Cody

Like Yellowstone, our family visited Cody back in 1972.  Anna Lee also wrote a travel article about Cody in 2012 even though we had to postpone the trip there due to the arrival of Bennett.  We came to see what we missed the first time and what Anna Lee had “recommended.”

Our drive from Yellowstone to Cody was along the Shoshone River with its towering walls.

The first day started with a four-star destination and slipped to negative one by the end of the day.  But we start with our morning visit to Powell, WY, site of the Heart Mountain WWII Japanese American Confinement Site.  This is an outstanding museum that tells the history of one of America’s most undemocratic actions.

Right at the entry are the words of the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution, an amendment the Supreme Court ignored in 1944.  It is worth note that, subsequently, the Supreme Court declared that its decision was erroneous and should be ignored in future cases.

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, American citizens were rounded up for the crime of being Japanese.  They were taken from their homes, deprived of their property and imprisoned in barren, remote areas in the US.

The introductory film “All We Could Carry” documents the story of internees.  Taken from homes on the West Coast, primarily California, Japanese Americans were forced into concentration camps.  Ironically, Japanese Americans in Hawaii did not face this abhorrent treatment. 

Internees lived in barracks divided into small rooms with blankets for walls.

 There was no privacy, even for the most personal of daily activities.  They used the few possessions they could bring to make the rooms into “homes.”

The museum uses first person accounts from those who spent their youth in the camps.  Wisely, the administrators of the camp saw that bored children would get into trouble.  There were sports activities as well as schools taught by teachers whose credentials limited them to teaching in the camp.  There were organized activities such as Boy and Girl Scout troops that let the children participate in activities their peers also did and to meet local children.  One Boy Scout campout led to a life-long friendship between Norman Maneta (Secretary of Commerce under Clinton and Secretary of Transportation under Bush) and Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson.

A display honors those internees who served in WWII, some of whom belatedly received the Medal of Honor.

Towering over the camp is the guard tower.

Outside the museum, is a trail marking the location of the administration buildings.  Nearby are remains of the hospital complex and the tall red chimney that was part of the boiler system.

 The internee nurses earned $16 a month while the white nurses $130.  It took a protest by the white nurses to get the hospital to provide the needed supplies and a healthy environment.

Returning to Cody, we  toured the Buffalo Bill Dam Visitors Center.  Completed in 1909, this concrete and granite dam was then the tallest dam in the world and served as a model for Hoover Dam.

Built to provide irrigation water from the Shoshone River to local ranch land, it later added hydroelectric power. 

The video about the construction of the dam showed the extreme difficulty of carving through granite with hand tools under extreme weather conditions.  All three construction companies failed in the economics of dam construction.  The one who did complete it had its workers pouring cement in sub zero temperatures; they could not work in the summer due to flooding.   

Our walk through Old Trail Town let us see actual buildings from the late 1800s to early 1900s including the Hole in the Wall cabin used by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. 

Other buildings include the cabin of Curley, Custer’s Crow scout and a buffalo hunter’s cabin

Coffin school

and the Shell store.

Gravesites nearby told tales of dangerous folks in a dangerous land.

Our day ended at the Irma Hotel with its cherry wood bar.  The hotel was named in honor of Buffalo Bill Cody’s youngest daughter.  The bar was a gift from Queen Victoria following the Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show tour in London.

 After we took photos of the bar, we went onto the street to watch the nightly gunfight.  This was the negative mentioned at the top of this blog.   It was a waste of time.  Fortunately the rest of the day had been excellent.