Lightning Flat in History

[Shakesthecoffecan]

Jim from Findingbrokeback.com has come across two photos of what Lightning Flat looked like back in the day.

The town, he learned, was settled after the first World War and had a newspaper in the 1920s.

Here is the Newspaper office and the Dance Hall:

[tampatalon]

Cool pics!

TampaTalon^">

[Brown Eyes]

That's so interesting!  Thanks Tru!

[Gabreya]

Interesting stuff. Thanks!

[Kd5000]

I wonder what it was like in 1963?  Was it already a ghost town?  Thanks for the photos.  L.F. is sure off the beaten trail.

[Gabreya]

I wonder what it was like in 1963?  Was it already a ghost town?  Thanks for the photos.  L.F. is sure off the beaten trail.

Probably so.
Of course, it was probably at least one hundred people living there but, hey, I could be wrong.

[Marge_Innavera]

At work awhile back, I found a fairly recent Rand McNally atlas that had Lighting Flat on the Wyoming map.  I believe it was the 2006 edition, and Lightning Flat disappeared from their maps after that.  Here it is below, showing LF's geographical position in relation to both Sheridan and Devil's Tower.

(For the full-sized image, hit "quote" and delete the "width=" part)

[Front-Ranger]

Interesting. Today, there is not even a foundation stone to be found at the location of downtown Lightning Flat! Only a bunch of fields, the occasional fence and, to the northeast, a lone forlorn house with a patch of irises gone wild.

[Marge_Innavera]

Yeah, doesn't that seem odd?  But it isn't unusual with small towns and homesteads.  We like to think that once we build something it's permanent but it doesn't seem to take long for man-made structures to vanish once no one is using them.

There's an interesting book out now called The World Without Us that shows what would happen to major cities if the people disappeared.  And it isn't just theoretical -- cities have been found hidden in rain forests and jungles in both South America and Asia that were major centers of population at one time.

[Penthesilea]

Jim from Findingbrokeback.com has come across two photos of what Lightning Flat looked like back in the day.

The town, he learned, was settled after the first World War and had a newspaper in the 1920s.

Here is the Newspaper office and the Dance Hall:

Three and a half years later, I came upon the same site. And then upon this thread.

The site is Wyoming Tales and Trails - Featuring photographs and history of old Wyoming


The Lightning Flat section begins just less than half the page down. It shows the two historical photos Shakesthecoffeecan posted and has also two recent photos, credited findingbrokeback.
Brokeback Mountain is mentioned on the site.

I liked especially the newspaper excerpt from 1922.
What they sold for "news" is, well, strange.
It's rather an early precursor of facebook than a real newspaper.

"Raymond Kraft spent a part of the day at the Alex Scott home Sunday.
Mrs. Ira Cadwell had the end of one of her fingers torn off by a food chopper last Saturday."

Really? They reported who visited who and distributed the info to everybody in the paper?

Just imagine to read this in the paper: Ennis Del Mar had a foreign visitor who stayed the whole weekend. The license plates on the man's truck indicated he was from Texas.


Makes me understand Ennis' fears even more. I mean, we're now almost a century further in time than 1922, but Ennis and Jack in the sixties were only 40 years apart from a local newspaper reporting stuff like the above (the real quotes, not my made up one). I doubt such reports were still common in the sixties, but neighbours in small communities probably still knew too many details like who visited, who married, and so on. Maybe even do today.

Poor Ennis. The lines between well justified fears and paranoia are understandably blurred.


The website is interesting beyond LF, BTW.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Makes me understand Ennis' fears even more. I mean, we're now almost a century further in time than 1922, but Ennis and Jack in the sixties were only 40 years apart from a local newspaper reporting stuff like the above (the real quotes, not my made up one). I doubt such reports were still common in the sixties, but neighbours in small communities probably still knew too many details like who visited, who married, and so on. Maybe even do today.

I suspect to the contrary that they were, in small-town newspapers in the U.S., anyway. My mother (d. 1995) for many years subscribed to the newspaper that was published in her own small home town. I used to skim through it when it arrived in the mail. I sort of lost track of the paper after I moved to Philadelphia (1986), but certainly well on through the 1970s at least, the West Schuylkill Herald, as the paper was called, had a "social column" that was all "news" of this nature--who visited whom, what former residents were back from out of state, all that sort of stuff. And of course even today, even the mighty New York Times still publishes wedding announcements. 

[Shakesthecoffecan]

My local paper used to carry those. I can go back in the microfilm and see what my parents and their siblings were up to in the 1930s, primary visiting and socializing. They used to break it down by each little community and the black people had their own "colored news" section.

[Penthesilea]

I suspect to the contrary that they were, in small-town newspapers in the U.S., anyway. My mother (d. 1995) for many years subscribed to the newspaper that was published in her own small home town. I used to skim through it when it arrived in the mail. I sort of lost track of the paper after I moved to Philadelphia (1986), but certainly well on through the 1970s at least, the West Schuylkill Herald, as the paper was called, had a "social column" that was all "news" of this nature--who visited whom, what former residents were back from out of state, all that sort of stuff. And of course even today, even the mighty New York Times still publishes wedding announcements. 

Thank you for correcting me, Jeff. I never would have thought.
Even worse then, thinking of Ennis.


Though the wedding (and death) announcements are different, IMO. People have to turn to the paper and order (and pay for) those announcements. It's not like the newspaper itself reports about the social stuff (except you're considered a celebrity).

[Penthesilea]

My local paper used to carry those. I can go back in the microfilm and see what my parents and their siblings were up to in the 1930s, primary visiting and socializing. They used to break it down by each little community and the black people had their own "colored news" section.

You can stalk your own parents. (I think we don't have a fitting smiley for this).

The whole concept is totally foreign to me. I don't think "news" like that were ever part of papers over here. Though I might be wrong a second time today. Hm, might be worth finding out...

[KittyKat]

I grew up in a small community in south Texas in the late 1970s - 1980s. We used to have a weekly newspaper called "The Progress" that I think is still in existence. It had a column called "Simmons City Happenings" written by the town busybody. It would say things like, "Glenn and Becky visited so & so on Saturday night" or "after the football game on Friday night Susan and Bill went to the Dairy Queen. Susan just had sweet tea but Bill had a burger and fries".  "Henry's car broke down at the bridge and he had to walk home".

Seriously. I'm not making this up. Poor Ennis would have had an anxiety attack.

[Monika]

Here is a link to a site where you can read scanned issues of the Lightning Flat Flash. It´s quite fun to see what it looked like. It didn´t survive long. 1922 - 1926.

http://pluto.state.wy.us/awweb/main.jsp?flag=collection&un=public&ps=public&smd=1&cl=library2_lib&qs=Lightning+Flat+Flahs&qt=64&submit=Search+Newspapers&itype=advs&menu=on

[Monika]

This piece of "news" reminded me of another story, albeit this one has a happy ending

24 Year Romance

A romance of twenty four years duration came to light
here the first of the week when
Joseph G. Kennedy, rancher of
the Rockypoint country, Wyoming,
arrived in Newcastle in
search of Miss Mable Brown of
Menominee, Michigan, his
sweetheart of twenty four
years ago.
It seems that almost a quarter
century ago this couple lived in the Michigan city and
here the friendship commenced
that has resulted in a marriage
solemnized by the Rev,
Father Brady at the Corpus
Christi church in Newcastle,
Wyoming, on Thursday morning, February 8th, 1923, at sixthirty
o'clock. P.H. McHugh
and Mrs. Mary Nolun, acted as
the witnesses.
This morning the happy
couple left for the groom´s
ranch at Rockypoint where
they will take up their future
residence.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Come to think of it, now I remember seeing a small newspaper clipping, carefully preserved by my paternal grandmother, that noted that Grandma had perfect spelling that year in school.    That was actually considered newsworthy in a small Pennsylvania community.

I don't have the clipping with me here, but it sticks in my memory that it was for her year in the eighth grade--which would have been her last year in school, because she went to school in a one-room schoolhouse that only had eight grades. Grandma was born in 1911, so she probably started school about 1916, so she probably finished the eighth grade about 1924.

The newspaper clipping was tucked inside a small New Testament--which was given to my grandmother by her public school teacher as a reward for her perfect spelling. Imagine the uproar if a public school teacher tried to do something like that today.