Just TrailsToday’s DIY trail tip is inspired by this “pin“–yep it’s a cup made out of duct tape. It took us about 5 minutes to make, you can check it out here: 
So, we’ve decided that the duct tape cup is definitely cool but I can’t think of a reason to take it camping or backpacking since water bottles are much more useful to have. What are your thoughts? Would you take this camping or backpacking and what would you do with it?
General Interest
Southeastern Wyoming
Northern Colorado
Just Trails News:
We can’t really talk about the adventures of miners, trappers and outlaws in the Old West without talking about some of the wild women who earned a living from these men by working as prostitutes. Today’s podcast is all about our favorite prostitute. You can listen here or read our show notes below.
Prostitution has been called the worlds oldest profession and for many women who came out west who were maybe orphaned or widowed or just needed the money prostitution was more than a financial endeavor, it was a way to survive.
Today we’re going to tell the story of one of the most famous prostitutes of the 1800′s, “Squirrel Tooth Alice” who lived a life full of epic adventures.
Alice, or Elizabeth Libby Thompson, was born in Texas and her first adventure began at the age of 10 when her families farm was raided by Comanche Indians and she was kidnapped. Three years later her parents paid a ransom for her release and she went home only to be shunned by society at the age of 13 because people assumed she had had sex with the Indians.
So Elizabeth, who went by the name Libby, who is having a hard time adjusting to life away from the Comanche Indians, meets a much older man who doesn’t care about her past and starts spending time with him. At this time Libby was 14 and her father hated the man so he shot and kills him. And it’s rumored that Libby introduced him to her parents as “her husband” which could explain her father’s rage. Annoyed, she runs away from home and heads to Abilene Kansas where the only way she can support herself is as a dance hall girl and prostitute.
In Abilene she met a gunman and gambler named William or “Texas Billy” Thompson. Thompson and Libby travel around for a little bit and she keeps working at dance halls and as a prostitute when she could for a few years, sharing all of her earnings with Thompson before having a baby boy named Rance in 1873 at age 18 and then marrying Thompson or lying about being married to Thompson to make it legitimate.
On August 15, 1873 Texas Billy Thompson shot and killed the town sheriff when he was drunk one night. Thompson was arrested but bailed out by the cattle company that he worked for and the family fled to Dodge City where Libby worked as a dancer and prostate again. By the summer of 1876, Libby had given birth to 3 more children and the family had settled in Stillwater Texas where Libby was the main attraction at the dance hall they owned on Main Street.
During this time the Texas Rangers caught up with Thompson and he was extradited back to Kansas for the trial of the sheriff. Ironically during the trial the shooting was ruled an accident and Thompson was freed.
Libby worked at her dance hall until she retired in 1921 at the age of 66. Libby wasn’t ashamed of her profession, when a census was taken in Sweetwater she listed her occupation as “one who diddles and squirms in the dark”.
In the early days, Thompson accepted and encouraged Libby’s profession but as they grew older it became a source of tension in their marriage and both had torrid love affairs with others but Libby raised 9 children, several are said to not have been fathered by Thompson and most of the 9 children turned to a life of crime or prostitution. Thompson was a perpetual vagabond and wasn’t around much to raise the children. Libby died in Los Angeles in 1953 at the age of 98.
It’s not known when Libby earned the nickname ‘Squirrel Tooth Alice” but Because of a huge gap between her teeth and because she kept prairie dogs on leashes as pets she became called “Squirrel Tooth Alice.” Libby or Squirrel Tooth Alice has inspired bands, restaurants, wines, and she is rumored to have first said the phrase “the customer always comes first.”
What I think is fascinating about Libby’s story is that she spent 3 years as a captive with Comanche Indians but history has glossed that over and historians are more interested in telling the story of her life as a soiled dove and Libby wasn’t interested in talking about her time as an Indian captive. As a result I couldn’t find anything about her time with the Comanche’s which was the real story that I wanted to tell. But if we use the example of Cynthia Ann Parker who was captured by Comanche Indians at the age of 9 or 10 we can see that Libby may have been integrating into the Comanche world much like Olive Oatman, which may have contributed to some of the challenges she had later on.
What do you think of Squirrel Tooth Alice…was she a brilliant entrepreneur or a wildly eccentric wild west character?
References:
Pistol Packin’ Madams: True Stories of Notorious Women of the Old West by Chris Enss
Old West Legends (link)
We are an Amazon affiliate, you can check out our disclaimer here.
Today’s Monday Trail Tip is inspired by this “pin” and we turn an icky cat food can into an efficient and lightweight little backpacking stove.
Has anyone tried a cat food stove for backpacking? We’re curious about other fuel sources besides HEET. Any ideas?
General Interest:
Southeastern Wyoming:
Northern Colorado:
Just Trails News:
Today we’re sharing with you one of the dumbest and weirdest stories we’ve come across.
Have you ever argued over a cup of tea? Who doesn’t like a good cup of tea right? Today’s podcast is about an incident over a pot of tea that ended in a brawl and a death.
North Park Colorado in 1883 was much like other towns out west, there was a mining boom which brought all sorts of interesting characters into the town. Two such characters were men by the name of Laban Keys and Charlie Sheldon. Keys and Sheldon were interesting men, Keys was a small man and very lazy, Sheldon was a big and strong man and had a bad temper and together they took care of a young boy on a small piece of land.
In August they were working as ranch hands when an argument in a tent, which was being used as a dining room for the ranch hands broke out.
Keys tried to pour some water from the tea pot for his tea but the kettle was empty. So he told the young boy he had been taking care of to fill it up. So, the boy took the tea pot, stood up and then Sheldon jumped up, took the kettle from the boy and said that he would fill it up.
A few minutes later Sheldon appeared without the tea pot. Keys asked where the tea pot was and Sheldon said that he had left it outside.At this point Keys got a little bit angry and told Sheldon that he should have filled the team pot and brought it back. Sheldon just glared at Keys and responded with a threatening comment.
Keys got up, left the tent and returned with the tea pot full of boiling water. Keys also returning with a Winchester rifle in his right hand.
For some reason Sheldon became angry, jumped up, turned his back on Keys, slowly walked away and dared Keys to shoot him. Key’s just ignored him.
A few minutes later Sheldon came to the table, this time with his own loaded rifle and told Keys to come out of the tent and fight him like a man.
A brawl then occurred with the other ranch hands trying to stop Keys and Sheldon. It ended with Keys being shot through the chest and dying instantly and Sheldon being shot in the neck, just missing his jugular. but Sheldon, unaware that he had killed Keys, sent for a doctor but then he decided to flee the state and head to Laramie, Wyoming.
A few weeks later it was reported that the shot had also broken Sheldon’s lower jaw and teeth and that he had to eat through a quill. Knowing that sheldon was responsible for the murder of Keys, the Laramie sheriff assured Colorado authorities that Sheldon would return for a trial once he recovered.
And that’s all we know about Sheldon. We don’t know if he died in Laramie, returned to Colorado for his trial or escaped and headed somewhere else. We don’t know anything more about the boy that Keys and Sheldon were raising and we don’t even really know why a pot of tea could instigate such an event. But as we research stories about epic adventures and strange historical event we do know that sometimes it’s hard to find the full story and the complete truth.
What’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever fought over?
Reference:
Pioneers of the Colorado Parks by Richard Barth
(We are an Amazon affiliate, you can read our disclaimer here)
Today’s Monday Trail Tip is inspired by this “pin.” We had visions of pyromania bliss using just a bit of wax, a few sheets of toilet paper and a few matches…but our hopes and dreams were shattered. That’s okay, we can of think of better things to do with toilet paper, right?
Has anyone had success with this tip? What did we do wrong?
General Interest
Southeastern Wyoming
Northern Colorado
Just Trails Updates
We’re excited to officially announce the launch of our first eBook next Friday, May 10th!
Steals & Deals
Today’s podcast is the third in our Pikes Peak series. The past few weeks we talked about the first woman to climb Pikes Peak and a man who moved a peanut using nothing but his nose to the top of 14,000 foot summit. Today we’re going to talk about a man who pushed a wheelbarrow to the top of the peak.
Photo courtesy radiocoloradocollege.orgAt age 49, Larry Hightower was described by the Associated Press as “a wanderer from Ellensburg, Washington” and a “cowboy poet” by the Brownsville Herald. Today we’re going to talk about Hightower and his wheelbarrow adventure.
Hightower was a WWI Veteran who left his home in Washington on July 4, 1946 with nothing but a wheelbarrow and a few supplies. His goal wasn’t necessarily to push his wheelbarrow to the top of Pikes Peak but to spend 12 years pushing his wheelbarrow all over the world. He described described himself as a “messenger of good will” and so he’d stop along his way and deliver lectures on Americanism.
You can listen to the podcast here or read our show notes below.
We don’t know much about Hightower’s early or personal life but we do know that he was quite the media sensation so most of the content for this podcast comes from old news reports. We’ll pick up our story in 1949.
In 1949 a reporter with the Brownsfield Herald wrote “To those of us who hate to push a lawnmower around the yard once a week, this man’s self-imposed stunt seems the acme of foolishness, if foolishness has any acme. Yet we wonder if a lot of us aren’t just as foolish without realizing it. Many of us are pushing wheelbarrows, figuratively speaking. We are trudging a lot of unnecessary worries up hill up a hill…”then the story gets way too sappy to continue on here, it goes on to talk about the burdens we carry in life, comparing them to the load that Hightower has in his wheelbarrow before concluding, “Oh well, if Larry wants to push a wheelbarrow around the world for a dozen years back to where he started that’s his business. On a rough road with plenty of cream he could churn some butter while he’s a-wheeling. Maybe he isn’t more foolish than some others.”
The media referred to Hightower’s wheelbarrow as an “Irish Baby Buggy.” It weighed about 120 pounds and had 2 headlights that were powered by a generator. It also had a radio, and was painted red, white and blue.
Not quite a year after leaving Washington, Hightower made it to Colorado and decided to push his wheelbarrow to the top of Pikes Peak. So he left Colorado Springs on March 11, 1950. The day he left snow started falling, but he told a reporter “I’ve seen worse weather than this” but that didn’t stop him from referring to the peak as “that dad-gummed hill” as he pushed toward the peak.
There are conflicting reports on how long it took Hightower to reach the summit, some say 4 days, others say that it took him 5 days. One report claims that it took him 5 days to reach the summit and when he did his beard was covered with frost from freezing temperatures but that he was “feeling fine.” His plan was to set off four flares when he reached the summit, although I don’t know if he actually did.
On his trip to the summit it’s reported that in his wheelbarrow he pushed crackers, sardines, GI emergency rations, coffee, one blanket, 4 pairs of gloves and a red flare just in case he got into trouble. He wore 4 shirts, 2 pairs of trousers. He was also pretty clever and he carried a flask that was partially filled with sand and sometimes he would make a small stove by pouring alcohol over the sand. I’m not sure if he kept the same packing list for the rest of his journey or if that was just what was in his wheelbarrow when he was climbing the peak. I also don’t know what happened after he climbed the peak, and how long it took him to get down the mountain.
Nevertheless, Hightower continued his trek for another 3 years. He kept a very meticulous log book but some of the facts have since faded into history . There are reports that on his trip he wore out 19 or 20 pairs of shoes, 1,217 or 1,324 pairs of socks, 21 pairs of dungarees, 11 jackets and 4 pairs of rubber wheelbarrow handle-grips. Hightower was gone for 4 years and during this time he covered 28,000 miles walking through every state and parts of Canada, Mexico, and Guatemala. He shook hands with 16 governors and did many radio and television interviews. When Hightower returned to Washington he was given the key to Ellensburg and many gifts, one of including a new wheelbarrow, which he declined.
What’s fascinating about Hightower’s story isn’t so much that he pushed a wheelbarrow to the top of Pikes Peak but it’s trying to figure out why he did it. We know that Julia Archibald Holmes, who was the first recorded woman to climb the peak just wanted to stand on the top of the mountain, and Bill Williams, who pushed a peanut with his nose to the top of the peak was trying to win a bet but we don’t know Hightower’s motivation for pushing a wheelbarrow to the top of the peak or around the US, Canada, Mexico and Guatemala.
Was it just a good media platform to promote his speeches or was he just looking to do something a little bit different?
As part of our Monday trail tip series, today’s tip is inspired by this “pin” as we recycled two pop cans and using some scissor magic transformed them into a small stove. 
Have you tried to make a pop can stove? Any hints on how to easily cut through an aluminum can?