Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Ft. Fetterman Cemetary, Wyoming

This is the military cemetery at Ft. Fetterman, Wyoming. The cemetery continued in use as a civilian cemetery after the post closed.

Ft. Fetterman was not an active post all that long. The number of soldiers buried there gives a good idea of the hard nature of frontier soldiering. For that matter, the civilian list gives a good idea of the harsh nature of 19th Century life.











Monuments in Lewistown, Montana

Lewistown Montana, which I recently went through, has a nice assortment of public monuments, several of which I missed, including a veterans park. Therefore, this is only a selection of the monuments that are located there.


The Fergus County Courthouse has a nice selection of monuments, at least one of which I was too hurried to photograph. This one is probably a post WWI vintage monument, but recalls the veterans of all wars. 


This is the first time I've seen a memorial of this type.  It's to Pioneer Freighters of Central Montana.


This is a park in Lewistown, which appears to feature retired heavy ordnance.  The gun appears to be a 155 Long Tom of WWII vintage, while the missle is a Minuteman, I think.

Monday, July 2, 2012

Bighorn Mountain Sheep Trailing, Wyoming






This may seem like an odd one to add here, but it does commemorate, in part, the dead  of a war, albeit a private war. This Federal monument commemorates the Wyoming sheep industry, now a mere shadow of its former self.  In its early days, the hill behind what is displayed here was the "Deadline", literally the line which sheepmen were not to cross, according to cattlemen, lest they end up dead.

The monument itself recalls a "Sheepherders Monument", a type of rock cairn that sheepherders once used to mark trails, and which are still very common in Wyoming.