Table of Contents  [ Hide]

Statistics
Towns
Well-known residents of Platte County
History
Origin of Name Platte
County Creation and Organization
Carnegie Library Construction
Construction of County Courthouse and Jail
Prohibition
William L. "Bill" Carlisle
Irrigation Projects and Reservoir Construction
Conclusion

Statistics

Towns

Well-known residents of Platte County

	Larry Birleffi	radio sports announcer
	Jim Geringer	governor
	Charles A. Guernsey	rancher and town founder
	Alexander Swan	cattleman

History

The name is derived from the North Platte River that flows through the county. The county was one of seven created in 1911. Originally, the county was cattle country. The massive Swan Land and Cattle Company was headquartered near Chugwater in the southern part of the county. In the late 19th century, an irrigation company, headed by Joseph M. Carey, developed agricultural lands in the county. Iron ore was mined at Sunrise by a diverse population of mostly European immigrants. The Wyoming National Guard established its training camp near Guernsey in 1937.

Origin of Name Platte

It was inevitable that one Wyoming County would be named "Platte," for the North Platte River, which was and is vital to Wyoming's development and prosperity. When a bill was introduced in the Eleventh State Legislature to create Platte County in January 1911, there was no debate as to the appropriateness of the name. The name "Platte" had been given to the Platte River at its mouth, where it flows into the Missouri River, in the 1790s by French fur traders and trappers toiling up the Missouri River to trade with Indians. Platte comes from the French word "plate," meaning shallow, and where the Platte empties into the Missouri, it is wide and shallow. Later, French voyageurs, working their way up the Platte from the Missouri to trade with Indians, discovered the river's two main tributaries and simply named them the North Platte and South Platte.

County Creation and Organization

The act creating Platte County from the northwestern half (approximately) of Laramie County was signed into law by Governor Joseph M. Carey on February 9, 1911. That night a celebration was held in Wheatland. A huge bonfire was started on Main Street, and the local band played and paraded. The local newspaper reported that many of the celebrants were carried away by the joy of the moment and tossed their Stetsons into the fire. The editor estimated the dollar loss in hats between $400 and $500, and reported that the town's clothing store was doing a brisk business in Stetsons.

The new county's enthusiastic citizens quickly circulated petitions to organize the county and presented them to Governor Carey. The governor determined that the petitions were valid and other legal requirements had been met, and then appointed Chris Hauf, Glendo, T. J. Carroll, Wheatland, and Robert Grant, Jr., Chugwater, as organizing commissioners for the new county. The commissioners met on March 8, 1911, in the Stock Growers Bank in Wheatland, and chose Hauf as chairman. They agreed to lease office space in the bank for $55.00 monthly, and then voted to hold a special election on April 25, 1911, for the electorate to approve or disapprove the organization of Platte County and to select a county seat. The commissioners concluded their first meeting by establishing election districts and polling precincts for the coming election.

Although there were six towns in Platte County in 1911, only Guernsey and Wheatland were candidates for the county seat. Guernsey was supported by Hartville and Sunrise, and most of the opposition to the organization of the new county was centered in those two towns. The campaign for organization of the county and for selection of a county seat was heated, but when the votes were tallied, organization of Platte County had been approved by the voters with a margin of more than four to one, 1,246 for and 300 against, and Wheatland had been named the county seat by an equally wide margin, receiving 1,219 votes to Guernsey's 262 votes.

Platte County's first elected officers were chosen by the voters on November 5, 1912. The officers elected were: Millard F. Coleman, W. H. Ralston and Lee Moore, county commissioners; Owen Carroll, county sheriff; George McDougall, county clerk; Guy Agnew, county treasurer; C. A. Paige, county attorney; Joseph Elliott, county surveyor; D. B. Rigdon, county coroner; and Mary Maloney, county superintendent of schools. Justices of the peace and constables were also elected for each of the county's precincts.

The newly elected county officials took their offices on January 7, 1913, taking the oath of office and posting the required bond. The Board of County Commissioners began conducting county business that same day, electing Millard Coleman chairman, agreeing to extend the lease for county offices in the Stock Growers Bank for $55.00 monthly and also agreeing to pay an additional $35.00 per month for janitorial services, and accepting petitions for roads from the county's citizens. Three days later, January 10, the county commissioners, meeting again, approved a contract to purchase three jail cells from the Pauly Jail Company of St. Louis, for $3,937.00. The commissioners' journal of proceedings does not indicate where the cells were to be installed, and later minutes of the commissioners only state that the jail cells were received, paid for, and being used for the county's prisoners.

Carnegie Library Construction

The year 1916 was a momentous one for county government in Platte County. On June 6, the county commissioners accepted a donation of $12,500 from the Carnegie Corporation for the construction of a free public library. In accepting the grant, the commissioners agreed to support the library, with an annual operational funding of not less than $1250, and to provide a suitable site for the library. A Wheatland Library Association was quickly organized to raise funds to purchase a site for the library. Early in 1917, the site was purchased by the association and then deeded to Platte County. The new county library was opened to the public in 1918.

Construction of County Courthouse and Jail

Also in 1918, Platte County occupied a new and permanent courthouse and jail. On August 1, 1916, the Board of County Commissioners adopted a resolution proposing the issuance of $50,000 in county bonds to finance the construction of a county courthouse and jail. The question was presented to the electorate at the general election held November 7, 1916, and approved by a vote of 1,203 for the bonds and 958 opposed. In February 1917, the commissioners contracted with architect A. A. Bearresen of Cheyenne to design the courthouse and prepare plans and during the same month the commissioners sold the county's bonds to the Keeler Brothers Company of Denver.

On April 6, 1917, the commissioners awarded the general construction contract to Archie Allison of Cheyenne for the low bid of $59,966. Construction work was begun in May, and the courthouse and jail (the three jail cells purchased in 1913 were moved into the new jail) was completed and occupied by the county's officers during January 1918. The total cost of the new facility, including furnishings was $85,000. A beige brick structure, the Platte County Courthouse has three floors, a basement partially above ground, a first floor above ground level, and a second floor.

As built, the basement contained the county jail, apartments for the county sheriff and the courthouse custodian, storage vaults, and heating equipment. Offices for the county commissioners, the sheriff, the county clerk, the county assessor, the county treasurer, and the superintendent of schools were all located on the first floor. The second floor of the new courthouse housed offices for the county attorney, the clerk of district court, the justice of peace, and the district courtroom, with an adjoining judge's chamber and jury room.

Prohibition

Even before the courthouse was completed in 1918, and before prohibition became the law of the land in 1919, Platte County was experiencing the divisiveness prohibition could bring to a community. Probably, the citizens of Platte County were more divided over the merits of prohibition than any other Wyoming County. Throughout 1916, 1917 and 1918, the county commissioners received numerous petitions against applications for liquor licenses, and then letters of protest if the license was granted. Likewise, the commissioners received numerous letters of support for applicants, and at some meetings of the county commissioners both proponents for a license and opponents were in attendance, causing some rather lively debate until stopped by the commissioners.

William L. "Bill" Carlisle

The year 1919, not only brought prohibition to Platte County, it also brought the return of Will L. "Bill" Carlisle to the county. Carlisle, known as the "modern train robber," or "the gentleman bandit," had worked on ranches in the northwest part of the county until he began robbing trains in 1915. Prior to his capture, Carlisle, by himself, robbed three Union Pacific passenger trains. He was gentlemanly in his approach to the passengers he robbed and harmed no one; he received national publicity, which he reveled in; and he was considered by many to be a twentieth century Robin Hood. To the railroad and law enforcement in Wyoming, however, Carlisle was a scourge to be locked away forever.

A massive law enforcement effort, aided by scores of railroad detectives, finally resulted in the capture of Carlisle near Rawlins. Twenty-six years-old at the time, Carlisle was promptly tried in Cheyenne, convicted of train robbery, and, on May 11, 1916, was sentenced to life in prison at the state penitentiary in Rawlins. The railroad and Wyoming law enforcement officers believed they had heard the last of Bill Carlisle, but it wasn't so. On November 15, 1919, he engineered a daring escape from the prison, having himself nailed inside a shirt box. Actually, the box was a crate in which prison officials shipped wholesale amounts of shirts manufactured at the prison, but newspaper headlines proclaimed that Carlisle had escaped in a box, like some Houdini.

Carlisle went first to Rock Springs, where he remained for several days enjoying his freedom. Then he boarded an eastbound Union Pacific passenger train, and casually rode through Rawlins. Near Medicine Bow, Carlisle held-up the passengers in his car, and then calmly left the train when it stopped in Medicine Bow. Somehow, he obtained a horse and rode out of the town to the northeast, pointed toward Platte County. Railroad and law enforcement officials were outraged by Carlisle's effrontery, and organized a massive manhunt for him.

Platte County Sheriff A. S. "Lon" Roach was notified that Carlisle's trail led to Platte County. On December 3, 1919, Roach formed a posse with his deputies and drove to the vicinity of Esterbrook where they borrowed horses from Oliver and Charlie Saul. They picked up Carlisle's trail and followed it to an isolated cabin, hidden in a canyon. Carlisle had seen the horses, and made a dash out the back door. Roach shouted for him to stop, but he continued to flee, so the sheriff shot him. Carlisle wasn't badly wounded, and after two weeks recovery in a Douglas hospital, he was returned to the penitentiary. Bill Carlisle was discharged from the prison, after a commutation of his life sentence, on January 8, 1936. He gave up train robbery as an avocation and for many years successfully operated a gas station in Laramie.

Apparently, Governor Robert Carey was impressed with Sheriff Lon Roach's capture of Carlisle, for he appointed him the State Prohibition Commissioner, a week after Carlisle's capture. Later, Roach would be entrusted with Carlisle's safekeeping, as Warden of the Wyoming State Penitentiary from 1927 to 1935. Roach began his new duties on January 1, 1920, and his first annual report, stated, "Conditions in Platte County are fair," referring to the enforcement of prohibition in the county.

Throughout the prohibition era, conditions in Platte County remained "fair" as the majority of the county citizen’s supported of prohibition. During the sixteen years prohibition was in effect, there was no violence in the county related to it, nor was a Platte County citizen sentenced to the penitentiary for conviction of a prohibition offense. Nevertheless, as Lon Roach reported in 1920, there was some illegal manufacturing and sale of liquor, particularly in the mining communities of Hartville and Sunrise, throughout prohibition, but in no way was there open violation of it, with law enforcement officers looking the other way, or being paid off, as occurred in some of the state's counties.

Irrigation Projects and Reservoir Construction

Much more exciting and beneficial to Platte County during the 1920s than prohibition was the construction of Guernsey Dam, Reservoir and Power Plant. Harnessing the North Platte River and its principal tributary, the Laramie River, had a long history, preceding the organization of Platte County by thirty years, and had contributed immeasurably to the development of the area that would become Platte County. It began with the Wyoming Development Company in 1883, when the company acquired water rights to the Laramie River.

The company's goal was to bring irrigation water from the Laramie Plains to the Wheatland Flats, where thousands of dry, but fertile acres, could be irrigated. To accomplish this, reservoirs would be built in north-central Albany County, and then the stored Laramie River water would be transported through pipes, a tunnel, and ditches to the Wheatland lands. It was a big project, taking years to complete, but by 1897 the land was being irrigated by settlers and the Wheatland Colony, which would grow into the Town of Wheatland, had been established.

Although its effect on the area that would become Platte County was negligible, the next step in managing the rivers, a harbinger of Platte County's future, was the construction of Pathfinder Dam and Reservoir, or the North Platte Project, upstream in Natrona and Carbon Counties in 1905. Congress in 1902 had passed the Newland or Reclamation Act, authorizing the federal government to build reclamation projects in the West, and Pathfinder was the second Wyoming project. At the time the site for Pathfinder was selected, State Senator Charles Guernsey, who had founded the Town of Guernsey in what was to become Platte County, had strongly advocated that a site on the North Platte, near the town named for him, be chosen for the project. Despite his efforts, the Reclamation Service had selected the Pathfinder site because it allowed for greater water storage capacity. But Charles Guernsey was not a man to give up easily.

He had become enamored with his proposed dam site, when he and State Engineer Elwood Mead had first studied it in 1897. Guernsey and Mead were convinced that the site, beyond its capacity for storage of North Platte water for irrigation, had a great potential for the production of electric power, which was in its infancy then. As the years passed, Guernsey tried again and again to persuade private investors to construct the dam and electric power plant he envisioned. The expansion of iron ore mining, with its huge open pits and increasing need for electric power, at Hartville and Sunrise, added to Guernsey's determination to see his project built.

Finally, in 1909, his opportunity to promote his project with people, who could bring it to fruition, came. The United States Senate Committee on Irrigation and Reclamation came west on a fact-finding junket. Guernsey met the committee's train at Mitchell, Nebraska, to persuade them to make a detour to Guernsey, Sunrise and Hartville to see the mines and examine his site for the dam. The committee chairman refused, but Guernsey intrigued with the train's engineer to divert the congressional train. The committee members were very angry with Guernsey when they learned where they were, but after viewing the mammoth open pit mine and examining his site for the dam, they became enthusiastic for the project. The committee members were instrumental in securing congressional authorization for the project after they returned to Washington. Fittingly, the project was named for Charles Guernsey, who had labored so long for it.

Construction was begun on Guernsey Dam during the summer of 1925, and was completed two years later. The reservoir was designed to have a total storage capacity of 74,264 acre-feet of water, and the power plant contained two 3,000 kilowatt generators. Other than the production of electric power, the major purposes of the Guernsey Project were to give better control of storage water released from Pathfinder for use in Wyoming and Nebraska, and to impound the excess flow of tributaries of the North Platte entering the river below Pathfinder. Since it was built, the power producing capacity of Guernsey has been substantially enlarged, and the storage capacity, because of silting, has steadily decreased. More recently, the development of Guernsey State Park has made Guernsey an important recreational center and tourist attraction in east-central Wyoming, and throughout the years, Charles Guernsey's dream has been important to the welfare of Platte County.

It was thirty years before the next development on the North Platte River in Platte County took place. Before it occurred, Seminoe, Kartes and Alcova dams, reservoirs and power plants had been built on the Platte by the Bureau of Reclamation; the entire Platte River Basin had endured ten years of drouth, the worst in the basin's "history; and, contesting rights to the use of North Platte water, Wyoming, Nebraska and Colorado had engaged in litigation before the Supreme Court of the United States from 1935 to 1945. After years of agitation for the Glendo Project by Wyoming and study by the Bureau of Reclamation, the project was authorized by congress on December 22, 1944, but construction was not possible then because of other considerations.

World War II effectively stopped the large appropriations by Congress needed for the construction of major reclamation projects, like Glendo. The 1945 decree issued by the U. S. Supreme Court for the North Platte River case prohibited any construction on the river without a change in the decree by the court, and the consent of the three states. Nebraska vehemently opposed the construction of Glendo and its delegation to congress took up the fight against Glendo and made it a political issue.

By 1951, however, Wyoming was very concerned about conditions on the North Platte. The drought cycle had ended with the coming of the 1940s, and each year the state saw more and more water in the North Platte drainage flow out of the state. Consequently in 1951, the state entered into negotiations with Nebraska and Colorado, which resulted in an agreement, approved by the Supreme Court. The agreement assured the construction of Glendo and stipulated benefits that all three states would receive from Glendo. The benefits included new and supplemental irrigation water, storage of spring runoff water, and increased electric power in the basin.

Construction of the Glendo Project began in 1955, and it was completed three years later. The project included a 2,100 feet long earthen dam, a storage reservoir with a capacity of 798,440 acre-feet, and a 24,000 kilowatt capacity power plant. During the 1960s, Glendo State Park was developed by the state and since then has become a popular recreational area, used by both state residents and tourists. Though the water stored in Glendo Reservoir is not used in Platte County, the county has benefited in other ways from Glendo.

The final development in Platte County, using the waters of the rivers that pass through the county, was the Laramie River Station of the Missouri Basin Power Project, built on the Laramie River, east of Wheatland. Construction of the power plant began in 1974, with the first coal fired unit, cooled by the waters of the Laramie, finished and producing electric power July 1, 1980. The second power unit was completed two years later, and like all of the earlier projects, dependent upon the rivers, the project provided economic benefits to the county.

Conclusion

Still served by its 1918 courthouse and jail, modernized and enlarged during the passing years, Platte County, economically, continues to be an agricultural county. As indicated, electric power production, managing and controlling the rivers that flow through the county, recreation and tourism, and the State National Guard Training Center located at Guernsey all contribute to the county's welfare, and regardless of the economic activity of its individual citizens, all county citizens are served effectively by Platte County government.