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A time traveler from the 1970s wouldn’t recognize the gyms, fields and tracks of today. Neither would one from a generation later in the 1990s.
Fremont County, along with most of the other areas of the state, has seen profound change in athletic facilities.
One year at a scheduling meeting, my friend Ernie Mecca of Dubois was trying to schedule his football and basketball seasons. I gave him a little friendly grief and he responded, “We drive a hundred miles, then play the same teams you do.”
Ernie was correct, it’s a little isolated for the boys and girls playing in the High Country.
If you were to go back in time 50 years or so, you wouldn’t find a track at Dubois, Pavillion, Shoshoni, St. Stephen’s, Arapahoe, Ethete or Fort Washakie.
Today, every one of them has an all-weather oval circling their football fields.
The late Harold Bailey grew tired of training his track team on the football field. For those of you who knew Harold as only a football coach, you might be surprised to learn that he was an outstanding track coach as well.
One season Harold decided to build a track on his own. He staked out a 440-yard oval in the sagebrush near the Shoshoni Airport (yes, there really is one) and had the late Art Shanley, a man who was an artist with heavy equipment, carve out an eight-lane track. It was sandy, with drifted sand in the corners after windstorms, had an occasional rattlesnake, and in the spring it abounded with horned toads, but it was a track.
At Morton High School, head track coach Leroy Sinner found a way to squeeze a track around the 80-yard-long, 8-man football field.
The track was 330 yards. A mile was five and one-third laps. The 440-yard dash (the modern 400-meter sprint) was a full lap and then another straight away. You got really good at running curves if you were on the Morton Broncs or later the Wind River Cougar track teams.
Each spring, the Morton Invite and then beginning in the 1970 season, the Wind River Invite was held on this 330-yard marvel.
Wind River High School moved to Pavillion in 1993, but before they built Leroy Sinner Memorial Field (even though Leroy is still with us and still a character) they started holding meets on the 100-yard-long football field south of the original Pavillion Elementary School.
It wasn’t an all-weather track, it wasn’t asphalt, it wasn’t even cinders, it was packed dirt with the lanes marked with chalk. It was fast on dry days but even a little rain turned it into a slippery mess.
Dubois had gravel surrounding their original football field near the middle of town. They didn’t hold any meets there, and I’ve heard stories of the guys who trained on it. None of them were positive and there wasn’t much love lost when it was finally paved, then surfaced with a six-lane track.
There is a bit of nostalgia associated with the football field inside that gravel track. In late-season games in October, the wind would howl above the field but not drop down except on the east end. On cold afternoons, the chill would roll down those hills like a fog.
Add the deer that often dotted the skyline above the field and you had one of Wyoming’s most unique football facilities.
If Dubois had one of the state’s most distinctive settings, Riverton possessed the county’s most memorable stadium.
That honor will remain forever with the now defunct Tonkin Stadium at the top of the equally defunct “High School Hill.”
Kids today and future generations will never understand why their parents and grandparents still refer to the top of Main Street as “High School Hill.” Why would they? The high school is just another bit of lost memory.
Riverton’s original field was in City Park before the move to Tonkin.
Riverton and Lander were the only county schools with full 440-yard tracks. Both were cinder. A cinder track was built from the cinders taken from coal-fired locomotives. They resembled pumice, drained well, packed incredibly tight with a heavy roller, and were as fast as any all-weather surface today.
You had to wear long spikes for sprints, hurdles and jumps and if you fell, it was like falling into a huge belt sander, but they were fast.
Lander hosted the state track meet twice in the 1970s on that cinder track.
Wyoming Indian first played football at Mill Creek Elementary, the modern location of Wyoming Indian Elementary. They had two-by-fours nailed together for goal posts and the field had a decided slant.
They moved to the old asphalt track and football field east of the Wyoming Indian Middle School before moving the present-day Chiefs Intertribal Complex near Wyoming Indian High School.
Lusk didn’t have a track either, just a well-drained, well-designed football field with a pole vault box on the west end and a combination long and triple jump runway in the northeast corner.
Now the Tigers have an all-weather track wrapped around Gibson Field at Fullmer Stadium. It’s already in need of a little upkeep with weeds growing on the runways and in the corners of the track.
It is amazing how weeds can get a grip on even the slightest bit of exposed soil.
A trip around the county today reveals a mass of similar weeds, cottonwoods, and elms taking over the field and track at Morton.
The one at Pavillion is part of the Wind River Elementary School. Wilford Mower track is still good as a walking track and is used by P.E. classes at Rendezvous Elementary School, but it’s not a competition track anymore.
Bailey Field is an RV Park, the Rams field is on the east end of town now, surrounding the 6-man football field.
The view is still tremendous, but it’s not quite the same as the original field set on a flattened hill above the high school. The new field does share the same elevated position above the school, but it’s not the same.
Change is inevitable. Stadiums disappear, tracks grow over and schools move on. But as long as there are people left to tell the stories, the places where we played are never completely gone.