He passed away in 1921, a bright star on the early horizon of Fremont County. Just three years later, a final testament to his work in establishing Riverton and the surrounding rural areas. That testament was certifying the school he built as a “standard school” by the state board of education, the first outside of Cheyenne to receive it.
“The Little Red School House” opened in January 1921 on 1.6 acres owned by Jacob Delfelder.
Delfelder was instrumental in the establishment of the schoolhouse, but was only able to see it being constructed as he was battling a fatal illness. Delfelder passed away on March 29, 1921, at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
His life was intricately intertwined with the early development of Riverton.
Delfelder was just 50 years old when he passed. Born on his parent’s farm in Effingham, Kansas, he grew up speaking German. His parents, Frederick and Anna Delfelder, immigrated from Germany, settling first in Illinois before heading to the Kansas plains. Frederick was trained as a Lutheran Minister, but never wore the vestments, instead turning to wheat farming and raising cattle.
The couple had eight children. Mary Elizabeth (1863), George (1865), John (1867), Jacob (1871), Anna Margaret (1873), Josephine (1874), Emma (1879), and surprise in 1886, Frederic.
As the fourth child, and the third son, prospects for young Jacob to take over the family farm were not great. He proved to be a resilient, resourceful young man from an early age.
He was a good student, taking classes in the winter and working on the farm for his father and hiring out to local farmers. He became adept at dehorning cattle.
In the 1880s, polled, or hornless cattle, were just making an inroad on the plains with the arrival of polled Hereford, Shorthorn, and Angus cattle from England. Kansas still had the descendants of early Texas longhorns that needed their horns cut off or removed as calves to reduce injury in shipping to both cattle and human handlers. Young Jacob was in great demand.
He went through eighth grade at a public school in Atchison County, then went on to Atchison Business College, where he earned his way through school by dehorning local cattle.
At 21, with a degree in hand, he headed west to the newly created state of Wyoming, arriving in 1892. His plan was to start a dehorning business on the high desert of the Equality State, but he soon learned that cattle raising in Wyoming was different than in Kansas.
In Kansas, cattle were kept in pastures, both large and small. In Wyoming, there were vast sections of open range, with a few large barbed wire enclosed ranches and multiple predators. Cattle needed their horns to fend off wolves, cougars, and grizzlies.
It was time to look for a new career.
In the early days of Wyoming statehood, there weren’t that many cattle in the state. The dominant industry was raising sheep. There were millions of sheep in the southwest in Sweetwater and Uinta Counties, and many more in the middle of the state in Natrona, and a few years later, Fremont when it was carved out of Sweetwater County in 1894.
Delfelder took a job in the late summer of 1892 in Uinta County, working for two years for David Sweeney. In the fall of 1894, he partnered with Austin Bruce, forming the Bunce and Delfelder Sheep Company.
They remained partners until 1901, when Bruce passed. Delfelder bought Bunce’s portion from his son in 1910 and was by then one of the largest stockholders in all of Wyoming, with 50,000 sheep, 2,000 cattle, and 500 horses.
Delfelder was a powerful “mover and shaker” in Wyoming’s economic and political circles. In a 1918 book, “History of Wyoming,” edited by I.S. Bartlett, Bartlett wrote a glowing tribute to Delfelder.
“If one were asked to express in a single word the most prominent and salient characteristic of Hon. Jacob A. Delfelder it might be done in the word helpfulness, for there is no man who has contributed more largely to the development of Riverton and Fremont county than he, and his helpfulness has been of a character that the sociologist says is of greatest worth to the world, the kind that helps the individual to help himself. He has ever striven to improve conditions, having to do with the development and upbuilding and the advancement of business activity in county and state and is regarded as an authority upon the subject of irrigation and water rights as wells as an authority upon sheep raising.”
In 1912, Delfelder moved to Fremont County, running sheep and cattle on Beaver Creek near the little town of Hailey, and then east along Beaver Rim into the Sweetwater Country. He spent more time in Riverton than on the ranch and eventually moved to town.
In May 1913, he was elected mayor of Riverton and simultaneously served as one of four Fremont County representatives in the state house.
Delfelder remained a sheepman, serving as state sheep commissioner beginning in 1903.
He was president of the National Sheep Company and the Diamond C Sheep Company. When Delfelder was nominated as sheep commissioner, it’s estimated that 90 percent of Wyoming sheep were scabby. Scabby sheep suffer skin irritation and lose wool due to mite infestations. Delfelder established a system of dip tanks throughout the sheep-producing areas of the state and, in two years, eradicated the epidemic.
On October 19, 1910, he took a break from his many business and community ventures to marry Evelyn Hartman. She was divorced from her husband, Charles Albert Hartman, and had a three-year-old son, William. The couple never had children together.
Nationally, Delfelder served as director of the National Wool House and Storage Company of Chicago and was heavily involved in banking in Fremont County and the Big Horn Basin.
He was president of the Farmers State Bank of Powell, vice president of the First State Bank of Riverton, a director of the Farmers State Bank of Worland and a stockholder and director in a number of other large financial interests.
His interest in finances and public service was closely monitored by the local newspapers. His exploits made popular reading in Riverton, Lander and Shoshoni.
Riverton Review – June 5, 1915
“Mayor Delfelder has bought a high grade “Chandler Six” car and be is already an expert in the Handling of it. We never thought that the mayor would forsake “Old Buck’’ for any old car, but speed seems to be the principal requisite now-a-days”
Three events symbolized his belief in the future of Riverton and of Fremont County as a whole.
In 1914, he worked with the Wyoming Tie and Timber Company to organize the first tie drive from Dubois to the Chicago North Western railhead in Riverton.
The second became known as the “Farlow Wolf Roundup,” but Delfelder was the financier and the organizer for the event.
They advertised it as “The Biggest Event in the History of the American West,” but it fell a little short of the hype. On August 13, 1917, the largest predator roundup to ever take place in Wyoming began in the pre-dawn hours southeast of Riverton.
The Farlow Wolf Roundup was the dreamchild of Ed Farlow and Jacob Astor Delfelder.
The plan was to create a giant circle of riders on horseback and in automobiles and gradually close the circle, forcing predators and game animals alike into a 10-acre enclosure. The plan almost worked, but as the adage goes, the “Devil is in the details.”
In June of 1917, the Farlow Wolf Roundup Corporation was created in a meeting at Delfelder’s office in Riverton. Farlow was elected president, and Delfelder vice-president. Board members were John Carmody, Marshall Graham, and William Pyne. Harry J. Hall served as secretary.
The plans laid out over the next few weeks were ambitious for the day. The corporation opened with $5,000 in front money donated by the board members. It offered public stock at $5 per share for a total offering of $25,000.
Rounding up predators and generating publicity were the only designs of the corporation. The committee created a motion picture committee with J.P. Buckley, Farlow, and Stub Farlow as members.
Rather than risk any more of their money on hiring riders, they offered stock in the corporation to anyone who signed on for the roundup.
A special delegation of Arapaho bear hunters was assigned to Delfelder’s team in the probable event that the roundup flushed a black bear out of hiding.
The corral was built on Delfelder’s Buck Camp near the modern-day Poston Ranch southeast of Riverton.
The corral in place was made of wood rails and was not large enough to use as a capture area. Workers built a 10-acre corral with a circumference of half a mile. Multiple gates and catchment chutes were placed around the large circle to guide driven animals inside the enclosure. Delfelder’s contribution to the project was ample.
A wolf was surrounded and killed by Delfelder’s hounds before arriving at the corral. An exhausted black bear was roped and released repeatedly by cowboys before it was finally allowed to escape from the capture facility. The elk was roped and released as well, and the antelope remained on display for the crowd for a few hours before a gate was opened and they returned to their range.
Delfelder’s hounds were busy that day. The Selznick crew filmed a lengthy battle between one of the dogs and a large rattlesnake before the hound finally prevailed.
The film was later shown at the Rialto Theater in Casper, the Dixie Theater in Lander, and the Acme in Riverton to capacity crowds.
Delfelder’s third project clearly displayed his pride in his new community and his hope for the future of Riverton.
Riverton was only 12 years old in 1918, but the rivalry that still exists with Lander was already prevalent. Lander constructed a massive, modern hotel on Main Street, a few blocks from the Chicago North Western depot, the Noble Hotel.
They already had the four-story Fremont Hotel in the center of town, just a few dozen yards from the Lander Depot. The Noble Hotel opened in May 1918 to great fanfare.
The excitement in Lander spurred resentment in Riverton. Talk about Lander’s new hotel filled the coffee shops and saloons of Riverton. Citizens lamented that Lander had beaten us again, but one citizen would have none of it.
Jacob Delfelder wasn’t a man to sit idly by. Instead of complaining about the Lander hotels, he got to work organizing a group called the Riverton Hotel Company, later changing Riverton to Teton.
The Teton Hotel Company issued two thousand shares of stock at $100 a share. The terms of the stock were 50 years, with the location at the intersection of Third and Main Street in Riverton.
The Teton Hotel opened for business on June 20, 1919, it was four feet higher than the Fremont Hotel and the only hotel in Fremont County with an elevator.
The citizens of Riverton and the surrounding area adored Delfelder and his competitive, industrious nature.
But the vibrant rancher, developer and businessman had private issues that soon became public. Delfelder began to suffer from stomach ailments, visiting local physicians and spending time at a sanitarium in Thermopolis before going to the fledgling Mayo Brothers’ Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
The Mayo Clinic was already renowned as one of the best in the world and Delfelder found relief after his first visit, but the symptoms returned. His last visit involved intricate gastric surgery, a major risk in the days before antibiotics, and once again, he rallied and showed signs of improvement.
Upon returning to Riverton, he decided to build a school about five miles northeast of Riverton for the children of local farmers and ranchers, and students from the fading community of Nebel just across the Wind River toward Shoshoni.
Construction for the “Little Red School House” began in the summer of 1920.
The straight-grained, rough-cut Douglas fir is a testament to the construction ability of the men who completed the structure in 1921. While the intent of their labor has changed over time, the essence of the project has survived for nearly a century.
The Delfelder School was constructed for children, and though its tenure as a public school lasted barely a decade, its use as a community center for both youth and adult activities lasted much longer.
Delfelder Hall, as it became known for much of its existence, was originally built as Delfelder School as an improvement to the undersized Freeman School in an area that was much further from the Riverton city limits than it is today.
Mr. and Mrs. Rogers were hired as teachers at the school, and their eighth-grade daughter was a student, but the couple disappeared mysteriously in the middle of the night after the news of an impending arrest of Mr. Roger’s by Fremont County sheriff’s deputies spread through the valley. The couple was last seen boarding a train for parts unknown at the Bonneville Station north of Shoshoni.
The building began with two large classrooms, a combination heating room, coat closets, and an attached coal room. There was originally no well and just a privy on the far side of the property.
After the school closed in 1929, it was converted into a community hall, and the two big classrooms were combined into a single large meeting room. It officially became a meeting hall in April of 1940 when the Delfelder Hall Association was incorporated.
Heating problems and beehives have existed since the building’s inception. Originally, it was heated by coal-fired steam heat, a cutting-edge innovation in its day for a public school, but the system never generated enough heat, with students and teachers wearing gloves and heavy coats inside for much of the winter.
The Riverton Review January 31, 1924
“Delfelder school, north of Riverton, formerly known as “the Little Red Schoolhouse“ has met specified requirements and was recently designated a standard school by state educational officials.
J. J. Jewett, chairman of the Riverton district school board, and C. M. Whitlow, superintendent of the Riverton schools on behalf of the state department of education, presented the plaque to the school and the distinctive marker is now conspicuously displayed so that everyone may read and know.
Standard schools are identified by an orange-colored steel plaque with the words, “Wyoming Standard School,” inscribed thereon in black. This is the first school in this section of the state to be thus designated and honored.
The minimal essentials required by standard schools in Wyoming are summarized as follows: Living conditions of the teachers must be satisfactory. Must have adequate playgrounds and equipment, and same must be properly supervised, with satisfactory sanitary conditions.
School building must have twenty square feet of floor space, 200 cubic feet of contents per person; glass area at least one-sixth of floor space; light from rear and left side only, some adequate provision for ventilation, flagpole and flag; provision for heating of building; walls and ceiling clean; walls tinted neutral grade; outside, painted. If frame; in good repair.
Equipment and supplies, such as blackboards, desks, chairs, maps, etc., as specified by the state board. Textbooks or other books appear on approved list of state department.
Organization: Definite daily program; records neat and adequate; recognized length of school term, nine months, and state course of study followed
Teacher must hold a class A certificate or better and must be ranked by the county superintendent as superior in the following regards: Classroom teaching, discipline in room and playgrounds. professional attitude, acquaintance in community, community leadership and co-operation, educational progress of pupils, working attitude of pupils, and housekeeping.
Mrs. Addie Holmberg and Mrs. Lillian Deimer are the teachers at Delfelder School, and its designation as a standard institution is a condign recognition of their ability and devotion to duty.
It’s amazing that the Delfelder School achieved this status after an incident the year before.
In the spring of 1924, teacher Cleona Kirch began dismissing school early when it was too cold for the students to function. This annoyed board member Frank Lichty, and he came to school one day and confronted Ms. Kirch, claiming the only problem was that she didn’t know how to light a fire. Overcome with frustration, Ms. Kirch slapped Lichty, who ran from the building as a claw hammer thrown by Kirch whizzed by his head.
Standalone wood-burning stoves were finally brought in and a permanent solution was put in place in 1952 at a cost of $894, with the addition of two oil-burning stoves. A unique cost-cutting solution came with the oil stoves. Long lines of 55-gallon oil drums welded together at the seams running the full length of the structure. These drums were the main heat duct and traditional duct work was cut into the drums and screwed in place to bring heat to floor registers throughout the building.
Teachers lived a Spartan existence at the school. A room was carved out of one of the classrooms for living quarters. Quarters without electricity, water or indoor plumbing and with just a kerosene lamp for illumination on long winter nights spent alone in the darkened building.
One thing teachers complained about since the first summer, was an abundance of honey bees nesting in the southern exterior wall. With fields of alfalfa in the surrounding area, the blooms were a siren song to honey bees, and the numerous holes in the wooden lap siding were easy for the insects to penetrate.
Bees were mentioned constantly as a problem over the next 75 years, and almost always in the southern wall.
The evidence of the short nine-year impact of Jacob Delfelder is long gone. Only a large monument marks his passage at Mountain View Cemetery, and a “mansion” at 222 South Broadway that he purchased from Jay Blake stands as a reminder.
Without his drive, influence, and investment, Riverton and Fremont County would be vastly different.