Daniel Sandoval

It is a contrived system of trading negotiable property for goods or services, but it's arguably the most powerful force in civilization. Money was in the news for the second week of August, with a nap in 1907, beer in 1932, fines in 1957 and extortion in 1982.

100 years ago

Mechanical bank - Unknown sneak thieves, or thief, battered a saloon's cash register but made off with only a fraction of its treasure, according to a report in the Aug. 14, 1907, Natrona County Tribune.

An idle bartender at D.A. Robertson's saloon on a Sunday night locked the cash register and took a nap. As he slept, someone lugged the register out the back door. The thief or thieves knocked a hole in the bottom and shook out an estimated $15 to $20 in change. Apparently satisfied, the thieves lit out, leaving $1.50 worth of nickels on the ground and some $250 still in the till.

No clues were left to lead authorities to the perpetrators, but their shoddy work probably put both proprietor and investigators at ease.

Feral children - A front-page article of the Aug. 14, 1907, Natrona County Tribune told of state Humane Society Officer H.D. Gough finding three children who had gone wild, living near Powder River.

Neglect resulted in the children's inability to speak, and efforts were being made to capture them. So said the first paragraph of the news story.

The second paragraph then recanted: "The above is much exaggerated, although the truth is bad enough. The children were neglected by their parents and were not decently fed or clothed. They are not wild and they can talk."

A separate one-paragraph article of the Aug. 14 Tribune noted that Miss Allie Jewell, a representative of an orphanage in Sioux Falls, S.D., was coming to Wyoming to pick up nine children, six of whom were not orphans but cases of parental neglect.

Whether the wild children from Powder River were among the six neglect victims, it didn't say.

75 years ago

Golden eggs - Prohibition agents raided a chicken farm southwest of Casper and found a well-equipped brewery Aug. 12, 1932. The estimated value of the operation was $20,000.

The Aug. 14, 1932, Casper Tribune-Herald characterized the scale of the bootleg brewery as being "typical of pre-Volstead days," with a sophisticated array of brewing and bottling capacity.

Agents Tillett and Johnson confiscated 6,500 pints of finished beer in two refrigerator rooms, 150 cases of empty bottles, 750 gallons of mash, six 500-gallon vats and two 1,000-gallon aging vats. Also seized were electrical generators, acetylene tanks and automatic bottling and capping machines.

Investigators were trying to find the bootleggers.

50 years ago

Social unrest - A Casper woman appeared in police court after an altercation with a police officer, as reported in the Aug. 13, 1957, Casper Morning Star. Mrs. Mamie Taylor was charged with resisting arrest, creating a disturbance and assaulting a police officer.

Police Judge William Cole fined Taylor $300, a fine of $100 for each charge. Judge Cole suspended $25 of the fine on condition that Taylor give that amount to the police officer whose uniform she ruined during the altercation.

Taylor coolly walked over to the police officer, gave him the money and left the courtroom.

If you build it - Casper infrastructure experienced a small boost when more than $100,000 worth of building permits were issued Aug. 12, 1957, according to B.B. Lummis, city engineer.

The $108,800 in building permits included 10 houses to be built in the 1600 and 1700 blocks of Kearney, Fremont and Fetterman streets, each valued at $9,000, and a six-room house to be built in the 3200 block of Hawthorne for $15,000.

25 years ago

No exceptions - The nation's highway honcho was in Casper and publicly admitted the federally imposed speed limit of 55 mph was unfair. But he would withhold highway funding from any state that didn't comply.

According to an Aug. 13, 1982, Casper Star-Tribune report, Federal Highway Administrator Ray Barnhart warned that the absence of federal highway funds would damage Wyoming's highways.

Barnhart issued this warning, and others, in a speech before the Wyoming Highway Users Association.

"A Look Back in Time" is made possible with the help of Western History Archivist Kevin S. Anderson at the Casper College Western History Center, which is open to the public.