Platte County Wyoming

Platte County

Wheatland

Chugwater

Guernsey

Glendo

S.E. Wyoming

Ft. Laramie

History
In 1911, Platte County was created from a portion of Laramie County, which joins it to the south. Platte County takes its name from the North Platte River.

Wheatland, the county seat and largest town in Platte County, provides easy access to scenic and recreational areas. Set amid farms and ranches that are irrigated by the largest privately owned irrigation system in the Country, the town has a nine-hole public golf course, city parks with a free camping area, a swimming pool and tennis courts, Laramie Peak Museum, library, bowling alley, movie theater and fairgrounds. Before a modern water system was developed in Wheatland, water was brought to each home by ditches which ran down each street from Canal No. 2 to irrigate lawns and gardens and to furnish water for homes. Wheatland still has many remains of the In-town irrigation system that made all the old trees in Wheatland.   Wheatland was incorporated in 1905, and because the county seat of Platte County in 1911.

The town of Chugwater is one of the older settlements in Platte County. The first building at this site was erected in the fall of 1867 after the government road had been opened through this section. The town takes its name from Chugwater Creek, on which it is situated.

The history of Chugwater
How the town got its name
    The most accepted version of how Chugwater got its name runs like this:    Before any white men came into the area, a Mandan chief was disabled during a tribal buffalo hunt. His son, Ahwiprie, also known as "The Dreamer," had to take charge of the hunt. He came up with a plan of driving the buffalo over the nearby cliffs. When the buffalo hit, they made a chug like sound, either from the impact or the bursting of their stomachs. So, the place where the buffalo were stampeded was called "the place" or "water at the place where the buffalo chug" because of the stream close by.

Guernsey, the second largest settlement in Platte County, occupies a site on the old Oregon Trail, but the town was not established until the Chicago Burlington & Quincy Railroad reached that area in 1902. The town was founded by the Lincoln Land Company, which filed incorporation papers in May 1880 and was named in Honor of Charles A. Guernsey legislator, rancher, and promoter.

How Guernsey got its name
In the 1840's the area that modern day Guernsey is located on was known as the ìemigrantís wash tubî. This name was given because this is where all of the pioneers came to bathe and do their wash.

In 1880 a New Yorker named Charles A. Guernsey moved west and bought some land in what was then Laramie County. It is on this land that the present day Guernsey is found. C. A. Guernsey was a legislator, a rancher and also promoted mining. C.A. Guernsey is also the author of the book ìWyoming Cowboy Daysî. Guernsey was also instrumental in the building of the Guernsey Dam.

The town of Guernsey lies directly on the old Oregon Trail. The town was incorporated in 1902 when the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroads reached the area. At the time of its incorporation, Guernsey was well known as the ìHub of the Oregon Trailî. At a special election in 1911, to decide the county seat of what is now Platte County, Guernsey lost to its only competitor, Wheatland.

Glendo began as one of the first of five telegraph stations on the Overland Stage Express at the Horseshoe Stage Station. The town was established at its present location when the railroad came through.

In the early eighteen-eighties rich deposits of copper were found in the Hartville Uplift, a range of Black Hills adjacent to Guernsey. The town for the mining district was located near Indian Springs and given the name Hartville, in honor of Colonel Verling K. Hart, commandant of Fort Laramie, who had located the Keystone Copper Claim high on the mountain overlooking the spring.

More History of SouthEast Wyoming

Before the History of the Indian tribes, archeology has shown a culture of people originating from central europe with features and bone structure. There are a lot of findings in the area.

Present-day Wyoming was populated by a number of Plains Indian tribes, including the Crow, Eastern Shoshone, Cheyenne, Northern Arapaho, and Sioux. Francés Francois and Louis La Verendrye were the first Europeans to explore the region in 1743, but the State's remoteness discouraged settlement.

During the early 19th Century, the first Europeans to move into the area were hunters, trappers and traders who became known as "Mountain Men." With the precipitous decline of the fur trade, the area's few settlers turned to ranching and supplying wagon trains crossing the area on the Oregon Trail, and later the Bozeman and Overland trails, which cut through the South Pass on their way west. Forts Laramie and Bridger became important stops on the pioneer trail to the West Coast. Wyoming was aquired as part of the Louisiana Purchace of 1803.

Settlement was facilitated by the 1868 construction of the Union Pacific Railroad. With the advent of large-scale ranching, the activities of rustlers and vigilante groups reached a climax in the 1892 cattle war of Johnson County, which was followed by similar conflicts between cattle and sheep ranchers. (See History of Tom Horn, etc)  Oil was discovered in the early 1880's, and production began in ernest in 1890.

In the 1920's, Wyoming's Teapot Dome oil deposits became the center of a corruption scandal involving the administration of President Warren G. Harding. The 1970's energy crisis and resultant increase in domestic oil prices and demand caused a dramatic boom in Wyoming's economy, especially coal mining. By the mid-1980s, however, the fall in prices and a lack of systemic diversity led to a sharp economic decline.

Famous Wyomingites: - Jim Bridger, Buffalo Bill Cody, Nellie Tayloe Ross, Curt Gowdy: Red Cloud: (1822-1909), Oglala Sioux leader, led the resistance to a trail through Wyoming and Montana that was to be developed by the U.S. government.

Ester Hobart Morris: American suffragist who was instrumental in the passage of women's suffrage in Wyoming Territory (1869) and was the 1st woman justice of the peace in the U.S. Wyoming had the 1st woman Governor.  The first woman Senator and the 1st State to allow women to vote.