Hey, Answer Girl --

Some co-workers and I were discussing where "Dead Horse Hill" got its name and nobody knows. It's the hill that sits behind CY Junior High, or at the end of 25th when it turns into Ridgecrest Drive. Can you help?

-- Curious in Casper

When you say nobody knows how Dead Horse Hill got its name, I fear you may be right.

The library doesn't house a book that tells us how the hill got its name. Kevin Anderson with the Casper College Western History Center didn't find any historical documents giving the hill its name. The Star-Tribune archives, going back to the time the paper began, even when it had a different name, don't ever seem to mention dead horses on that hill, or how the hill was named. Even the Wyoming Board of Geographic Names and the national Geographic Names Information System had absolutely no mention of a reason for the name of Dead Horse Hill.

Anderson, who grew up near the hill, said he's been trying to find more information on the hill for a long time, without any definitive success.

He knows he read or heard somewhere that a soldier had a skirmish on Dead Horse Hill with some members of a Native Indian tribe and his horse was killed.

"This seems like the most probable reason for the name, especially because soldiers from Platte Bridge Station (Fort Caspar) did go to Casper Mountain for wood," he said.

Childhood rumors also circulated that prehistoric people drove horses off the top of the hill to kill them, and that a local glue factory may have used the hill to kill horses for that purpose, but Anderson can't find any info saying there ever was a glue business in Casper, nor does he think prehistoric people would drive valuable horses off the hill, given that they were important to the culture of the time.

Another simple reason for the name: Someone "merely found a dead horse on the hill and began calling it that," Anderson said.

I'm with Anderson in thinking the hill's name had something to do with an artillery horse during Fort Caspar's heyday. Another "Dead Horse Hill," in Virginia, was named such because Lt. Col. Reuben Lindsey Walker's battalion lost so many horses during a battle there in 1862. Perhaps Casper's name is the same.

Readers, do you have any information on Dead Horse Hill? Help us put Dead Horse Hill on the map -- the historical names map, that is.

Literary lisp

Apparently, I have what could become known as a "literary lisp" -- a tendency to hear and write the "th" sound when the sound actually being made is a soft "ss" sound.

Somehow, I heard WYDOT representative Jeff Goetz say construction crews on First Street in Casper would be "thawing" concrete. What they're actually doing: sawing concrete. Shows how much (or little) I know about construction terminology.

Roger R. in "Thermopolith" sent me this kindly hilarious note: "You thilly, thilly girl! It's 'thawing,' not 'thawing.'"

Thankth, Roger. I'll keep that mind. --Anther Girl

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Answer Girl tackles questions about Casper, the universe and everything else. Submit your questions by e-mail to megan.lee@trib.com, or call Megan Lee at (307) 266-0616. Write to Answer Girl, Box 80, Casper, 82602.