Train mural, Casper Wyoming

This train mural is on the Platte River Parkway that runs through downtown Casper along a rails to trails easement.   The building is the 321 Art Works building, formerly an industrial warehouse.

Blog Mirror: Historic Casper Theaters For Sale With Legal Stipulation They Can't Be Theaters Again

 From the Cowboy State Daily:

Historic Casper Theaters For Sale With Legal Stipulation They Can't Be Theaters Again

As the owners they can, of course, do whatever they wish, including putting stipulations in the sale.  It's sad, however.

Assuming that anyone buys them with that stipulation present.

Painted Bricks: Tumble Inn, Powder River, Wyoming.

We recently ran this story. 

Painted Bricks: Tumble Inn, Powder River, Wyoming.:   As this institution is in the news, and as I knew I'd taken these photographs, I looked to see if I had posted them. Of course, I had ...

News now comes that the new owner will have the sign restored, but will not place it back up in Powder River, the reason being that in the process he discovered many broken bottles near the sign.

Well, that's no surprise.

Here's the thing, however. Out of context, it's just a big weird old sign.   

Tumble Inn, Powder River, Wyoming.

 

As this institution is in the news, and as I knew I'd taken these photographs, I looked to see if I had posted them.

Of course, I had not.

The Tumble Inn was a famous eatery and watering hole in the small town of Powder River for decades.  As odd as it seems now, particularly as it would have been practically impossible to leave the establishment without having had at least a couple of beers, it was very popular for travelers and people in Casper, who'd drive the nearly 30 miles for dinner and then drive back.

Open well into the unincorporated town's decline, in its final years the restaurant, which had rattlesnake and Rocky Mountain Oysters on the menu, closed under new ownership and in its final stage was an alcohol-free strip club.   Apparently it recent sold and the new owner has taken down its famous sign in an effort to preserve it.

On that sign, I don't know how old it is, but from the appearances, it dates from the 40s or 50s.

The recent news article:

Powder River’s Iconic Tumble Inn Neon Cowboy Hasn’t Blown Over, It’s Being Restored

Lex Anteinternet: The 2023 Wyoming Legislative Session. Mining Mural Appropriation

Lex Anteinternet: The 2023 Wyoming Legislative Session. End of the f...: HB 264 would appropriate funds to memorialize the mining industry:

HOUSE BILL NO. HB0264

Mining mural.

Sponsored by: Representative(s) Conrad, Berger, Larson, JT and Sommers

A BILL

for

AN ACT relating to the legislature; authorizing the painting of a mural in the state capitol house chamber; providing an appropriation; providing requirements; creating a selection committee; and providing for an effective date.

Be It Enacted by the Legislature of the State of Wyoming:

Section 1.  

(a)  Five hundred twenty thousand dollars ($520,000.00) is appropriated from the general fund to the legislative service office. These funds shall be used only for the purpose of the planning, design and painting of a mural in the house chamber at the Wyoming state capitol building. The mural shall depict the history of mining in Wyoming and shall match historically and artistically with the Allen True murals that are currently in the house chamber.

(b)  The legislative service office, with assistance from the Wyoming arts council, shall issue a request for qualifications to commission an artist or artists to paint the mural specified in subsection (a) of this section.

(c)  A selection committee consisting of the five (5) members of the management council who belong to the house of representatives and three (3) other non-legislative members as determined by the speaker of the house, with assistance from the legislative service office, shall select an artist or artists to paint the mural using criteria established by the selection committee. Members of the selection committee who are not members of the legislature shall receive the same per diem and mileage as members of the legislature traveling to and from meetings or while in actual attendance of meetings of the selection committee and during the performance of their duties relative thereto. The state building commission shall approve of the process to affix the mural required under subsection (a) of this section to the house chamber wall, pursuant to W.S. 9-5-106(e), before any alteration is made to the house chamber under this section.

(d)  The funds appropriated in subsection (a) of this section shall not be transferred or expended for any purpose other than for the planning, design and painting of the mural required by subsection (a) of this section. Notwithstanding W.S. 9-2-1008, 9-2-1012(e), 9-4-207(a) or any other provision of law, the funds appropriated in subsection (a) of this section shall not lapse or revert until the mural required by subsection (a) of this section is complete.

Section 2.  This act is effective July 1, 2023.

Bricktown, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

These are all bad photographs from my hotel window of the Bricktown district of Oklahoma City.  I didn't have time to tour it, so this is what I have

I've been to Oklahoma City quite a few times over the years, but several of my visits predate the period at which I packed around an iPhone for photographs.  I'm sure the first time I was there I didn't take any photos at all, and I probably didn't have a cell phone.

Bricktown is the name that's been attached to the old downtown section of the city.  Oklahoma City has done a really nice job of making this old section of what's now a fairly old Midwestern city pretty hip and cool.

Colorado Baseball. Coors Field, Denver Colorado.

 

Lower Downtown Denver

 A building baring a variety of old signs in Lower Downtown Denver

Grain/Hay elevator, Lower Downtown Denver.

 A grain and elevator in Lower Downtown Denver, clearly no longer serving that purpose.

Denver in 1859 Mural, Denver Colorado.

 A mural on a building in the Denver Heights district of Denver.

Denver Heights Sign

I'm not sure what this building was, but to the extent that I can read the sign, suitcases and traveling bags are advertised.

The Big Chief Bottling Company, Denver Colorado.

Big Chief was a soda brand that was bottled across the United States including Colorado, where this building housed that enterprise.

Women of Wyoming, Casper Wyoming

The spectacular, but hard to photograph, mural Women of Wyoming in downtown Casper.  It really must be seen, in part because It's hard to photograph it when it's not in shadow.

 

Prairie Woman, Casper Wyoming.

 A mural on one of the newer downtown building in Casper, entitled Prairie Woman.

James Reeb Mural, Casper Wyoming

This is the memorial to civil rights activist James Reeb in Casper Wyoming.  I should have taken this photograph when this mural was new, as its faded considerably since first painted, and it isn't even very old.

Given that, I'm taking the unusual step of posting it in full size here as well.

James Reeb was a Presbyterian minister in Casper when first ordained.  He lost is life when murdered by segregationist in Selma, Alabama, where he was attending civil rights demonstrations, in 1965.  The mural depicts scenes from his life, as well as honoring the Civil Rights movement.

Slavic Apothecary, Sheridan Wyoming.

 

Some sort of Slavic apothecary in Sheridan, Wyoming.  As I'm not otherwise familiar with it, and as the green in such shops tends to indicate products I'd just as soon avoid, that's all I know.

It is, I'd note, very unusual in this part of the country to see anything in a Slavic language outside of Rock Springs, which traditionally had an Eastern European population.  Sheridan, on the other hand, has traditionally had a much more English population and is a ranching center.

Today In Wyoming's History: Casper's Historical Preservation Commission Meets Tonight, May 13, at Black Tooth Brewery.

Today In Wyoming's History: Casper's Historical Preservation Commission Meets ...:  The event is its first "meet and greet".  It starts at 5:00 p.m.

Southern Rockies Nature Blog: Amber and Her Arborglyphs

Southern Rockies Nature Blog: Amber and Her Arborglyphs: M. and I were poking around in the Wet Mountains two days ago, at the site of a now-vanished picnic ground that I think dated from the 1920s...

Historic Sidewalk Maps, Denver Colorado.

The City of Denver has municipal offices right downtown, and in front of their municipal office building, they have a series of maps in the sidewalk, depicting Denver in prior eras.   These are photos of a few of them.

Baseball mural, 1998 All Star Game. Denver Colorado.

This mural is directly across from Coors field in downtown Denver.  The All Star Game was played at Coors Field in 2021, but this mural celebrates the 1998 game.

Street corner, Denver Colorado.

 

West of Surrender, Denver Colorado.

 

From a bar and grill, West of Surrender, in downtown Denver.

The Aerodrome: Medicine Bow Aiport (Site 32 SL-O (Salt Lake-Omaha) Intermediate Field Historic District).

The Aerodrome: Medicine Bow Aiport (Site 32 SL-O (Salt Lake-Omaha...: 

Medicine Bow Aiport (Site 32 SL-O (Salt Lake-Omaha) Intermediate Field Historic District).

Teletype hut and beacon tower.

I didn't know that Medicine Bow had an airfield at all until MKTH photographed it.  I've never been to it myself.

But it does, as these photos show.

As these photos show, not only is a strip still there, but one of the big concrete arrows (which I've never seen in person myself either) is on the strip, indicating that it was once part of the Transcontinental Air Mail system.  It must have been part of a connection between Cheyenne and points further west, but what the next western airfield was, I don't know.  My guess would be Rawlins, but that would be just a guess.  According to the submitting material for its placement on the National Register of Historic Places, it was an emergency field on "Route T".  This was "Site 32" on the route.

Today the strip is owned by the Town of Medicine Bow, and is little used, apparently.  It's still there, however, including the noted remnants of the near century old teletype hut and its beacon tower.

Lex Anteinternet: "Denver has outgrown us". El Chapultepec closes.

Lex Anteinternet: "Denver has outgrown us". El Chapultepec closes.: .

"Denver has outgrown us". El Chapultepec closes.

I really wondered how it was hanging on.

I'd never been in there, and I apparently never got a picture of it from the outside for our Painted Bricks blog.  It wasn't very photogenetic anyway.  But when the Mexican restaurant turned jazz club found itself no longer in the seedy Five Points district it had survived in for years, but in the new gentrified up and coming Coors Field area, without moving an inch, it just didn't look quite right.  It's old school "the nightlife ain't the right life, but it's my life" type of genuine atmosphere didn't squire with the hipsterization of where it was.

COVID 19 didn't help things, but the owners were quick to note that it wasn't solely responsible for brining its 87 year existence to an end.

Jazz musicians and blues musicians, they shouldn’t have to time their sets around baseball innings and when the crowds are going to get out and be wild. They should be able to play their music, and the crowd should just be there to enjoy them, The employees and our musicians, our customers, we shouldn’t have to be worried about our safety when it’s time to leave.

Denver’s outgrown us.

So stated one of the owners.

I love Coors Field and baseball, about the only thing about Denver I actually like. But there isn't anything I like about Denver without some degree of reservation.  Like everything else, there really isn't a permanent "old Denver" that was in some state of perfection.  The area that El Chapultepec was in prior to Coors Field was a scary dump which was a bit scary to drive through in the middle of the day.  It wasn't until Coors Field overhauled everything downtown that it changed.

But it was a change that to an end the feeling that the jazz club belonged there.  A jazz club could probably exist somewhere else in Denver, but it wouldn't be genuine in the same fashion that El Chapultepec was.

But that's true of a lot of Denver now.

Indeed, that's true of a lot of the US, but Denver is somehow sort of unique in this way.  The town that my father was born in, four years before El Chapultepec opened, was still around in many ways into the 1980s when I first started to go there on my own. Bits of that, indeed, still are.  But when it pulled out of the oil recession of the 1990s it really started off in another direction even as the oil companies came back.  Prior to that point it was sort of an overgrown cow town in some real ways. Then it started to become a hipster epicenter, followed soon thereafter by a new weedy culture based on pharmacological stupefaction. That's what basically characterizes the town town today.  And the change hasn't overall been a good one.

Not that those who hung out at the jazz club were models of universal clean living.  It was a bar. But the set in seediness in the old Five Points district was of a different sort than the new widespread seediness that characterizes a lot of Denver.  In between was sort of a high point when it looked like the city would overcome its decay without creating a new one, based on Coors Field and what it brought to the downtown.  It did partially succeed but weed took a lot of it away.

Wyoming Territorial Seal, Big Hollow Food Coop, Laramie Wyoming.

This is a nice rendition of the Territorial Seal of Wyoming on the Big Hollow Food Coop building in Laramie.  We've featured this building before, but we missed the seal in our prior photographs.  Indeed, one of our remote roving contributors to this blog just picked this one up.

Wyoming has a complicated history in regard to seals, and this one was actually the state's third.  This is additionally slightly complicated by the fact that some versions have the year 1868 at the top, rather than 1869.  1869 is, I believe, correct.

The seal depicts a mountain scene with a railroad running in the foreground in the top field.  In the bottom left it depicts a plow, shovel and shepherd's crook, symbolic of the state's industries.  The bottom right field depicts a raised arm with a drawn sabre.  The Latin inscription reads Cedant Arma Togae, which means "let arms yield to civil authority", which was the territorial motto.

This seal was an attractive one and in some ways it was a better looking seal than the one the state ultimately adopted.  The state actually went through an absurd process early in its history in attempting to adopt an official state seal that lead, at one time, the Federal mint simply assigning one for the purpose of large currency printing, which featured state seals at the time.  Part of the absurdity involved the design, which was describe in the original state statute rather than depicted, which lead to the sitting Governor hiring his own artist as he didn't like the one art of the one that had been in front of the legislature.  That caused a scandal as the one that he picked featured a topless woman, which had not been a feature of the legislative design, and ultimately it was corrected to the current design.

All in all, looking at the original one, I think they could have stuck with it.

Nolan Chevrolet, Casper Wyoming

Nolan Chevrolet was an early Chevrolet dealership in Casper, Wyoming, probably the town's first.  It opened in this building, which was built for it, in 1924.  The company originally operated in this location on South David Street until it outgrew it, becoming Schulte Chevrolet in 1965 and then being bought out by the Schellerbargers in 1966.

In 1969 the Chevrolet dealership moved out of this downtown location into a new facility on East Yellowstone, where it is today.  While this facility was still in use when I was a kid, I don't ever recall it being a Chevrolet dealership and until this recent work was done on it, I didn't know that it had been.

In 1973 this building and a neighboring one became Plains Furniture, which I do recall. A childhood friend of mine's father worked there.  It was completely redone at that time.  Plains closed some time ago and these buildings have changed hands again and are part of a restoration process which is restoring the look of the block to its 1920s appearance.  The area here, which was once a display yard for the dealership, had been enclosed by the Plains remodeling but has been re exposed, along with the Nolan sign and a Schellabarger sign as well.

Art or vandalism?

We don't like to put up photos of graffiti here as it's not in the same category as what this blog is dedicated to depict.  Here, we make a bit of an exception.

The scenes depicted above are of the backs of two local office buildings.  Both are actively occupied. I.e., there's going businesses in them. They aren't abandoned buildings.

So what, you may ask.

Well, graffiti has been a feature on the back of these buildings for a long time, but it's grown markedly worse in recent years.  The amount of graffiti has increased as the building on the right has been oddly popularized in the local press. And when I say the building, I mean the alley.  For reasons that aren't apparent to me, the fire escape  has become locally celebrated as some sort of a wonder.  That's drawn people to trespass on it and as that's occurred, graffiti has likewise increased as well.  So have high school graduation pictures with the staircase as a backdrop and even wedding photos.

And now a local theater company.

I'm not a big fan of local theater, which speaks poorly of me. When I was very young my parents introduced me to the theater at the local community college which was a real treat for all of us grade school kids.  I can dimly recall seeing You're A Good Man Charlie Brown and The Man From Lamancha at the college theater.  While in high school I was never in theater but about that time I was introduced to the text of plays as literature, and I really like some of those.  I've seen more college production in latter days, including when I was in college, including, by my recollection, The Dark Of the Moon, which I don't particularly care for, and A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, which I do.  When our kids were little, we took them to a college play about the Wright Brothers.

Local theater, however, is another deal entirely and you have to admire the people who are willing to do it.  It doesn't get hte same viewership as college theater, for one thing.  And the quality fo the volunteers is bound to be uneven.

Anyhow, there's a couple local theater companies around here and one of them decided to put on a version of a famous Greek play.  I've read the text of the play as a college student, which is a long time ago, but I can dimly recall the outline of it.  In this production of the play, apparently, there's an element that emphasizes the need to put on a play in spite of hte presence of an Athenian plague, which apparently might be a real background story to the original play.  I.e., it was staged during a plague, perhaps, during which the author felt it critical to reopen the Athenian theaters in spite of hte risks.

There's a lot of things that are interesting about that, including that if that's correct, ancient Greeks, while they may not have had the germ theory of disease, grasped that hanging around in groups spread it.  Athens apparently closed up shop to try to combat it, something that might seem familiar to the readers here.  If my understanding of the views at the time are correct, there were also those who dissented from that view. . . which is also interesting in context.

In the current context, it's generally those who are on the left to the center left, politically, who have been for keeping things shut down and a tight quarantine, while on the right to the center right the view is the opposite.  In the middle, where most folks are, the views are nuanced.  On the edges, they aren't.

Anyhow, most theater people are on the hard left.  It's the hard left that generally would really have a really tight quarantine.  Probably most people in local theater on are the left somewhere.

Which makes a play all about protesting quarantines oddly ironic.

Anyhow, that's not why we have posted this here.  Apparently determining to stage this out in the open for a certain sort of street cred feel to it, the producers have added to the graffitti.

This may make the town about hte only town around which graffitti making reference to ancient Greece, but it's still graffitti.  Of course, there was a lot of it before.

I'm not quite sure what to think.

The play on opening day.  I happened to be in the building at the time and so I snapped this photo.  There wasn't a large crowd, but then it was opening day during a time of pandemic too.

One thing maybe the theater company and the audience might think is how gracious the building occupants are.  It's impossible not to notice a thing like this and in a lot of places the reaction would have been hugely negative.  No reaction at all isn't permission, but it is pretty gracious.

Vita Sana Olive Oil Company, Casper Wyoming

These are paintings on the side of the Vita Sana Olive Oil Company in Casper, Wyoming.  The speciality food store sells more than olive oil, but its focus originated with that, as one of these paintings depicts.

 

Antelope mural, Laramie Wyoming

 

Somehow I missed this mural in downtown Laramie when I was otherwise photographing the excellent set of murals there.  This one depicts Wyoming scenes very skillfully, along with a state map, on the side of a building.

It also contains a sketch of the mythical Wyoming jackalope and a quote from D. L. Moody.  The quote depicted with the jackalope is; “Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at something that doesn't really matter.”

Elk Mountain Trading Company. Elk Mountain, Wyoming.

This is the Elk Mountain Trading Company building in the tiny town of Elk Mountain, Wyoming.  Built in 1932, the building and business name is presently used by a restaurant.

Graffiti Records Mural, Rock Springs Wyoming

This is a mural on the side of Graffiti Records in Rocks Springs, Wyoming.A fox and a jack rabbit adorn the buidling.

CPA Office Murals, Rock Springs Wyoming.

The office of a CPA in Rock Springs, Wyoming.  Most of the themes on this side of the building have to do with the rights of women in society.

The other side of this building also has murals, but I have yet to photograph them.

Former Grocery Store, Rocks Springs, Wyoming.

Rock Springs Wyoming has a fairly extensive old downtown dating from the early 20th Century.  Not all of the buildings are in good shape by any means, but they do provide an example of what an early 20th Century downtown was like.  Very few newer buildings have been built in Rock Spring's old business district and therefore, in that sense, its well preserved.

One of the buildings located there is this former grocery store which features a fairly typical, and well preserved, painted wall advertising its wares.

Holscher's Hub: Pentax: Built like a tank

Holscher's Hub: Pentax: Built like a tank: So states a professional photography blog naming the Pentax K1 full frame one of the three bests cameras of 2019. And they are. The revi...

Grant Street Grocery, Casper Wyoming

Grant Street Grocery in Casper Wyoming is the only surviving small neighborhood grocery store in the town and even advertises the same.

Opened in 1921, the store was converted into a specialty grocery store and deli some years ago, and features meats and cheeses, as well as many other items, that are unlikely to appear on the counters of regular grocery stores.  It's featured here for its simple sign, as well as being a remnant of something that was once very common, a neighborhood store.

University Building, Denver Colorado.

What's depicted here is the smokestack of the University Building in Denver Colorado.

The University Building was built in 1910 as the A. C. Foster Building and was renamed in 1921 when it was donated to Denver University.  It contains many art deco embellishments.

A more recent embellishment to the building, which is now an apartment building, has been the painting of its smokestack as a No. 2 pencil, thereby playing on its name.

La Boheme, Denver Colorado.

This is a photograph of the mural on the side of La Boheme in Denver, which euphemistically calls itself a "gentleman's cabaret". By that it means, no doubt, something on the order of "strip club".

La Boheme, which means the female Bohemian in French, is located in what was once a pretty rough downtown Denver neighborhood which went through gentrification after Coors Field was constructed. The transformation in this area was remarkable and its still ongoing, Colorado's legalization of marijuana had reintroduced a feeling of decay into downtown once again.  At any rate, in spite of many old buildings being bought and converted into new upscale uses, and in spite of being located across the street from the downtown Embassy Suites, a nice Denver business hotel, La Boheme keeps on keeping on.

I can't recall this mural being there until just recently, so it's presumably a new addition.  Perhaps keeping in mind where it is, it's not shockingly skanky and is actually fairly well done.  It's placement resulted in a minor debate with my travel companions on whether it depicts Marilyn Monroe, Jenny McCarthy, or none of the above.  The first two choices would in some ways emphasize the tragic nature of the establishments purpose.  Anyhow, it's fairly well done except that the figures left hand, which isn't really visible in this photo, is quite meaty, making for an odd appearance.

Postscript

The image is in fact that of Marilyn Monroe.  I ran across it by accident elsewhere on the net.

Paleontologist Mural, Laramie Wyoming