If only the walls could talk: The history of the Jenney Stockade Part II

By Bri Brasher 
with Leonard Cash
NLJ Reporter 
 
After the Jenney Stockade was moved and reconstructed behind the Weston County Library, the structure served several purposes in the Newcastle community. Cash uncovered additional information on the restoration printed in the News Letter Journal on April 12, 1928: “Among the curios which will be exhibited in the building when it has been restored are the andirons, taken from the fireplace, and which were fashioned from wagon tires by the muleshoers of the Twenty-third Infantry. Another article of more than passing interest is the first shotgun to be brought to the Hills. In addition to these, will be rifles, guns, pistols, arrow heads, Indian baskets and clothing and Western curios of every description.” Cash said he is not certain where the contents originally displayed in the Jenney Stockade went after the display was dismantled. 
Dating back even further, Cash added a story printed in the News Letter Journal on July 14, 1927 that explained why the Jenney Stockade was moved to town. The paper reported that when the days of the stage coach passed, the stockade was used as a dwelling house. It was the home of J.C. Spencer and his family for many years at the LAK ranch until he sold the ranch and moved away. At the time of the Jenney Stockade’s relocation, the ranch belonged to C.E. Ferguson, and it was used as a home. The News Letter Journal wrote that the (Twentieth Century) club fought to “see that the building was erected in its original form and to be used as a Memorial for housing relics of the old time west, there being many very fine specimens among the old timers in this part of the country.” The same article ended with the following statement: “The county commissioners are heartily in sympathy with the move and have given the site north of the library for the building to be erected on.” According to Cash, the Jenney Stockade was moved to make room for a new home at the LAK. 
In January 1929, the restoration of the Jenney Stockade was in the planning stages. According to the News Letter Journal, Mrs. Baird of California donated $50 to the committee in charge of the restoration, and the library club donated another $15. The restoration planned to be completed by spring, and the article called for any other pledges from the community so the project’s committee could plan its budget accordingly. 
May 12, 1932, is the next date noted in Cash’s records, referencing the stockade’s historical marker. According to D.A.R. notes of the time, “motion made by Mrs. Babbage, seconded by Mrs. Durkee, the marker for the Jenny Stockade be ordered. Mr. Coyle kindly accompanied the ladies to the LAK to locate for them some of the locations of the stockade as remembered by him in 1876. It was decided to let Mr. Coyle and Mr. Meek of Upton decide on the most suitable location for the marker.” Cash said the marker still stands on U.S. Highway 16 in a little pullout near the LAK ranch. However, Cash noted that the Jenney Stockade actually stood where the ranch houses are now. 
Cash’s records then skip to 1940, when the stockade building itself was dedicated as a historical landmark. An article printed on March 28, 1949, mentioned that the Jenney Stockade would be  dedicated by the governor and Wyoming historical landmark commission. The full article on the dedication was printed in the News Letter Journal on April 18, 1940, and is titled “To Place Monument of Site of Famous Jenney Stockade.” The article includes an excerpt from John C. Thompson’s column, ‘In Old Wyoming,’ printed in the Cheyenne Tribune:
“Sixty-five years ago—in April of the year 1875—feminine hearts went pit-a-pat when a handsome blond stranger, with a leonine mane, luxuriant eyebrows, dropping mustache, appeared on the streets of crude little Cheyenne. The ladies heard that Prof. Walter P. Jenney had been commissioned by the government of the United States to make an expedition into the Indian country north of the Platte and there determine whether reports of the Black Hills were lousy with gold were, or were not, dependable. The professor, they were informed, was an eminent geologist, and they had visualized him in their mind’s eye – as doubtless have the most of those who since have read concerning him – as a crusty, cranky old scientist with neglected whiskers and a total indifference concerning whether there was egg on his vest and no creases in his pants. They weren’t prepared, therefore, for the ‘Prof’ as he was in flesh and blood. He was around 30 years old – a nifty dresser, and one of the handsomest men that ever set foot in Cheyenne.”
Cash provided more information on Dr. Walter Proctor Jenney, based on his research on findagrave.com. He said Jenney was a man of many talents, working as a U.S. geologist, writer, mineralogist and leader of the Jenney-Newton Expedition. The expedition was an effort to confirm or refute George A. Custer’s reported discovery of gold. Jenney’s verification caused an influx in miners and settlers to the Black Hills. Cash added that Jenney was born in 1849 in Massachusetts, married Mary Patience Hopperton at the age of 42 and died in 1921 in Maryland. 
His influence on the Black Hills and the Jenney Stockade live on. The article printed in the News Letter Journal in April 1875 also said that the first permanent camp of the Jenney party in Weston County was to be marked with a monument the same year by the cooperative enterprise of the people of Newcastle and the Wyoming Historical Landmarks Commission. 
Cash clarified that the marker that sat with the Jenney Stockade behind the library and now sits at the Anna Miller Museum is a leftover marker of the tributaries of the Cheyenne river. The markers around the original site are separate dedications.  
Next, on June 29, 1950, in an article titled “Women Agree to Staff New Tourist Information Booth,” the News Letter Journal reported that women’s organizations around Weston County enthusiastically agreed to staff the tourist information center to be located in the Jenney Stockade behind the library. The building was being readied for the change with painted signs, as well as folders and stickers with information on Newcastle. The article noted that a supply of Wyoming literature was to be available as folders were being prepared, and 12 organizations were responsible for staffing the center one week of the 12 that made up the 1950 tourist season. Cash recalls using the Jenny Stockade as a meeting place for the local Boy Scouts when he was a kid around this time as well.  
A few years later, the Jenney Stockade transitioned yet again to house the local Chamber of Commerce. On March 26, 1953, it was announced that the chamber office was to be located in the Jenney Stockade, which would be remodeled inside. Work had started on the cement floor – Cash explained there was no floor in the stockade before it became the chamber’s headquarters, and a wood floor is in the stockade now at the Anna Miller Museum. The roof was reshingled and wall board put on the walls in 1953, all of which has since been taken off to put the building back to its original state. The Jenney Stockade was used as the Chamber of Commerce behind the library for many years
The summer of 1969 brought yet another recognition to the Jenney Stockade. Milt Pimpell was the manager of the chamber at the time when the stockade was being considered for the National Register of Historical Sites. 
Next, on Aug. 5, 1982, a dedication of the Jenney Stockade immediately followed the Weston County Fair Parade. The News Letter Journal published that Wyoming Secretary of State Thyra Thomson was to be the guest speaker. Thomson’s appearance was all the more special because her husband, Keith Thomson, lived on Beaver Creek. Cash said Keith Thomson’s grandparents were among the earliest settlers in the area. The next reports on the Jenney Stockade cover its second relocation 
An October 1982 article written by Penny Bonnar in the Wyoming Horizons publication titled “Tales of robberies, murders, pillage and plunder” explained the relocation to the Anna Miller Museum. The article opened with, “The Jenney Stockade cabin no longer sits on the Weston County Library lawn in Newcastle. Its ghosts have relocated with the cabin to the Anna Miller Museum complex on Highway 16. The small but imposing piece of Wyoming and Black Hills history has been preserved for the second time, largely through the efforts of the community that treasures its heritage.”
Other interesting snippets of the article are as follows:
“The oldest standing building in the Black Hills, the stockade was built in 1875 by members of the Jenney Expedition. The expedition set out from Ft. Laramie May 25, 1875 under direction of geologist Walter P. Jenney and Henry Newton and escorted by 400 soldiers under the command of Colonel Richard Irving Dodge. 
“… Ownership of the cabin was transferred to the Weston County Chapter of the Wyoming State Historical Society in 1980. The society made plans to move the cabin once again because logs were deteriorating from constant moisture produced by library lawn sprinklers. The move became urgent this year when plans were made to expand and remodel the library.”
Stay tuned for the last of the Jenney Stockade’s timeline in next week’s issue.