Oh Just . . . You Know: Butch Cassidy, John D. Rockefeller, My Grandfather, Me

I recently came across photos of the burned buildings in downtown Dubois following the big fire in January. Sixty five years ago the parking spaces in front of those buildings were filled by 4:00 every afternoon. In her autobiography, Eighty Miles from a Doctor, Esther Mockler recalled that in the 1930's most people living in and around Dubois gathered every afternoon in front of the post office. Those of us living there two decades later were still doing the same thing.Of Dubois’ 100+ inhabitants, a majority of us came downtown to wait together for the mail. We stood on the sidewalk visiting, alert for a familiar truck to turn the corner where Highway 26 became Main Street for a few blocks. barnes truck co. emblazoned in big black letters on its red doors, the truck pulled up at the post office with freight in the back and mail bags in the cab. It hauled history as well.

The Barnes Truck Co was owned by two partners, one of them my grandfather Cody Simonson (1903-1970). Cody got his start in the transport business in the early 1920s when, as a teenager, he hired on with Eugene Amoretti, Jr (1871-1950).

John D. Rockefeller discovers the Grand Tetons

The Eugene Amorettis, Sr and Jr, were energetic and visionary entrepreneurs who created much of the early economic infrastructure in northwestern Wyoming. Eugene Jr recognized an opportunity when, in 1922, the bad wagon road through Togwotee Pass was upgraded to a bad road for motor traffic. Access to Yellowstone Park was difficult and in high demand. Amoretti established a service that transported tourists from the new Chicago & Northwestern terminal in Lander, through Dubois to Jackson Hole, then on to Yellowstone. He built the Brooks Lake Lodge and the Amoretti Inn near Moran to provide accommodation. He also shipped in large motor stages and hired young men to drive them, my grandfather Cody included.

An Amoretti stage on Togwotee Pass 

(Wyoming Tales and Trails)

In 1926 John D. Rockefeller visited Jackson Hole with his family, noticed the Grand Tetons, and was inspired to create a national park. The historical record confirms they stayed at the Amoretti Inn. It does not disclose the name of their driver.

Butch Cassidy goes to the bank

Eugene Amoretti Jr 

(Wyoming Tales and Trails)

            Among all the bankers in the west in the 1890s, Eugene Jr was the only one known to be a friend to Butch Cassidy. By his late teens he was Eugene Sr’s partner in the Amoretti Bank in Lander and the assistant manager. He had already founded the EA Ranch north of Dubois on Horse Creek. In 1889, a few weeks after the bank in Telluride was robbed, Cassidy walked into the Amoretti bank and sat down with the assistant manager. When he left he had opened an account with a large cash deposit, had made a new friend, and had been hired to work on the EA Ranch. He stayed in the Dubois area for two or three years. With a partner, Al Hainer, he ran a horse ranch downstream from the EA. He was popular in the small community and known as a big spender.

 I wish I could say that, like Butch Cassidy and my grandfather, I too was once employed by Eugene Amoretti Jr. But that would not be true. In 1950, when Eloise Amoretti hired me as chore boy for the summer on the EA Ranch, her husband had been dead for four months.

First Dubois Post Office, 1890. 

Supposedly, Eugene Amoretti Jr in the white hat, Butch Cassidy seated next to door 

(Wyoming Tales and Trails)

Just a Kid, Yet So Much Depended on Him

Find the EA Ranch on Google Earth

43 37 26.29 N 109 36 02.27 W

In 1950, when I hired on as chore boy for the summer at the EA Ranch above Dubois, the elegant Mrs. Eloise Amoretti, 75, was my boss. Her daughter, Mrs. Eloise Peck, was my boss. George Peck was my boss. On a ranch everybody told the chore boy what to do, even the cook. Or rather, especially the cook.

When life stirred in the guest cabins in the morning, people could flush their toilets because the chore boy had been up before them to pull the starter rope on the one-cylinder gas engine that pressurized the water system. They could take hot showers because an hour earlier he had quietly stoked a coal fire in the water heater in the shed behind their cabins. He would do the same in the evening so they could go to bed clean.

When everyone sat down to breakfast—ranch management and guests in the dining room, hired hand and chore boy in the kitchen—their bacon, eggs, and flap jacks were cooked on a wood burning stove. The chore boy split the wood and kept the box filled. 

Meeting everyone's needs

Food was kept wholesome in a custom-built ice box, 6 feet by 6 feet and 2 feet deep, that took up a corner of the kitchen. The chore boy charged it with ice from the ice house, a large, low roofed dugout south of the barn. Several times a week he searched through the insulating sawdust to find a large block, chipped off a 50 pound piece, washed it and carried it to the house.

His task was the easy part. Every winter George, Eloise, and the hired hand hitched a team to a sleigh and drove to a lake high in the mountains. They shoveled a large area clear of snow and for many days sawed out and hauled back blocks of ice to be stored for the warm months.

The chore boy’s bosses seemed always to know of items that needed to be picked up, carried, and put down in a different place.

The chore boy works as a cowboy. 

Roundup day on the EA Ranch, 1950.

Grown men's work

When time came to round up the cattle and brand the calves we all had roles to play. I learned to ride a cow pony hard and headlong through the sage brush, tight grip on the saddle horn. In the dusty corrals, when a calf was roped and thrown my job was to secure the hind quarters while it was inoculated and branded, forcing the legs apart to present the bull calves for castration.

Though I was just 13, the life suited me. Already six feet tall, I could handle the work. My mother, only fifteen years older than me, had always been drawn to that place known as somewhere else, spurred by its promise of untried bars and unmet drinking companions. I was used to settling in anew and living pretty much alone.

         I had my own cabin next to the creek, just big enough. I also had plenty of time to devote to the treasure trove that turned up in the bunk house. The back room, long unoccupied, was where during the war years the Amorettis had tossed their finished issues of Life and Look. Mrs. Amoretti once scolded me for the pile of magazines, approaching a foot deep, accumulating in my cabin. Even chore boys have to be nagged about cleaning their room.

The chore boy's Dubois 

(Wyoming Tales and Trails)

NEXT POST: 

Watch Gerry Spence Turn a War Hero into a Sheep Herder