Here’s Walt and he’s walking the I-beams down at the job—he’s walking the flanges and eyeing the web he helped design and build.
See, the railroad tamed the Wild West in 1888, but it was the regional discovery of crude oil a few years later that gave the city of Casper Wyoming its identity. Early refineries transformed Casper’s crude oil into kerosene and gas, but it was adjacent Sweetwater County that brought a boom—and Walt—to the area in 1947.
Sweetwater County? There’s one hell of a story: during Prohibition, three uniformed soldiers stationed in nearby Rawlins traveled to Sweetwater County on a rumor that whiskey was being made up in the hills. The three soldiers set out on foot to find the spot and were soon enveloped by a blizzard. One of the soldiers made it back to headquarters, but two of the fellows were lost in the snow. There was a search and rescue deal, and the area was dubbed Lost Soldier Field. Anyhow. In the late 1940s, oil wells were situated right in the heart of Lost Soldier Field in Sweetwater County and these wells? Man, did they hit.
And where there’s the promise of oil, there are refineries to be built. And Walt and Bud are two men for the job.
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