What Tie Hacks Did on Saturday Night

Today people are living in a subdivision across the Wind River from downtown Dubois. In the ‘40s and ‘50s the Boedeckers were the only residents who used the bridge to get home. Two big dogs guarded their house; because of the tie hacks, my grandfather explained at the time.

The hardiness of the tie hacks is well known. From 1914 onward they felled trees in Union Pass and Towgwotee Pass, skillfully “hacked” them into railroad ties, and floated them down the Wind River to Riverton, breaking up dangerous jams along the way. At the treatment plant the ties were infused with creosote and delivered to the Chicago & Northwestern.

Breaking a jam on the Wind River

(Wyoming Tales and Trails)

Catching up in the summer

While we understand what the tie hacks did during working hours, we know little about how they spent their time off … except that they drank. The Wyoming Tie and Timber Company did not allow the camp commissary to stock booze. But vanilla extract sold well. Bootlegging was popular in the camps too. Dried fruit concoctions could be fermented, then distilled using a pressure cooker and copper tubing.

Tie hacking in the winter

(Wyoming Tales and Trails)

But that was in the winter, when deep drifts isolated the men high in the mountains. After the snow melted the tie hacks headed into Dubois, where drinks could be purchased at the bar and consumed at the gambling tables. My grandfather recounted a Saturday night when a group of tie hacks started back to camp. Their Model T ran off the road and into a deep borrow pit, scattering drunks as it bounced down the embankment. The men gathered around the car, lifted it, and carried it up the steep slope to the road, where one turned the crank. They were on their way again.

Many years later a few retired tie hacks still lived in Dubois. Saturday nights they would go to the bar and afterward, feeling old stirrings, might set out for the large house standing by itself on the other side of the river. That’s why the Boedeckers, who years before bought the place from the woman who owned it previously, still kept guard dogs.

No one had warned them

Most of the Dubois area tie hacks had been recruited as young men from isolated logging camps in Sweden. After suffering sea sickness, seeing more strangers than they knew existed, and traveling more miles than they could comprehend, they again found themselves secure in an isolated logging camp among men who spoke their language.

There was a puzzlement though: the pigmentation of two fellow workers. People with African genes were another new experience for the young Swedes. The older tie hacks remained silent until a wide eyed newcomer asked. “Oh, you mean Bill and Jim? Yes, we all turn that color after a few years here.”

Floating ties near Dubois

(Wyoming Tales and Trails)

Dad Rides a Bronc, Full of It

         With a nod of his head, the bartender directed my attention to a picture tacked to the wall behind the bar. The photo must have been taken shortly after my father, Max Crowe, returned to Wyoming following his discharge in 1945. It showed him competing in a rodeo. A big black saddle bronc is in full buck as it leaves the chute. The rider, chaps covering his legs and hat pulled down tight, right arm up, is leaning well back and spurring high on the neck. The hand written caption announces: Max Crowe, full of Old Crow, coming out on Black Crow.

Old style bronc riding

(National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum)

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