Elk Basin celebrates its centennial

Posted 9/25/15

Elk Basin’s name originates from a herd of elk that once inhabited the area 17 miles north of Powell on the Montana/Wyoming border, according to “Stories of Elk Basin Oil Field of Powell Wyoming And The People Who Called It Home,” compiled in …

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Elk Basin celebrates its centennial

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Elk Basin turned 100 this year. Millions upon millions of years ago, Elk Basin was inhabited by prehistoric animals; then much later, Native Americans, and not so long ago, people extracting oil established a community of hardy inhabitants.

Elk Basin’s name originates from a herd of elk that once inhabited the area 17 miles north of Powell on the Montana/Wyoming border, according to “Stories of Elk Basin Oil Field of Powell Wyoming And The People Who Called It Home,” compiled in 2014 by the late Patricia Miller.

Gushers

Coal was mined in Elk Basin from 1900-20. Oil was discovered in 1915, and the boom was on, Miller said.

“Gushers, which had produced a high grade of light oil, were struck in the Elk Basin field in 1915,” according to “From Beaver to Oil: A Century in the Development of Wyoming’s Big Horn Basin,” (1973) by David J. Wasden. “Some of them shot 30 feet above the top of a standard oil derrick.”

Camp town gang

The campsites were typical of Wyoming oil fields, built by the oil companies to house employees and their families. Camps were essentially self-sufficient, because it was time consuming traveling to an actual town, Miller said.

The roads to Frannie and Red Lodge, Montana, were easier to navigate than roads to Powell, Miller said.

Elk Basin was nicknamed the “hole” because of its low elevation in relation to the surrounding topography.

Bertram Steck, a Powell area farmer, delivered the first load of groceries from Powell to Elk Basin in 1915. The last stretch was practically perpendicular, so a snubbing post was embedded at the top of the hill and a cable attached to decelerate horse teams’ descent into the hole.

In Miller’s book, Bud Hocken said natural gas from the field was used to heat homes. Hocken’s father piped natural gas to their outhouse to keep it cozy on cold winter nights.

The first houses were tar-paper shacks facilitating easy ingress of wind-borne dirt and cold. Later, houses were built, Miller said.

Alex and Vervean Pryde lived in a tent house in the Ohio Oil Company camp during the 1916-17 winter and moved into a tar-paper shack in the summer of 1917 until they left in 1918, said Alex Pryde in a brief history written in 1944.

The area was rife with rattlesnakes, including at school.

A photo in Miller’s book depicts two largish rattlers that little Lucy Wynn dispatched with a shovel. “The older kids went to recess first and scared away or killed the snakes before the little ones came out,” Miller said.

Four teachers were employed to educate approximately 80 pupils through the eighth grade. Students attended high school in Powell, Miller said.

A 1929 contract with Park County School District No. 1 stated the Elk Basin principal would receive $1,450 in pay for the entire school year. He was guaranteed an additional $45 per month for janitorial services.

Genevieve Helgeson Romine completed elementary school in Elk Basin in 1931 and graduated from Powell High School in 1935. “At that time there were no school provisions for us to attend high school, so our parents had to pay for room and board to live in Powell during the week, take us into Powell on Monday and got us on Friday,” Romine said in Miller’s book.

Many amenities

Elk Basin had a doctor, post office, community hall, garage, two ball fields, store, school, barber shop, blacksmith, pool hall, and for unmarried men, a dormitory and cookhouse. The community hall orchestrated dances, card games, movies and other social gatherings. “Diamond Dick’s pool hall, so named because of the proprietor’s huge diamond ring, sometimes did double duty as a hotel for the unlucky traveler who got stuck there,” Miller said.

Snowbound

Miller’s book makes mention of blizzards and snowstorms and there are pictures of the town and its occupants nestled amid mountains of snow.

During winters, a thermometer in the oil field showed the temperature in the 40-50 below zero range, said Alex Pryde in 1944.

Unforgettable people

In the early days, horses, oxen and mules were harnessed to haul freight.

For Miller’s book, Carla Wensky, who works at the Powell Tribune, wrote about “Sixteen Mule” Johnson, a tobacco-chewing, pipe-smoking mule driver. Leslie Clemments, a freighter’s son, recalls Johnson’s touchy temperament in Wensky’s account. “He sure got along with those mules, especially when he started spitting against the wind. His temper was like an angry hornet’s.”    

Nettie Thompson, AKA Cactus Kate, was an Elk Basin denizen of some repute. “She was the first, maybe the only female wildcatter in Wyoming,” Miller said. “Besides oil, she raised a few cattle and sheep and she used sagebrush for fuel, and she always wore a pair of six guns.”

Elk Basin was an adventuresome location.

Bud Hocken, who lived in Elk Basin, said it was around 1933 when the bank robbers raced up Silvertip Creek with the posse in hot pursuit. The highwaymen hid out in a shack near Elk Basin. Park County Sheriff Frank Blackburn ordered the rogues to surrender, but they were not so inclined. So Blackburn drilled the cabin’s stovepipe with bullet holes and the crooks capitulated pronto. 

It was reported in 1943 that four men burglarized the Elk Basin post office. The villains absconded with $74.57 in cash, a pad of money orders and one postmarking stamp, according to the Powell Tribune. The were later caught and jailed.

Gas prompts migration

In 1942, natural gas from wells was so potent that it peeled paint from houses. Flares to burn off excess gas transformed night into day, or so it appeared. So new camps were built to relocate residents out of the hole. The new sites were closer to Powell, and efforts were made to improve passage to Powell, Miller said.

Water, previously hauled by wagons, was piped in from the Clarks Fork River. The post office, store and community hall were the same structures, but the community hall acquired a juke box, soda pop machine and film projector. Electricity and sidewalks were additional advents, Miller said.

Once, 800 to 1,000 people called Elk Basin home. A 1920 census tallied 142 households. By 1930, the count was down to 47 households, Miller said.

In 1955, when oil production ebbed, employees and their families migrated to Powell. The federal government ordered the oil companies to restore the land to its natural state. Families were given the option, and many did, to move their homes to Powell, Miller said.

“Very little remains to remind us that once 1,000 people lived up there,” Miller said.

Elk Basin was a place of mosquitos, rattlesnakes and, at times, merciless weather. Yet its erstwhile residents recollect warm memories, Miller said at Powell Centennial Series lecture in 2009. “The one thing everybody said was ‘those were the happiest days of my life.’”

Miller died in March 2015. She was a U.S. Air Force veteran, serving with 551st Airborne Early Warning and Control Wing. She was the Commander of the American Legion Post No. 26 in Powell from 2001-05 and was still serving as adjutant at the time of her death.

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