Black Cat Books, Greybull Wyoming

This doesnt' really fit our normal topic category here, but interesting advertisement theme nonetheless.

Firehouse Brewing Company, Rapid City, South Dakota

Firehouse Brew Pub in Rapid City, South Dakota, converted from a downtown fire station.

Downtown Rapid City

This Iphone photo was originally intended to show the odd seen of a dance class at work in the second story of the building across the street, but that taxed the ability of the Iphone camera.  Therefore, what it shows instead is part of the well preserved downtown of Rapid City.

WPA Kemmerer Mural

281532_208344659212857_817731_n.jpg (JPEG Image, 720 × 568 pixels)

Lex Anteinternet: What people read

Lex Anteinternet: What people read: We've had this blog up for a couple of years now, with the first posts being in 2009 . There were none in 2010, but we really took off in p...

Main Street, Lewistown Montana

These photographs weren't actually taken with publication here in mind, but after looking at it I noticed the the painted sign on the left side of the frames.

Lewistown is a beautiful small city, the county seat of its county, in northern Montana.  Surrounded by mountains, it is extraordinarily well preserved for a northern Plains/Rocky Mountain town.  A large number of early 20th Century buildings are intact, well preserved, and in use.

Feed store, Lewistown Montana

There's actually more than one painted brick building in this photograph of trackside Lewistown Montana, but the photo was taken very early in the morning, and none of the signs are really legible.

Holscher's Hub: Calendar Query

Holscher's Hub: Calendar Query: Are any of the denizens here finding any neat agriculture, nature, equine or history related calendars in the offering for 2013? As per usu...

The Halls of Natrona County High School

When I attended NCHS, back in the misty dawn of time, there were no interior paintings in the building.  Now, to my surprise, there are.  When I first learned of this, I expressed surprise about it, and in turn my wife, who attended NCHS in years more recently than I, was surprised that I was surprised.  Indeed, she insisted that I must have missed them.  As it turns out, I did not miss them at all, the murals commenced in 1983, after I had left.

Anyhow, while this is somewhat outside the usual scope of this blog, they are interesting.

 Nicely executed mural of Civil War or Frontier Era solders near the JrROTC room at NCHS.  MKTH photo.

 Example of hall mural.  MKTH photo.

 NCHS hall mural which features the logo of the band House of Pain.  It must have been the year that the rap tune "Jump" came out  that this one was painted.

 One done by my brother in law, while he was there.

Another change.  Navy recruiters in the hall.  I don't recall recruiters coming on campus back when I was there.

Historic Downtown Casper

historictour.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Gamble Store, Casper Wyoming

This is the painted sign for the Gamble Store, in downtown Casper Wyoming.  This building is now occupied by other establishments.

Gambles was a department store. As the sign indicates, the stores offered a wide range of products, although as I don't ever recall this business operating here, and therefore don't know, I have to wonder how this range of products was offered in a relatively small retail space.  Anyhow, the Minnesota based company expanded from an initial store in that state in the late 1920s to being the 15th largest retailer in the United States by the end of the 1970s.  In the 1980s, it was so large that it attempted to take over Brooks Brothers.

Since that time, the company's fortunes declined.  A descendant company still exists, but it does not operate under the Gambles name as a storefront name.

Furniture Store, Casper Wyoming

Remnants of a furniture store sign, now on the side of the Kirkwood Oil and Gas building, in downtown Casper.

McEwen and Central Feed, Lewistown Montana

Two buildings on the main street of Lewistown Montana.  I have no Idea what McEwen is.

Tripeny Building, Casper Wyoming

The building on the right, with the "Sanford's" sign, is the Tripeny Building. The Sanford's sign is covering the Tripeny name on the masonry, but it is there.  The tile work at the entry way, however, remains.

The Tripeny Building was built as an pharmacy, but the store was much more than that.  Still in operation when I was young, the store had a substantial jewelry counter and an old fashion soda fountain.  It was a neat place.  I can distinctly recall the juke box and a very old arcade game the store had in which the player attempted to shoot down bombers passing over a city.

After the death of the proprietor the store ceased operations and then became Giansanti's Pizzeria, a restaurant well remembered by Casperites of a certain age.  When Giansanti's ultimately closed, the location became the home of the Casper expression of Anthony's, a restaurant that had started in Jackson Wyoming (it can be seen, getting busted up, in the not so great movie Any Which Way But Loose).  Again, for Casperites, Anthony's was the Casper, not the Jackson, location, event  though they were both excellent.  The restaurant was always very popular and had a huge lunch crowd, but as with all restaurants, it too eventually closed.  Since that time, the building has been occupied by Sanford's, a regional restaurant chain that originated in Gillette with a restaurant called Humphrey's there, and which has expanded throughout the state.

Sanford's uses a style which involves featuring a lot of stuff in and outside of the restaurant in a manner that's clearly intended to recall the 1970s television show Sandford & Son.  For those who need a bit more of a clue, the menu titles provide it.  At this location it was involved in a bit of a spat with the city of Casper over an effort to convert its liquor license to a specialized cheaper variety intended only for restaurants, but the city gave it a bit of a bad time about that, resulting in the "$1 Pint" program, which must have been popular, as it continues on.  In spite of the big restaurant sign and the pint banner, observers can still pick up the details of the building if they look closely.

I'm not sure of this buildings age but I believe that it dates to the 1920s

Updated: Painted Bricks: Kistler Tent & Awning.

Recently updatated:  Painted Bricks: Kistler Tent & Awning..