The Ohio Oil Company, a subsidiary of Standard Oil, arrived in Riverton in the summer of 1913. The following year, a young company engineer moved his family to the eight-year-old community on the Big Wind River.
Ralph G. Schaefer would soon leave the Ohio Oil Company and make his mark on the growing transportation needs of the young county.
Schaefer was born in 1884 in Wayne, Ohio. His wife Anna Mae Parker was 12 years younger.
Travel and shipping in Riverton remained in the 19th century, with buckboards, carriages, and single riders aside from the freight and passenger trains arriving several times a day on the Chicago North Western Railroad’s runs from Casper to Lander and back.
Lost Cabin sheep millionaire and entrepreneur J.B. Oakie brought the first automobile to Fremont County in 1906, a Great Smith, but motor vehicles remained a rare sight across the Wind River Valley.
The decade following Oakie’s purchase saw the greatest percentage increase in automobile sales in American history. In 1906, there were 108,000 registered cars and trucks in the United States. By 1916, that number swelled to 3,600,000, a 3000 percent increase.
During nearly the same period, Fremont County’s population more than doubled from 5,357 in 1900 to 11,822 10 years later.
In Riverton, cars began to trickle in. Jacob Delfelder owned one, so did Dr. Frank Welty in Dubois. When someone purchased a car, it made the newspaper. Motor vehicles were a transformative wave bringing rural America into the 20th century.
George Moreau, a man who made his fortune raising sheep, just as the other successful early businessmen of Fremont County did, looked at the growth in automobiles and built the first full-service, large-scale service station and dealership in Fremont County.
City Garage opened in March 1916. It was an instant success, supplying gasoline, oil, tires, and service to the rapidly expanding number of cars and trucks filling the Wind River Basin.
The early 20th century was a fascinating evolution from the Old West to Wyoming’s modern, energy-based economy.
Looking back, the City Garage was an iconic example of that change. As Moreau sold largely forgotten vehicles like the Kissel truck, with a chain drive and an “All-Year Cab” feeding the needs of advancing technology, Stub Farlow, the man riding Steamboat on the Wyoming license plate and the nephew of the Sioux War Chief Gall was buying wolf, coyote, fox, cougar, and badger pelts in a room of the garage.
Ralph Schaefer -Teton Auto and the Teepee Service Station
On January 20, 1920, Moreau sold the business to a corporation formed by Ralph G. Schaefer, his wife, and partner Gene Griffith. They soon built it to an entirely new level but retained the connection to the Old West.
In the 1920s and 30s, nostalgia for the idealized image of the Western Frontier filled America. Silent, black and white Westerns were among the most popular films in theaters across the nation, and an unincorporated chain of Teepee Gas Stations stretched from New York State to San Diego and in all parts in between.
In Wyoming, the first Teepee Station was built in Cheyenne; later, two more were constructed, both in Riverton.
The last was built by Schaefer in the 1920s.
Schaefer changed the name from City Garage to Teton Auto and expanded his business to Teepee Texaco on Main Street just west of the Lapeyre Hotel.
Both businesses flourished. Ralph sold oil, gasoline, farm chemicals, tires, and service at both locations.
The Teepee had an ideal location near the Chicago North Western train depot on Main Street. From the station, buses headed for Yellowstone, and trucks supplying the many rural stores in Fremont County fueled before departing.
In the days of Moreau’s City Garage, there were dozens of upstart car and truck manufacturers trying to catch the American market. Moreau sold a line of Kissel trucks. These were huge trucks for the day, carrying capacities of three to five tons, but they were chain drives, meaning the engine turned a roller chain connected to sprockets on the rear axle. They were prone to rolling off the sprockets and gradually phased out as axles and drivelines improved and became standard.
Schaefer began selling Dodge Brothers cars and trucks, as well as Buick automobiles. Buick merged with General Motors in 1908. Dodge trucks and Buicks were entry-level vehicles for working-class people. He offered the premier of the General Motors line as well, and for his more affluent customers, the Cadillac.
Schaefer built the business into one of the premier service stations in Riverton. By the 1920s, tractors, trucks, and other vehicles largely replaced horses and mules in agriculture. From the Dunoir to Crook’s Gap and from Red Canyon to Lost Cabin, Schaefer and his competitors delivered fuel, kerosene, oil, and tires to isolated farms and ranches.
Schaefer’s business survived the Great Depression and boomed during World War II as the oil fields surrounding Riverton worked 24-hour shifts to supply the incredible demand for fuel in a nation at war.
The Long and Willman Families
While Moreau and Shaefer were busy in oil, gas, and automobiles, two families, the Willman’s and the Long’s arrived in Fremont County soon after homesteading opened on the ceded section of the Wind River Reservation north of the Wind River and in the growing little town of Riverton that took root beginning in 1906.
John Lawrence ”Scotty” Long was born in 1891. His wife, Anna Conradina Bretthauer, was a few years younger, born in 1899.
Anna’s parents, Erick and Anna Kiesling Bretthauer, immigrated from Germany with Anna and her sister Esalena in 1901. The first lived in Kansas, then moved to Brush, Colorado. Erick heard of work at Crosby and moved the family to the coal mining town.
Anna grew up on the C.W. Anderson Ranch at Lucerne and worked with future Hollywood cowboy movie star Tim McCoy and western artist Charles M. Russell. She married Scotty in 1920 in Thermopolis.
The mines began to shut down, and Scotty moved the family to Paradise Valley, where they sharecropped for 18 months with a friend. They soon learned to live on what they produced.
“I put up everything I raised,” Anna said in a 1965 interview. “About 1,000 jars of food. I raised turkeys, chickens, and one lamb. We had a cow, but, believe me, I never milked!”
Scotty bought a house in Crosby, Don Woodard cut it into four sections, trucked it through the Wind River Canyon, and assembled it on 1113 East Main in Riverton.
They had four children, June Ellen in 1921, John Lawrence “Jack” in 1922, and two younger children Betty Lou in 1933, and Robert “Bob” in 1938.
Henry and Katherine Willman came from western Nebraska and homesteaded in Missouri Valley.
“Grandpa Willman came to Sterling, Colorado, then moved to Minatare, Nebraska, and then to Riverton,” Jim Long said.
Scotty Long served in the U.S. Army during World War I and mined coal at Colby and Gebo, Wyoming. Jack was born at nearby Gebo, before the family moved to Riverton.
Jack Long – CV-6 – The USS Enterprise
Jack graduated from Riverton High School in 1940 and enlisted in the U.S. Navy.
His military career in the Pacific Theater of World War II is the stuff of legend.
Before his first shipboard assignment, Jack worked cleaning up Pearl Harbor after the attack.
He was then assigned to drive a jeep for Admiral Halsey.
“Admiral Halsey asked him what he wanted to do. He pointed at the Enterprise and said, ‘Sail on her,’” Jennifer said. “Halsey put him on the Enterprise.”
Jack later wrote two stories of his service on the Enterprise while a student at the University of Wyoming.
He joined the Enterprise in November 1943 for campaigns in the Gilbert and Marshall Islands, on Eniwetok and Tarawa, and then in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the Invasion of Luzon, raids against Tokyo, and in the landings at Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
“While working the flight deck, he loaded fighter planes,” Jim said of Riverton. “He was run over by a damaged plane and in sick bay for a back injury. The plane hit the net, he went to jerk the pilot out, and another plane knocked him off the wing to the deck.”
John enlisted at 17 and was a boxer on the Enterprise in his free time.
“Dad was in munitions and he loaded bombs on planes, pulled clocks and instrument panels out of planes that were pushed into the Pacific. His men boxed to release pent-up energy, instead of going to the brig,” his daughter Jennifer Long of Riverton said. “One day, he jumped up on the wing of a plane to get instruments out and pulled out the pilot. He ran 50 feet, and the plane exploded, injuring his back. When he jumped from the wing, he fell with the pilot on top of him.”
“He wouldn’t let us buy anything Japanese until the 1960s,” Jim said.
On May 14, 1945, off the coast of Okinawa, a Japanese Zero loaded with a 1,100-pound bomb crashed through the forward flight deck, throwing the number two elevator 400 feet into the air.
“He was thrown into the conning tower, from the number two elevator when the Kamikaze hit,” Jennifer said. “He wouldn’t go below decks to the infirmary. He didn’t want to go down in the bowels of the ship.”
It was a career-ending injury that eventually led to a 100% disability.
Not all memories of his time in the Pacific were tragic.
“Santa Claus came in on an airplane, he got a big box of candy, he was lucky to get one piece,” Jennifer said. “Whenever he talked about the war, there were tears in his eyes.”
Most stories were tragic or ended that way.
While in Pearl Harbor, he met four other men serving in the military from Riverton, including his high school football coach, Lee Kizzire, and his friend, Bill Forrester. They had dinner at the Royal Hawaiian and before they left, Forrester gave each of them a silver dollar.
“Here’s a silver dollar. It will take you home once,” Forrester said.
Bill Forrester and Lee Kizzire did go home once, but when they returned, Forrester was shot down and killed in a B-24 over Leyte Gulf, and Kizzire was shot down in an attack bomber at Rabaul.
Post-War Riverton
While in the Navy, Jack saved his money.
Scotty had worked for Ralph Schaefer for three years when they first arrived in Riverton and kept track of the Teepee Station.
Jack knew from the letters he sent to his parents and siblings that the station was up for sale.
While still in the service, Jack purchased the Teepee from Schaefer.
He never worked there, but his father, Scotty, ran the station until 1961.
Mildred Katherin Willman was born in Minatare, Nebraska on July 10, 1927. She was the sixth of 12 children born to Henry and Katherine.
She remained in Nebraska, graduating from Minatare High School in 1946. Her parents had moved to Missouri Valley to farm a few years before. She was a baton twirler and majorette in high school.
She and Jack began dating soon after he returned from the Navy.
“He was in a fight before they first met at the pool hall, but he told Mom he fell out of a tree,” Jennifer said.
They were married on July 2, 1947.
Scotty ran the station with the grandkids often watched by grandma. Jack went to work as a pumper in the Beaver Creek Oilfield. A busy, industrious man, Jack farmed in Missouri Valley and ranched near Hamilton Dome.
Jack’s war injuries continued to plague him.
In 1961, Scotty, suffering from Black Lung Disease, picked up while mining at Crosby and Gebo, closed the Teepee Service Station, and retired. Two years later, American National Bank purchased the property and built the American National Bank at the present site of the Bank of Montreal.
Two young men, Bob Scarpelli and Chris Peck, had an idea to open a poster shop in the Teepee in 1967.
“We ordered psychedelic posters from a mail-order catalog,” Chris said. “My dad, (Bob Peck) didn’t like what he saw. He was a reasonable man, he suggested we not open up the poster shop. He knew what was happening in San Francisco at the time and didn’t want me involved in it.”
Scarpelli and Peck did some renovations on the interior of the aging gas station with plans to open in the summer.
“We bought the posters, did some work on the Teepee, but never opened up. I’ve still got a couple of the posters. They’ve survived in my closet.
The Teepee was demolished late in 1967. The bank needed more parking.
The family moved often, living in Beaver Creek, Riverton, Missouri Valley, Powell, Sterling, and Casper.
Jack couldn’t continue the arduous work of the oilfield, farming, and ranching. He enrolled in business classes at the University of Wyoming.
He took a job at a bank in Greeley, where his sons Dan, Ed, and Jim graduated. Jennifer left Riverton before her senior year and graduated from Laramie.
In an ironic twist, Jack returned to Riverton and took a position at the American National Bank, eventually rising to president of the financial institution that purchased, and demolished, his business at the Teepee Service Station.
Their late son Edwin Jack “Ed” purchased the Livestock Liquor Store in 2010 from his parents.
Jack passed on January 12, 2012, Mildred on July 8, 2018. On the east face of their monument at Mountain View Cemetery in Riverton, under the family name Long, is an engraved image of the USS Enterprise CV-6, with the words “Most decorated ship during WWII.”
Jack was proud of his service.
From the days of the horse and wagon, the Chicago North Western and early automobiles, to the privation of the Great Depression and the horrors of total war in the Pacific, the Long and Willman families became institutions in the growing town of Riverton.
The Teepee is gone, but the iconic image of Scotty Long’s station in the center of town remains a warm memory for many older residents.