Folks who love Wyoming really love the Red Desert, which
spans a huge area across south west-central part of the state.
One popular place
is the Tri-Territory Historic Site, where the space now known as Wyoming, is
shown to have been parts of three vast landowners: France’s Louisiana Purchase,
Britain’s Northwest Territory and Mexico.
And yet it is
highly possible there is a small spot in Wyoming that once was bordered by four
different territories, parts of which together became the future home of our
great state.
This spot is
somewhere in a corner of Sweetwater, Fremont, Natrona or Carbon County,
according to a map created by Velma Linford in her amazing history of Wyoming
in 1947 called Wyoming Frontier State.
This one amazing
spot touched countries and territories that were the Louisiana Purchase in
1803, Texas in 1845, Mexico in 1848, and Oregon in 1846.
All of these
places ultimately became parts of the United States. Then in 1890 (127 years
ago this year) the U. S. Congress created a big rectangle that became the state
of Wyoming.
First big
owner of much of these territories was Spain as a result of Columbus’s
“discovery” of North America in 1492.
Not much
happened for a long time except that whenever Indian tribes were exposed to
white men, they were nearly wiped out by diseases for which they had no natural
defenses.
Jesuit
Missionaries Marquette and Joliet, who were the first white men to discover the
huge drainage of the Mississippi River, claimed a vast area for France. At this
time, the southwest corner of future Wyoming was presumably controlled by Spain
and the northwest corner by England.
In 1803,
President Jefferson negotiated the Louisiana Purchase for $15 million from
Napoleon who was in the midst of a terrible war of attrition with Great
Britain. At that point, about two thirds of the future state of Wyoming became
part of the USA.
Jefferson, in
1804, sent Lewis and Clark to find out what he had purchased and they skirted
our area because they were following the Missouri River. One of the Corps of
Discovery’s members, John Colter, was one of the first white men to venture
into our future state.
Mexico
rebelled against Spain in 1821 and finally secured its own land in 1824. Mexico claimed land all the way to
present-day Idaho and owned about 10 percent of present-day Wyoming.
The Spaniards
had explored the Green River all the way up into Wyoming and reportedly claimed
all that drainage.
A man named
Moses Austin dreamed of an independent Texas nation. That job was later
finished by his son Stephen. By 1835,
there were 35,000 Americans in Texas and it was ripe for prying itself away
from Mexico.
Texas won independence
in 1836, despite all those deaths at the Alamo, but its boundaries were subject
to dispute. Its initial claim included a finger of land that reached all the
way into the heart of Wyoming.
The battle
call of “fifty-four forty or fight” was what finally rallied Americans to force
England to give up Oregon in 1846.
That was a
pivotal year because the USA also went to war with Mexico and ended up in 1848
with a vast swath of land from California to Colorado, which again included
that 10 percent chunk of future Wyoming. After the U. S. won that war, it paid
$15 million to Mexico as a way to prove itself a good neighbor and to prevent
future wars.
By 1848, some
42 years before becoming a state, the land that today encompasses all of
present-day Wyoming was firmly under the ownership of the United States. It
took four decades to establish the final property lines.
Not sure if
everyone agrees with Velma Linford’s map or her conclusions, but it might be
interesting for some enterprising person to go back into the files and try to
determine where this “four corners” area of Wyoming would be located.
Going by her
map, as much I want to believe part of it might be in Fremont County, it surely
could be right in the middle of Carbon County. There is already that
Tri-Territory marker in Sweetwater County recognizing three of the territories
but not mentioning the Texas claim.
So I tip my
hat to Ms. Linford, who later became state superintendent of schools.
Her book was
used as a textbook for years in Wyoming schools. Like so many wonderful history
books that have been published about Wyoming over the years, it is hard for me
to catch up with each one.
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