Christmas in Wyoming 2022 - Episode 13


Listen to the episode here. You can also subscribe by searching for Wyoming My 307 wherever you listen to podcasts. NOTE - the first drop of this episode was a draft version (oops) so please give it another chance!

Happy Holidays!  I’ve been collecting stories and anecdotes about Christmas in Wyoming - these stories highlight the uniqueness of celebrating the holidays during our harsh winters. From Portugee Phillips’ Christmas Eve ride to secure reinforcements for Fort Fetterman, to ordinary citizens and their determination to celebrate despite winter’s hardships, Christmas in Wyoming is not for the faint of heart!  

The stories shared (some of which were abridged) are read from the resources listed below: 

  1. John “Portugee” Phillips used to regale visitors with tales from his famous 236 mile ride from Fort Phil Kearny to Fort Laramie during the Christmas of 1866. I shared this reading on the episode. (I said Fort Fetterman in the episode, oops!)
  2. A Christmas in the Mountains, as told by Agnes Baxter of Evanston, WY is one of the passages in Wyoming Folklore, a collection of the Federal Writers’ Project of the great depression. 
  3. One Man Against the Mountain: The Story of a Quest to Survive Winter Alone in the Big Horns, by Mary Jo Mosher tells the story of Danny’s Longwell’s braving the winter alone up in the mountains and the life lessons he drew from that experience. 
  4. The cedar berry home remedy was shared from A Taste of Heritage, Crow Indian Recipes & Herbal Medicines by Alma Hogan Snell. 
  5. Glimpses of Greybull’s Past, by Tom Davis is a wonderful compilation of newspaper articles, and it includes a story about Christmas 1908, when the whole town of Greybull WY got one Christmas tree. 
  6. The Christmas “trucks” anecdote, was shared in Getting the Bull by the Tail, a compilation of the best of Bruce M Kennedy’s over 30 year column in the Greybull Standard.



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