When Margaret Wilson walked in to get her last driver's license, the Wyoming Department of Transporation officer said, "See you in another three years."

She was 98 years old. There was no question to those who knew her that the Glendo resident would be driving herself to hair appointments and to see her friends.

Not even protests from her son could prevent it.

"I asked them to put a restriction on her driving, because she was getting old," Jim Wilson said. "But they went out driving with her and said she could go anywhere."

That was who Margaret Wilson was - a little stronger and a little more independent than many.

She died March 29 at the age of 104.

Born in 1903, the daughter of Casper's first mayor, Margaret Wilson was proper and strong - the perfect mix of her parents' native Scotland and the "rough and ready ways of the Wyoming rancher," Jim Wilson said.

For a brief period in her 20s, she taught at the Jumbo Wilson School, a small ranch school three miles up Cottonwood Creek from her home.

To entertain herself on the horseback ride to and from the school, she ran a trap line. Aside from the occasional skunk, she also caught beaver.

From those beaver she made a coat that she wore into her 90s.

Margaret Wilson was a woman who carried a pistol when she ran the trap line. She would also make sure each dinner was served and eaten with perfect manners.

She was the first person in line when the boys baseball team needed another player, said daughter Ruth Goodrich. They didn't have a girls team in those days, so she played with the boys when she got the chance.

While her family wintered in Pasedena, Calif., she and her brother appeared as extras in many of Tom Mix's early Western movies. They were both accomplished with horses, and easy to put in films.

Because Westerns weren't the only place Margaret Wilson road horses, she raced in local horse races and competed in the early Cheyenne Frontier Days, Goodrich said.

"She was better than a lot of the men," Goodrich said. "At one of the races I remember a man couldn't handle his horse and she said, 'OK, let's trade horses,' and they did, and she could ride it."

When Jim Wilson and his sister were young, Margaret Wilson made sure they could ride horses.

"Sometimes we rode horses that weren't real well-mannered," Jim Wilson said. "And when I wasn't old enough to handle the horse, my mom would get on and teach that horse a lesson. It was all straightened out when I would get back on."

She won the women's champion small bore rifle marksman competition for the state of Wyoming in 1928. Her great-grandson uses the same gun in 4-H competitions.

Margaret Wilson stopped teaching when she married Gordon Wilson, but she didn't saddle into the role of a housewife very easily.

Goodrich said she spent most of her time outdoors, never happy staying in the house.

She decided she wanted to raise milk cows, and on her own she milked and cared for the cows. She bottled and sold the milk at the Glendo Cash Store that she and her husband owned.

Along with her passion for the outdoors, Margaret Wilson was a history buff, interested in local and family history.

In the '70s she found an old rail car that was abandoned near Wheatland. She and Gordon Wilson dragged the car back to their ranch, where she cleaned and fixed the inside, turning it into a museum of the West and filling it with family relics and artifacts from the Oregon Trail.

She was involved in every organization available in the Glendo area, and was an active member of St. John's Episcopal Church.

Margaret Wilson rarely sat still, even right before she died at 104. She wasn't a woman who would stay locked in a house. Her fierce independence led her to race horses and trap beavers. It also helped her get that last drivers license at 98, allowing her to take herself where she needed to go.

Contact city reporter Christine Robinson at (307) 266-0639 or christine.robinson@trib.com