Hi, I’m Mike.
You only have one hometown, and not matter where you go and what you do, its gonna be
there waiting for you.
For our family its Gillette Wyoming.
We ranch south of town and although the town of Gillette has been through many ups and
downs over the last hundred years, just like the ranch, it still stands and today we look
at how Gillette and the ranch, managed, from cow town to coal town, to boom town on our
Wyoming life.
Welcome back to Our Wyoming Life, over the past few months we have dedicated one video
per month to looking at the history of the ranch.
How we came here, how those before us got here and now we get to look at how this area
has thrived over the years, and how living in a boom town area has affected ranching,
our ranches, and our family.
Thanks for coming back and joining us once again.
If you haven’t done so, please consider subscribing and helping us take you along
as we explore the ranch life and escape the ordinary.
This history videos that we have been doing really have started to mean a lot to me.
Not only do we get to share with you the history of the area that we live in, that we call
home and depend on but also we get to show you why its so important to us.
One thing that is hard to convey over video is the connection to the land that you feel
working out here.
Its not something that is easy to explain.
My father in law Gilbert loved this place, like no other but I’m not even sure he could
have explained why.
The purpose of these videos was to hopefully be able to show you why we choose to be here,
why we don’t just sell, pack up and leave, even if it was to go and do this same thing
somewhere else.
And through this series, I have learned more about this land, this area that we call home
and it ties me here even more, and I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity
to do that and to share it with you.
Gillette is a city located in Campbell county Wyoming.
The ranch we live on is only about 12 miles south of town, although when Gilbert was born
in 1929, it might as well been a hundred miles out of town.
Gilbert was born in this hospital in a town at the time boasted a population of a little
over 1000 people.
And it was over his lifetime that he saw Gillette grow, explode and implode.
His family had homesteaded about 10 miles north of Gillette, in an area that is now
surrounded by coal mines.
He attended a 1 room school house, where his mom taught, before heading into town for high
school where he graduated in 1947.
And although Gilbert was a cattleman at heart, it was long before that another resource began
its takeover of Campbell county.
Campbell county is smack dab on top of the powder river coal field, and area larger than
the state of Connecticut is one of the largest coal deposits in the world and as far back
as the early 20’s it was being mined.
WyoDak mine was the first in the area and originally supplied coal exclusively to gold
mining operations in the black hills of south Dakota.
It still operates today, now producing some of the cleanest, low sulfur coal in the world
for domestic energy generation.
As of today, it is the oldest, continually operated surface coal mine in the united states.
By the time that Gilbert was in his mid 20s, things were beginning to change in Campbell
county.
As coal production became more and more prevalent and desired.
But by the 1960s it was a by product of the coal that brought real change to Gillette
in the form of oil development.
The cities population doubled from 3500 to more than 7000 almost overnight as oil rushed
into the area and struck deals with local landowners and cattlemen alike to drill for
oil.
Money flowed into a city that only had 2 paved roads along with people, unfortunately, the
area wasn’t ready for it.
Booms are very much unexpected and the massive influx of workers into he area created a major
challenge for those in charge.
A town that was busting at the seams with a population of 3500 all of sudden had to
house thousands more.
Man camps were set up, trailer houses were moved in and most without any regard for safety
or regulations.
Soon Gillette became known as one of the roughest towns west of the Mississippi.
Crime went through the roof, costs of living skyrocketed and it was a time that many natives
started locking their doors and became worried about the future of Gillette.
I once talked to Gilbert about this time in Gillette’s history, the first big boom to
a town that was used to shipping out millions of metric tons of coal per year.
He told me that over that time, the area got a lot of bad press, and article in playboy
magazine in 1982 spotlighted the fact that Gillette sported a ratio of about 50 men to
every woman in town.
The incident where a 22 year old electrician hijacked at 47 ton caterpillar bulldozer and
ran amuck over a 20 block area, running over cars, telephone poles and eventually buildings.
But he also told me that Gillette thrived on change and for a boom town, that is certainly
the truth, but its also what stayed the same what was important.
Coal mining started here in 1924 with the wyodak mine.
But it was in the 70’s and 80s when it really began to thrive.
It was then that Gilberts families original homestead property was found to have coal
underneath it.
The coal mine bought the property from Gilbert, which allowed him to buy the ranch we live
on today, only about 25 miles away.
Of the top 10 coal mines in the world, Campbell county holds three of them.
Gillette now calls itself the Energy capital of the nation, after suppling almost 40 percent
of the energy in the form of coal over the past 30 years.
Coal has never been considered a boom industry here, its become part of the backbone of the
city and county and even through ups and downs, it still remains.
Coal brings families to our community, allows the infrastructure to be build to support
those families and forms a community that now 1 in 10 workers in Campbell county are
tied to.
But the booms still come, the latest in the form of coal bed methane.
This boom possibly affected cattle ranchers of the area more than any other, including
Gilberts new ranch.
The oil bust came in the 80’s, and a few companies began buying oil and gas leases
in the hopes of future play.
Everyone knew there was natural gas, methane under the ground in the coal seams permeating
Campbell county but know one knew how much.
Methane gas was formed in the coal below and a small hand full of oil and gas operations
were playing with the idea of safely removing the methane from the coal seams.
The American Oil and Gas company was the first to get it to payoff however when in the 90’s
they sold their gas fields, only a few miles from the ranch for a total of 40 Million dollars
and set off one of the biggest booms in Wyomings history.
Repurposed water well rigs tapped into the coal seams, removing water, separating the
natural gas from it presto.
Money in the making.
Big and small players rushed the area and at one time more than 100 different operators
were drilling in Northeast Wyoming.
Over the next ten years 24,000 methane wells were drilled.
But like most booms this one burned off quickly too.
And although many ranchers whose land titles traced back to Homestead Acts and other federal
land laws, owned the surface and oil and gas estates, but not the coal, they did earn substantial
royalties from the production of coal-bed methane.
Including Gilbert on our ranch.
During that time, some cattlemen in our area, reduced herd sizes, seeing a new income from
methane and rethought their entire operations, but soon the boom was over and it was back
to business, and back to ranching.
Methane companies abandoned over 3000 well sites when the supply went dry.
Some ranchers saw the coal bed methane boom as a hinderance to their land, others saw
it as a godsend, saving cash strapped ranches.
It was before our time here, but all I can say is that all the booms, the busts, coal
and Cowtown got us to where we are today.
And thankful to be able to share our story and our life.
Everyones history has segments that they are not proud of, but its those that make us who
we are today, from one person, to an entire community.
Theres a poem that we dug up in the museum, written by one of our
neighbors
Thanks for coming along today and I invite you once again to subscribe and be sure to
hit the bell button so you don’t miss a thing.
Even though the temperature is dropping rapidly, things are heating up and there is rarely
a dull moment on the ranch.
Join us this week as we continue with the project list, our livestream on Thursday night
and much much more on facebook and Instagram.
Of course I would like to thank the city of Gillette and the Rockpile museum for all their
help with researching this video and the pictures and video with in it.
If you would like to support projects just like this, you can do it on our patreon page,
the link is down below.
Until I see you again, have a great week and thanks for joining us in our Wyoming life.