My second week of work

May 24-30, 2009

My Second Week

My second week of work was based upon one set of remains in particular. Monday I was told that over the weekend a set of skeletal remains had been recovered of an ancient native American (or at least that’s what the coroner’s office believed). I was given the privilege to go through the artifacts recovered consisting of fabric fragments, beads, non-human crania, rocks, dirt, and bones. This was good for me because this is what my degree in anthropology had prepared me for. I have previously done this at the University of Wyoming in my bioarchaeology class only 1 month earlier. So I set down with my reference book and inventoried all the contents and organized them into bags.

Tuesday, Ed and I drove to Laramie, Wyoming to meet with Danny Walker and Rick Weathermon. These individuals are experts in the field of human and non-human faunal remains. We were told by Danny (within two seconds) that the non-human cranium was that of a rabbit. Rick took control of the human remains and promised to go through them in more detail when he had time later that week. He was a bit tired from an investigation he had been out on all day. So we agreed to leave all the artifacts in his care. We then returned to our hotel and I went swimming and hot tubing.

Wednesday we had breakfast with Tom Ferguson, Albany County Coroner (which is the county Laramie is in). This was exciting because I had not gotten to meet this man before but I had heard a lot about him from my anthropology professors.

After the WACO (Wyoming Association of County Officials) meeting (Ed is the 1st Vice President and will be the President of this organization next year.) Ed and I set out for Rawlins by leaving Laramie on Highway 30. This route is a little bit longer, but more entertaining because Ed knows a lot of history about the area. He pointed out that Highway 30 is a national historic site. Also a set of cliffs that we passed by was where the Union Pacific Railroad stagecoaches used to get to the west. Billy Carlisle, a notorious stagecoach robber, robbed a Union Pacific Railroad stagecoach in this area in 1905. This was the last stagecoach robbery in Wyoming. Carlisle is said to have been caught, but the money he stole was never recovered. So lots of people go to this area searching for the “treasure”, but it has never been found and few still know about the story.
We also stopped by a cabin that is made totally of dinosaur bones. It is near Como Bluff, "Dinosaur Graveyard", an area that has a plethora of dinosaur bones and is owned by a private individual.

Our last stop was in Medicine Bow at their famous hotel called the Virginian. This hotel and saloon was built in the early 1900s. We stopped for lunch and were allowed to go up the stairs and look at the rooms which are decorated as they would have been back in the 1900s. People still stay in those rooms; it’s like staying in a castle in Europe. No showers but a few suites had claw foot bathtubs.

It is always an experience driving with Ed due to his knowledge of Wyoming and the stories that come to his mind when we are driving in certain areas makes the ride interesting.