- The Tie Hack industry was an industry that supported the rail roads and there were rail roads all over the country.

And wherever there was a rail road, there was a source of ties.

(somber music) In the early 1800's, the United States, still in its infancy, relied on the development of the railway system as a key player in its industrial revolution and later, its expansion west.

Railways became the lifeblood of the nation - they determined what industries would succeed, where population centers would emerge, and drove the country's economy.

Wyoming became a microcosm of that model - with the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, Wyoming was now an important industrial hub.

With a way to transport them, agricultural and mineral resources in Wyoming became viable industries and people came.

A rail system is very interesting, it sits on a bed of crushed rock.

The ties are laid in that crushed rock and then the rails are set upon the ties and rails are spiked to the ties.

And so that entire system floated on the crushed rock bed.

(somber music) Starting around 1915, the area around Dubois began to be harvested for ties.

The men who cut these ties were known as tie hacks.

Many of the men that came were from Scandinavia.

The company that started the Tie Hack industry eventually became known as the Wyoming Tie and Timber company, and their headquarters were in Riverton, Wyoming, but the work was all up here in the mountains west of Dubois and both the Absaroka and Wind River Range.

These rail road ties went to the Chicago and Burlington and Quincy Rail Road and eventually, the Chicago and North Western Rail Roads, 'cause those are the rail roads that were up here in this country.

(somber music) A rail road tie had to be, for the most part, eight feet long and eight inches square, and the earlier requirements for that tie was that it be flat on two sides.

The reason for that was flat so that it stayed on the ground and the other opposite side was so that the rails could be put on it.

(upbeat music) When a tree was felled, they would pick an appropriate sized tree and then they would go to work with a double bit ax.

So he would drop the tree, he would go along the tree with his ax and trim off all of the branches, that means in the length to see how many ties he was gonna get out of that tree.

He would stay with that double bit ax and the two horizontal sides, he would score with the double bit ax.

(upbeat music) Then he would come along with the broad ax and that's an ax that has a broad head and it's flat on one side and the he would go along with that broad ax and trim all of that slash that he just done with the double bit ax.

He would then measure out the eight foot lengths and with a cross cut saw, he would cut that log into the eight foot lengths.

Then he'd roll the log over and trim the branches off of the bottom of the log and at that point, the log was ready to become a tie.

He would mark that one end of that tie so that he knew that it was his tie.

A tie hack might cut as many as 25 or 30 ties in a day and then he would get paid depending on what the price was at the time.

It could range anywhere from 15 cents to 25 cents a tie.

(upbeat music) So from 1915 till the late 20's, most of the ties were cut by hand.

Then the diesel type portable saw mills became part of the cutting and shaping process.

The logs then would be dragged out of the forest, along the river banks and then that's where the logs were decked.

And decking was stacking those logs with the butts of the logs facing the river and those stacks could be 15 or 20 feet high, side by side, all the way along the river bank where they would gather those ties.

(dramatic music) For a few years, during World War 2, an unexpected group added to the ranks of the tie hacks About 1944 till 1946, there was a German prisoner of war camp up on Little Warm Springs Creek and that camp was staffed with about 140 prisoners of war.

By most accounts, these soldiers took to the life of the timber industry, laboring in the mountains, and in many ways endearing themselves to the other tie hacks and to Dubois.

Many came back after the war, and some even stayed and lived in and around Dubois.

(somber music) The ties didn't go in the river until the river crested, which was about the middle of June.

That means that the high water has ceased and so there's a low spot in the middle of the river, that's when the ties were all pushed into the water.

(dramatic music) Everybody participated on the river drive.

When you look at the lay of the land of the Wind River up here, it's full of rocks, it's twisty, it's fast and it was a real chore and log jams were not an uncommon thing on the river drives.

OSHA would have had a nightmare during those days.

The tie jams had to be freed up by finding the key logs and undoing them with a long pole with a point on the end of it, called it a pike pole, and these guys would literally get out on the log jams and start trying to get those logs undone.

These guys had to be incredibly strong and have a great understanding and be about 95% daredevil to keep those logs flowing down the river.

It would take them, probably into and around the 4th of July to finally clean up all of the logs off the river bank and get them all down to Riverton to where they were sorted and then processed.

(dramatic music) (somber music) Dubois celebrates its tie drive legacy in many ways.

They hold Swedish smorgasbords to commemorate the big meal that the tie hacks had after the tie drive was over.

They also use the very same dutch ovens that fed the tie camps for various celebrations.

Riverton has remnants of the tie drive influence as well.

The treatment and sorting plant is no longer there, but a rails to trails project allows pedestrians to visit the site.

Also, in the Riverton Cemetery is a plot dedicated to the tie hacks who were so important to the area.

tie hacks who were so important to the area.

32 tie hacks lay in this plot with a hand hewn tie memorial to their contributions It was almost a 24/7 365 job.

Because it was that critical to the rail roads, especially during the war years.

It wasn't an easy day, but it was a day that all of them liked, or they wouldn't have been here.

They came for the thrill of the mountains, for the openness of the mountains, the freedom that the mountains offer and a place to earn a living and raise a family.

(somber music) - We are sitting in the room where the first government in the world gave women the right to vote.

Nowhere else in the world.

This is it.

It's not only important to Wyoming and not only important to the country.

This is important to the world.

This very spot where we're sitting right now and when I walked in and I saw the grandeur and how well it is done, it gives you goose bumps.

I mean this is a very, very historic place and now when it is redone in this way, at this level, it's appropriate to show it off to the world.

(instrumental music) - My name is Tony Ross and I am Chairman of Capitol Oversight Committee, which is in charge of the complete renovation of the Capitol Complex, including most importantly, the Capitol.

It started a long time ago.

Probably we started saving for this, in 2003.

And then along the way, we made some appropriations to it.

- First, is just the nuts and bolts of why we needed to move forward on this.

This building had been renovated, but not full renovated.

But there was things that were left undone that needed to be done immediately, in my mind.

The fire suppression system, there was non-existent.

It was not ADA compliant.

So I think those were two immediate needs, but of course, it's much more than that, I mean this is the most important building, in my mind, in Wyoming.

And it represents, not just government, but it represents what the state of Wyoming is all about.

And it needed refreshed and it needed redone.

(classical music) - One of the great aspects that has really been emphasized by the group that has worked the Oversight Committee and others that have had a lot of care about this is, the emphasis of the history and the continuity and the way to move forward.

- Of the project, the Capitol is 116 million dollars.

There is so many other components to the project.

You've got Herschler, at 57 million dollars and the CUP, the Central Utility Plant, at 19 million dollars.

The Connector at 19 million dollars and all of your exterior stuff, at eight million.

And then you also got furniture, fixtures and equipment and you've got temporary leasing.

That's all in the project.

So when you really, if you boil it down, it's not 300 million dollars just for this Capitol.

It's for the whole Capitol Complex and moving people around the city, finding places where we can house agencies, while we're doing this.

So that was a big deal.

There was challenges along the way, because you have to figure out, where you gonna put everybody?

- Government offices were housed all over Cheyenne and there was a discontinuity, over the last several years.

- At times you were wondering, "What's the solution?"

And we were very lucky that we were able to kind of fall into the Herschler.

Turned out to be a rather miraculous what we've done.

Central Utility Plant, was out of date.

The boilers were way over their extended life and there was no efficiencies to them.

It's now state of the art and it supplies cooling and heating for five different buildings.

The Herschler Building and the Connector.

The Capitol, the Supreme Court, the Barrett Building and the Hathaway Building.

All tied in to the Central Utility Plant.

- I think the initial thought about revamping the Capitol, came about at a time when the state was pretty flush.

We had a lot of energy resources coming in and luckily, we had the fortitude to continue through and do the construction that was necessary, to bring this building to fruition.

- I was a primary sponsor of the legislation.

It was Senate file 103.

When we started the project, we had saved 100 million dollars.

We had the money to go forward and then of course, the economy takes in the shorts.

- Ultimately, I had to make my own decision, whether this was something that needed to be done.

The timing always is tough, because we were coming off some good record revenues and then we had money, but we also recognized, being so mineral dependent, that that could fluctuate and in fact, it did fluctuate.

So I had resolved in my mind that there was a definite need.

I knew it was gonna be tough.

I didn't quite know how tough it was gonna be, but I thought, "You know, if I have a chance to do this, "while I'm governor, it'll be something that, "when done, I will be proud of, "that I had a role in, that made this building "even more magnificent."

- We had a lot of good people helping us.

Everybody, professional and with the best of intentions.

But it was such a massive project and what we lacked was the great expertise of who has done this?

Who has managed a project of this magnitude?

Not just square footage, but an actual capitol.

And that was MOCA.

- They changed the paradigm of the whole project, because they had done other capitols and so they represented us, as just laymen legislators, to make sure that we got this project done right.

- They brought it all together.

And they showed us where we had made mistakes.

They showed us a direction forward, how to manage the budget and so, we wouldn't be here today, without MOCA.

- It's important that we retain the heritage and the significance of this building for our children and our grand children.

- We recognize, this is a chance to do this, it won't come around perhaps, for another 50 or 100 years.

- We hired an artisan from New York, Evergreen, who's done historic renovations of capitols.

And they were able to uncover the original colors and the ceilings and what they would look like.

Everything was down to detail.

And now, it all seems to blend.

The skylights make sense.

The colors are so much more grand.

The gold leaf, that was covered up, is back.

And when we start hanging our art, it'll even be more beautiful.

- Well I think as we open this building that certainly a couple of us have felt strongly that the people of Wyoming need to understand what the investment truly was.

Just as I said before we began this project, more than just the rocks and the paintings, this is about the people.

This reconstruction is really now more than just the edifice.

It's the superstructure that brings us to modern standards with internet and wireless connections, with better plumbing.

With ADA accessible bathrooms and all of that.

- When you look at the fundamentals, first of just the life safety issues that needed to be rectified.

But secondly, was public access to their government.

And literally, they did not, the public did not have meaningful access to committee rooms, to committee meetings.

- And then I think the practical usage of this building is going to be greatly enhanced, because the best government, is government that is open to the people and allows for their full participation.

And the way it was designed, before this renovation, it didn't allow for that full participation, because some of the meeting rooms were so small and people couldn't get in and ask the questions and hear the debate.

- We've rethought government, to make sure it's more accessible, it's more open and more transparent.

And this building really represents all of that.

- There is something magical about this building, when you come to work in this building, you have a depth of sort of the history and the expectations of the people of Wyoming, that Wyoming will move forward.

I hope they have a great sense of pride in their state house, in their capitol and also a great appreciation for the utilization that allows for full participation by the citizens in their government.

The myth and the legend was blending with the truth and the reality.

And so he he became a horse that almost everyone in Wyoming could recognize as having this fiery spirit never give up.

Always do what your job was and do it really well.

And and for him, his job was bucking and he did that very well, and he actually represented the state really well.

The horse became synonymous with Wyoming.

Steamboat was born on the Foss Ranch over near Wheatland area, was on the Swann Land and Cattle Company.

He was born in 1896 and they went in to break him in 1899.

So is a three year old and was meant to be a cow pony and a cowboy named Jimmy.

Danks was the first cowboy that really tried to break him, and that was the intent to break this horse and use him on the ranch .

He talks about the first time that he tried to ride him.

He rode him in the corral three or four times, and then he said, OK, we're going to basically "let's open the gate.

Let's see what happens. "

And they open the gate and the horse just took off and was bucking all over the place and he didn't get bucked off.

He actually did ride him, got him back to the corral And he said to his friend Sloan, Yeah, I thought you were going to haze for me.

And he says, Well, I was too busy watching the horse buck.

So, I mean, that's really when he first made his reputation.

He was very strong, he was a percheron stud and a Mexican hot blooded mare So he was kind of wiry but really strong.

And Jimmy Danks said he liked to buck that was his business.

That's what he wanted to do.

And so they would do these wagers.

I mean, that's what cowboys did, you know, in the evenings or something like, Hey, we got to rank win for you.

And so let's see who can ride him.

So they did a lot of that, and they kind of found out fairly quickly that this was this was a horse that was going to be a bucking horse.

The guys at Swann Land and Cattl Company gave up on breaking Steamboat for ranch life.

And John Koble bought Steamboat to use in his bucking horse string.

Steamboat's career in the rodeo arena began The first time that the horse was used in the rodeo arena was at the Denver Festival of Mountain and Plain in 1901, which is a very big festival, kind of the equivalent of Cheyenne Frontier Day, which had had just started a few years earlier.

Kind of the same timeframe that the horse was born is when Cheyenne Frontier Days was born, so it kind of grew up together.

So John Coble would bring his bucking string there.

And then ultimately, Charles B Irwin obtained Steamboat and used him in the rodeo arena there in Cheyenne as well So the early rodeos in this 1900s era.

They didn't ride for eight seconds.

They rode until the horse stopped bucking and Steamboat would buck and buck and buck for a minute or so, and then he'd stop and catch his breath and then he'd buck again.

And he had when they had castrated him back on the ranch, they had broken nose bone and they took it out and they cut it out.

A guy cut it out, and it caused him to whistle.

Kind of when he would breathe hard, he would whistle.

And that's how he got the name.

Steamboat and Jimmy Danks is the one that named him Steamboat for that whistling sound.

Steamboat and his whistle took the riders by storm.

He could be ridden, but it took a special cowboy, making a special ride to stay on the now infamous bucking Bronco And the cowboys who rode him the ones that were.

We have documented that that spoke about the ride always said he just came down like a pile driver, and it was because he was so strong.

And then when he would work, he would buck really hard and he would twist and he wouldn't stop.

Steamboat continued to make his mark growing in popularity just as a Cheyenne Frontier Day developed into a premiere event.

At the time - This was early 1900s.

There was no World Championship saddle bronc riding competition.

So if you won Cheyenne, you were considered the world's champion.

That's just the way that it worked back in that time frame.

They wouldn't use Steamboat, though, in the preliminary rounds because he was such a good bucking horse that most the guys couldn't ride him and they would just be disqualified, even though they were very good cowboys.

So they usually kept Steamboat until the Championship round, and then the cowboy that drew him, if he could ride him, would almost always win.

Steamboat's legend grew.

Newspapers love to give him nicknames, including "Twister" and "King of the Hurricane Deck "Outlaw Horse" and "The Horse that Couldn't be Rode" In his career Steamboat threw many of the best riders in the world and those that were lucky enough to ride him had bragging rights few could claim.

Steamboat was traveling almost constantly in the last few years of his life with the Irwin Brothers Wild West Show.

And in 1914, he was out in Utah in Salt Lake City at a show and got with.

He was in another pen of horses and they got into some wire and he got cut pretty badly with some wire.

They put him on the train and brought him back to Cheyenn By the time he got to Cheyenne.

He had blood poisoning and they knew they weren't goin to be able to save the horse.

And so they took him - The story goes that they took him down to the Cheyenne Frontier Days Arena, and they used a gun that had belonged to Tom Horn, but that at that time belonged to Charlie Irwin, and they use that gun to put him down.

And then the story goes, if you like legend, that he was buried at the Old Frontier Park.

But most people would say that he was taken out to the Cheyenne City dump, and that's where his body was disposed of.

But he was such a famous horse, and everyone knew him that there was actually an obituary for him in the Cheyenne Leader So I mean, you don't always see an obituary about a horse, but this horse was so famous in Wyoming that and around the West, but certainly in Wyoming that they actually wrote a very nice obituary about him.

And they talked a lot about his history and where he'd been born and what he had done and his achievements.

Just like you'd write about an important person, they wrote about this horse.

The myths and legend of the famous outlaw horse only intensified after his death and persists to this day.

Many of the stories revolve around the famous bucking horse imagery so strongly associated with Wyoming.

During World War I, the Wyoming National Guard went to France and Germany, and there was a man from Sheridan - George Ostrom, and he took his horse named Red Wing with him.

And while he was over in France, he painted an image of the horse bucking on the side of some of their equipment over there.

So that really was the first symbol of a bucking horse that represented Wyoming.

The first image of Steamboat as an icon or a symbol of Wyoming is a bucking horse happened in 1921, when the University of Wyoming developed their Wyoming cowboy logo, and they use the BC Buffum photo that had been taken in 1903 of Guy Holt for that image.

And then when you jump forward a couple of decades, you come in 1936 and Lester C Hunt was the Secretary of State in Wyoming.

He wanted to use that Wyoming bucking horse as a logo and put it on our license plate.

And he had Allen True, who was an artist in Denver.

Draw an image that then was put on the Wyoming license plate in 1936.

And there's all these stories about cowboys who are the cowboy on the on the license plate or the horse.

that's on the license plate.

And Allen True himself, said that he didn't us any particular cowboy.

When you go around the state of Wyoming, you will hear different areas of the state.

People living in different areas have their preference or their idea of who's who is the rider on the license plate.

You know, you go to Pinedale, it might be Guy Holt You go to Laramie.

They'll say it's Jake Meiring, you'll go to Lander area and they'll say it's Stub Farlo But I believe the artist who did it, and I believe Lester Hunt said it wasn't any particular rider in mind.

I think it's a composite of all the great cowboys in the state of Wyoming.

Steamboat had a fiery spirit and every cowboy that rode him, said he was the hardest bucker that they were ever on, some of them said they couldn't eat for days after they rode him, and that kind of just goes to the whole spirit of a Wyoming cowboy.

He didn't quit.

They they do their job the best way that they possibly can.

They have his independent spirit.

And so I think that's kind of the symbolism of of Steamboa and why we all kind of revere that horse.

There's really no evidence the Steamboat was the horse on the license plate, either.

But by association through the years, that's what we all believe.

He just has become our horse.

People all around the country, all around the world really recognize that cowboy image.

So it is the most recognized icon of, I think, any state because it's so simple.

And yet it speaks to what we are that we we really we call ourselves the cowboy state.