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DANIEL, WYOMING
THE FIRST
HUNDRED YEARS 1900 — 2000
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By Daniel Wyoming Community Center
See
3 Pages of Photos of Daniel
Double click cover
for a larger image.
Hard Cover 8.5 x 11 2 Volume Set. 70# Matte Paper. 800
pages. Over
800 Photos, 30 Maps & Charts. 250 Livestock Brands, 80 pages of Index.
Private Printing
ISBN 1888106352
Library of Congress 00-102249
To purchase a set, Contact Us.
Review in Sep 2002 by American Profile magazine:
The Town
That Wrote Its History
"A Town's History in Print" by Laurie Quade.
"Everyone who'd ever lived in Daniel, Wyo., created its
colorful history, yesterdays rich with mountain men, American Indians, frontier
settlers, ranchers, and rugged souls who braved the bitter Wyoming winters to
stake their future in this scenic valley...." See www.americanprofile.com
Additional Information:
Book Description
Daniel Wyoming Community Center
About the Authors Centennial Celebration
Early History of Daniel
Cattle Brands
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BOOK DESCRIPTION
The most comprehensive book we've ever seen on a town history. Whatever you're
looking for, it's likely to be there. Publisher
Volume One is the history of Daniel, a little town in
west central Wyoming, and includes the buildings of the town, who built them,
and when, and who has lived in them over the years.
Volume Two includes the history of the surrounding
areas, their people and their connection to Daniel. Such people got their
mail at the Daniel Post Office or via Star Routes out of Daniel, including Merna,
Bronx, Daniel and Burns (downriver and ending with the Sommers ranch). Volume Two
also includes township maps, who homesteaded the land initially, what is known
about these pioneer settlers, and contains a great deal of information about the
various families owning the ranches since then. More township maps show how the
land has been concentrated over the years into large ranches owned by a few, and
names those who owned the land in 1999.
Through the efforts of Dudley Key and Linda Graziano,
the Daniel Community Center has been approved as a non-profit organization.
Persons wishing to make donations to assist with the publishing of this set of
books may contact:
Dudley Key, PO Box 183, Daniel, Wyoming 83115. Dud's phone number: 367-6661.
This two volume set is to be published using money raised through community
activities and donations. All money from the sale of these books will go toward
preserving the old schoolhouse and to modernize and make it more
useful for community activities. The books will be sold at actual cost.
A major fund-raising event was held in February 2000 at the
Daniel Schoolhouse, offering an old-fashioned box social planned by Chris Paravicini, and Legends provided the music.
Click photo for full image
The Pride of Daniel, the Daniel Community Center's 1920 schoolhouse
building, a state historical site listed in the National Register for Historical
Places.
Photo by Dan Abernathy.
Scanned illustrations of two hundred fifty carefully preserved cattle brands are included
in Volume Two, and are identified by the originator of that brand. Samples:
Ralph Parks and E. C. Todd Ranch
Brand Name - Order of ownership/
1. AG — Andre Germain/Christy Thomson
2. MD Quarter Circle — Milt David/Mary Spence/Megan McCormick
3. Quarter Circle L Bar — Lou Binning/Ed Todd
4. VTF — Ed Todd
5. Reverse C Reverse B — Charles C. Beck
6. Open A T — Dick and Mary Thomson
7. Reverse L L Quarter Circle — Ron Kamp
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Pat Walker, writer and unofficial historian of Daniel
has been the driving force behind this book. A relative newcomer to Daniel, she
also writes for the Sublette County Journal.
Hayden Huston had been researching Daniel's history for
many years and intended eventually to publish a book on the town. He agreed to
use his material for this book and was appointed Editor.
Jonita Sommers, author of Green River
Drift, and one of
the Sublette County Artist guild members responsible for publishing their most
recent book, Seeds-Ke-Dee Revisited—initially volunteered to help with
photographs and ended up totally involved in all aspects of the Daniel Wyoming
book preparation.
Dianne Roberts Boroff, who spent many years researching history
of the Merna area, homesteads, etc., was willing to "sign on.
Barbara Pape, along with all her other
involvements, became the Bronx historian.
Many other writers have also
contributed their time and talent to the book.
Wilma Facklam, proofread the whole book several times
in an effort to get out all the spelling, grammar and computer bugs.
Cris Paravicini scanned the 250 cattle brands,
and added the appropriate captions describing them.
Daniel, Wyoming's Centennial was February 1, 2000. Pat
Walker wrote to the club's board of directors suggesting a book to honor
Daniel's first 100 years. The Board agreed to act as sponsor of the book.
The Old-Timers Picnic was held on July 16, 2000.
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By Hayden H. Huston
The town of Daniel was established by Thomas Pixley
Daniel in 1900. It is located in the high country of the upper Green River
valley at an elevation of 7,192 feet.
Pat Walker recently wrote in an article that,
"Daniel is still a small village. It nestles among cottonwoods, poplars,
and a variety of willows. While the Wind River Range fills the eastern horizon,
the Wyoming Range is on display to the west, and the more distant Gros Ventre
Range reveals its jagged skyline to the north. The Green River passes north of
Daniel as it weaves its way down the valley from its headwaters in the Wind
River Mountains. Prairie Creek runs along the north edge of this little town,
with Horse Creek a short distance to the south; these creeks flow from the
Wyoming Range. Ranch land surrounds the community.
"Only native Americans and wildlife visited the
area until Wilson Price Hunt’s party passed through on their way to the mouth
of the Columbia River in 1811. Captain Benjamin L. E. Bonneville, in 1832, built
Fort Bonneville on the Green River. In the meantime, the mountain men arrived in
their quest for beaver pelts. They gathered in the Daniel area for their annual
rendezvous in 1833, 1835, 1836, 1837, 1839 and 1840. The need for railroad ties
during construction of the transcontinental railroad brought lumbermen into the
upper Green River valley in 1868."
The Daniel area is naturally adapted to stock raising,
and the economy of Sublette County has always been based on the livestock
industry—primarily cattle with some sheep. Ranch owners and their employees
were real Western cowboys. The towns and settlements, like the ranches,
developed along streams and rivers. Early Daniel could boast of having exactly
the typical places of business since settlements usually consisted of a general
store, a post office, a garage, a school and a bar. The towns and their
businesses existed because of the services they provided to the local ranchers.
Not only were the businesses important for their economic role, but they also
acted as social and cultural centers.
In 1931, the Pinedale Roundup printed a
description of the area around Daniel.
"Circling the upper Green River valley from east
to north, the mighty barrier of the Wind River Range rises in sheer majesty from
timbered uplands. Rugged Fremont Peak, visible for miles from the lower plain,
and first climbed by General Fremont in his expedition of 1841, borders one of
the largest glacier fields in the continental United States. Here Gannett Peak,
the highest in Wyoming, rears its lofty pinnacle amid perpetual ice and snow.
"In the lower mountains and foothills hundreds of
beautiful lakes, many offering fine trout fishing and unexcelled summer home
sites, form probably the greatest compact series of natural water storage basins
in the West. Fremont Lake, the largest, 16 miles from Daniel and four miles from
Pinedale, is ten miles in length.
"Completing the circle of the area to the north
and west, the Wyoming Mountains, with their extensive timber bodies of pine,
spruce and fir, make of the whole valley a huge amphitheater open only to the
south, and radiated by dozens of clear streams flowing southerly from high
mountain meadows.
"Here indeed is an outdoor paradise for all lovers
of recreation. The big game fields close at hand provide herds of elk, also
moose, deer, bear and mountain sheep, with antelope on the plains to the south.
Sage chickens, grouse and ducks are also plentiful. . .
"The extensive forest ranges provide adequate
summer pasturage for the many thousand cattle, horses and sheep wintered on
ranches in the lower valleys. On upper Green River a single grazing unit summers
12,000 cattle, the largest number grazed on any other national forest
range."
The few settlers around the Daniel area as early as the
winter of 1888-1889 would forever after remember it as probably the worst of
Wyoming winters which, as any resident knows, can be plenty bad.
There were but few settlers here that early. Cyrus Todd
and son, William, were living on land at the junction of Horse Creek and the
Green River. D. P. Faler and family lived on Faler Creek above the Burns post
office. The George Hartley family had settled at Merna. William Roy was living
on Beaver.
Most of the population at that time in what is now
Sublette County was concentrated around East Fork, the Cora area, and around the
New Fork store of John Vible and Nels Hanson Broderson.
In an article about that winter, the Pinedale
Roundup noted that there were few large herds of cattle in those days except
those owned by the Spur Ranch at La Barge and the 67 Ranch of Budd and McKay at
Big Piney. These cattle ranged as far north as where Daniel now stands. However,
the few settlers around each owned a few cows and other stock. That terrible
winter of 1888-1889 was hard on all stock and wild animals alike.
The paper went on to say that the winter came early.
Most ranchers had very little or no hay. The most feared of all situations
occurred after a snow storm put two or three feet of new snow on the ground.
Around the first of February, a three-day thaw melted the top layer of snow.
This was followed by freezing weather that crusted the snow so hard the stock
and wild animals could not get through it down to the grass below.
Many ranchers in what is now Sublette County suffered
catastrophic losses. Ed Steele lost all but eight of his eighty-seven head of
cattle. Another ranch started the winter with five hundred, but had only one
hundred seventy cattle at the end of the winter. Bill Evans lost all but
seventy-five of his three hundred head. Only one two-year-old heifer and a team
of horses belonging to Jim Westfall survived, although he went to heroic efforts
to try and save his forty-six head of cattle.
Great numbers of elk and other wild animals also
perished.
The few settlers around Daniel seemed to have been
hardier or more resourceful than most.
The Hartleys, who had just arrived at Merna, had to
contend with snow that got deeper and deeper as that winter went along. They had
left the Hams Fork area during the summer of 1888 with John Van Dervort and had
moved to Merna; the first settlers in that area. Hartleys had on hand but a
small amount of hay they had managed to gather that fall. However, there were
springs on their ranch that never froze. When the hay was gone, parents and
children shoveled the snow from the banks into the water so the cows could get
at the thick and high slough grass that grew in natural meadows beside the
springs. It was not an easy task. Five feet of snow, or more, had to be shoveled
away. Even with all this effort, they still lost half of their herd of thirty
cattle during that memorable winter.
The Pinedale Roundup claimed that settlement of
the country was delayed twelve to fifteen years by that terrible winter because
up to half the settlers living in the Pinedale area left the country in the
spring. Many had to walk out to Opal, even that early, as later, the area’s
main supply point on the Oregon Short Line Railroad, carrying on their backs the
scanty belongings they had left. Only a few of the hardiest stayed to carry on.
However, we know of no one who gave up and left the
Daniel area. Cyrus Todd and his son, William, the Hartleys and William Roy were
still here the next year, more determined than ever to make a go of their cattle
ranches. Falers left. The bad winter may have had something to do with it, but
in time they moved to Fall River Basin where the winters were even more harsh.
We have to thank the early editors of the Pinedale
Roundup, especially C. Watt Brandon for much of the factual information
we now have on early Daniel. Mr. Brandon started publishing the Roundup
in 1904, and, unlike some country newspapers, his weekly paper always carried
lots of news about the people of the upper Green River valley and what was going
on. Unfortunately we know little about Daniel and vicinity before 1904, but
thanks to Mr. Brandon’s paper we do have an excellent source for researching
people and events after that year. . . .
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