Old West Group

It was the building of the railroads that spurred western settlement.

In 1862, Congress authorized construction of two railroads to link the Midwest and the West Coast. The Union Pacific Railroad extended westward from Nebraska; the Central Pacific Railroad went eastward from the Pacific Ocean. The meeting of the two railroads at Promontory Summit, Utah, in 1869 signified a new era in Western history.

The embryo town of Sherman is 8262 feet above the sea, yet the ascent to it from the Missouri River, a distance of 549 miles, is made with the greatest ease. The grades never exceed 90 feet to the mile, while for the larger part of the distance is not over 30 feet to the mile.

Sherman now boasts a newspaper office, a US Marshals Office and Jail, a millinery store, a large machine-shop, a Wells Fargo express office, a large national bank, a TSC Mining Company office, a mercantile, and 2 general stores, a train station, post office and telegraph, Livery and Blacksmith, a Doctor’s office three hotels one being the Grand Hotel and Steak House, five dance halls, twenty-five saloons the best being the Iron Horse Saloon, a seven-room schoolhouse, 5 gambling houses, a Church, and a Brothel.

Sherman has, as a part of the railroad yards, a windmill, the vanes of which had a diameter of 20 feet. It was used to pump water into a tank holding 50,000 gallons. Additionally, the yard had a roundhouse with five stalls and a turntable. The railroad shops were required, in great part, by the necessity of double-heading the locomotives up the steep grade from Laramie.

In addition to a goodly number of respectable, law-abiding people, there are also a large number of the toughest characters that ever drew the breath of life. Bar room bums, thugs, garrotters, holdups, thieves, and murderers from the railway towns. All day and night, without cessation, dancing is in full swing, the women portion of the dancers being the lowest of the low-camp followers who had followed the railway since its inception…”

Lawlessness prevailed in Sherman until a vigilance committee, the Yellow Sashes, were organized… A raid was initiated and three of the ring leaders of the toughs were captured… and hung… left hanging there for several hours after daybreak so the rest of the cutthroats might get the benefit of the execution and take warning. There the Yellow Sashes remained and stayed strong until the Marshals arrived.

About the same time in 1867, not far away, just 3 miles south of Sherman and just 25 miles north of Cheyenne, Jon Adams Claridge started a cow camp to supply the Union Pacific railroad crews and the local Sioux tribe.

It’s been often said that Wyoming’s cattle industry started by accident. As the tale goes, Seth Ward, a sutler to Fort Laramie, left cattle out to graze the open range in the winter of 1852-53 along Chugwater Creek north of what is now Cheyenne. He expected to find carcasses in the spring. Yet when he returned he found “the oxen,” as he called them, thriving. A series of similar stories tried the same experiment, leaving cattle out all winter, in the same vicinity with considerable success. It is said that the Wyoming Territory would have had a bovine boom even without the discovery that cattle could survive winters without supplemental feed. In years past a series of events combined to bring an inevitable surge of livestock to the northern plains.

That series of events, began with changing demographics, people were moving west, pioneers and freighters drove wagons over the Oregon Trail to Idaho, Mormons began passing through Wyoming on their way to Utah, and a gold discovery outside Sutter’s Mill in California in 1848 vastly increased the traffic. These new arrivals brought clashes with the Plains Indian tribes, primarily the Lakota Sioux, Arapaho and Northern Cheyenne. To protect these emigrants, the U.S. government bought Fort Laramie, located near the confluence of the Laramie and North Platte rivers, from the American Fur Company for $4,000. Fort Laramie housed up to 350 soldiers, and they needed to eat. Provisioners obliged them by supplying beef to the quartermaster, thus establishing local demand.

At the same time, railroads began to revolutionize beef transport—both for live cattle and chilled, butchered beef. In 1851, the Missouri Pacific Railroad laid down the first tracks west of the Mississippi. Simultaneously, the New York-based Ogdensburg and Lake Champlain Railroad began shipping butter in refrigerated cars to Boston. In 1857, the first car of chilled beef left Chicago for eastern cities. It was a flawed system and failed. But the tinkering and improvements began.

Then there was the Civil War. This epic conflict left two enduring changes in the American cattle business: centralization of the beef-packing industry and a huge surplus (around five million) of Longhorn cattle in Texas and around 2 million in the Colorado and Wyoming Territories.

Packing plants had been known in America since the late 1680’s when William Pynchon of Springfield, Mass., began packing cuts of pork and beef into barrels with brine. Still, the local butcher reigned supreme.

The Civil War brought on an unprecedented demand for first barreled and then tinned beef. Packers, now mostly in Cincinnati and Chicago, set up what they called disassembly plants, One such plan owned by Markus Turco Sorensen, which he explains as,

Paradoxically, while demand for beef in the East and the upper Midwest climbed during the war, it dwindled in Texas. By 1863, the Union Army controlled the Mississippi River, preventing the Confederacy from accessing Texas beef. Furthermore, young cowboys from the Lone Star State left ranches to fight for the Southern cause.

Untended, the herds grew. Supply soon outstripped demand. At the end of the war, a 3-year-old steer in Massachusetts sold for $86.00, according to an 1867 Department of Agriculture report. The same critter in Texas, probably a little leaner, went for only $9.46. Cattle buyer Jon Adams Claridge said …

Then there was the first Transcontinental Railroad built across North America in the 1860s, linking the railroad network of the eastern states with California on the Pacific coast. Finished on May 10, 1869 at the famous Golden spike event at Promontory Summit, Utah, it created a transportation network that revolutionized the population and economy of the West, catalyzing the transition from the wagon trains of previous decades to a modern transportation system. It substantially accelerated the populating of the West by white homesteaders, led to rapid cultivation of new farm lands. The Central Pacific and the Southern Pacific Railroad combined operations in 1870.

Building the railroad required six main activities: surveying the route, blasting a right of way, building tunnels and bridges, clearing and laying the roadbed, laying the ties and rails, and maintaining and supplying the crews with food and tools. The work was highly labor intensive, using mostly plows, scrapers, picks, axes, chisels, sledgehammers, and handcarts. A few steam-driven machines, such as shovels, were employed as well. Each iron rail weighed 700 lb and required five men to lift. For blasting, they used gunpowder, nitroglycerine, and limited amounts of dynamite. The Central Pacific employed over 12,000 Chinese workers, 90 percent of the work force. The Union Pacific employed mostly Irishmen. The crews averaged about two miles of new track per day but they were driven to do more.

New railroads, improved refrigerated cars and pent-up postwar demand for beef put an end to this dynamic. Among other things, the Civil War helped turn around a decades-old pattern of declining beef consumption.

If there was an accidental angle to Wyoming’s beef boom, it was geography. For example, the fact that railroad surveyors decided to route the Union Pacific through Cheyenne, not Denver, was much more influential in establishing a Wyoming cattle industry than a series of mild winters.

Wyoming Territory was also handily located between Texas and Montana—the latter a site of various gold strikes. In 1866, Ohio-born gold miner and storekeeper Thomas Jensen Tims, having made a bundle on a claim strike outside Virginia City, in the Montana Territory, sewed $10,000 in Federal greenbacks in his coat and headed for Fort Worth, Texas. He returned to Montana’s Gallatin Valley with 600 head of cattle. That’s a journey of 1,500 miles, 450 of which were in what soon became Wyoming Territory. Even though Tims and his men were attacked by Indians and harassed by the U.S. troops who forbade them to go farther on the grounds of safety, they made it to Montana. In the process, they got a good look at what’s now Wyoming—most of it open range with free grass--and the potential it held for future cattle production.

So, by the time Thomas Jensen Tims started a cow camp {3 miles south of Sherman} 25 miles north of Cheyenne in 1867 to supply Union Pacific railroad crews and the local Sioux tribe, Wyoming’s beef industry already had a foundation.

Then the boom really began.

Tims spelled out the reasons for expected prosperity. Grass in Wyoming was abundant and “exceedingly nutritious.” Good water was “everywhere.”

Mild winters necessitated no feeding, declared Tims, and while an operator might expect winter losses to his herd of two to three percent, this was still more economical than buying hay for feed. And then there was the railroad, which provided “cheap” transportation to markets.

Territorial governors invested in livestock. Cattlemen founded one of the most powerful political organizations in the West, the Wyoming Stock Association, in February 1868. The opulent Cheyenne Club, built by cattle money, opened in 1869 in the town of Sherman. Under its roof, oysters were shucked, wine flowed and, as club member and Anglo-Irish cattle owner said, “cordial drunks” abounded.

Interested discussions about beef grew on both sides of the Atlantic. Technology in the form of efficient refrigerated rail cars and ships were being researched.

Stockmen fanned out across Wyoming Territory, staking out ranches in the Bighorn Basin, the Powder River Basin and the upper Green River Valley. Cattle kept pouring in from Texas and Oregon. Further increasing the demand, the U.S. government continued to feed displaced Indian tribes.

Outside capital flooded in as well. Wholesale prices for cattle reached a heart-stopping $6.47 per hundredweight in May 1870— meaning an 850-pound steer went for $55. Those already in the cattle business around Sherman — the TSC Trading Company— made a killing. Investors were convinced that they, too, could repeat such profits.



Jon Adams Claridge, is a cattleman, merchant, and entrepreneur. ~In his mid to late thirties, Jon stands 5' 10", weighs 175 lbs and has a muscular build. He has slicked back long dark hair and steel gray eyes, and dresses in the latest fashions from back East and often rides in a fine carriage.

Sometimes he wears black denim pants and a double-breasted shirt, with long black coat for riding. A single man with no Intentions of marriage. He wears a black, fancy, ornate holster with two pearl handled, silver plated Smith & Wesson .45s under his coat and has a Derringer always hidden, usually in his sleeve or in the pocket. He is quick on the draw and shows no fear of anyone. Always displays a cool, calm disposition in public.

Jon Adams Claridge was born April 6, 1833 in Baxter, Pennsylvania. Son of Sarah and Amos Claridge, a local Baxter merchant, who had made his wealth systematically thru years of slave trade. By 1860, Jon Claridge was a rich man, a spoiled son who inherited his father’s fortune; Sympathetic of the southern states' cause for slavery, and pronounced it openly. As the War between the States began, Jon was run out of town by freedom sympathizers. His wife and two sons, Thomas and Andrew were forced to leave their home and life of luxury. They moved south and west into Kingsville, Missouri in search of friends, land, and new fortunes, but the War changed that.

It was there, in Kingsville, Missouri, 1862, that Jon met Arch Clements, one of the Lieutenants of Captain William Clarke Quantrill. Jon Claridge left his family in Kingsville and rode with Quantrill, wreaking his own vengeance on people who wished to destroy his way of life, who took what he had away from him. Then in 1863, Amos, a member of Quantrill's Raiders, a Confederate guerrilla band operating out of Missouri, terrorized Lawrence, Kansas, killing 150 residents and burning much of the town.

Because of the attack on Lawrence, Kansas, General Thomas Ewing, the commander of the Union troops along the Kansas-Missouri border, issue the famous order known as "Order No. 11" - So that Confederate guerrillas would have no assistance from Southern sympathizers, a strip of land along the border, 85 miles long and 50 miles wide, was made into a wasteland. Everyone living within those boundaries was given 15 days to leave the area and then every home, barn, and outbuilding was burned to the ground, and all food appropriated or destroyed; 20,000 families were gone as a result, Jon Claridge’s family was one of those ill-fated families, who was forced further south.

Then on one cool evening, units of the 11th Kansas Volunteers made a deep raid into Missouri. A patrol of Union Cavalry caught a battery of Confederate artillery off guard and in the ensuing battle, killed Jon's wife and oldest son Thomas. Jon’s youngest son, Andrew, just 15 years old, managed to save himself and hid amongst friends until Jon could return.

Angry, heartbroken and not willing to allow his son to follow Quantrill, they joined a wagon train heading west and ended up in the Arkansas Territory outside Fort Smith. It was here that Jon and Andrew was taken into the close knit circle of Confederates and slavery sympathizers.

This is where Jon began trading with the locals... Indians, prospectors, and frontiersmen. And Andrew was busy be tutored about frontier life, eager to start out on his own. In 1864, Andrew, having finished school, tried farming, and running the local mercantile, finding it all too boring, urged his father to head west.

Within three years, the cattle trails and railroad construction was blazing pathways across the open lands; this eventually lead the father and son north to the Wyoming Territory – to a small town named Sherman. No different than any early end-of-track town with its saloons, red light district, boot hill and its share of violence. But one catch, the cattle business had also moved into Sherman, thanks to Thomas Jensen Tims.

Thomas Jensen Tims, an Ohio-born gold miner and storekeeper, having made a bundle on a claim strike outside Virginia City, in the Montana Territory, sewed $10,000 in Federal greenbacks in his coat and headed for Fort Worth, Texas. He returned to Montana’s Gallatin Valley with 600 head of cattle. That’s a journey of 1,500 miles, 450 of which were in what soon became Wyoming Territory. Even though Tims and his men were attacked by Indians and harassed by the U.S. troops who forbade them to go farther on the grounds of safety, they made it to Montana. In the process, they got a good look at what’s now Wyoming—most of it open range with free grass--and the potential it held for future cattle production. A year later, Tims arrived in the southern Wyoming Territory, not more than 5 miles south of Sherman Pass. There he would start his cattle ranch, 25 miles north of Cheyenne to supply Union Pacific railroad crews and the local Sioux tribe.

Andrew O' Connor was born in Summerall Township, Ireland in June of 1833. Andrew was an Irishman, an apprentice teamster, who, at the young age of 15, came to America to escape the prisons of England. In 1858, upon the death of his father, he had been an inheritant debtor, sentenced to the workhouse of London. Feeling that he was not to be imprisoned for debts his father incurred, killed an English guard, and escaped on horse back from London to Dover, eventually stowing away on a ship bound for France. There he found passage to America.

Now, although Andrew O'Connor appeared fifty years old, he had just reached thirty years. Andrew stood 5' 11" tall and weighed about 190 pounds. and was of a large and powerful build, a type of the physically perfect man, his bronzed face and flowing brown hair and beard, and his clear blue eyes told of his free and open life of years on the American plains and mountains. It was in 1868, that Andrew O’Conner was a hired hand, working on the railroad, laying track. In 2 years, he had wasted no time making his way through the Railroad hierarchy to become a “spotman”. He employed an active massive advertising campaign in St Louis to attract settlers to company land grants in the Colorado and Dakota Territories of the West, sending his agents to rural areas in the eastern states and throughout Europe distributing handbills, posters and pamphlets that advertise the rich soil and favorable climate of the regions. It was 1868, when the Butterfield Overland Mail stagecoach brought Andrew O’Conner, who was now employed by the Union Pacific Railroad, to Sherman from St Louis, in search of new railheads and profitability.

With the railheads pushing west, and the cattle profitability that was booming in the Wyoming Territory, it was in Sherman that Jon and his son, Andrew bought the Teracosa Saloon, and from the gambling profits, eventually purchased land and built the cattle holding pens just outside town. The profitability of cattle being sent back East, provided a catalyst of wealth and Jon Claridge soon took to the right connections.

It was this draw of profitability that brought merchant, Markus Turco Sorensen, a meat packer magnet, now age 50, to Cheyenne. Sorensen was born in Stockbridge, New York, one of eight children, and grew up on his family's farm. Being educated at Wilmot University in New York City and starting out on his own with $200 dollars from his family in his pocket, within 3 years was able to start his own business with 2 butcher shops in Albany, New York. By the time he was 40 years old, he owned a meat packing plant in St Louis and Chicago. At age 50, Sorensen began plans to build a large plant west of the Cheyenne stockyards, one that would have the new ice-cooled rooms so they could pack year-round, and steam hoists to elevate carcasses and an overhead assembly line to move them. Sorenson wanted to promote his dressed beef in eastern cities, so he built branch sales offices and cold storage warehouses. When railroads balked at investing in refrigerator cars, he purchased his own and plans to lease them to the railroads.

After several conflicting events linking the 4 men, this unlikely group of men, Tims, Sorensen, O’Conner, and Claridge had formed the TSOC Cattle and Trade Company. Together, they had organized a monopoly on the cattle and merchant trade in the area and furthered plans to gain control over the economy of the Laramie District, including a monopoly on filling profitable contracts from the military at Forts Laramie, Camp Brown, and Fort Sanders. Greed and the struggle for seniority and power between the company co-owners festered hatred and mistrust, but the greed for the dollar overshadowed any internal strife.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government resolved upon another round of cession of land from the Indians. Washington initially attempted to uphold treaty obligations, thus postponing settlement of the region. The government’s efforts failed, however, and found it increasingly difficult to keep prospective landowners out, when eastern newspaper editors promoted the rush to the West. Railroad workers, mules, wagons, guns, and associated equipment poured into the very center of Indian land. Farmers, ranchers, prostitutes, and businessmen soon followed. Again, profitability for the TSOC Cattle and Trade Company surged, but the higher costs of railroad land compared to public lands, and the fact that railroads pay no taxes on their lands, soon stirred charges of extortion. Jon Claridge developed a plan of greed and corruption of his own. These charges against O’Conner gave him a means to eliminate O’Conner from The TSOC Cattle and Trade Company.

Each new day brought new dangers. Besides the Indians, the TSOC Cattle and Trade Company, financially stable, began to gobble up the smaller ranches and farms one by one. But as the moneyed investors moved in, so did the lawlessness. While the populace's ethics might have been flawed, much of the disorder was probably explained by the excitement amid the physical discomfort. Generally speaking, wide-open atmosphere of places in the Wyoming Territory such as Sherman helped spawn lawbreakers. There was a widespread perception that the law was crooked, twisted by, and for the benefit of the rich. Outlaws who claimed unjust men or bad luck had driven them into crime received considerable sympathy from the press. The many threats to body and soul produced a vigilante justice. Those charged with enforcing the law were not always dependable. The early population was overwhelmingly male, producing a fertile field for prostitution. The houses of ill-repute were well known throughout the area and were considered legitimate businesses.

The people, influxing into the area, could easily have been daunted as everyday reports were coming in, telling of Sioux raids, lawlessness and murder that prevailed in Sherman and the surrounding area in the very area they were about to enter. Such news did nothing to change anyone's plans. The decision of the town leaders, and the TSOC Cattle Company was made to form a militia in addition to the Army, to ride alert with rifles in hand. Over 150 well-armed, dedicated men stood watch at all times, patrolling the area. This militia was dedicated to the TSOC Cattle and Trade Company and commanded by Jon Claridge himself. Distinguished by the yellow sashes tied around their waists, the militia was hence known as the Yellow Sashes by many.

But during those early years, smaller towns, along the cattle trails, acquired its own stamp of lawlessness and gun-slinging. There was no local law enforcement and the military was far too concerned with the Indians to provide protection over the towns. The local militia, the Yellow Sashes, provided local protection where the TSOC Cattle and Trade Company deemed necessary. Ranchers, farmers, hunters, railroad workers, drifters, and soldiers scrapped and fought, leading to shootings in the streets and saloons. And that created a hasty need for a local burial place – Carver’s Coin Cemetery. Both, persons dying who had friends-enough money-or-sufficient standing in the community were buried next to others-penniless or unknown.

Business houses, dance halls and saloons catered to the trade at hand. Saloonkeepers served brandies, liqueurs, and the latest mixed drinks. Ice usually was available so even beer could be served cold. Some saloons advertised anchovies and Russian caviar on their cold menus. Gambling ranged from a game of five-cent "Chuck-aluck" to thousand dollar poker pots. Some hotels offered showers, or hot tubs, and even massages.

By mid-1869, while most businessmen went unremembered, the names Claridge, Tims and Sorenson survived. The TSOC Cattle and Trade Company was prospering ten fold. The Yellow Sashes controlled and patrolled the area. Jon Claridge and the Yellow Sashes provided their own style of Justice with their own laws.

It was in October 1869, the local town councilmen hired Tom Sands as sheriff. Sheriff Sands was doing a remarkable job of trying to settle down Sherman. Within a year, Sands, with assistance of the Army, took control of the area and forced the TSOC Cattle and Trade Company to disband the militia and allow him local law enforcement. Fuel fires continued to wreak havoc in Sherman between ranchers and cattlemen despite Sands' efforts.

Angered by the extortion charges and betrayal, Andrew O’Connor approached Jon late one evening in the main office. As Andrew drew a pistol from his belt, aiming at Jon, but struck his son Andy in the chest. Just as the bullet struck its target, Thomas enters the room and witnesses the dastardly deed. Jon in retaliation over his son’s murder attacks Andrew, beating him to death. Afterwards, Thomas contacts Markus, and the three men begin a cover-up protecting Jon and his interest in the Company. In return, Thomas and Markus acquire Andrew’s share of the Company. Reluctantly, and afraid of his future, Jon agrees. The Company then changed its name to the Tims, Sorensen, and Claridge (TSC) Trading Company.

Within months of each other, Thomas J. Tims was killed in a stagecoach robbery and Markus T. Sorensen was ambushed and murdered in the streets of Sherman. Many claim Jon Claridge and the disbanded Yellow Sashes with the murders. They are arrested, charged, and tried by the District Court in Cheyenne, but alibis proved differently, and the standing jury found all innocent of the charges. Jon Claridge then assumed sole ownership of the TSC Trading Company and the men of the Yellow Sashes were not seen together again in public.

Next came the permanent railhead at Sherman, along with that, news of men wearing yellow sashes around their waists were committing robberies of banks, stagecoaches and even railroads.

Finally the request for US Marshals to quell the lawlessness was granted. With this group of lawmen assigned to the Laramie District, was John Tyrone Wesley. Thus Sherman began to grow more in a civilized manner...first the TSC was not as powerful as it once was, the Yellow Sashes were banished from the area, a church was built, then a bank, a school (built by TSC funds), and other businesses sprang up and flourished. Cattlemen and drovers used Sherman as a stop-over.

Late one evening, when John was in the Saloon, several men began arguing, it seemed as if a drunken brawl had turned to gunplay. It was in the crossfire of a gunfight that Sheriff Tom Sands was killed. John arrested Marcus Ruszo, one of Claridge’s men as the assailant, and Jon Claridge as a conspirator. Again, in the courts, the two men were set free.

Over the next several months, As Sherman continued to grow and prosper, people flocked to town and its surrounding areas, the bitter personal feud between the Marshal and the local businessman grew - each accusing the other of underhanded acts - each with a vendetta to prove the other’s guilt. Claridge sought to own all of Sherman... John knew this, but could not prove it. He swore to keep Claridge from his goal. The town's people were divided in loyalty - Claridge had his own silent force of followers, not just those of previous years but supporters of his efforts, seeing him as good for the budding town.

Others sought peace and equality in their growing community by siding with John, their hearts knowing Claridge was involved in the illegal activities and goings-on. With the murderers still at large, only one of five had been caught, tried, and found guilty, and he was once a member of the Yellow Sashes, but he had killed in his jail cell awaiting transfer to the Kansas State Prison in Abilene.

Scrutiny from the Marshals, the absence of Wesley, and advice of his close friends, Jon made himself unavailable as to avoid any association with yellow sashes, Jon Claridge left Sherman on June 4th, 1870 headed for Kansas City. Marcus Ruszo remained in Sherman.

In early September 1870, while John and 4 other Deputies were out of town investigating a ranch burning, a young man with a Navy Colt 44 on his hip rode hard toward a meeting place, as he entered the gulch, where the others were waiting, then all together the 12 men rode down toward the ranch, all hooded with yellow sashes wrapped around the waists, several men had torches, regardless that the sun still up... two men ride to the barn and tossed torches into it, as the others opened the corral and let out the horses, herding them toward the south... one man gets down and heads for the bunkhouse, checking inside, then tossing the torch inside, setting it ablaze... four men came from the main house firing their rifles and shotguns at the hooded men, killing 2 of them and wounding 3 more, the young hooded man turned drew his gun and killed two of the men, the other hooded men began firing at the other men. As shots crossed the open area, a woman and her daughter came thru the door of the main house – both dropped where they stood. The hooded men rallied together and rode off... the 4 men suspected to be ranch hands, the woman and her daughter lay dead, the bunkhouse and barn were ablaze as the men rode off with about 35 head of horses belonging to the Circle Bar M...