History & News

Buckboard was once home to a hotel

Details

Hits: 1148

Photo #1 - The Buckboard Hotel (sometimes called the Halfway Hotel) at Buckboard on the west bank of Flaming Gorge, 20 miles south of Green River and about halfway to Manila and the now-submerged town of Linwood

Photo #2 - Aerial photograph of Buckboard, depicting the Green River’s channel and the Buckboard Hotel’s location, now under water

(Sweetwater County, Wyo. - February 16, 2022)     Buckboard Crossing, south of Green River on the west bank of Flaming Gorge, once featured a hotel.

In the days before automobiles and roads suitable for them became practical, horseback or horse-drawn wagon or buggy travel from Green River to the Utah communities of Manila and Linwood in Utah meant a two day-trip. Halfway between was Halfway Hollow and Buckboard Crossing, where a ferry across the Green River operated. (Buckboard was also the site where the old Cherokee Trail crossed the Green.) Travelers and freighters hauling goods off-loaded at the Union Pacific train station in Green River to what would become Daggett County customarily camped at Buckboard and continued their trek south the next day.

A freighter named Peter Wall saw an opportunity and built a two-story hotel at Buckboard in 1912. Though his idea was a good one, his timing was less than ideal; travel by automobile and trucks became more widespread over the years and business dropped off. The hotel soldiered on, however, hosting dances and other social events up through the 1950s, as described by historian Roy Webb in his excellent work Lost Canyons of the Green River, the hotel was torn down when the Flaming Gorge Dam was under construction, a process that began in 1958 and finished in 1962.

The hotel site is now under water and the ferry is long gone, but Buckboard lives on in the form of the Buckboard Marina and the public boat ramp there.

Green River’s April Fool’s Day Bank Robbery

Details

Hits: 1233

Photo #1 - A Prohibition-era photograph of Railroad Avenue in Green River. At right is the First National Bank, next door to the Candy Kitchen. Prior to Prohibition and once again after its repeal, the Candy Kitchen was the Green Gander Bar, which remains open today.  (Sweetwater County Historical Museum Photo)    

Photo #2 - Today, the Green River Basin Federal Credit Union occupies the First National Bank building, next door to the Green Gander, the Candy Kitchen at the time of the 1933 robbery. (Sweetwater County Historical Museum Photo)

Photo #3 - At left, a young Ed Taliaferro, the cashier tied up and left in the vault of the First National Bank in Green River during the robbery of April 1, 1933. At right, Taliaferro in 1985 during a visit to the Sweetwater County Historical Museum.  (Composite Photo - Sweetwater County Historical Museum)

Photo #4 - James Costin - his Wyoming State Penitentiary mug shot.   (Wyoming State Archives Photo)

Photo #5  - Sweetwater County Sheriff Mike Dankowski.   (Sweetwater County Historical Museum Photo)

Photo #6 - Sweetwater County Sheriff Mike Dankowski’s badge, currently on exhibit at the Sweetwater County Historical Museum

(Sweetwater County, Wyo. - January 21, 2022)      A Depression-era April Fool’s Day bank robbery in Green River and the chain of events that followed it are the subject of a new article on WyoHistory.org, the Sweetwater County Historical Museum reported on Friday.  

Early on the afternoon of Saturday, April 1, 1933, 29-year-old cashier Ed Taliaferro had just locked up the First National Bank on Railroad Avenue when two men rapped at the door. They were there to inquire about a rental property managed by the bank, they said. When Taliaferro let them in, one of them produced a gun and the pair forced him into the bank’s vault, where they tied him up and helped themselves to just under $20,000 in cash, (well over $400,000 in 2022).

The two robbers, later identified as Jim Stoddard and Harold Bradbury, made a clean getaway in a stolen Reo four-door and drove to Rock Springs, where they met up with James Costin, a career criminal who had masterminded the holdup.

Taliaferro managed to free himself and spread the alarm, though at first some did not believe him, thinking he was engaging in an April Fool’s Day prank.

Costin, Stoddard, and Bradbury were later arrested and brought to trial. Stoddard and Costin were convicted and received prison terms, but Bradbury was acquitted when several witnesses were unable to identify him. 10 months later, on February 12, 1934, Costin and two other prisoners escaped from the Sweetwater County Jail in Green River. Sheriff Mike Dankowski tracked him to Denver, where he was recaptured in March.

The story then took a strange turn when, at the Wyoming State Penitentiary in Rawlins, Costin told Warden A.S. Roach that he’d been kidnapped while hiding out in Denver by three men who “demanded money from him on the threat of turning him over to the police.”  Costin’s claim was taken seriously, and three men were ultimately charged in federal court with his kidnaping. Two of the three were convicted and received 11 years in Leavenworth.

While Costin received a sentence of eight to 10 years in District Court for the Green River robbery, he was released in 1938 and wasted no time in resuming his criminal career. Over the years he engaged in check forgery schemes in Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, Utah, South Dakota, Nevada, and Washington, was arrested, and served more prison time. He died in 1952 at age 65.

“A Bank Robbery and its Mastermind,” by former Sweetwater County Historical Museum Executive Director Brigida R. (Brie) Blasi of the University of Wyoming’s American Heritage Center, appears on the WyoHistory.org website at

https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/bank-robbery-and-its-mastermind .

WyoHistory.org, a project of the Wyoming State Historical Society, is an exhaustive online resource for articles and information on Wyoming history.

Located at 3 E. Flaming Gorge Way in Green River, the Sweetwater County Historical Museum is open from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, Tuesday through Saturday. Admission is free.

A Burntfork Snapshot

Details

Hits: 1303

COUNTY MUSEUM HOSTS LONG-DISTANCE ONLINE CLASSES

Details

Hits: 1229

 

January 15, 2022

Nearly a hundred 4th-Grade students 2,000 miles away learned a great deal last week about geography, fossils, Native Americans, Wyoming, and Wyoming history, thanks to a special online program created by Aidan Brady, the Sweetwater County Historical Museum’s Public Engagement Coordinator.

Brady was first contacted in 2020 by the Yavneh Academy in Paramus, New Jersey, a community about the size of Rock Springs located some 15 miles from New York City. The Academy had heard of the museum’s educational outreach programs via the Internet and expressed interest in arranging special virtual education blocks. Brady created his first presentation for the Academy in 2021, and was asked to do another this year for four different classroom sessions.

The students were very curious - and surprised - about the differences between New Jersey and Wyoming, both historically and in the present, and had many questions.

Educators, parents, and parent-teacher groups who are interested in learning more about museum programs for students Grades K - 12 are encouraged to contact Brady at (307) 872-6435 or via email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..