Leslie and David's Wanderings: 18 July 2023 Heart Mountain and Rodeo

David finished work early, so we headed out to the Heart Mountain Relocation Camp National Historic Place to the north east of town. The Heart Mountain camp was built in 1942 to house up to 11,000 Japanese American internees. This is the third interment camp we have visited and it definitely had the best exhibits and a good film. The exhibits cover the lives of Japanese Americans before during and after their interment during World War 2. The only surviving buildings are two barracks and a boiler building from the camp hospital. The barracks were hastily thrown together (a barrack was boasted to be built in 58 minutes)…between February 1942 and August 1942 when the first internees arrived by train. The Internees quickly organized themselves in this desolate country, completed an irrigation canal to allow them to farm, a fire brigade, a police force, and crews to work on construction. They grew their own vegetables, chickens and hogs to feed themselves and other camps. It’s amazing under the conditions they were living. Can’t imagine surviving a Wyoming winter with -40F temperatures in a building with tar paper walls and no insulation especially with nothing more than California clothing. There were ten interment camps for Japanese and Japanese Americans and more camps built for other nationalities (German, Italian, and other axis countries).

Following our visit to Heart Mountain, we went to the rodeo in town. The invocation at the start of the rodeo was a real heart swelling speech. This is real God and Country part of the US and we loved it! The rodeo was fun to watch. They had bronco riding, bull riding, cow roping, barrel racing and a fun event for the kids. We had taken the free bus from the KOA to the arena and when we made our way out of the stadium, we were surprised to find out the bus had taken off without us! Fortunately, some of the Rodeo clowns were still around and suggested we call the Cody Taxi company. We waited around of thirty minutes for the taxi to pick us up. But folks hung around to make sure we would not be stranded. Got to love small towns in God’s country!