6.01.26
Travel Day!
We left the Cabela’s Campground at 7:00 am. We try to beat the traffic, wind and heat. The wind is horrible! We took our time and stopped several times at rest areas, practicing our motto: Never pass up a rest stop!
As Al was getting back in the truck, a guy waved him over and was pointing at the rear passenger tire. OMG! There were bulges! Apparently a steel belt broke. Thank the Lord we didn’t have another blow out! It was so close! We thanked the guy for pointing it out and Al did some Googling right there and found a mom and pop tire shop a couple miles away that had the tires we needed. MGT Tire Service. The people were so nice and helpful. They got us in right away. They loved Mr. Marley and we sat in their office while the tires were changed. They thanked us for our business and our $980.
6.02.2026
We toured the Wyoming State Penitentiary "Old Pen"
Al and I in front of the 'Old Pen"
Execution
Our tour guide started the tour by demonstrating how the Julian Gallows worked. She poured water in the small white container, then put the little weighted "prisoner" on the trap door. The weight of the "prisoner" made a valve on the white container start pouring water into the big bucket. When the water ran out, the trap door opened and the "prisoner" went through the hole and was hung. The tour guide said there were times when it didn't work right and they had to do the hanging again or they just pulled on his legs until the deed was done.
Julian
Gallows
The "water drip gallows," commonly known as
the Julian gallows, was an automated execution device designed in 1892 by
Cheyenne, Wyoming architect James P. Julian. It utilized a water-filled
counterweight system to trigger the trapdoor, allowing the condemned to, in
effect, act as their own executioner and sparing a hangman from having to
perform the task.
The execution apparatus operated on a system of water
displacement designed to automate the process. When the prisoner was
positioned, their weight on the platform initiated the flow of water from an
elevated container into a balance-scale component. As the water shifted, the
change in weight eventually tripped the mechanical latch holding the trapdoor
in place. This process created a brief, predictable delay between the
initiation of the mechanism and the release of the platform.
Similar automated systems were explored in other regions,
such as Colorado. Some variations utilized a heavy counterweight intended to
jerk the subject upward rather than dropping them through a trapdoor.
A challenge for these systems in the American West was the
climate. To prevent the mechanism from failing due to frozen water during
winter months, some jurisdictions experimented with using materials like lead
shot to achieve the same weighted effect.
The use of automated gallows declined as states moved toward
different methods, such as the electric chair or gas chambers, in the early
20th century. The original Julian gallows remained in occasional use at the
Wyoming State Penitentiary until the mid-1930s.
The Story of Big Nose George
***This story is included in the museum section because of some items that were IN the museum. If you're squeamish, skip down to the row of stars.
Frontier justice could be harsh, but few Wild West legends
ended as badly for a bad guy as did the life of Big Nose George. You wouldn’t
have wanted to walk a mile in his shoes, especially since his mortal soul
became none other than a SOLE of a shoe—not just one shoe but a pair of shoes.
In fact, George would be “reincarnated” into a variety of other unlikely
objects, including a doctor’s bag and an ashtray.
George Parrott was born on March 20, 1834 in Montbeliard,
France. Little is known about his early life or how he ended up in the Wild
West 44 years later as a desperado, cattle rustler, highwayman, train robber,
and, finally, murderer. It is one of those strange twists of fate that his last
name, Parrott, was ironic in that he was born with an immense, hooked nose very
much like a parrot. Thus, he came to be known by the nicknames “Big Beak
Parrott” and “Big Nose George.” His distinctive face first showed up on
“wanted” posters in Wyoming in 1878 for murder and train robbery. He and his
gang of outlaws had tried to wreck a train near Medicine Bow, Wyoming, so they
could rob it. Wyoming Deputy Sheriff Robert Widdowfield and Union Pacific
Detective Tip Vincent and a posse pursued Big Nose George and his Union Pacific
Detective Tip Vincent and a posse pursued Big Nose George and his gang to
Rattlesnake Canyon, near Elk Mountain, where they were ambushed and Widdowfield
and Vincent were killed.
Big Nose George continued to wreak havoc for several more
years, robbing a Montana military convoy of 15 soldiers, two officers, an
ambulance, and the Army payroll of between $4,000 and $14,000. The gang also
held up several stagecoaches, including an especially profitable job in July
1880. The bounty on him quickly went up to $2,000.
Aside from a whopping bounty on his head, George had another
big liability: he had a big mouth and liked to boast. When he bragged to a
saloon dancer in Miles City, Montana, that he had killed two men and pulled off
some big robberies, word quickly reached the sheriff. Within an hour, he was
under an arrest, then returned to Wyoming for trial.
In Rawlins, Wyoming, he was sentenced on April 2, 1881 to
hang. But in a scene right out of a Hollywood movie, he tried to escape 13 days
before hanging day by knocking Sheriff Rankin unconscious. But, Mrs. Rankin,
ever the vigilant wife, foiled his escape by locking the cell door before
Parrott could reach it. A vigilante group of masked men decided to take justice
into their own hands. Despite Sheriff Rankin’s pleading that they wait for the
legal hanging day, they dragged the prisoner out and marched him to telegraph
pole and threw a rope was over the crossbeam of a telegraph pole. The noose was
secured around the prisoner's neck with Parrott standing on a barrel. But when
they kicked the barrel out from under him, his toes touched the ground.
The mob cut him down, secured a ladder, then shortened the
rope. Parrott dutifully climbed the ladder but, the vigilantes, wishing him to
die a painful, lingering death pulled it out from him rather than having him
jump from the top and he slowly strangled to death, tearing off one of his ears
in the process, as 200 townspeople watched. George Parrott was 47 years old.
Doctors Thomas Maghee and John Eugene Osborne were present
for the hanging to declare the condemned man dead. Since there were no kin to
claim George’s remains, the doctors took possession of Parrott's body to study
the outlaw's brain for clues of abnormality. The top of Parrott's skull was
crudely sawn off, and the cap was presented to 15-year-old Lillian Heath, then
a medical assistant to Maghee. She would become Wyoming’s first female doctor
and is said to have used the skull cap as an ash tray.
The doctors also created a death mask, then Osborne began
stripping skin from George’s chest, back and thighs. He had an idea; he sent
the skin to a Denver tannery to be made into a pair of shoes and a medical bag.
As an afterthought, Osborne cut off the nipples also, requesting they be placed
at the toe ends of the shoes as ornamentation. (Wing tits?!) He was later
disappointed when he received the shoes from the shoemaker, who had opted not
to add the nipple flourishes. Nevertheless, Osborne later proudly wore the
shoes to his inaugural ball after being elected Governor of the State of
Wyoming in 1893.
The death of Big Nose George faded into obscurity over the
years until May 11, 1950, when construction workers unearthed a whiskey barrel
filled with bones while building the Rawlins National Bank on Cedar Street in
Rawlins. Inside the barrel was a skull with the top sawed off, a bottle of
vegetable compound, and the shoes said to have been made from Parrott's flesh.
Dr. Lillian Heath, then in her eighties, was contacted and asked if she still
had the skull cap of Big Nose George that she had been given nearly 60 years
before. She brought the cap and it fit the skull in the barrel perfectly.
Later, when DNA testing cane into use, they would also confirm the remains to
be those of Big Nose George.
HATTIE LAPIERRE - #965
The Wyoming State Prison housed female prisoners from 1901 to 1909, Miss Hattie was one such woman. Frank McKinney, aka Harry Black, said Hattie LaPierre shot him in cold blood. Hattie said Harry took her into the street by force and threatened her life; therefore, her actions were based in fear and self-defense. McKinney died on September 19, 1905. While the events of September 14, 1904 was his word against hers, Hattie LaPierre was convicted of manslaughter in December 1905. Hattie entered the State Penitentiary in Rawlins in January 1906, serving one year.
-Text contributed by the Wyoming Frontier Prison
