The Alexander Story

By Ethelyne Worl

(some editing has been done to correct typing errors from the original copy and footnotes added)

-submitted by Judy Troxel Gould with the following note: Think this was written in the 1960's 

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Wm. Alexander Sr., of Cora, Wyo. told me of his arrival into Sublette County in the summer of 1889.  Mr. Alexander who still lives at Cora was the youngest child of Eugene and Nancy Butler Alexander.  He was born at Yankton¹, South Dakota on December 12, 1880.

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           The wonders of the Oregon territory were told in letters coming back to Nebraska to Eugene and Nancy Alexander, who became fired with yearning to see this far off fair land.  So in the year 1887 the Alexanders started to Oregon to join his sister in the Hood River area.  It was late to be starting and in November 1887 the Alexander family arrived in Montpelier, Idaho.  The railroad had reached Montpelier and there was work so the family settled for the winter there.  They remained in Montpelier until the spring of 1889 when they took up the trail to Oregon.

Not far along their trail, at Soda Springs, Idaho, the met up with a trapper who had just returned from the Green River country.  The trapper told of the plentiful grass, the abundant game and fish and the free land which stretched away in every direction.  So the Alexanders turned their two yokes of oxen and their buckskin team up the Snake River to Idaho Falls, which was then known as Eagle Rock, and headed back toward the Green River Country.

Coming over through Star Valley, Mr. Alexander turned his wagons up over the Wyoming Range and dropped down into the Snider Basin and on into the Big Piney country.  Proceeding to the Green River and up to the mouth of Cottonwood Creek, the Alexander family camped at the trading post operated by the Cleofus family.  The winter of ’88 had been a mild one and all the streams were easily forded.  So they crossed Green River and came up toward the present site of Pinedale.  There were no settlers in this vicinity.  They made a camp at a place on the west side of Pine Creek, about west of the present site of the Elton Cooley home.  There was an old Indian crossing at this point on Pine Creek.  After looking over the land along Pine Creek for several days, Mr. Alexander moved his family up to a place along the New Fork River, near the site of the present George Jorgenson ranch home.  From there Mr. Alexander and his oldest son rode out on saddle horses to look for a permanent ranch location.  Mrs. Alexander and the younger boys stayed at the camp, watching over the half dozen horses and the 15 or 16 cattle the family had herded along the trail with them.

After scouting the countryside and looking at many possible home sites, Mr. Alexander decided on a spot on the east side of Newfork River well up the river.  This is near the place now owned by Rob Lozier and above the Bar Cross ranch.  He chose this particular spot because the valley floor was covered with an abundant growth of native hay and it was close to timber with which to build buildings.

On the 28^th day of June, 1889, the Alexanders moved onto their chosen ranch site.  The rest of the summer was one of continuing hurry.  There was a house to put up and hay to cut and stack for the coming winter.  Wm. Alexander, Sr., who was nine years old that summer, recalls that his father worked at putting up the house first and when the one-room cabin was covered, he immediately started with the job of making hay.  All the hay was cut with a hand scythe.  All the low places were covered with thick growths of wild hay and Mr. Alexander worked from daybreak until dark each day cutting hay.  He fashioned a wide, wooden toothed hand rake and with this crude instrument, the boys raked the hay into piles and put it into their wagon to haul it up near the cabin.  Every wisp was carefully stacked for the winter, which they had been warned would be one with lots of snow.

In the meantime the cattle and horses grazed and became fat and sleek on the knee high grass.  Game was every place, especially antelope and with the coming of fall the deer and elk came down out of the hills.  Fish were abundant in every stream and catching enough for a meal took but a few minutes time.

The buffalo had gone by this time and Mr. Alexander recalls, “We never saw any buffalo after coming, but we heard that a half-breed had killed one that fall down at the forks of the Newfork and the Green River.  That is the last buffalo anyone heard of in this country - that was the fall of 1889.”

Early in the fall, Mr. Alexander and his oldest son, Frank, went back to Montpelier to get some possessions which they had left stored there with an older daughter, Charlotte, who had married during the stay in Montpelier.²  While there, they secured supplies for the winter.  Mrs. Alexander and the younger boys kept the ranch during the month long trip.

In August of 1889, the Alexanders were joined in the Cora Valley by the Bill and Jimmie Westphals.  They built three cabins, two on land now owned by Wm. Alexander, Sr., and a third cabin immediately north of the Alexander ranch now owned by Carroll Noble.  So the first winter, the Alexanders had neighbors down the valley.  These Westphals left the following spring.

That first winter was a long and hard one but the Alexander family had planned and prepared well so that they and their livestock came through the winter without the extreme hardships experienced by many others in the Wyo territory.  With flour, sugar, salt, bacon and molasses brought from Montpelier, the family lived as other pioneer families, with wild meat and fish as the mainstay of their diet.

The Budds had a post office at Big Piney and during the first year, infrequent trips were made down to Big Piney to get mail and make some necessary purchases at the Budd store.  After the Westphals came, the two families took turns making such trips.  In that summer of 1889, two families moved onto sites west of Pine Creek near the present Pinedale.  Their names were McDowell and Helm and neither of those families stayed, moving out when fall gave evidence of the hard winter to come.

“We never went to formal school after coming to Wyoming,” tells Mr. Alexander, but we were more fortunate than most children of those days, because our mother was an educated woman.  She could teach us.”  Mrs. Alexander who had come to the Dakota territory as a tutor and governess to the family of Governor General Faulk, gave her family an education during the long winter days in the one room cabin.

During the first rugged winter, Mr. Alexander recalls that three people spent the winter near the town site of Pinedale.  They put up a rude cabin near the crossing on Pine Creek.  The men, Al Sanford and Jack Haley spent the winter trapping and a widow named Puckett kept house for them.  With the coming of spring, the trio moved out.  Both Sanford and Haley later settled in the Hoback Basin, then known as the Fall Creek Basin.

Mr. Alexander reminisced that over in the Boulder area, several families had moved in.  The Steeles had settled at the hot springs in ’88.  The Lovatts and the Boulters each had a little bunch of cattle and had established homes.  Vible and Broderson came about that time and established a store on East Fork and later a post office.  The Faler family came and settled on Newfork between Pole Creek and Boulder Creek but moved on into the Fall River Basin Country.  But the Newfork Valley was a lonely place that first winter.

When asked about the Indians, Mr. Alexander said they saw Indians once in a while through the first summer, when they came to the Alexander cabin to beg.  The family watched their stock closely and forestalled any attempts at the Indian’s stealing.

Once in a while that first winter the Alexanders had company from three trappers who had put up a cabin near Jerome spring, along the present road to the Willow Creek ranger station and the Z-U.

The following year a nephew of the Westphals who had moved, came in and took up a residence on the place now owned by Mr. Alexander.  This Jim Westphal started a store³ and traded with the Indians.  His wife, whose name was Minerva J. started the first post office at Cora.  The name Cora was decided upon by the Westphal children who named it for an aunt who is now Mrs. Cora Auer.

Mr. Alexander does not remember that his family were ever unhappy or lonely.  They planned well for those first years and the fact that they did plan for the hard rugged winters made their lot easier.  Of the four Alexander boys, William and Charlie stayed in Sublette county and raised families here.  Frank went to Canada in 1912, and Essy (Esley) went over the mountains to Burris, where he ran the store and post office for many years.

William Alexander, who is the lone survivor of the family lives on his homestead near Cora, with his son, W. D. (Bud) operating the ranch.

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¹Bonnam, Yankton, SD

² Charlotte married William Henry McGilvray (also spelled as McGiluray and McGiloray) Jan 31, 1889.  Source - Western Historical Marriage Record Index - BYU Idaho 

³this building may have been moved to the Alexander place to become the first bunkhouse