Wyoming History in the First Person: Knew a Woman Who Knew a Man Born 200 Years Ago. Maybe You Did Too.

Pete and Eleanor Ridgeway, my uncle and aunt, lived a few blocks north of Eugene Street, which was a block north of Amoretti Street. Both streets were named for the "Father of Lander," Eugene Amoretti Sr. (His son, Eugene Jr, appeared as Butch Cassidy's employer, my grandfather's employer, and my almost employer in the initial story posted to this blog).

Eugene Amoretti (1817-1910)
(Wyoming Tales and Trails)

Amoretti Sr--whose biography will illustrate a surprise about your history and mine later in this story--was one of those 19th century gentlemen who set out from Europe for the New World hoping to enrich themselves.

Many had aristocratic, even royal, pretensions. Most were but a stride or two ahead of pauperhood, a condition many never escaped. Amoretti, however, succeeded extravagantly.

After knocking about in South and Central America, Amoretti showed up in California for the gold rush of 1849. Grasping a truth of gold rushes--that selling shovels is a surer way to riches than digging holes--he prospered.

When he arrived in Wyoming for the South Pass gold rush in the late 1860s, he had sufficient capital to open several mercantile establishments and buy several promising mines.

South Pass City, 1871, photo by William Henry Jackson
(Wyoming Tales and Trails)

Who gets the post office?

While Amoretti was getting richer at South Pass, two communities were engaged in fierce competition 30 miles to the north at the foot of the Wind River range. Both were lobbying to be chosen as the site of the post office that would serve the area.

One, Push Root, was located on land that had been homesteaded by Benjamin Franklin Lowe. As yet a modest community, it consisted principally of a hotel and livery stable operated by Peter Dickinson.

The other applicant was North Fork, five miles to the north of Push Root. It was a thriving collection of saloons and brothels that met the social needs of the cavalry troopers stationed at Fort Washakie. Its residents shopped at an Amoretti store.

In 1875 Push Root was awarded the post office on condition it come up with a respectable name. Today we know it as Lander.

(North Fork was subsequently renamed Milford. When I was a teenager the passing years had reduced Milford to two buildings, a small store and a barn converted to a dance hall. Its heritage endured, however. My cousin Jim Ridgeway and I attended cowboy dances there; drunken brawls might be a better term.)

Lander, 1907

(Wyoming Tales and Trails)

Building a community from scratch

With Lander's future prosperity assured by the post office, Lowe and Dickinson tempted Amoretti down from South Pass by offering to share their land holdings in exchange for his help developing the town.

They made an excellent investment. In subsequent decades Amoretti created not only the town of Lander, but, with the help of his son, much of the early economic infrastructure of Fremont County.

The Amorettis also opened a string of banks up through the Big Horn Basin and into Montana. They were known for their generosity as community philanthropists as well as their acumen as entrepreneurs.

The mausoleum of Eugene Amoretti

(Find a Grave)

Born 200 years ago

Amoretti Sr's year of birth, 1817, provides a switch that illuminates an interesting fact regarding the passing of generations.

Born in Venice in 1817, he died in 1910. In the early 1890s Eloise Credon married Eugene Jr in Omaha and relocated to the EA Ranch near Dubois. Therefore Eloise and her father-in-law, Eugene Sr, were acquainted for almost two decades. In 1950 I worked for Eloise as chore boy on the EA Ranch. She was 75, I was 13.

Hence a brag I started making recently: I knew a woman (Eloise Amoretti) who knew a man (Eugene Amoretti Sr) who was born 200 years ago (in 1817).

(Okay, 199 years ago. At my age it's wise not to defer gratification.)

Then I realized: as a youngster I knew several people who were in their 70s. Like Mrs Amoretti, they too would have known people who were alive 200 years before today.

A further realization: people of my generation--and people who live a long life in every generation--probably once knew someone who knew someone born 200 years ago.

As an almost universal experience, we old folks remember people who remembered people who were born two centuries before our present time.

Counting the memory links

Eugene Amoretti Sr and I are separated by only two memory links, Eugene to Eloise to me. If we go back a single additional link, my generation is only three memory links from people who were alive in 1776. Add a fourth link and we're back into the 1600s.

We communicate little and forget much. So from generation to generation most of our personal memories are lost, despite the links that connect people across history.

A closing thought. My generation was born around 1940. Today I have in my life several young people. In their later years they will share their lives with young people who might still be alive when the calendars turn to 2140. Perhaps you do too.