President Harry S. Truman once said, “My favorite animal is the mule. He has more sense than a horse. He knows when to stop eating – and when to stop working.” 

 Today, on Pioneers of Outlaw Country, we are paying tribute to the American mules that helped shape America, Wyoming and the routes through the Wind River Canyon.  

 They were sure-footed, tough as nails, good-natured giants, stubborn and reliable. 

 These patient plodders were true pioneers of Wyoming. 

 The Pioneers of Outlaw Country 

Cowboys, Lawmen and Outlaws… to the businessmen and women who all helped shape Wyoming. 

Here are their stories.

 "From Grit to Glory: The Wyoming Mule"

Welcome to "Pioneers of Outlaw Country," where we delve into the untold stories and rugged legends along the Wind River Canyon Scenic By-Way. I'm your host, Jackie Dorothy and today, in partnership with the Wyoming Department of Transportation Buckle Up Campaign, we saddle up for a journey with the unsung heroes that helped build Wyoming and the routes through the Wind River Canyon —the stubborn mule. It is a history carved out of sheer rock and grit.

"May the wind always blow dust in your eyes, and the sun scorch your back ‘til you wish for rain!"

The muleskinner’s curses would have echoed off the canyon walls and across the cliffsides. It was said that it required a special vocabulary to coax these obstinate burros to do their work and most of it unprintable. Despite their reputation for mulishness, those that worked with these beasts of burden saw their true value and wanted others to recognize it as well.  

 "May your every step be weighed down by the ghosts of your past misdeeds, and your water always be muddy enough to gag a rattlesnake!"

 In 1908, this mighty mule inspired a poem which was published in the now-defunct Wyoming newspaper, the Inter Mountain Globe. The author bemoaned a lack of recognition of these creatures and the men that labored by their side.

 The Mule Skinner’s Kick

 In readin’ the story of early days, it’s a cause of much personal pain

At the way of the author-men leave out us, in charge of the wagon train;

Granted the rest of ‘em worked and fit in the best way to they could do – 

If it wasn’t fer us that skinned the mules, how would the bunch have come through”

We have frosted ourselves on the prairie sweeps, a-bringin’ the Sioux to book,

And the sojer men never had no kick that the front rank been forsook;

They cussed warm holes in the blizzard’s teeth, when waitin’ for grub and tents,

But the comforts of home we allus brung, though at times at our own expense.

We have sweated and swore in the desert land, where the white sand glares like snow,

A-rompin’ around, forty rods from hell, playin’ tog with Geronimo;

We larrupted the jacks when the bullets flew, and then, when ‘twas getting’ too hot,

We used for our breastworks, mules, dead mules and we give ‘em back shot for shot.

We never was rigged up purty, of course, and we didn’t talk too perlite, 

But we brung up the joltin’ wagon train to the tail-end of every fight;

We made a trail through the hostile lands, and our whip was the victory’s key.

So why in the name of all that’s fair, can’t we figger in history?   

The story of the Mule of the Wild West begins at Mount Vernon. (yankee doodle)

 President George Washington was convinced that Mules—a cross between a male donkey and a female horse—could do the same amount of work as horses but with less food and water. He saw the mule as the future of American farming and became “The Father of the American Mule.” 

 In 1785, the King of Spain gave him a donkey that Washington named “Royal Gift.” Our First President became one of the first to crossbreed this large donkey with horses to create the stubborn, hard-working American Mule. 

Between 1830 and 1890, several thousand large donkeys were imported from Spain, Italy, Malta, and France and broadened the genetic base of America’s mule. They were steady riding animals and did not spook easily like horses. This drew the attention of mountain men heading into the wilds of the Rocky Mountain region where they knew feed would be hard to come by   

In 1830, Mountain Man Warren Ferris described his first encounter with the mules his party used while traveling west from St. Louis. His journal details his travels through the future territory of Wyoming and of marching wearily beneath the Wind River Mountains. 

 “The day was bright and fair, and this early part of our travel might have been pleasant, but for the unceasing annoyance of our mules, who seized every opportunity to give us trouble and vexation. 

 Some were content to display the stupidity for which their sires are so proverbial, but the greater part amused themselves with the most provoking tricks by tossing their packs into a mud-hole and then scampering off in high glee or they commenced kicking, floundering, pawing, and bellowing, as if they delighted with the result of their merry humors. 

 Job himself would have had his patience tried by trying to manage a drove of packed mules…”

 These mules would have first appeared in the remote Wind River Canyon when Ferris and other mountain men were traveling along the banks of the Wind River, hunting for the profitable beaver. 

 Rich minerals were discovered in this same canyon over 70 years later and mules were once more employed by prospectors and businessmen to help bring supplies into the mines of this new state of Wyoming.

 It was 1906 and the Wind River Reservation had been opened to mining. Mules were brought into the canyon when 500 mining claims were made near the Copper Mountain. The town of Shoshoni became a tent town of 2,000 as miners surged into the area surrounding searching for gold. 

 At the time, great excitement surrounded the fledging town. Governor Brooks told the American Mining Congress that it was one of the greatest gold rushes ever known in Wyoming when seven hundred miners flocked into the Owl Creek range of mountains. It was now legal to make a mine claim on the Wind River Indian reservation and men were eager to try their luck. 

 To accommodate the miners, businessman Asmus Boysen attempted to build a dam and power plant in the Wind River Canyon and, he, too employed mules.

 After obtaining his treaty with the Shoshone and Arapaho Indians for land on the reservation, Asmus immediately imported $10,000 worth of Missouri mules to haul materials to the site. 

 However, the gold and copper rush was not successful and only a few prospectors and their pack mules remained in the region when Boysen eventually was forced to tear down his dam. 

The railroad recognized that these beasts of burden were indeed important and, as Boysen struggled to build his ill-fated dam, they were the next big employer of the mules and donkeys in the Wind River Canyon. 

These steadfast animals, known for their incredible strength and endurance, played a pivotal role in the canyon when they helped build the tracks that wound through the treacherous terrain of a once impassible canyon.

In 1909, Harry Schaefer was employed by the Chicago, Quincy & Burlington Railroad as a surveyor to complete a north-south connection between Billings, Montana, and Casper, Wyoming. 60 years late, in the 1970s, he shared his adventures in the “Rail Classic” magazine of working alongside these mules that Harry said were more reliable for this hard work of laying the tracks than the men. 

 Despite their ability to do hard work, Harry also acknowledged that they were contrary animals and Simon Jackson, a Wyoming journalist agreed. In 1899, Simon had described them as “Gaunt and lean, with drooping ears, dejected tail and a woebegone visage that would frighten an inexperienced ghost.”

 Simon went on to write in the Wyoming Press that a mule has lives enough left to secure him a ripe old age.  He had seen a mule fall in the mud and become buried under a heavily loaded wagon. When the wreck was removed, the mule got up, shook himself, and began to nibble the grass as unconcernedly as if nothing had happened.

 Although often difficult to work with, Harry conceded that this ability not to ‘get spooked’ was another benefit to the mule. They were necessary and the best choice for the hard work of laying tracks through the Wind River Canyon, especially since it was all hand labor without the benefit of the modern machinery of the day. This twelve-mile of tracks cut through the canyon between the Big Horn Mountains and the Owl Creek Range and it was impossible to get equipment in to help the men with their work.  

 These mules could go for days with little water and less food, pulling heavy loads over rocky hills and through heavy sloughs. An estimated two hundred burros were employed from 1909 to 1911.

 Harry was twenty-one when he began work with the surveying crew on the Wind River line in May, 1909. He stayed on the job, helping plot the roadbed, until 1911 when the line crawled out of the south end of the gorge.

 2000 to 5000 men were on the project at all times compared to the 200 mules. Many were foreigners, such as Japanese, Swedes and Italians. They worked six, ten-hour days a week, with Sunday off. Wyoming winters can be rough but there was no seasonal break. Seven work camps were set up at various points. Three big camps had commissaries.

There was a constant turnover of the human employees, for many men found the work too grueling and camp life too hard. Most of the men were young and single, although some had families somewhere. They were as hard and tough as the granite they handled, but it was a monotonous life, with little time or facilities for recreation.

Harry was assigned to a camp about midway of the canyon. The members of the surveying crew were called the engineers and he remembers one time when his crew had special attention.

 “They had a big two-day celebration for us engineers in Shoshoni on Washington’s birthday. We had to walk seven miles out of the canyon where a man with a wagon met us and took us on into Shoshoni, about fifteen more miles. Shoshoni was a little place, a stockman’s town, but lively, and that celebration was a great break in the monotony. We didn’t get out of that canyon very often. About once a week someone climbed out to the east and took a trail to Bird’s Eye Pass, a stage station on the top of the mountain, to get the mail. The stage through there was horse-drawn, of course, and that pass was the shortest way to reach the Big Horn Basin from Casper.”

 Each camp had a pair of mules for heavy work. Hitched to a small hand-made sled they hauled wood into the camps. Occasionally a man would take the mules to Thermopolis, about four miles to the north of the outlet. He could ride one mule on the trip to town but both were packed for the return trip, so that meant a long trek on foot. 

 It was May 1910 before the rails reached Thermopolis, so all freight for the first year had to be hauled from Kirby, a coal mining town over 15 miles away. There, jerkline freighters loaded their wagons with working equipment, powder and dynamite, and food, and delivered it to Minnesela, the camp at the north outlet of the canyon.

 From the mouth of the canyon, the wagons were abandoned and the burros did most of the packing. After a pack string was loaded at Minnesela they were moved by ferry – about twelve to a load – to the east side of the Wind River. 

 Then, usually without a guide, they followed along a trail along the canyon walls to a swinging bridge near the center of the canyon. They crossed the bridge back to the west side of the river. Here, men from each crew met them and took charge of their supplies. That line couldn’t have been built without those burros. 

 The camp cooks got their supplies from these pack trains and made attempts to make the meals fancier than one would expect in a railroad camp. 

 The cook in Harry’s camp had been a chef at the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver.  He always wore his chef’s white jacket, and insisted that some of his helpers did, too. 

 One hot summer evening, a cyclone hit the camp. The mules weren’t the only ones unfazed by the windstorm. The cook tent and supplies had been scattered around but the cooks dug around the next morning and got to work, making breakfast for the men. 

 Near the south entrance of the Wind River Canyon, six tunnels had to be carved out out of rock that was harder than any granite according to those swinging the picks and setting the dynamite. The longest tunnel was named the Black Tunnel and was 742 feet long. After the blasting, it was all hauled out by hand and mule. 

Each day work trains brought ties and steel to the end of the line. A mile of track had to be laid a day, usually a ten-hour job but now and then the men and mules got it done in eight hours.

The Wind River Canyon railroad was completed in 1911 but there was no regular train schedule until 1913 when the line was finished to Casper. The first passenger train through the canyon was October 13, 1913. 

After the railroad was built, most of the mules were just turned loose. Some were taken by local people for pets.

One of the burros that ran wild in the canyon became a local Thermopolis legend. For a number of years, he stepped out from behind a big rock each day to watch the passenger train go by. In his retirement, it is doubtful he missed the hard work of hauling rock or laying the tracks of the railroad he watched from afar. 

 General Saves A Veteran Mule 

 There was one mule that gained fame if only briefly, in Wyoming. It’s a story that has long been forgotten by the general public, but one that encompasses the wild spirit of  early times and the state’s connection to the livestock the state was dependent on before the advent of the automobile.

 It was 1916 and the world was quickly changing. The ‘motor truck’ was being embraced as the transportation of choice, but the mule and horse had not yet completely disappeared. 

 An unnamed reporter took a moment to share what he called an exciting incident about Gabriel, the camp mule. 

 During the American Punitive Expedition in Mexico with General John J. Pershing, the ‘mule-headed critter’ caused quite the commotion and stirred the imagination of the watching world. The Associated Press had picked up the story and, on October 13, 1916, newspapers in Wyoming shared the stories of their soldier boys and the action they were truly seeing, much to their readers delight. 

 “It is doubtful if the motors and their drivers will ever achieve the fame of the army mule and his master, the army muleskinner,” the reporter wrote from the frontlines. “There is an element in the contest of mulish stubbornness and muleskinners’ language that is not rivaled when a motor settles down in the deepest rut and refuses to budge.”

 Gabriel, a wise old mule who was an army veteran, took advantage of his master’s carelessness at the picket line. He slipped loose from his halter, edged toward the end of the line, and a moment later was galloping to freedom. It only took another moment for the muleskinner to discover Gabriel’s flight and he singed the atmosphere with conversation that would never have passed the censors of the day.

 “Oh, you double-dyed offspring of perdition,” he yelled, his curse recorded by the eyewitnesses, “I sure will skin you alive for this.”

 Then he picked up a log, about the size of a wagon tongue, and started in pursuit. Gabriel made a regular mule’s chase of it. He waited until the muleskinner was within striking distance. Then, with a happy kick of his heels, Gabriel was off to a point a quarter of a mile distant. Here, he paused long enough to bray ironically.

“May all the alfalfa you eat turn to barbed wire in your copper-riveted insides,” swore the muleskinner according to the reporter. The angry owner trudged through the alkali dust in pursuit. By this time, the whole camp was watching. 

 Brother muleskinners were offering sarcastic advice to Gabriel’s master. Gabriel rolled lazily in the dust, waggled his ears, brayed some more and otherwise informed the world that he was having a splendid time.

 The chase lasted two hours. Even Gabriel seemed to tire. As for the muleskinner, he was reduced to an exhausted human, spurred on only by the desire to capture one slender-legged mule and splinter the club he still carried between the two long ears. Gabriel loafed toward officer’s row, with the muleskinner dogtrotting in pursuit.

In front of General Pershing’s tent waved a red flag with a white star that symbolized the commander’s quarters. Toward this flag Gabriel ambled. There, with a meek and innocent look in his eyes, Gabriel came to a dead stop and waited.

 The muleskinner crept to the spot, took a fresh hold of his club with both hands. He waved it in the air as he came nearer. 

 “Now, you sin-spotted brute, I’m going to beat your hard head into a pulp.”

 It was then that General Pershing stepped for a moment from his tent and surveyed the scene. The muleskinner promptly dropped his club. He approached Gabriel softly. He patted his neck tenderly and asked him sweetly,

 “Why do you act like this, Gabriel? Why can’t you be like the other nice mules?”

Then he led Gabriel away. Gabriel the veteran, it was said, smiled a wise, mulish smile. 

 Back home in Wyoming, Gabriel’s cousins were also having adventures and had not yet been put out to pasture.

 By 1915, the automobile had reached Wyoming and these autoists needed the mule’s help. A highway was being built through the Wind River Canyon to connect Yellowstone National Park and the Big Horn Basin with the rest of the world. 

 The current roads were too dangerous and inaccessible for travel. This meant that the mules and horse drawn wagons were needed for hauling in supplies and equipment that were impossible to navigate in a motorized vehicle. 

 Work began on the canyon road in June, 1922. Four hundred and fifty men, five steam shovels and many teams of horses and mules worked steadily for two years before it was completed.

 Surprisingly, over two decades later, the mule was once more called upon to bring the modern world to the Wind River Canyon. In 1953, the Rural Electric Association employed mules to bring electricity to the residents of the canyon.

 The mules were hooked to a pulley and helped haul the electrical poles into place. 

 Today, the mules are used in rural Wyoming to go into the mountains that motorized vehicles are still unable to reach. They continue to pack in supplies and plod along the trails even in this age of technology. 

 Thank you for tuning in to Pioneers of Outlaw Country and for taking this ride with the wise, stubborn mule who knows a thing or two about grit and perseverance.

 I am your host Jackie Dorothy with my co-host, Dean King.

 This program has been made possible through a partnership with the Wyoming Department of Transportation.

 Seat belt safety starts with you!

 No matter what type of vehicle you drive, one of the safest choices drivers and passengers can make is to buckle up.

 Seat belt safety starts with you.  Your kids are watching. Children whose parents or caregivers buckle up are much more likely to buckle up, too.

 Wyoming has vast, wide open spaces, and long drives. Please buckle up, every trip, every ride, every time.

 Mule train!
Clippety cloppin' over hill and plain
Seems as how they'll never stop, clippety clop, clippety clop
Clippety, clippety, clippety, clippety, clippety cloppin' along

There's a plug of chewy tobacky for a rancher in Corona
A guitar for a cowboy way out in Arizona
A dress of calico for a pretty Navajo
Get along, mule! Get along


Thank you for listening to Outlaws of Pioneer Country. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of this historic series. 

This was a production of Legend Rock Media.

 Mule Train was sung by Frankie Laine in 1949. Johnny Curtis and the "Prairie Sons" was the muleskinner at the end. 

 Interview of Harry Schafer from the Rail Classic magazine, July 1978