse, the bridge carried nearly 50 tons above and beyond its intended load capacity due to the weight of the metal locks. Apparently, that was about the weight of twenty elephants. Now the practice became more than just what might be considered an eyesore, they were a cause of concern for public safety. So, with that in mind, the city removed the locks. These days, visitors are still welcome to cross the bridge and take in the views of Paris, but they are no longer allowed to put locks on the bridge to “declare their enduring love.” Still, 
this hasn’t stopped some visitors from trying to add new locks to Pon des Arts bridge. Of course, now the locks are removed as soon as they are spotted. Instead of the locks, visitors are encouraged to take selfies or find less destructive declarations of love. I wonder if they might consider throwing roses into the river or something. I guess no one asked my, but it’s a thought anyway.
The Black Plague, also known as the Black Death, was a devastating pandemic that affected Europe and Asia during the Middle Ages. It was caused by the bacterium Yersinia Pestis and was primarily spread by infected fleas carried by rodents, but this was not known to the people of the medieval period, as it was only identified in 1894 CE. It was also known as Bubonic Plague. The Black Death wiped out millions of people in Europe between 1347 and 1352. It was one of the most fatal pandemics in human history. As many as 50 million people lost their lives, which was perhaps 50% of Europe’s 14th century population.
Prior to that 1894 CE, the plague was attributed primarily to supernatural causes – the wrath of God, the work of the devil, the alignment of the planets and, stemming from these, “bad air” or an unbalance of the “humors” of the body which, when in line, kept a person healthy. Basically, there was no cure…just fear. That fear left only one solution…quarantine. In an effort to protect the general population, the cases in Italy, once diagnosed, were sent to a small island in the Venetian lagoon. The island housed a hospital, now abandoned. The decrepit 
complex of buildings has been abandoned for a long time and basically left to rot. In an effort to slow the progression of the Plague, the island once served as a quarantine district during various phases of the Plague and its recurrences. For the victims housed there, unfortunately, quarantine did not slow the Black Death. They were quarantined from the public, but not from each other. Instead, the quarantine patients were kept in large dormitories with others at various stages of the disease. Even those who weren’t infected when they arrived but rather sent there because they had symptoms that worried the doctors, but once there, they had a good chance of being infected too. For many of the 160,000 infected patients who set foot on the island, it became their final destination. The victims were buried in mass graves or cremated after their death, and their ashes were spread on the island where they lie to this day.
After its use as a quarantine station ended, Poveglia opened an isolated mental hospital there in 1922. The hospital went from bad to worse, reportedly torturing its patients. They were also subjected to unnecessary, barbaric procedures like electroconvulsive therapy and lobotomy. They were physically restrained, beaten, and sometimes left in a solitary cell for long periods of time. Even after the hospital closed in 1968, the island wasn’t closed down. It remained open to the public until 2014. The bleak reputation of the hospital continued. It was finally decided that it needed to be closed. Of course, it was then rumored to be one of the most haunted places in Europe. I don’t believe in hauntings, but I’m sure that just the knowledge of how many people lost 
their lives there is gruesome ways, made it seem creepy for sure. Despite the reputation, the landowners have continued to try to sell the island for development, or maybe even a tourist destination. No one has taken the bate, because it seems too creepy to try to monetize an island whose soil may be comprised of human bones and ashes.
Traveling west in the mid 1800s was not an easy undertaking. It is often filled with hardship and heartache. Traveling westward in those days was not for the faint of heart or the weak in constitution. One family was heading out to Oregon, and things just didn’t go as planned. The Magill family consisted of Caleb and Mary Magill and their six children ranging from the eldest, Benjamin at 15 years, to the youngest, Ada at 3 years.
The trip from Brown County, Kansas to Oregon would be a long one, and it was often fraught with danger, so the family wanted to get an early start. One good thing was that their June 1864 early start put them ahead of some of the troubles that just weeks later lead to the deaths on the trail of Mary Kelly and Martin Ringo. Long-simmering tensions along the trails broke out into sporadic warfare later that summer between emigrants and people of the Lakota Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes. Kelly and Ringo were victims of those tensions.
Unfortunately, missing out on those tensions didn’t make the trip easier for the Magill family. Late in June 1864, 3-year-old, Ada Magill fell ill with dysentery when they were camped near Fort Laramie. They stayed in camp until Ada’s health improved, and then the family continued along the trail another 100 miles to a spot near present Glenrock, Wyoming, in Converse County. In early July 1864, the family was camped alongside Deer Creek, near present Glenrock, when Ada again became sick, but next morning seemed better, so the family continued on. They had gone only a few miles when Ada became very ill again, so they stopped and camped. That night, July 3, she died, as Caleb told the story years later. Devastated, but under the gun to get to Oregon before winter, they built a coffin for little Ada from the boards of an abandoned wagon. They buried Ada in her 
“Sunday best calico dress,” as the family remembered it later, then, “They heaped stones on the grave to keep wolves and coyotes out and went on toward Oregon,” according to historian and retired schoolteacher Randy Brown.
The Magill family went on to Oregon and settled in Polk County south of Portland in the Willamette Valley. I’m sure the arrival was bittersweet, because they were still grieving. Brown said that most of the information he got on the Magill family came from W W Morrison of Cheyenne, who was a freight conductor on the Union Pacific in the 1940s. Strangely, when Morrison contacted Magill family members still living at that time in Oregon, little information was available on Ada or her passing, and no family letters or diaries mentioning that have survived, so far as is known. The grave is not mentioned in any other emigrant diaries that have turned up. Nevertheless, its location is well documented.
The Oregon Trail route continued be an important trail long after the end of the covered wagon era. A new railroad was built in 1888, that passed close to Ada’s grave but respectfully, did not disturb it. Engineers were surveying for a better road between Glenrock and Casper in 1912, and they found the Magill grave, on a knoll 20 feet north of the old trail and marked with a rough, inscribed headstone. They knew it would end up right in the centerline of the new road. Surveyor L C Bishop, who later would become Wyoming’s state engineer, or chief water officer, decided to move the grave 30 feet north to the edge of the new road. As they dug up the grave, they found under a large stone slab about five feet down, according to Brown, Bishop, and a shovel crew of convicts from the Converse County jail “pieces of the little girl’s skull, a few small bones, some pearl buttons 
and a few cut nails.” It had to be a really hard find, but that is what happened to those old pine box graves in those days. I’m sure they felt awful. Bishop carved a new stone with the same inscription as the original and buried the original about three feet deep in the new grave. I feel like that was a very respectful and honorable thing to do.
While the railroad is no longer used and was removed in the 1980s, Ada Magill’s grave still remains, protected by a sturdy fence, and marked with a plaque placed by the Oregon-California Trails Association. The Ada Magill’s grave lies in sight of the North Platte River.
As Americans, we are all used to the many scandals that can happen with government corruption or just corruption in general. Most of us have heard of Watergate or Whitewater, which are two of the modern-day scandals of our time. Scandals are pretty common really, mostly because greed will always be something we deal with. I just never really considered the scandal that happened in my own back yard…so to speak. I grew up in Casper, Wyoming, and the scandal involved a president, a senator, two oil men, bribery, and a rock (or rather a dome naked after a rock formation) located north of Casper. The rock formation is known as Teapot Rock, and the scandal involved the oil located within that dome…named Teapot Dome.
The Teapot Dome scandal took place in the 1920s, and it involved national security, big oil companies, bribery, and corruption at the highest levels of the government of the United States. Before Watergate, the Teapot Dome scandal was the most serious scandal in the country’s history. It was named for an that rock formation north of Casper, Wyoming, that looked just like a teapot, but they didn’t care about the rock. It was all about money.
The interest in Teapot Dome began decades before the 1920s scandal. The United States government and US Navy officials, while contemplating a new, global presence, began to realize that they needed a fuel supply that was more reliable and more portable than coal. Requiring the battle ships to make stops to reload their coal supply was not feasible. They needed something that worked better, lasted longer, and took up less space. In order to accommodate the need for coal, the Department of the Navy officials, during the Theodore Roosevelt presidency early in the 20th century, resorted to building coal-fueling stations around the world. That would be a huge undertaking.
The United States began to see that they were severely hampered, as other nations began development of petroleum-powered ships. Developing petroleum-powered ships seems like the logical next step, so beginning in 1909, during the Taft administration, Navy administrators decided that they needed to convert the fleet to the more efficient petroleum. Ships would have no need for coaling stations. Once fueled, the petroleum-powered ships had far greater range. Oddly, considering the scandal, the USS Wyoming, which was a battleship initially launched in 1900, became the first ship in the fleet to be converted to oil power in 1909. The ship was later renamed the USS Cheyenne, because the new battleship USS Wyoming was launched in 1910. Soon, more 
ships were converted from coal. With the conversions came the concern about the long-term availability of oil. They didn’t understand at that time, the longevity of oil. They worried about what would happen if oil were to run out? The Navy would be paralyzed!!
As a result of these concerns, Navy administrators asked Congress to set aside federally owned lands in places where known oil deposits most likely existed. The plan was to reserve these “naval petroleum reserves” for any future event that could have resulted from a national emergency. One of the three petroleum reserves set aside was near Salt Creek in northern Natrona County, you guessed it…Teapot Dome. “A dome is a geological formation that traps oil underground between impervious layers of rock, with the upper layer bent upward to form a dome.” Reserving those areas, was like screaming “come and get me” to oilmen. They all wanted the opportunity to drill within these federally owned reserves.
Enter President Warren G Harding, who was elected president in 1920. Harding’s friend, and poker buddy, US Senator Albert Fall, was picked to be Harding’s secretary of Interior. Fall was a rancher and New Mexico’s first US senator. He immediately accepted the cabinet post. It was the beginning of the scandal, because Fall had “ideas” that would be “helpful” to both of them. Within a few weeks, Fall worked quickly to convince President Harding to allow transfer of the naval petroleum reserves from the Navy to the Department of the Interior. His argument was that the department was “better able” to oversee the protection of these areas where oil was not to be produced but kept in case of emergency. That basically put Fall in charge of the oil reserves, to do with as he saw fit.
Fall made secret deals with two prominent oilmen, Edward Doheny and Harry Sinclair. Both men were close friends of Fall. Of course, Fall didn’t just give them access to the reserves. They paid him bribes to authorize them to drill in the three naval petroleum reserves. The law was specific, saying that access was not to be granted unless it was an emergency situation, and no such emergency existed.
Wyoming Governor Leslie Miller, himself an independent oilman became suspicious when he saw trucks with the Sinclair company logo hauling drilling equipment into the Teapot Dome naval petroleum reserve. He asked US Senator John B Kendrick to look into the matter. Kendrick, sensing wrongdoing, turned the question over to a special Senate investigating committee. At about that time, President Harding took a summer trip west, stopping in Wyoming, enjoying Yellowstone and continuing on to Alaska and, eventually, to San Francisco. While in San Francisco, the President died suddenly. While no one would want to say his death was a good thing, but it’s quite likely that Harding escaped impeachment for his role in Teapot Dome. Of course, there wasn’t exactly proof that he knew anything about the situation, not evidence that he took bribes. Still, there is no proof he didn’t either.
Fall was convicted and sent to federal prison, the first Cabinet-level officer in American history to go to jail for 
crimes committed while serving in office. Both Sinclair and Doheny were exonerated of the main charge…giving bribes to Fall. As a newspaper reporter observed when the two wealthy oilmen were found not guilty, “You can’t convict a million dollars.” Sinclair was sentenced to a 9-month prison term not for bribery but for contempt of Congress, and for charges connected to his hiring of detectives to trail members of the jury in the original bribery trial
In federal court in Wyoming the federal government filed a lawsuit to cancel the illegally obtained leases of Teapot Dome oil reserves. US District Judge T Blake Kennedy ruled against the government, but the US Supreme Court overturned the Kennedy decision, and the leases were canceled.
My dad, Al Spencer loved the Oregon Trail. When we would take trips, and come across an Oregon Trail marker, we always had to stop and read all about it. My sisters, Cheryl Masterson, Caryl Reed, Alena Stevens, and Allyn Hadlock, and I, practically groaned every time one of those “dreaded” Oregon Trail markers came into view. Dad would call out “hiss-tor-ickle marker” to emphasize the significance of that next marker. Of course, looking back now, those markers weren’t that bad, but at the time…basically our childhood days, history held little significance in our minds. We found it boring and thought of it has “stupid memory work” with all its names and dates…and of course, its endless tests in school. These days I feel differently about history, but I still wouldn’t stop at those markers…sorry Dad. Actually, my dad would have really liked Ezra Meeker, I think. Meeker went west on the Oregon Trail as young pioneer who first traveled the Oregon Trail by ox-drawn wagon in 1852. Fifty years later, still very much infatuated with the Oregon Trail, Meeker would make the trip again and again, repeatedly retracing the trip of his youth, and worked to memorialize the Oregon Trail. So, he’s the guy my sisters and I have to thank for those many boring stops on our vacations over the years, haha!!
Meeker dedicated the last twenty-five years of his life to saving the trail for future generations. This man was 
as serious about the Oregon Trail as my dad. His crusade introduced tens of thousands of people to the history of the trail and the need to preserve it. Meeker, as president of the Washington State Historical Society in 1903, led efforts to record the stories of trail pioneers. In 1905 he published his personal trail story, Pioneer Reminiscences, and drove an ox team to Portland, Oregon for the Lewis and Clark Exposition.
In 1906 – 1908, he traveled from Washington State to Washington DC, following the trail as he went. In DC, he met with President Theodore Roosevelt. As he traveled, Meeker placed markers along the trail, and began the national discussion on the fate of the trail that continues to this day. Meeker returned to the trail campaigning in the Midwest and as far south as Texas in 1910. He exhibited his ox team at the Panama Pacific Exposition in 1915 and made another trek over the trail in 1916 in a Pathfinder automobile. Then, in 1924 Meeker, in the ultimate “trek” flew over the trail in an Army biplane to meet with President Coolidge to urge him to join the trail promotion effort. In 1926 he and others founded the Oregon Trail Memorial Association, which was the predecessor of the Oregon-California Trails Association (OCTA). His last trip over the trail was in a touring car at the age of 96. Next, Meeker converted a Model A Ford, which he planned to use for his 1928 trip, but unfortunately, his health prevented that trip. At the time of Meeker’s death, he was living in Seattle, Washington, where he died of pneumonia on December 3, 1928, just a month short of his 98th birthday. He was buried in Woodbine Cemetery in Puyallup, beside his wife, Eliza Jane. Their gravestone reads, “They came 
this way to win and hold the West.”
Meeker couldn’t stop thinking about and working to preserve the Oregon Trail. It was like the trail was in his blood, and maybe it was. After all, he spent enough time on it. Yes, I think my dad would have liked Ezra Meeker. In 1930 President Hoover issued a proclamation which commended both the heroism of the Oregon Trail pioneers and Meeker “for carrying over into our day the personal memory of this historic epoch.”
In the United States, at least on American soil, World War II seemed so far away, but the reality is that in parts of the United States, including Wyoming, the war, or part of it was closer to home than we realized. In fact, it was as close as an hour away from where my mom’s family lived, in Casper, Wyoming. Of course, I don’t mean the fighting, but the area was still connected to World War II. In Douglas, Wyoming, there was an internment camp for Prisoners of War (POW) called Camp Douglas. The camp was used between January 1943 and February 1946 housing first Italian and then German prisoners of war in the United States. During 1942, the first year of United States involvement in World War II, an estimated 2000 prisoners came to the United States. The POW camps overseas were so overcrowded that by September they needed a place to take them, where they could safely be contained. In order to be prepared for the 50,000 POWs being held by the British in North Africa, the US needed to reactivate the Civilian Conservation Corps camps. They opened unused portions of several major military bases; utilizing such facilities as fairgrounds, racetracks, armories, and auditoriums; and setting up “tent cities” in remote areas of the country.
In the fall of 1942, knowing that they would need a better plan, they began the longer-range $50 million-dollar program of POW camp construction. The government had decided that for security reasons, the camps needed be located in remote and isolated areas. They didn’t want any camps to be built within 170 miles of the east and west coasts; nor within a 150-mile-wide zone along the Canadian and Mexican borders. They also forbade locations near shipyards, munitions plants, and other vital wartime industries due to fears of sabotage. These regulations made the ideal site, according to the Army Corps of Engineers, an area of 350 acres of level and well-drained land located within five miles of a railroad and 500 feet from any public road. Wyoming and other rural states became the prime locations, hence Camp Douglas. Another reason for placing the POW camps in the United States, was that it also abided by the international Geneva Convention agreements, which were signed by 47 world powers in 1929, and defined treatment of enemy prisoners. The USA made a much greater attempt to live up to the pact than the Axis powers. According to interpretation by American military leaders, camps had to be constructed to the minimum standards of a regular military compound. That insured that the prisoners had adequate housing, food, and water to sustain life and in the end, they were treated so humanely, and after the war many of them would have loved to just stay here. Wyoming was not opposed to a POW camp within its borders, because the presence of a large POW camp would provide an economic boon to a state and the nearby communities so “Chambers of Commerce, businessmen, the Commerce and department, city mayors, and the state’s political leaders sought to secure the establishment of military installations” in Wyoming, according to historian TA Larson. These lobbying efforts resulted in the construction of a new air base at Casper, a large expansion at Cheyenne’s Fort FE Warren, and the selection of a site on the outskirts of the small town of Douglas as the location for a POW camp.
The Douglas site met the defense regulations and was quickly approved. It was located in Converse County within one mile of a rail line that passed through downtown Douglas. The 687-acre site sat above the banks of the North Platte River. The federal government acquired the land through condemnation, which brought about a legal battle in which the defendants were eventually awarded more money for their land than the government had initially proposed. The government was rather between a rock and a hard place. They wanted the contracts for the site. In December of 1942, government surveyors and engineers arrived in Douglas, fueling rumors of the proposed POW camp although the official announcement did not come until January of 1943. The low bid came from Peter Kiewit and Sons of Omaha, Nebraska, and the company set up operations in Douglas by February of 1943. Four to five hundred construction workers used the 4-H buildings on the state fairgrounds as dorms and a dining hall. The government contract specified the buildings be completed within 120 days. Kiewit and Sons actually finished the job in 95 days. “The officers’ quarters, clubhouse, and softball field were located at the north main entrance to the camp, outside the double rows of wired fencing (the inner fence was electrified) and guard towers that surrounded the rest of the complex. The hospital area and the troop barracks were built directly inside the fence. Beyond that, the prison complex was organized into three compounds, separated by wire electrified fencing, each with a capacity of approximately one thousand men. Auxiliary areas for prisoners included a large outdoor recreation area near the river, a softball field, and one football field. The camp also accommodated a variety of operational functions in buildings designed for the motor pool, a heating plant, warehouses, corrals, a K-9 dog unit, a sewage disposal plant, as well as a salvage yard and gravel pit.”
The influx of people prompted the Douglas mayor to urge local residents to rent any spare rooms in their houses to the incoming military personnel and their families as a housing crunch was inevitable in the town. The town leaders with the home front war effort quickly established a Service Men’s Center in the downstairs room of the Moose Lodge. Moose members cleaned and remodeled the room while the ladies of the lodge scrounged up furniture and curtains from local donations. It was a concerted effort to welcome the new facility and its personnel. The Moose Lodge basement became a popular hangout for servicemen with daily hours from 5pm until midnight and stayed open till 2am on Saturday nights. The Center was affiliated with the national USO organization during the final days of the war. The local newspaper focused on the anticipation and excitement of the arrival of the US Army coming to their town, especially the officers, which helped to downplay any apprehension people may have felt about having an enemy population one mile away that outnumbered the townsfolk. Because so many of Wyoming’s men, like many other states, were serving in the war, it was decided that the prisoners could fill in some of the gaps outside the camp. Wyoming was left with a critical shortage of agricultural labor. POWs provided the solution to the problem and performed many essential jobs related to agriculture. They harvested crops, whether it was cotton in the South or sugar beets and timber in Wyoming. Local ranchers and farmers formed a corporation, in anticipation of the much-needed prison labor. A manager was appointed to handle the governmental red tape involved in the contracting procedures.
The story of this POW camp is an important part of the history of the town of Douglas. While Camp Douglas is no longer in use, there are still a few remaining structures. The walls of the Officer’s Club were painted with murals by three of the Italian prisoners. They are beautiful murals that depict western life and folklore. They are now registered with the United States Department of the Interior National Park Service on the National Register of Historic Places.
