An impressive 21 of the last 22 presidents have visited Wyoming. Only Grover Cleveland is off that list since Ulysses S. Grant visited Fort Sanders, near Laramie, in 1868, a year before Wyoming became a territory.
All those visits were made to just five main destinations. If you’re a Wyoming resident, you have a good idea already of which ones made the list. Cheyenne, simply because it’s on the Union Pacific Railroad, Laramie, with the University of Wyoming and the same rail link, Casper, in later years for energy issues, and the two darlings of non-Wyomingites, Jackson and Yellowstone National Park.
In 1883, one man broke the mold and made his way to the Wind River Country. President Chester A. Arthur.
A narrative of the trip, written by Lt. Col. Michael Vincent Sheridan’s staff and filled with quality photographs, takes us back to the expedition.
Journey Through Yellowstone National Park and Northwestern Wyoming 1883
GREEN RIVER, Wyo., Aug. 5. — “On the arrival of the Presidential train at Cheyenne at 9 o’clock last night, a large number of people were at the station, and during the short time we stopped there the President, Secretary Lincoln, and Senator Vest made a few remarks and were introduced to the officials of the Territory. At 9:30 the train moved out from the station under the charge of General Superintendent Dickinson, of the Union Pacific Road.
Eighteen miles west of Cheyenne we passed over the summit of the Black Hills of Wyoming, the highest point on the Union Pacific Road, and where a monument to Oakes Ames, one of the original projectors of the road, has recently been finished.
The train arrived at Green River, Wyo., at 10:30 today (Sunday), and in consequence of the pre-arranged plan to spend Sunday at this point, we remained quietly on the train all day. Tomorrow morning at 7 o’clock we take the spring wagons for Washakie, and will encamp tomorrow night on the Sweetwater, one hundred and one miles north of this point. The next day we will drive into Fort Washakie, fifty-five miles.
There are three of these spring wagons. The President, Secretary Lincoln, and Gen. Sheridan will ride in No. 1; Senator Vest, Judge Rollins, and Gen. Stager in No. 2; Gov. Crosby, Mr. George Vest, Surgeon Forwood, and your representative in No. 3. We expect to make about ten miles an hour over a fine natural road, and to reach Washakie about 3 p.m., August 7.
As there is no telegraph station this side of Washakie, you will not hear again from me till after reaching that point.”
Arthur, like the 17th president, Andrew Johnson, arrived in the White House via an assassin’s bullet. Arthur took office on September 19, 1881, after Garfield lingered for two-and-a-half months after being shot on July 2. He died an agonizing death from gangrene.
Many presidents have traveled to Wyoming, but only Arthur made it to the Wind River County.
William McKinley, another president who had his tenure cut short by an assassination, rode through Wyoming, mostly at night, while traveling back to Washington, D.C. from California. He never left the train.
McKinley’s successor, Theodore Roosevelt, a man known for his rugged love of the outdoors, ignored a ride over the Summit on a train and instead rode a horse from Laramie to Cheyenne in 1903. He took in Yellowstone that summer as well.
No president knew Wyoming as well as Dwight D. Eisenhower, who, as a young Army officer, drove through the state in 1919 on a coast-to-coast motor vehicle expedition. He came back in 1952 while campaigning.
In 1974, still reeling from the loss of his wife and daughter in a car accident. Then Senator Joe Biden spent time in Yellowstone, finding solace and refocusing his shattered life.
Aside from Eisenhower, Biden, and possibly Theodore Roosevelt, all the other presidents were either tourists to Jackson Hole or Yellowstone, or on the I-80 or I-25 corridor, campaigning when they ventured into Wyoming.
Arthur was different; he was a tourist, yes, but also a man seeking to unify federal relations with the indigenous people of the plains and Rockies.
Arthur was also an avid fisherman, and as president, had a strong connection to the newly created Yellowstone National Park.
Yellowstone became the world’s first national park in 1872, just 11 years before Arthur’s epic trip to the Valley of the Wind River.
In August 1883, the Arthur Expedition arrived in Green River on a special Union Pacific train. His entourage was impressive. Some joined him at the Sweetwater County railhead, others met him later in Yellowstone.
Among the party was Montana Governor Schuyler Crosby, Lt. General Phillip Sheridan of Civil War Union Cavalry fame, Secretary of War Robert T. Lincoln, and Senator George Vest of Missouri, a former member of the Confederate House of Representatives.
Sheridan was a strong advocate for protecting the pristine park from speculators, as was Senator Vest. The park had no greater advocate than George Bird Grinnell, the editor of Forest and Stream.
The U.S. Department of the Interior was lobbied to grant a private company at least 4,000 acres of parkland. The company intended to sell the land for commercial development, with stores, residences, and developments at premier locations in the park, such as Old Faithful, Mammoth Hot Springs, and Yellowstone Falls. They even had plans to extend a railroad into the park.
They were already clear-cutting trees for a 250-room hotel at Mammoth Hot Springs. Poachers were already killing the Yellowstone elk herd, one of the last original herds remaining in the world in the 1880s.
The company cut almost 1.7 million board feet of virgin timber.
Memories of the aesthetic destruction of Niagara Falls just a few years before were still fresh. The once pristine falls in New York State had suffered overdevelopment, pollution, and profiteering, nearly ruining it.
Sheridan came up with a plan to bring attention to the problems facing Yellowstone, and Arthur was a major player in his scheme.
Arthur loved to fish, whether freshwater or offshore in the Atlantic. The legendary monster trout indigenous to Yellowstone caught his fancy.
The President wasn’t healthy. He was thin and getting weaker. Though he and his press manager tried to hide his health, reporters soon noticed that the president was failing.
In April, while fishing in Florida, Arthur suffered intense kidney pain and had to end his vacation.
People, and the press in particular, questioned the wisdom of the president taking an arduous three-week horseback adventure in the wilderness of the Wyoming Territory. Others supported the idea, thinking it might be just the tonic Arthur needed to rejuvenate.
Sheridan organized a three-week horseback fishing trip up the western edge of Wyoming Territory to the park.
The venture morphed into more of a campaign than a camping trip.
A 75-man cavalry escort, with a train of 175 pack mules, set out from Green River.
Anyone familiar with Wyoming, especially September weather in Yellowstone, knows the unpredictable nature of it.
Sheridan set up a packing list for each member of the president’s party to prepare. The soldiers and outfitters were already equipped.
Sheridan’s List
- Four sets winter clothing
- Four sets of summer under clothing
- Four outer woolen shirts, with pockets
- Two suits of rough clothes, one heavy and one ordinarily light
- One heavy winter overcoat, Ulster preferable
- One rubber coat
- One pair riding boots or shoes, with leggings
- One dozen pairs of socks
Every angler enjoys new gear, and Arthur was no exception. He spent $50 on new equipment before he left Washington, the equivalent of about $2000 today.
The expedition headed east to Point of Rocks, then cut across the desert to South Pass, covering 101 miles the first day.
Two reporters, one from the Chicago Times and the other from the Chicago Sun, followed the expedition from a distance, taking the stage at Rawlins despite a warning from Sheridan that they would be arrested if they stepped onto the Wind River Reservation.
A telegraph line to Fort Washakie was already in place. President Arthur and Secretary Lincoln received and sent regular telegrams to Washington while on the trek. Once they left Fort Washakie, couriers sent and returned messages from the group until they reached Shoshone Lake, from there, couriers from Fort Ellis in Montana took over.
Arthur arranged a meeting with Washakie, Chief of the Shoshones, and Chief Black Coal of the Arapaho.
A popular movement in Washington was to sell off reservation land to the highest bidder and send the Native Americans on their way.
Washakie and Black Coal told Arthur they refused to sell any part of their reservation.
Vest also brought up the subject, which was being debated in the Senate at the time. The debate centered on selling reservation land to individual tribal members who could then do what they wished with it. It was a method of ending the reservation system. All the assembled elders of both tribes spoke strongly against it.
Journey Through Yellowstone National Park and Northwestern Wyoming 1883
FORT WASHAKIE, Wyo., Aug. 8. – “The Presidential party has spent the day here at Fort Washakie, preparatory to setting on to their ride to the Yellowstone in the morning. In accordance with the expressed wish of the Shoshone and Arapahoe Chiefs their people were afforded an opportunity of calling upon the President at 3 o’clock this afternoon.
Shortly before that hour they gathered on the plains to the number of about 500 warriors, and, mounted upon their handsome ponies, dashed forward in line for about 1,000 yards to a point near which the President stood awaiting them.
The column then halted, and several Chiefs dismounted and approached him. Among them were Washakie, Chief of the Shoshones, from whom this post takes its name, and Black Coal, Chief of the Arapahos, a tribe which, within a few years, has been permitted to share the occupancy of this reservation.
The President thanked his visitors for calling upon him; congratulated them upon their fine appearance; assured them of his interest in their welfare and of the satisfaction with which he had heard of their exemplary conduct and growing attention to the practice of industrial pursuits.
His address, which was admirably suited to the occasion, was interpreted to the Shoshones by an English-speaking member of the tribe, who bears the name of Norcutt, and to the Arapahos by one of their number, who has been educated at the Carlisle School, in Pennsylvania.
The Chiefs repeated to their respective tribes what had been said to them by their Great Father, and the announcement was received with demonstrations of applause. Both Washakie and Black Coal made pertinent replies. They thanked the President for honoring them with a visit; avowed their purpose of living at peace with the whites and adopting as fully and as rapidly as possible their customs and manners of life.
These addresses, as interpreted, were full of expressive metaphors, and were at times positively eloquent. The Arapahoe interpreter found no little difficulty in making himself understood. His efforts were ably seconded by Capt. Clark, of Gen. Sheridan’s staff, who has thoroughly mastered the beautiful and expressive sign language, which affords a medium of communication for the two tribes in their intercourse and with the whites, and which fully supplies the place of vocal speech.
After the addresses were concluded, Sharp Nose brought forward an Indian pony and, placing the lariat in the hands of the President, presented the handsome animal for the use of his daughter. Gifts of moccasins and leggings were also made to the members of the President’s party.
Then followed a war dance, in which twenty young Shoshone braves took part; eight beating the drum and chanting a weird song for exciting the efforts of their fellows. Some of the dancers were nearly naked, their skin being painted in various colors; others were gayly dressed in flashy-colored costumes, no two of which were alike. Some were adorned with beads, feathers, and every sort of Indian ornamentation.
The dance afforded much entertainment to the Presidential party.”
After two days, with some time spent with Washakie Hotel and Washakie Store owner J.K. Moore the party departed for Yellowstone.
They left the wagons at Sheridan Pass and crossed the continental divide, then followed the Gros Ventre River into Jackson Hole.
Arapaho Chief Sharp Nose served as a guide for the party from Fort Washakie into Yellowstone.
Once they reached the park, Arthur was awestruck by the majesty of the place. He kept a line in the water every day he was in Yellowstone, catching hundreds of big, native cutthroat trout.
Sharp Nose took him to Geyser Basin, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, Lewis Lake, Old Faithful, and Mammoth Hot Springs.
Journey Through Yellowstone National Park and Northwestern Wyoming 1883
“The march of 350 miles is finished. The last campfire has been lighted and has burned to ashes, and today the party takes the train awaiting them seven miles away, and start for Livingston, on the mainline of the Northern Pacific Railway.
Governor Crosby returns to his post of duty at Helena. Senator Vest begins a journey through Montana and Dakota, visiting various Indian agencies, in pursuance of his duties as a member of the joint committee of Congress of which Senator Dawes is Chairman.
The President and other members of the party proceed to Chicago, where they will arrive Tuesday morning.
BILLINGS, Mont, Sept.1. –T he President and party passed this point at 3 p.m. The special train will arrive at Fort Keogh at midnight, St. Paul Monday evening, and Chicago Tuesday. All are well. This is the last telegram you will receive from the representative of the Associated Press accompanying the Presidential party.”
Arthur wasn’t won over to protect the park, but Vest was.
After a battle on the Senate floor, Vest was victorious. Exploitation of the park’s natural resources came to an end. Any future proposals would have to pass the Senate, which wasn’t likely.
Legend has it that Arthur fly fished but set out baited lines on the precursor of the spinning rod as well. He caught three large cutthroats on one line and caught two trout simultaneously many times.
Reports were overwhelmingly positive; everyone on the expedition, from the president to the Army privates on the escort, had an enjoyable time.
In 1886, the Department of the Interior was in shambles, and didn’t manage the park well. Sheridan, as the U.S. Army Commander, sent troops into the park from Fort Custer in Montana to restore functionality. The U.S. Army remained in control of the park until 1916, when the National Park Service was created.
Arthur passed away in 1886 but had fond memories of Yellowstone in his final three years of life, despite staying out of the debate on park exploitation. He’d caught salmon, bass, barracuda, and trout around the nation, but the angling in Yellowstone was special. 
The wonders of Yellowstone were preserved thanks to President Arthur and later to the efforts of President Theodore Roosevelt, when the next generations of speculators made a run at industrializing Yellowstone, this time with proposed electric power plants harnessing geysers and hot springs.
Sheridan passed in 1888, at age 67. The legacy of Yellowstone was perhaps more important than any of the battles he had won against his fellow countrymen in the Civil War.