Oral History Program

The Milward L. Simpson Family Oral History Program:

This program focuses on the generations of the Simpson family whose history has been interwoven with the history of Wyoming for more than one hundred years. This project is funded through the generosity of Denver businessman Carl Williams.

Filling in the documentary gaps within the areas of national, regional, and state business industries and politics is of key importance to the Simpson Institute. Oral history is a powerful tool that enables us to capture different perspectives, most of which cannot be found in written sources. What is oral history? It is the collection and study of historical information about individuals, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes or videotapes and transcriptions of planned interviews. Interviews are conducted with people who participated in or observed past events and whose memories and perceptions of these are preserved as an aural record for future generations.

Wyoming's Energy Booms and Busts:

An Oral History program explores the social, environmental, and economic impacts of Wyoming's latest energy boom. The program interviews those involved in, and impacted by, the activities to develop and extract the state's coal, natural gas, and wind energy. Funding is provided by the Wyoming Humanities Council, the University of Wyoming School of Energy Resources, and the American Heritage Center.

In 2010, the AHC’s Alan K. Simpson Institute for Western Politics and Leadership received grant funding from the Wyoming Humanities Council to conduct an oral history project to explore the social, environmental, and economic impacts of Wyoming’s latest energy boom in Sublette County and the more recent downturn. The title of the project is “Wyoming’s Energy Boom, 1995 – 2010: An Oral History Program.” The AHC’s Leslie Waggener, Rick Ewig, and Kim Winters, as well as Pinedale historian Ann Chambers Noble, conducted more than forty audio oral history interviews with those involved in, and impacted by, the activities to develop and extract the state’s natural gas resources in Sublette County. Interviewees included those most directly impacted by the energy boom. UW School of Energy Resources is funding panel discussions at UW and in Pinedale to allow both community members and scholars to reflect on the interviews’ perspectives in detail.  Audio files of interviews, transcripts, and photos from the project are on the AHC’s website.

If you’re not familiar with Sublette County, it is located in western Wyoming and is an area of about 3.2 million acres; 80% of which is public land. The Wind River Range runs north to south along the eastern portion of the county, the Gros Ventre Wilderness lies to the north, and the Wyoming Range runs along the western side. The central portion of the county is a valley comprised of a sagebrush steppe eco-region. The natural beauty of the region has long made it a favorite tourist destination. The county is geographically isolated from railroads and population centers and it has retained a frontier culture for longer than many areas of Wyoming and the West, and remained one of the least densely populated areas in the state until the start of the energy boom around 2000. The county has three incorporated towns, Big Piney, Marbleton, and Pinedale; and has several other smaller community centers, including Bondurant, Cora, Boulder, and Daniel.

The area in and around Sublette County has long been known as a vast source of oil and gas; however, the tight sand formations have frustrated more than a few energy companies since the 1920s.  Success did not occur until 1995 when McMurry Oil employed a hydraulic fracturing process that could effectively unlock the considerable natural gas resources. The first area to be developed became known as Jonah Field, located about 32 miles south of Pinedale on land managed by the Bureau of Land Management; the field has a productive area of 21,000 acres. However, the development of a nearby even larger gas field beginning around June 2000, the Pinedale Anticline, located on BLM land about a stone’s throw from the southern edge of Pinedale, led to significant impacts on the town as natural gas prices rose and this resource was rushed to be developed.
What were the impacts socially, economically and environmentally, on Sublette County? How did residents feel about the impacts? Comments from two Pinedale residents who will be part of our panel discussions provide a sampling of the information we gathered. An interview with Leslie Rozier, Pinedale native and longtime nurse practitioner in the county, points up the ambivalence towards energy development that was reflected in a number of the interviews: “For me it’s bittersweet because I can sit here with this gorgeous clinic. I have every tool…I don’t have to send that patient to the hospital. I’ve got a full lab…I have a helicopter on this beautiful helipad in forty-five minutes. My pocket is full of change. But I really cry because we don’t have our sweet little quiet town.” Rozier is also active among a community of Pinedale residents who fear a decline in air quality: “My father has lived here—he’s eighty-three, and he’s had a ranch south of Pinedale and we know that our air quality has changed in his lifetime. We do not have what we used to call the…‘severe blue clear day.’ We know that. Is that coming from outside the area, or is it coming from Sublette County? And that’s been a question that we’ve all asked as concerned citizens is, ‘Where has that change in the quality of our air come from?’”  
A frequent complaint of Pinedale residents, not always longtime residents, is that they no longer recognize those they see in the town’s only grocery store, Ridley’s. Rozier notes, “My parents are, like I said, in their eighties, and they just are very sad that…when they go to the grocery store anymore, they don’t know anybody in the grocery store.” Cally McKee is a Senior Regulatory Coordinator with Ultra Petroleum, a company with a number of gas leases in the Pinedale Anticline. She is also a longtime Pinedale resident, arriving in the town with her family when she was starting fourth grade. Her excitement at the changes in the town is evident in her interview. A sentiment of a lost town ethos is not part of her perspective. She recently joined the board of the Pinedale Fine Arts Council, which, at the time of the interview, was organizing its yearly gala, “…one of the things that Jo Crandall, who started the Fine Arts Council…keeps coming to me and saying, ‘How do we get all the oil and gas people, these new people in town, involved in what’s going on? Coming to the performances and stuff?’  Going to the [San Jose] Taiko thing the other night…I saw people there and I was like, ‘Oh, what are they doing here? I wouldn’t have picked them for a Pinedale Fine Arts performance.’ It’s funny…they’re certainly starting to become more and more of a part of the community. But I still hear from people, ‘Well, I go in the grocery store and I just don’t know anybody in there anymore.’ And I say to people, ‘So what? Well, stop and introduce yourself.’”
Differing attitudes toward the same circumstances were a large part of what we discovered in this project. The AHC invites you to explore other nuances that can be found in the voices of those interviewed for this significant Wyoming history program. For more information about the program, please contact Leslie Waggener, archivist for Simpson Insti-tute for Western Politics and Leadership, at 307-766-2557 or lwaggen2@uwyo.edu.