Rededication of century-old monument of Oregon Trail history set for Sunday

The Casper, Wyoming, Daughters of the American Revolution 100 years ago celebrated a new monument to local history in Mills, along the Oregon Trail and near the location of the 1865 battle that killed the city of Casper’s namesake, Caspar Collins.

Carved atop the century-old stone Oregon Trail marker are the words: “Unveiled by Ft. Caspar Chapter D.A.R. July 5, 1920.”

Exactly 100 years later, the Fort Caspar Chapter of the DAR will return to commemorate the monument Sunday in a brief rededication ceremony with Mills town officials at Memorial Park (across the street from the Mills Post Office) followed by refreshments.

“The DAR has three main agendas, and our main goals are historic preservation, patriotism and education,” Fort Caspar Chapter Regent Shelly McCleary Trumbull said. “So we’re big on historic preservation.”

McCleary Trumbull on Sunday will follow not only in the footsteps of an earlier local DAR generation, but of her own family who helped dedicate the monument in 1920. So will her daughter, Kristen Trumbull-Moldascher, who spearheaded Sunday’s rededication.

They learned through research for the rededication project that McCleary Trumbull’s great-grandmother Mary Brooks directed the original unveiling as state regent for the DAR. Mary’s husband, former Wyoming Gov. B.B. Brooks, spoke at the ceremony.

The marker “was unveiled to great fanfare by a Wyoming celebrity, Dr. Grace Raymond Hebard, who was a professor at the University of Wyoming and its first librarian, an Oregon Trail enthusiast, a suffragist, and a D.A.R. member,” according to the DAR.

Memorial Park isn’t the monument’s original spot, which was a farther west along Yellowstone Highway where the Lariat Mobile Home and RV Park now is, according to the press release. The area was identified as the site along the Oregon Trail where U.S. Army 2nd Lt. Caspar Collins died on July 25, 1865 in a battle near Platte Bridge Station, later renamed Fort Caspar in his honor.

“In this day and age, with all the monuments being you know torn down,” she said, trailing off. “… I feel it is important to keep history alive. Good, bad, indifferent. It’s all important, because even the bad history, you can learn from it.”

The marker has been moved at least twice, including to the intersection of Yellowstone Highway and West Highway Street before arriving in the 1980s at its current home.

The monument to mark the Oregon Trail and to honor the memory of Collins was donated by the state of Wyoming, the Fort Caspar Chapter of the DAR and Natrona County commissioners, according to a state DAR publication. The day before the unveiling, the DAR placed a similar Oregon Trail marker at Independence Rock in southwest Natrona County. Those following the trail aimed to reach the landmark by Independence Day.

McCleary Trumbull lived in Casper her whole life but learned of the DAR monument in Mills a few years ago, when she and her daughter co-chaired a DAR project to correct a bronze plaque at Fort Caspar. While researching for that project, they found photographs of the Oregon Trail marker.

“But my great-grandparents – Kristen’s great-great-grandparents – were both there a hundred years ago and dedicated it,” she said. “So it kind of became important to us, when we realized there would be the 100th anniversary, to see if the national DAR would let us rededicate it.”