Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
The route is a checkerboard starting in Pine Bluffs and ending a few miles west of Evanston, 404 miles total. Credit Mobilier, the holding company overseeing the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad, received a square mile of land for every mile of track laid until it reached Wyoming. In true Wyoming fashion, we were quickly taken advantage of, and the Ames brothers, Oakes and Oliver, owners of the Union Pacific, took 20 square miles for each mile of track.
They were the biggest con artists of the 19th century, easily worthy of positions as Secretary of the Interior under the present administration.
The Union Pacific has sold off some of the original land, but still owns 7,160 square miles of Wyoming, one-fourteenth of the entire state. The 4,582,520 acres along the southern quarter of Wyoming represent one of the largest private land ownerships in the world.
In another uniquely American trend, when the scandal surrounding Credit Mobilier was made public, the federal government was quick to respond. They built a monument to Oakes and Oliver, the Ames Monument, on the summit of Interstate 80 between Cheyenne and Laramie. We do love the people who rip us off, cheat us, take advantage of the poor and middle class, and protect the criminally wealthy. America!
Theodore Roosevelt was only 10 years old when the construction crews of the Union Pacific rolled across what would become Wyoming Territory. His presidency 33 years later changed Wyoming, and the West forever, making it the pristine, multi-use public land that it is today.
Those public lands are now under assault, ostensibly by the same Republican party that Roosevelt was part of.
While in office from 1901 to 1909, Roosevelt was a busy man. He signed the Pure Food and Drug Act into law in 1906, much to the chagrin of big business moguls who were routinely killing children with spoiled milk, treated with formaldehyde to mask the odor and decay. Teddy is the man who removed cocaine from Coca-Cola and cleaned up the filth at slaughterhouses across the nation.
The reforms in our national food supply were a good start, but the corporations continued to battle these health-related changes until his distant cousin, Franklin Roosevelt, took office in 1932. The battle remains in Washington, D.C., the same type of indifferent corporations are lobbying Congress, the Senate, and the White House to take us back to the bad old days, all in the name of profit. You can see this anytime you see a talking head calling for the elimination of government inspectors or the weakening of quality control.
Making our food safe was a great step forward by Roosevelt. He did the same in controlling pollution in our water and on the land. Yes, these too, are now under assault from the money-grubbing fringe of the extreme right in Washington.
Safe food, water, and uncontaminated land pale in comparison to Theodore Roosevelt’s greatest contribution to unborn generations of Americans. While president, he set aside 230,000,000 acres of public land. Roosevelt created 150 national forests, 55 federal bird reservations or game preserves, five national parks, and 18 national monuments.
In doing this, he ensured that future generations would be able to enjoy the pristine wilderness that was once America without smog pouring into the sky from industrial smokestacks.
Now our representatives in Washington, not really our representatives, but representatives of billionaires and corporate interests, are supporting selling off our heritage to the highest bidder.
Representative Harriet Hageman, and senators Cynthia Lummis and John Barrasso bravely stepped forward to preserve Wyoming’s heritage in the face of this assault on our way of life… Ok, no, they didn’t, they’re in lock step with the creators of Project 2025. They towed the party line like good Germans and now spend their time at town halls and answering reporters’ questions, dodging the issue. Their combined mantra is “Not us, we wouldn’t do that,” yet in the Senate Reconciliation Bill passed by a narrow Republican majority last week, they’ve created a venue for the highest bidder to fence in, wall off, and prevent access to much of Wyoming’s remaining wild lands.
It’s a crime, a crime happening right in front of us. I don’t care about your political viewpoint, whether you lean towards being a right-wing Nazi or a left-wing Commie. These lands were set aside for us, and we enjoyed and continue to enjoy them. Once they’re sold off, they’ll look like much of the area west of Laramie did when I was a college kid.
Nothing makes a Wyomingite angrier than working your way back along a narrow gravel road in search of a hunting, hiking, or fishing area and encountering a locked gate with a sign such as “Private Property: Longmont Sportsman’s Club.” That’s what the clowns in the Washington majority have in store for all of us.
It is nothing short of “Californicating” the west, and we shouldn’t stand for it.
Hageman, Lummis and Barrasso can take away social security, Medicare, Medicaid, school lunch programs and raise taxes on the lowest earning Americans, while giving their wealthy donors a free pass, that’s fine in the short run, it will be rectified in future elections, but once public land is sold, it is gone forever.
If you take a close look at land ownership in Wyoming, you’ll notice that much of the area south and east of Casper is privately owned. If you grew up in Lusk, Douglas, Wheatland, or Torrington, you had to know someone just to get on the Platte to fish or get grudging permission from a farmer or rancher to hunt deer or pronghorn.
There is a reason we get annoyed on Green Mountain, Boysen Reservoir, or Union Pass when we see all the county 1, 2, 4, 5, and 17 license plates. The guys from Cheyenne, Casper, Rock Springs, Laramie, and Gillette come here to hunt and fish. Yes, it’s a great area for outdoor recreation, but it’s also accessible; you don’t have to ask anyone’s permission to hunt, fish, or hike. It is “PUBLIC” land.
A long time ago, I hiked deep into Teton National Park. To my surprise, miles from the nearest road, I ran into a high, chain-link fence. It defied logic and it went on for miles. I did a little research once I returned to civilization. The fence bordered an area of private land within the park, land that had belonged to John D. Rockefeller Jr. Rockefeller was inspired by the beauty of the Tetons and purchased 35,000 acres of the valley below. In 1949, he donated the land, creating Grand Teton National Park by joining Jackson Hole National Monument and the original section of Grand Teton created in 1929. He kept a few thousand acres for his family within the donated section. Fair enough.
You don’t see that kind of philanthropy much these days. If you did, you’d see Musk Cancer Centers and Trump Children’s Hospitals. These don’t exist and never will.
Short-term politics can be reversed when competent people take over, but long-term sell-offs or giveaways of land last for centuries.
Hageman, Barrasso, and Lummis are committing political suicide. They don’t realize it, but they’ve managed to unite the entire state against them with this misguided support of selling off public lands. None of the three has done much for Wyoming, they’re too busy dancing the dance played by the eastern elites. Removing them from office can only help, not hurt, the people of Wyoming.
Our friends to the north in Montana, and to the west in Idaho are exempt from selling off their public lands thanks to the diligence of their senators, who read and followed the wishes of the people.
Don’t care about public land?
Try camping, hunting, or fishing along the Union Pacific Tracks and see how that plays out.