How much difference can one man make in the world around him? The answer varies with the man, but in the case of Dr. Emory Lee Jewell of Shoshoni, Wyoming, the impact was nothing short of miraculous.
Emory Lee Jewell was born on July 5, 1875, to William Wallace Jewell and Mary Isabel Jewell in Pine Island, Minnesota. As a young man, Jewell earned a medical degree from the University of Minnesota before heading west to Casper, Wyoming.
His training was in general medicine, but he began life as a pharmacist, partnering with his younger brother Scott. In those days, the line between physician and pharmacist was not as distinct as today. Doctors routinely created new combinations of drugs and pharmacists practiced medicine at deeper levels than they can today.
In 1904, Dr. Jewell moved to the bustling little town of Lost Cabin at the request of J.B. Oakie. It was here that he met his future wife, Livia Amanda Willoughby. The couple was married in Lost Cabin on March 28, 1905.
Dr. Jewell had a practice in a room at the Lost Cabin Hotel, but greener pastures beckoned 25 miles to the southwest with the advancing tracks of the Chicago North Western Railroad.
The young couple moved to Shoshoni in September 1905. Dr. Jewell and his brother Scott opened Jewell Pharmacy on the west side of Shoshoni’s Main Street in 1906.
Business was picking up as thousands of homesteaders gathered in Shoshoni in anticipation of the opening of the Wind River Reservation to homesteading in August 1906. Dr. Jewell’s office was on the first floor of a building adjacent to the pharmacy.
On July 19, 1907, the couple had their only child, a daughter, Isabel, named after Dr. Jewell’s mother.
Dr. Jewell was a tireless physician, making local house calls in Shoshoni, or taking the train to Moneta, and Arminto to the east when a telegram, or later a telephone call, indicated someone in need of his services. He also served people in the newly built town of Riverton and had hospital privileges at Bishop Randall Hospital in Lander.
He even took the treacherous route over Birdseye Pass to Thermopolis, Gebo, and Worland when he was needed before the railroad and then the highway cut through the Wind River Canyon.
A fire destroyed the entire east side of Main Street in 1908, forcing many businesses to close, but others to build again, this time with more permanent brick structures. The Jewell Pharmacy was untouched, but the brothers’ interest began to wane.
Dr. Jewell had a thriving practice as one of the only physicians outside Thermopolis or Lander in Fremont County, aside from Dr. Tonkin in Riverton.
The brothers let the pharmacy go, on February 19, 1909, the First National Bank of Thermopolis foreclosed on the building, and Ira E. Jones took possession of the property.
During Dr. Jewell’s long practice in Shoshoni, he treated dozens and dozens of gunshot wounds, but none more poignant and upsetting than the one that occurred just four months after he and Scott closed the pharmacy.
Hudson Miner – June 4, 1909 -Accidentally Killed
“Scott Jewell, one of the leading citizens of Shoshoni, and a man who numbered his friends among the hundreds, while sitting in a barber chair waiting for his turn to be shaved was shot through the abdomen by a bullet from a 30-30 which a young man was handling.
Harold Aronson, son of B. H. Aronson, was in his father’s room at the Heyer & Berger block at Shoshoni, having arrived from school the night before to spend his summer vacation with his father, and as near as we can learned he picked up a rifle belonging to his father and was looking at it and testing the mechanism when it was accidentally discharged the bullet going through the window and across the street and into the Miller barber shop and hitting Mr. Jewell.
The victim lived about a half-an-hour after the accident. The remains were shipped east to the home of the Jewell’s for burial. The deceased with his brother, Dr.Jewell ran a drugstore in Shoshoni until a short time ago and was a highly respected citizen of the town and one of the boosters for it.”
His brother was buried back in Minnesota, but Dr. Jewell continued his practice. A practice that was filled with accidents, poisonings, typhoid fever, German measles, polio and gunshots. Accidental, self-inflicted, and murderous shootings were a common call for the enterprising doctor in the little desert town just east of Boysen Reservoir.
Here are a few examples of the type of “Frontier Medicine” practiced by Dr. Jewell early in his career. His first shooting came while still residing in Lost Cabin.
Natrona County Tribune – August 17, 1905
KILLING ON DEEP CREEK Andrew P. Anderson Shot in the Abdomen and Leg by Henry Holland.
Holland is Said to Have Shot In Self-Defense and is Exonerated by the Coroner’s Jury
Anderson Wanted to be a Bad Man.
“On Wednesday evening of last week at about 6 o’clock on Deep creek, in Natrona County, near Lost Cabin, Andrew “P.J” Anderson, who is commonly known as Pete Anderson, was shot and killed, by a half-breed Indian, whose name is Henry Holland.
Anderson was running sheep on shares for J. B. Okie, and Holland was herding for Mr. Okie. The trouble which led to the shooting, was told by Mrs. Anderson, wife of the dead man, as follows: “We were moving our camp over to Woodruff’s spring, and had stopped to camp for dinner when this Indian, Henry Holland, heard of it and came down to our camp and began talking to me. I told him not to move his sheep down there for fear there would be a mix-up. He stuck up his nose and went back up and chased his sheep down toward my camp. I went into the wagon and laid down on the bed and watched the sheep and saw they were coming down to ours. I soon saw the sheep were mixed up and our herder came and told me they were mixed.
Our herder then got a little 22 gun and said he was going out to shoot prairie chickens. I suppose Henry Holland thought he got the gun to shoot him with. In a little while afterwards Mr. Hughes came down the road and he told me he had loaned Henry Holland his gun, so I thought he was after our herder, the Mexican. Our herder saw when Mr. Anderson came over the hill. Mr. Anderson saw me talking to this man and wanted to know what was the matter and I told him the Indian, Holland, had mixed up with us and plenty. He started toward the Indian to see how he was mixed up. The Indian put his hand on his gun and Anderson saw it and fired. The Indian walked as fast as he could behind Mr. Rowe’s horse and there was a lot, of firing, I didn’t stop to see who was hit but went toward the wagon. Mr. Rowe’s horse was shot. The doctor came about an hour later and cleaned the wound and it seemed that Mr. Anderson’s leg was badly hurt and they thought best to bring him to town to amputate the leg.
Mr. Anderson was in great agony until we got to the head of Trout Creek when he died, at about 8:30 a. m. Charles Hughes said that Anderson was over to the dipping pens, and when he came back his wife told him about the mix-up. He and the Indian, Henry Holland, began shooting.
As far as he knew, Anderson fired the first shot. He said that Anderson shot three times and Holland shot five times. Dr. E. L. Jewell, who dressed Anderson’s wounds, said that when he came past Harry Bryon’s camp Albert Fall informed him that a man had been shot. He immediately went to the camp and found Anderson, who told him that he had been shot. On examination he found two bullet wounds, one in the abdomen, about four inches to the left of the umbilicus. He extracted the bullet about five inches from where it entered. The range of the bullet was below the rectus muscle next to the peritoneum and toward the crest of the ilium.
The other wound was in the right thigh at about the middle third. The bullet ranged down to the bone fracturing it. The wound in the abdomen undoubtedly caused death by the rupturing of the peritoneum and intestines. The place of shooting was at Woodruff’s Spring, on Deep Creek in Natrona County. The time of shooting was 6 o’clock p.m., on August 9th, 1905.
Anderson’s body was brought to Lost Cabin, and County Attorney Butler telephoned Instructions that the nearest justice of the peace to Lost Cabin should empanel a coroner’s jury and hold an inquest, and in accordance with Mr. Butler’s instructions, Justice George Woolf, subpoenaed Charles Bader, Michael Leahy, T. A. Dougherty and John Irwin as jurors, who after viewing the body and listening to the above evidence, rendered a verdict as follows: “We the undersigned, coroner’s jury, empaneled to hold an inquest upon the body of Andrew P. Anderson, do find that the said Andrew Anderson came to his death by the firing of a gun or pistol in the hands of one Henry Holland, and that the said firing and killing was done in self-defense. That the said shooting occurred in Natrona County, Wyoming, and that the said Andrew P. Anderson died in Natrona County. Wyoming, while being transported to Lost Cabin.”
Many of his house calls were to local ranches, where accidents were frequent and he was often the only medical care within 50 to 100 miles. Many of those accidents involved horses or machinery. On September 27, 1907, soon after establishing his practice in Shoshoni, Dr. Jewell was called to the S.P. Asbell ranch near Ervay, where the 10-year-old son of Asbell was suffering from a broken femur after falling from a horse onto hard ground. Dr. Jewell arrived several hours after the accident and set the bone back into place. It was the third time in two years that the boy had broken his leg or arm while horseback riding. He fully recovered a few weeks later.
Accidents kept the good doctor and the two hospitals in Shoshoni busy in the early decades of the 20th century.
The Casper Record – July 6, 1915
“Pat O’Neil and Mr. Myers, roadmaster and bridge foreman on the Burlington, stationed at Bonneville, narrowly escaped death Tuesday when returning from Boysen where they had gone for supplies.
They were homeward bound on a motorcar, both loaded down with dynamite percussion caps, when their car struck a heavy piece of bridge timber which was laying across the tracks. Both were thrown a considerable distance from the car, which was wrecked, but luckily, they did not fall on the caps when alighting on terra firma, or they would now be in eternity. Mr. Myers escaped with a severe shaking up, hut Mr. O’Neil suffered a broken arm and a severe cut on the head. Dr. Jewell was called and he administered to the injured man. The accident happened at about 10:30 o’clock in the evening.”
Dr. Jewell was a frequent visitor to the Fremont County District Court in Lander, usually after rendering aid to the victim of a crime. Assault, attempted murder, along with first- and second-degree murder trials kept the doctor busy as he rode the Chicago North Western to and from the Lander courthouse many times.
In 1924, he was called to testify against E.M. Sagestage, a sheep herder working for Jacob Delfelder of Riverton, who was charged with the attempted murder of Achie Bader, another herder on the ranch near Moneta. Sagestage held a 30/40 Craig rifle on Bader, forcing him to tie himself up. Bader escaped and almost choked out Sagestage with a scissors-style wrestling move, but Sagestage broke free, took a 20-inch-long iron bar, and hit Bader in the head.
The unconscious Bader was loaded on the train at Moneta and transported to Shoshoni for Dr. Jewell to examine. He recovered, but Sagestage faced serious charges and was convicted later that summer on Jewell’s testimony.
Dr. Jewell’s practice evolved with the technology of the early 20th century. The introduction of sulfa drugs improved patient’s chances of recovery from surgery and reduced the incidence of deadly gas gangrene which was a common cause of death post-surgery. The days of horse-related injuries were quickly replaced by America’s fixation with the motor car. Dr. Jewell had his fair share of automobile-related injuries. Here are a couple of examples of the work that awaited him each week in Shoshoni.
Casper Daily Tribune – July 14, 1925
“George Fisher of Shoshoni is at Dr. E. L. Jewell’s hospital at Shoshoni being treated for injuries incurred when the car he was driving three miles on the other side of Moneta missed the turn and dropped off the bridge. Fisher narrowly misled having his head mangled and sustained serious cuts and bruises about the head caused by the shattering of glass in the windshield.”
“Davis Gilbert of Moneta is at Dr. Jewell’s hospital at Shoshoni recovering from Injuries in an auto accident. Gilbert, while working in a garage at Moneta, had his hand badly mangled when the motor was accidentally started. Gilbert had his hand near the connecting rods when the motor started.”
It wasn’t all accidents, murders, and mayhem for Dr. Jewell. Over a century ago, he delivered hundreds of babies from Arminto to Dubois and all points in between, something that can’t be done today in any part of Fremont County outside Lander.
Treating infectious disease was another large part of his practice. As a respected local physician, schools across Fremont County trusted his judgement when it came to quarantines, or closing schools during outbreaks of measles, whooping cough, scarlet fever or the dreaded polio. He was busy during the outbreak of the Spanish Flu, the first modern pandemic in 1919 and 1920. Though he was unable to stop the spread of this disease, he was instrumental in controlling it.
His passion was another disease, one indigenous to the Rocky Mountain. Known colloquially as “tick fever” its official name was Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. It was a disease spread by infected wood ticks. Though it was rarely fatal to healthy young men, the type of people who encountered wood ticks most often, it was deadly to the elderly and to young children.
In late June 1930, Swiss immigrants Eugene and Clara Gasser were homesteading on the Bar G Ranch near Black Mountain in western Fremont County. They had two young children, Eugene, Jr., age four, and Ruth, just two years old.
Ruth began running a fever, followed by a red rash forming around her wrists and ankles. Clara recognized the symptoms of “tick fever.”
The streams feeding the Wind River were swollen with late spring runoff. The couple had a Ford Model T, but it wasn’t capable of crossing the high water. Eugene, a former Swiss Cavalry soldier, and an expert horseman, hitched up a team to his work wagon and set out with young Ruth wrapped in a blanket resting in the bed of the wagon. It was 70 miles to Shoshoni and Dr. Jewell from the Bar G.
Eugene made the trek in 20 hours, arriving at Dr. Jewell’s office just before dawn. Dr. Jewell treated Ruth, keeping her in his hospital for a few days and she made a full recovery, living to be 94 years old.
Dr. Jewell became the leading authority on Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever in the world. He was appointed the Assistant Collaborating Epidemiologist of the U.S. Public Health Service.
In the midst of all his medical activity, Dr. Jewell was a rancher as well, raising sheep and cattle on ranches near Shoshoni, and in Lost Cabin and Moneta.
In a classic case of “physician heal thyself,” Dr. Jewell was working horses at a sale in Moneta on October 3, 1928. As he drove a wild stallion towards a cutting chute, the horse kicked him in the lower right leg, snapping both bones and dropping him to the ground. His friends and fellow physicians, Dr. Replogle of Lander and Dr. Carter from Thermopolis, quickly provided first aid. He was loaded onto the westbound Chicago North Western and taken to Shoshoni, where the two doctors reduced his fracture. After four weeks of convalescence, Dr. Jewell was back at work.
The following spring, Dr. Jewell noticed some wild action outside his office window. Two Arapaho boys, Clarence Moss and Charles Bell, were in hot pursuit of a coyote down Shoshoni’s main street. The boys had a pair of wolf hounds and hired out to local sheep ranchers hunting coyotes. They chased the wayward coyote through the water of Poison Creek west of Shoshoni and down the highway before the hounds caught the coyote in front of Jewell’s office. They dispatched the coyote with a club and skinned it, still with a full winter coat on March 15, 1929. They sold the hides as part of the deal.
One incident haunted Dr. Jewell for most of his life. A thunderstorm rolled through Lysite on August 22, 1915. Two boys, aged nine and 11, the sons of Mr. and Mrs. Duncan McClelland of Lysite, were struck by lightning. The nine-year-old was killed instantly. His older brother survived for a few days but was badly burned. A telegram was sent to Dr. Jewell, who was driven to Bonneville by his friend A.O. Barber. They held the Burlington Northern passenger train, and Dr. Jewell made the short run to Lysite but was unable to save the boy. The boys were later buried in Lysite.
Dr. Jewell was often called to treat accidental shootings. The smokeless .22 Long Rifle cartridge was invented in 1887 and soon became popular with young boys, older men and women thanks to its light recoil. It wreaked havoc on many people near Shoshoni.
On July 21, 1924, teenager Elsie Nelson shot herself through the foot with a .22. The bullet missed the bones, and Dr. Jewell treated the wound and gave her a set of crutches.
Eight years early, on February 7, 1916, Mary Weis, also a teenager, was riding in a car, hunting rabbits, when she took aim at one but didn’t notice the barrel in line with her big toe. She fractured her toe with the shot, and Dr. Jewell treated her.
It wasn’t all teenage girls with errant aims. James Sellar, a retired rancher, was hunting rabbits on Badwater Creek northeast of Shoshoni on July 30, 1920. He caught a ride back to town with Claude Allen. He kept his .22 rifle loaded and cocked. Allen hit a bump and the gun discharged, hitting Sellar in the sternum. The bullet rode up over the bone and lodged just above his heart in the pectoral muscle. Dr. Jewell removed the bullet, and Sellar made a complete recovery.
In a final case of mishandled technology, R.C. Ellsworth of Shoshoni was curling her hair with a newly invented electric curling iron when she hit her eye with the hot iron. Dr. Jewell treated the injury, and she retained some eyesight after the accident.
Dr. Jewell wasn’t so lucky, after delivering the last baby of his career, LeRoy Allen of Shoshoni, he suddenly, inexplicably, went blind in 1933.
His daughter Isabel moved to Hollywood to become an actress. Though he was unable to see her, he heard her playing Emmy Slattery in the classic, “Gone With the Wind” at the Acme Theater in Riverton.
Dr. Jewell continued to research Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever despite his blindness and still treated the sick. He passed away on October 21, 1941, in Shoshoni.
His gravestone at Lake View Cemetery in Shoshoni summarizes his life: “Pioneer, Humanitarian, Friend…Greatness Is Measured By Service.”