Daniel Sandoval

As the calendar changes from one year to the next, we put events from the recent past into anecdotes of triumph and tragedy to help us meet the challenges of the future. Symbolic changes were in the news for New Year's Day, with a jump in 1908, a governor in 1933, an appeal in 1958 and drunk drivers in 1983.

100 years ago

Leap of madness: A man being taken to serve a 20-year sentence in prison burst free from the railroad smoking car as the train rolled along near Wheatland, according to the Jan. 1, 1908, Natrona County Tribune.

Joe Mulkey, labeled as a "dope fiend murderer" by the Tribune, was sitting in a funk, his ankles shackled together, handcuffs securing him to his seat. Unbeknownst to his captor, he worked his hand out of the cuff.

In a surge of motion so quick that Deputy Sheriff Sam Morrison and other passengers took a few seconds to believe their eyes, Mulkey jumped through the window of the train car.

The train lumbered to a stop and Mulkey slogged a distance of about a half mile from where he landed in a snow drift. Mulkey was quickly recaptured because he was still restrained by the leg irons.

Remarkably, Mulkey was found without injury, suffering no cuts after breaking through the glass of the window, unscathed after hitting the ground from a moving train.

Mulkey said his jump was an attempt at suicide, not escape.

On the record: The attempt to change the location of Casper's new courthouse brought a man a huge libel suit in the opening days of 1908. Silas Adsit didn't want the courthouse built at the end of North Center Street.

Adsit filed an injunction to halt payment to the contractors in an effort to put the discussion of courthouse location back into play, but the issues his injunction raised must have been a bit overreaching because the parties named took great umbrage to the document.

The contractors, the architect, the man who sold the property for the proposed location and the county commissioners banded together and responded with an aggregate $100,000 libel suit against Adsit.

For example, the contractors Schmidt and Esmay had built Casper's Carnegie Foundation library for $15,000 and built the Kimball and Barnett and Sennett block downtown for $37,000 - all without complaint of price or quality of workmanship.

Schmidt and Esmay maintained their bid was the best and lowest, and to suggest otherwise was libelous.

75 years ago

Head of state: Lawmakers were pondering the question of who was Wyoming's governor during the days of transition from 1932 to 1933, according to an article with a Cheyenne, Dec. 31 dateline that appeared in the Jan. 1, 1933, Casper Tribune-Herald.

Acting Gov. A.M. Clark insisted that he was still governor until the high-noon Jan. 2 swearing in of Governor-elect Leslie Miller, but Clark was leaving for Nebraska.

The governor-elect couldn't assume office until the appointed time, so if a governor was needed in the intervening hours between absent acting governor and unsworn governor-elect, the capacity of governor would fall upon state Senator Earl Wright.

No such jockeying was necessary, and Gov. Leslie A. Miller was given the oath of office by Chief Justice Ralph Kimball of the Wyoming Supreme Court. Gov. Miller was elected to serve out the unexpired term of Gov. Frank Emerson, who died in office in February 1931.

With the Senate gallery filled with spectators, the brief ceremony must have been bittersweet because Emerson, a Republican, defeated Miller, a Democrat, in the November 1930 general election. The Depression had turned the political tide, and Gov. Miller was one of a record number of Democrats to take office in 1933.

50 years ago

Fair conviction: The Wyoming Supreme Court was considering the appeal of a Casper man convicted of killing his wife, and the state attorney general argued that the conviction should be affirmed on the last day of 1957.

James Alexander was found guilty of second-degree murder of Barbara Alexander, whose skeleton was discovered clutching a crude wooden cross and entombed in a shallow grave under the concrete floor of the family home.

Attorney General Thomas Miller argued that there were no reversible errors in the murder conviction and that the sentence of 45 to 65 years in prison was justified.

Rose Alexander, Alexander's first wife, who was also charged with murder in the case, had her trial postponed pending the outcome of the appeal. Rose and James Alexander remarried, possibly to avoid testifying against one another, shortly after Barbara's remains were found in December 1955.

25 years ago

I'm jusht fine: In an effort to put holiday drinking to a test, a Casper TV reporter and disc jockey shared a fifth of whiskey and got behind the wheel of car in a controlled experiment, as reported in the Dec. 31, 1982, Casper Star-Tribune.

Despite their confidence, Mitch Jacob and Jerry Gebhard failed their driving tests on a closed course.

As reported in an unrelated Jan. 1, 1983, Casper Star-Tribune article, state Rep. Kelly Mader pre-filed a bill that would make jail mandatory for the first conviction of driving under the influence in Wyoming.

"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.