Backstory

CASPER, Wyo. — Dorothy LeMasurier was sitting in a back passenger seat in a twin-engine Beechcraft as her husband, Dalton, piloted the aircraft over Wyoming on Saturday, May 11, 1957. She read a magazine as the time and vast landscape passed beneath them. There was nothing unusual about this moment. Dalton — an experienced and […]

CASPER, Wyo. — On Sept. 27, 1923, a Chicago, Burlington & Quincy passenger train hauling nearly 70 people lumbered out of Casper’s station just after 8:30 p.m. The train — pulling luxury smoking, sleeping and coach cars — was expected to arrive in Denver at 10 the following morning, a scheduled stop ultimately on the […]

CASPER, Wyo. — Douglas, Wyoming is likely little known to people outside of central Wyoming, but in January 1958, the small town became a media epicenter with a terrifying week-long murder spree that started in Lincoln, Nebraska before ending in Wyoming. 

CASPER, Wyo. — A black and white photograph discovered taped to a whiteboard shows thick, black smoke billowing from the roof of a tired 1920s-era three-plex as Casper Fire-EMS crews aim their hoses at the doomed old residence. The dramatic scene was likely captured by a Casper Star-Tribune photographer, but it wasn’t a spot news […]

CASPER, Wyo. — It was Thursday evening, July 29, 1948, and Welker W.F. “Bill” Henning was inside the palatial mansion he and his wife, Lucille, had built with much fanfare nearly 25 years earlier. Most accounts of his life claim that Henning spent little time inside the sprawling mansion at 1104 S. Wolcott. He was […]

CASPER, Wyo. — Pearl Harbor was attacked on this day in 1941, sending the United States into what would become World War II. In this age of instant and constant information, it’s almost impossible to imagine how the news traveled all those years ago. Without TV or internet, the fastest way to hear news was […]

CASPER, Wyo. — During an interview in the early 1980s, Casper broadcaster and politician Pat Meenan was asked what exactly “KATI” stood for. It turns out the call letters to what was for years one of Casper’s most popular radio stations didn’t stand for anything specific. They were instead intended to tap into an emotion, perhaps […]

CASPER, Wyo. — Frosty’s Bar and Grill at 520 S. Center St. has been open for so long that it’s hard to imagine a time when it didn’t exist. One person with close ties to Frosty’s has recently been looking back at that history after getting her hands on a family scrapbook. “This is the […]

CASPER, Wyo. — Preparations for President Lyndon B. Johnson’s scheduled speech on the Natrona County Courthouse steps started days in advance. According to newspaper accounts, Johnson would fly to Casper at 3 p.m. on Oct. 12, 1964, after a stop in Butte, Montana, on SAM 26000, the same Boeing aircraft in which he took the […]

CASPER, Wyo. — The new Westridge Commissary was a dramatic addition to Casper’s expanding edges when it opened in 1950. The new shopping center was the second operation opened by Commissary Inc., which operated what was likely Casper’s first modern full-service grocery store on 442 E. Yellowstone. After WWII, the nation’s post-war boom was fueled […]

CASPER, Wyo. — In the summer of 1993, some Casper music fans decided to invite a few local and regional punk, metal and grunge bands to play at an outdoor concert. It would be held at the Washington Park bandshell, a place usually graced by municipal bands playing patriotic tunes to a smattering of families […]