Dry River Crossing Inspired Popular Facetious Expression

Dry River Crossing Inspired
Popular Facetious Expression

By David Bowser

CHEYENNE , Wyo. — In the western action movie, "The Magnificent Seven," actor Steve McQueen climbs aboard a hearse, checks a double-barreled shotgun borrowed from a stage driver, turns to actor Yul Brenner, and says, "Let 'er buck."

Phil Roberts says that term is pretty generic and was probably used throughout the West in the 19th century to show resolve, but when Joe Glenn, the new football coach for the University of Wyoming Cowboys, began using the term "Powder River, let 'er buck" earlier this fall, Dr. Roberts of the University of Wyoming History Department says the term became more localized.

Glenn is originally from Nebraska and coached in Montana before coming to the University of Wyoming this year.

"He started using that expression in his press conferences just as he was getting started," Roberts says. "People from three corners of the state really hadn't heard that expression before, but there's one corner of the state where it's pretty well known. That's the northeast, because that's where the Powder River country is."

Powder River is one of three rivers in Wyoming that flows north. Eventually, the Powder River runs into the Yellowstone in Montana , then on into the Missouri River near the Montana-North Dakota state line.

"It's an unusual river," Roberts says of the Powder River . "It's one of only a few rivers in the country — three of them are in Wyoming — that run north."

The others are the Yellowstone River and the Big Horn.

The South Fork of the Powder River flows from near the center of the state, through the town of Powder River , west of Casper and turning east south of Kaycee. Then it joins the main branch of the Powder River , flowing north between Buffalo and Gillette. The Crazy Woman River flows into it, then Clear River , before Powder River angles off to the northeast into Montana .

Roberts, a Wyoming native, researched the origins of the term, " Powder River , let 'er buck."

What he found was a story of a trail drive to a Wyoming railhead and a cowboy who worried about crossing the Powder River .

In 1893, just after Wyoming became a state, ranchers from around what is now Riverton , Wyo. , were trailing their cattle east to Casper so they could ship them to eastern markets by rail.

The custom of the day in that area was to trail the cattle south to Rawlings or Medicine Bow, to the Union Pacific Railroad, but the trail boss decided to head east instead.

It wasn't until the late 1920s that a written record of the expression's origins came to light, however.

Edward J. Farlow, a former mayor of Lander, Wyo., and a state legislator, told the Annals of Wyoming, the state historical society's journal, when he first heard the expression.

In the fall of 1893, according to Farlow, the L outfit, Four Jay, Horse Collar and IX ranches put together a herd of some 1600 steers and dry cows.

Farlow was a young cowhand who was put in charge of driving them to the railhead. He told his hands that they were going to take the cattle east to the Chicago Northwestern Railway at Casper .

"None of them had taken this particular route to the railroad in Casper ," Roberts says.

"We had never shipped form Casper before," Farlow told the historical journal, "and this was our first trip and the trail was new to all of the cowboys, but myself."

Farlow was the trail boss with eight cowboys, a cook and a horse wrangler.

"None of them had ever seen Powder River ," Farlow says in the Annals of Wyoming article, "and they were all excited."

"Missouri Bill, one of the cowboys, when he was hired was kidded by Farlow," Roberts says. "Farlow said, 'I hope you know we gotta cross the Powder River .'"

Missouri Bill indicated that he was nervous about trying to cross the river.

As the herd trailed east, the Powder River reportedly became the main topic of conversation as the cowhands built up the barrier in their minds.

"You know how these guys are," says Roberts, who grew up on a ranch near Lusk , Wyo. , that his grandfather homesteaded a century ago.

It is likely, Roberts allows, that none of the cowboys could swim.

Farlow even told the cowboys that they'd better have horses that could swim if they couldn't.

"About 10 o'clock ," Farlow reported in the historical journal some 85 years ago, "the lead of the heard reached the river, and it was almost dry, the water standing in holes and barely running from one hole to the other."

They took the herd downstream about two miles before watering them. Farlow reported that they crossed the river several times looking for a place with enough water for the cattle.

Missouri Bill's horse had no problem stepping back and forth over the trickle of water in the riverbed.

"When Missouri Bill saw it," Farlow says, "he looked at it very seriously for some time, and then said, 'So this is the Powder River,' and that night in camp he told us he had heard of the Powder River and now he had seen the Powder River, and he kept referring to the Powder River nearly every day until we reached Casper, which we did in 28 days."

Once the cattle were bedded down at Casper , waiting to be shipped, Missouri Bill stood a round of drinks at a saloon in town, saying, "I have crossed the Powder River ."

After a few more drinks, Missouri Bill is reported to have said, "I swam the Powder River ."

Another round and he said, "Well, here's to the Powder River . Let 'er buck."

"That was the first time I ever heard the slogan," Farlow told the historical journal.

Farlow identified Missouri Bill as William Shultz, a good cowhand who worked for the L outfit.

The ironic thing about the cowboys’ concern over swimming the Powder River was that, like many rivers in the West, it was only a trickle during certain times of the year. When the trail drive reached the Powder River , the hands found that there was a lot of powder and very little river.

"The river was nothing," Roberts says. "You could leap over it."

The Powder River is dry a good part of the year, Roberts says.

"It was really powdery," the university professor laughs. "What makes it funny is that it wasn't much of a river to cross."

Powder River in August, unless there's a good rain storm in the basin, may be dry all the way to the Montana border.

"They used to say about the Platte in the days of the wagon trains going through here," Roberts says, "they used to say that the Platte was too thick to drink and too thin to plow."

That, he says, has also become part of the Powder River story.

"They've added to that over the years," Roberts says.

He says the expression came to be used widely in Northeastern Wyoming , but there are people in other parts of the state who have never heard it.

Coach Glenn, Roberts says, bases his terminology on a saying that he'd heard over the years that comes from World War I.

During World War I, the Wyoming National Guard fought in France and used the expression widely, a generation after the trail drive story that Roberts found.

"It was 25 years later," Roberts says. "By that time, the expression was pretty well embedded in this cowboy culture of the whole area up there. Some of the guardsmen of that area adopted the expression and used it."

It became known as the Powder River , Let Her Buck Unit of the Wyoming National Guard.

"What Joe Glenn quotes it from, and what a lot of people quote it from nowadays," Roberts says, "is from that World War I use of the term."

Shortly after World War I, Roberts says, a number of newspaper people around the state began to question where the expression came from.

"That's when Ed Farlow came forward and said, 'I can tell you when I first heard it,'" Robert says. "Nobody has come forward to contradict that story."

No one has come up with the expression being used at an earlier date.

"There are a lot of people who say it started in World War I," Roberts says, "but they don't follow it back."

When Roberts reported all this in a newspaper column for the Wyoming Tribune Eagle newspaper, he says his telephone in Laramie started ringing. People began calling him with different versions.

Some, he says, think the cattle drive wasn't from the Lander-Riverton area to Casper , but from Buffalo , Wyo. , to Gillette, or somewhere else.

"A couple of people called me and said, 'How can it be Powder River ?'" Roberts says. "They claimed the Powder River doesn't stretch that far south. Of course, I have to tell them to look at a map."

While Roberts has carefully researched his historic references, others continue to refuse to believe his tale because that wasn't the way they'd heard the story.

"They just say, 'I just know because I heard it,'" Roberts says.

It isn't the first time Roberts has been questioned over his efforts to get to the bottom of some of Wyoming 's legends.

Roberts is still occasionally attacked for a newspaper column he did concerning the bucking horse that's been used on Wyoming 's vehicle license plates for almost 70 years.

"A lot of people claim that the bucking horse on the license plate did not originate in 1935," Roberts says.

That was the year that Wyoming Secretary of State Lester C. Hunt hired an artist named Alan True to come up with a logo for the state's license plates.

"That's the one that's over here in the state museum," Roberts says, sitting next to his laptop computer in the state archives across the street from the Capitol Building .

Others, however, claim that during World War I, a National Guard unit from Sheridan , Wyo. , used that logo on all their trucks.

"That bucking horse logo, according to folks up around Sheridan," Roberts says, "had its origins not in 1935, but in World War I, and it was 'borrowed' later by this artist and put on the license plates."

Of course, Roberts says, any time an extended discussion of the bucking horse comes up, at least half the people in the discussion will have been descended from the rider.

"There will be at least three or four people there who will say their grandfather owned the horse or they have a specific name for the horse," Roberts says.

Roberts says he did a column on the origin of the bucking horse back in the 1970s.

"I thought I had it pretty well in hand," he says.

Roberts contacted both the artist, True, and the person who commissioned the art work, Hunt. Both men told Roberts that the horse and cowboy were a composite of every cowboy and every bucking horse they'd ever seen.

"It's a typical kind of way in which a horse jumps," Roberts says, "and how a rider might hold his hat in that particular fashion. According to Hunt and according to True, you can find a dozen photographs just exactly like that."

Roberts, in his column, reported that the bucking horse with the cowboy was a composite.

"Then the mail came," Roberts says, rolling his eyes.

The people in Douglas , Wyo. , say the silhouette on the license plate is based on a likeness of Clayton Danks, a famous ranch and rodeo cowboy in the early 20th century, on the horse.

Around Lander, Wyo. , they say it's 'Stub' Farlow, Ed Farlow's brother.

"They claim that's Stub Farlow on the horse Steamboat," Roberts says.

One man in Laramie, Roberts says, told him that it was Clayton Danks because that man was there when the picture was taken on which the silhouette is based.

"He argued with me about that one time," Roberts says.

Around Sheridan , they say it can't be either one of those two men, because this emblem was being used by the Wyoming National Guard in World War I. They claim it's a rider and horse from Sheridan .

People in Cheyenne think it's based on a photo taken during Frontier Days.

"They think it's based on a photograph of an actual event, a bucking contest at Frontier Days," Roberts says, "but there's no evidence for that, either."

The letters that Roberts received specifically identified some six or seven different cowboys the writers of the missives said they were sure was the cowboy on the horse.

"That's how legends grow," Roberts grins.

Still, Roberts says he feels safe in calling it a composite.

"Frankly," he says, "I've seen a hundred or so pictures like that. Every rodeo you go to, you can see a horse and a rider doing exactly what the bucking horse is doing on the Wyoming license plate."

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