Wyoming Tales, Part 2: Absaroka, the State That Almost Was

Back in the 1930s, the residents of Wyoming, Montana and South Dakota felt the federal government— and the state legislatures— ignored them. They felt unheard, unheeded and, most importantly, moved to find solutions of their own. In this episode, Ben and Noel return to the story of Absaroka to ask: Was this meant to be the 49th state, or was it a publicity stunt?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Ye

(00:27):
welcome back to the show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank
you so much for tuning in. Like we said in
a previous episode, we're spending a little time in Wyoming.
This is part two of our Tales from Wyoming. It
has nothing to do with Big Nose George. But no,
this does have a little bit of a connection to

(00:49):
a previous episode we did why Omen where the sheriffs
wear human leather shoes. Where there are failed states, And
that's all I got. Failed states. That's the thing right
in history. Boom, No nipples, No, there are no nipples
on the shoes. Um. Yeah, it's it's not only reserved

(01:11):
for like you know, Banana republics or places outside of
the United States. There are in fact failed states within
the United States. And that's what we're talking about today.
Portions of Wyoming, Montana, and South Dakota back in nineteen
thirty nine tried to secede from the Union and form
their own state, which they called Absorca, which sounds like

(01:37):
something out of like a science fiction novel er, like
a like a Dune series, but it was in fact
named after the abs Sorca Mountain Range in the Rockies. Yep. Oh.
And by the way, I'm Ben shout out to our
super producer Casey Pegro and our guest producer Andrew Howard. Uh,
neither of whom I believe have been to Absorca. Guys,

(02:00):
set us straight. If that's an incorrect assumption, I know,
by the way, if I didn't make that clear from
the jump. Um and yeah, I mean Absorca, the you know,
the state or the whatever you want to call it,
never actually came into being, so I guess you couldn't. Really, Yeah,
you still call it a failed to day. They did
have license plates though, I but those are collector's items.

(02:21):
Oh yeah. And the previous episode we did back in
Get This two thousand and eighteen was called the United
States That Never Were. We had a we had a
special guest on UH and we talked a little bit.
It was kind of a launch. It was the guest.
It was my old man that's right, that's right, the

(02:41):
colonel who says hi to everyone. By the way, Hello.
So he took us on a journey through a number
of different states or proposed states in the US. And
today we want to do a deep dive on Absorca.
Absorca is so fascinating to me. So it's this. The

(03:05):
mountain range and the state were named after the Absorca Indians.
The mountain range is named after the Absorca community. The
name itself comes from the hiddatsa name for the crow people,
and it means children of the large beaked bird. So
that's that's the etymology. You guys know, we love etymology here. Yeah,

(03:27):
and it's also gives what kind of gives it a
little bit of a parallel flavor with big nose George. Yeah, hey,
good call. I did not think about that part. Yeah.
Absorca may sound obscure nowadays, but back in their glory
days when they were trying to make a state called Absorca,

(03:48):
they did a lot of stuff. They had license plates,
and they even held a beauty pageant, Miss Absorca in nine.
Today we're gonna we're gonna explore a little bit about
how this came to form and why it is not
a state or a star on the US flag today.
This story had a kind of main character. That would

(04:10):
be Street Commissioner A. R. Swickard. He is the guy
who declared himself at one point governor of Absorka and
began taking in grievances like hearing complaints from the locals.
So how did we get here? Well, to answer that question,
we have to go back to the American West in

(04:31):
the nineteen thirties. The fences that theoretically formed state borders
had had been pretty finalized by this point. There were
outliers Alaska and Hawaii. Of course, Alaska had been a
Russian colony for a while, and Hawaii was the outlier

(04:51):
because it was its own independent kingdom. If you'd like
to learn more about that, please do check out. And
at silent episode of stuff they don't want you to know,
why are we saying it's excellent? Are we kissing our
own butts? Absolutely not. That episode was hosted by Code
Name Doc Holiday, our producer, and Danis Schwartz from Noble Blood.

(05:15):
I thought was fantastic, so please give it a listen.
And in nine Alaska Hawaii, as we all know, they
became the forty ninth and fiftieth states. There hasn't been
a fifty feet yet, but just twenty years before then,
there was this real secessionist movement in Sheridan, Wyoming. And
these people, like you just said earlier, these people wanted

(05:37):
to make a new state, and they wanted it to
be Absorca. It would have been the forty ninth state
if if everything worked out the way they had hoped. Yes,
that's right. There's a pretty visceral image in an article
on Drake mag dot com UM describing the formation of
Absorca as having been cut from the guts of northern Wyoming,

(05:59):
southern Montana in western South Dakota. I mean, there's really
no other way to read that than in that like
you know, hardcore mad Maxie kind of voice, good from
the goods, um. But yeah, you know, there was a
part of Wyoming that was largely Democratic, in the southern half,
and there was a sense that that part was not

(06:22):
playing nice with the rest of the state. Uh. Therefore,
a secessionist movement UM was launched by the northern portion
of the state, which was made up of Republicans in
nine nine. Their desire was to create a new state
that would better serve its constituency. Uh it's more conservative population. Um.

(06:44):
So that state, Yeah, as you is, there is you know,
and my constituency that's a My brother artou Ref I
didn't make that up. Um. This state would have been
called Absorca, and by the way. It's confusing because it's
spelled like it's got an extra syllable. It doesn't exist
like it should be absaroke, but it's absorca alternately absorca.

(07:05):
There's a couple of different ways we've seen it recommended
to be pronounced. And like we said, it was named
by this nearby mountain range, so that would have been
made up of northern Wyoming's, southeast Montana, and the western
region of South Dakota, like you said at the top
of the show, and yeah, imagine you're in Wyoming and
nineteen thirties and you say this is just not conservative enough.

(07:29):
So instead of operating within the usual mechanisms of government,
I'm just gonna make my own thing. The temptation is,
you know, is understandable. The exact genesis of the movement
is a little bit difficult to pin down, but we
know that rumors of secession were well received by a

(07:49):
lot of folks in small towns, a lot of ranchers,
because they had experienced years of droughts, there had been
biblical level plagues of in sex and they were thinking,
you know, again, understandably, they were thinking, look, I see
this new deal and it's doing a lot of good
for people who live in other states. Howcome Uncle Sam's

(08:12):
bankroll isn't making it out here to us, we're suffering.
There has to be a better way, some kind of alternative.
And then that's when people started kind of co mingling
across state lines. Like some South Dakotas would meet with
some folks from northern Wyoming and they'd say, look, we're
all on the same page, right we could make something

(08:35):
that works better than than what we're stuck with right now. Yeah. Yeah,
almost like a plot, uh starts to coalesce. So this
contingent of Wyoming Heights, wyominger's I'm not really sure. Let
us know. If you're a citizen of Wyoming, what do

(08:55):
we call you? Um. They were really irritated by this
level of what they saw as out of touch democratic
control of the state legislature there in Cheyenne, which, if
you've watched Deadwood, Cheyenne has always kind of stand in
for like the man right they always say, you know,
back in back in Cheyenne. They felt like they were

(09:17):
being ignored, the forgotten men and women of Wyoming by
that southern half of the state. They were not having
their interests represented properly. Um. So this movement, this plot
started to thicken the game momentum when the residents of
the southeastern part of Montana joined in this little conspiracy.

(09:37):
Let's not forget that this all happened during the height
of the depression, when it was a lot more likely
that state dollars would be funneled into UH towns that
had infrastructure such as a college or a hospital and communities.

(09:58):
UH in the part of of the of the state
that we're talking about, they were really rural, They were
sparsely populated. They would have been miles and miles away
from any of those types of places. Therefore, they were
not seen as priority to get that relief. And let's
not forget these were in the early days of the automobile,
when the Model A was kind of the you know,

(10:19):
the most advanced vehicle around and ben your car stuff
experience out of come in handy here. What would still
that have been like to drive around in one of
these cars like for these long, tedious trips. Oh, it's
a great question. It's rough. So the US interstate system
did not exist at this point, which meant that traveling

(10:43):
even with a Model A, which was like the second
biggest success forward encountered after the Model T. Even even
if you had that car, it could still be, as
you said, pretty tedious, especially in sparsely populated areas where
you had to drive a long way from point A
to point B in a Model A. It's not a

(11:05):
super pleasant journey. And these institutions that other states or
communities have are just not there. You don't run into
them as often because frankly, there's not a huge population, right,
So if you don't have tons and tons of people,
then you probably won't have tons and tons of colleges
and hospitals and so on. So we can understand what

(11:29):
felt like an economic and cultural disconnect in this community.
And they would say, like, look, it takes forever to
drive to the state capital, and those aren't really our people, right,
we have to drive all the way there for a check.
They don't know what's going on here on the ground.

(11:50):
They're short changing us, So we need to take the
reins of statehood. South Dakota Magazine has a great quote
from a journalist at the time who says unity was
the dream, a vision of orphans bent on cutting the
hot out of the watermelon. It's it's weird because, uh,

(12:11):
you know, it's betraying this honestly, this secessionist movement in
a really empathetic light because everybody, even if they didn't
agree the the common person in this area at the time,
would have understood what was driving people to make this decision. Right. No,
it was tough times all around for most people. The

(12:35):
residents of these counties that were far away from the
state capitals of South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming. They're called
Wyomingites by the way, sense although apparently Supreme Court Justice
former Supreme Court Justice Scalia is on record saying that
he wanted it to be a different word. Yeah. But

(12:57):
that's the thing though, Like there's no real grammatical rule
was behind these like Michigander. There there's no hard and
fast role that creates that suffix. Right. It seems like
somebody just comes up with it and people just roll
with it, right. I you know, I haven't looked into this,
but it does feel somewhat arbitrary. Maybe you just go

(13:17):
with the one that for some reason sounds better, feels natural.
But if you want to be wyoming Er, then I say,
full steam ahead, you know what I mean, Just get
it to catch on with everybody else the way that
these folks did with the idea of absorca. They felt alienated.
And and and let's go back to drakemag dot com

(13:38):
here because I love I love the way this one
is is written. They described this guy a R. Swickerd
that we mentioned earlier as a quote stir by nature,
that's right. And he had bona fides. He was like
a bona fide celebrity. Essentially. He was a former baseball player, um.
And he was based in Sheridan as a street and

(14:01):
water commissioner UM. So he you know, had kind of swaggered,
you know what I mean, like, and he had the
gift of gab, and he knew how to kind of
get people on board with his cause. So he led
the charge in this idea, this notion of splitting off
into a distinct state. And and you know, historians report

(14:23):
that his main beef was that Sheridan County wasn't getting
their fair share of the Republican Patronage Committee appointments. So
to him it was almost more political. Uh, he was
coming at it from a more political bent than maybe
the average Joe's and Josephine's who were more concerned with

(14:44):
they weren't getting their money, you know, they weren't getting
that that subsidy to help them just you know, go
about their lives, uh and having to go kiss the
ring in Cheyenne in order to you know, beg for
scraps and get that check. Can you imagine if we
had to do that for our stimmies, you know, we
had to like draw of to Washington and go in person,
please sir, and then hold out a hand for a check.

(15:05):
It's pretty demoralizing, right, Yeah, absolutely, I mean there is there.
There is a real issue of personal agency and dignity
that comes in here. We know that even even today
you see similar observations from folks when when you look
at one state over or you nowadays will be going online,

(15:28):
but let's say read a newspaper and you're learning about
all this all this cool stuff and very expensive stuff
happening in other parts of the country, and then you think, well,
do those parts of the country just matter more than
me and my family and my community. Wyoming. A lot

(15:48):
of ranchers in Wyoming specifically, I felt like they were
not getting federal cash and they were being passed over
in favor of things like the development of railroads and
these huge public works projects irrigation or dams for instance.
That was a specific example, but you see, Wyoming had

(16:11):
a secret beneath that sparsely populated grazing land, there was
a ton of coal and this this could be a
huge advantage for some of these smaller towns in Montana
on the periphery if they joined up with this ab
sort of movement. The folks in western South Dakota were

(16:34):
mainly beefed up against the politicians on the east side
of the state because they were running the state government
and they used that control of the government to take
advantage of the ore industry. Right they taxed it pretty heavily,
and more and more members of you know, South Dakota

(16:57):
in the western side are starting to say, like East
eastern South Dakotans are completely different people, and they've got
us over a barrel. There has to be a better way,
and a picture like absorca monorail exactly monorail um ben
Would there have been things like mineral rights at the time,

(17:19):
or the notion of you know, ownership over these kind
of resources, like would it have belonged to the state
or would it have belonged to like the region. I'm curious. Yeah,
that's a great question. So this stuff kind of goes
state by state. We know that we know that mineral
rights definitely existed in the US, right, Texas has those

(17:39):
for sure. The thing is, again, you know, I don't
want to fall into the stereotype of like cunning, lawful,
evil politician, but a lot of these ranchers, a lot
of people in these communities feel like the government is
using legislation in a predatory where and taking advantage of

(18:01):
stuff that shouldn't belong to them, right, or their their
rent seeking because they're grabbing so much in taxes every
time somebody tries to conduct business. And then in this phray,
in this economic cultural fray, in these desperate times, Absorca

(18:21):
seems like a shining new solution and so swickered. When
he's the monorail dude in this story, he gets a
lot like he he has an audience that is totally
on board. They're gonna hear him out. It does. It's
sound things are so When things are so crazy and

(18:42):
so unpleasant at their baseline normal, then ideas that you
would have once thought were crazy sound increasingly plausible. So
the concept of saying, hey, we're gonna make our own
state sounded less and less like a pipe dream and
more and more like something that could be a real plan. Absolutely,

(19:03):
and a lot of these meetings took place in the
basement of the Sheridan Rotary Club. UM. But one of
the early meetings, when Swigert was trying to get people
on board, UM, he said something along the lines of,
you know, as governor, we will make our own laws
like the fat cats and Wyoming legislature do in the

(19:23):
big Hotel at Cheyenne. You know there there's that Cheyenne again,
as like a term of abuse. You know, it's like
these are the out of touch, you know, fat cats
over there, the big Hotel. I wonder what that's reference.
I'm guessing that's the fancy way of referring to the
state House or something like that, like almost like a
you know, like they're they're so out of touch and
their fancy hotel, you know, and they're they're nice digs

(19:44):
over there in Cheyenne. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's a good point.
I'm wondering. Was the big Hotel the only hotel in town?
It could well have been. I mean, this was I mean, now,
this is like in the thirties, and this is like
the way past early like Deadwood era that they would
have had, like infrastructure. I'm sure the big hotel was
some sort of uh slang for for the state house

(20:08):
or or something like that. That's just me guest gu estimating.
But he did end up meeting with Gwyoming's actual governor,
nels H. Smith. I love the name Nells by the way,
I used that as a pseudonym sometimes if I'm trying
to make a fake email or something like that, like, uh,
why why did you make a fake email? Noel, you
might ask, don't worry about it. I tend to use

(20:29):
the name nels. But yeah, he met with the governor
for a closed door session, a little rap session at
the capitol, and apparently it went okay. Uh, it was friendly. Reportedly,
um he was quoted as saying, I told the governor
of our sister state to the south of Buffalo that
we had no warlike designs and that rumors we might

(20:52):
succeed by force were erroneous. He had it, uh. And
then he coins another thing, which I love, We absto
Rodin's which literally sounds like a species of alien from
Star Wars still has that extra syllable just movie silence.
Maybe it's Absordins then, because the ABSA is not present
in the real princia, so I'm thinking it might be Absordin.

(21:15):
Still sounds like Rhodans or whatever. Um. We Absordins are
a peace loving lot. And while we think we really
need the state of Absorca, we are not inclined to
a revolution. M So he's saying something very important here,
even if it's couched and like folk see comfy terms.
He's saying, listen, uncle Sam, federal government, no need to

(21:41):
send federal troops here. We're we're peaceful, We're not raising
a militia against you. But we are going to draw
a map. So Slickered and his crew at the Rotary
Club draw this proposed map of ABSWORKA, and they do

(22:04):
a couple of provocative things. The map creates a boundary
straight through northern Wyoming and then uh, it cuts a
line through western South Dakota, and it takes this kind
of like square, like if you're looking at a brownie pan.
It takes like a corner piece brownie chunk out of
southeastern Montana, and it doesn't pay a lot of heed

(22:28):
to existing geological boundaries, right, like the Missouri Rivers. Not
only does it not pay attention to those boundaries, it
like literally takes some pretty big tourist destinations and just
like ropes it into the territory, things like the as
yet still under construction, uh Mount Rushmore. You know, the

(22:51):
president faces on the mountain. Everyone knows that one. And
Yellowstone uh not to mention the Black Hills. So that's
a pretty sis flex there. I don't think that would
have gone unnoticed or you know, give it up without
a fight. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so the borders are established,
at least in the minds of Swickard and co. And

(23:13):
they decided that rather than just focusing on sorting out
all the paperwork that they would need, they're going to
start behaving as though they already are an extant state.
So they make the license plates which you mentioned. These
are distributed to friends of the Rotary Club, right. And
they also have that beauty contest. So we know that

(23:36):
this beauty pageant was kind of a kind of a
big deal because you can see photos of the winner
one Dorothy Fellows, and Dorothy Fellows also got you know,
post winning this beauty contest. She got roped into being
a kind of like um, an active member of the movement,

(23:57):
or at least a publicity draw because she went with
Swicker in kind of a march to Billions, Montana. Uh.
And it's it's funny because they got the local high
school band or the Sheridan High School band. We should
say they got the American Legion Drum and Bugle Corps,
and they kind of I don't know, maybe I shouldn't

(24:20):
call the march. It was more like a parade. That's
the since I get what do you think? Yeah, that
sounds about right. Once again, excellent turns of phrase in
this Drake mag article. It's really more of a blog
post because unfortunately doesn't list the writer. Uh, it's an
official Absorca is the name. Oh, it says Drake Magazine
back issue content winneren Um, but does not credit the writer.

(24:43):
But there's some fabulous terms of phrase here. With borders established,
the secession has turned to the obvious next steps to
forming a new state, pressing license plates which were distributed
to supporters and holding a Misobsorca beauty pageant. Old black
and white photos show as sultry Dorothy Fellows wrapped shoulder
to hip in a missub Sorcus sash with fellows in
tow Swickard led a noisy procession to Billings, Montana in

(25:05):
the spring of nine that included the Sheridan High School
Band and the local American Legion Drum and Bugle Corps.
And sorry to be redundant, their folks. I just wanted
to read that quote because I think the writing of
this Drake mag article is fabulous and I wish they
credited the author um. But then at the end of
this procession, of this parade, they actually link up with
Prince Olave and Princess Martha of Norway who were in

(25:29):
town for the Viking League of America reception. UH and UH.
Swickard also supposedly met with King hack in the seventh
of hak Kan h a a Ko and the seventh
of Norway in Wyoming as well. So he's already laying
the groundwork for like international affairs here, really trying to

(25:50):
to make a show of him of himself as some
sort of like great diplomat and states. Right. Yeah, and
that's interesting. So one big thing about the formation of
a new country is always recognition by other existing countries.
So he's taking a strategy that people use on an
international level and applying it to the proposed state of Absorca.

(26:18):
And and you know it's clever because the royalty here
the clearly they didn't know what they were being used
for a lot. This guy is very savvy when it
comes to publicity. And before he continue, yeah, agreed, Drake
mag is awesome. It's started as a fly fishing magazine.

(26:40):
M hmm. Yeah, the article really about Obstorca. They were
talking about. The center piece of it is the trout
there exact. So here's what he does. He shows off
these license plates and he wants everybody who has a
Model A or a Model T, you know, no discrimination,

(27:01):
to show their support for apps work of by rocking
these plates. And then, of course, what's the next step
in publicizing your perspective. State, You gotta get a flag.
Got to get a flag. What's a what's the state
without a flag? The flag is red and white. And
they've sown a big forty nine in their forty nine

(27:21):
standing for the forty nine state. And he also started
pitching it as the vacationist paradise because, as you said,
with that potential map, they did purposely include a lot
of like tourist destinations, outdoor landmarks, things like that Big
Horn Mountains, Big Horn Basin, Yellowstone Parks, Black Hills. They

(27:43):
were gonna try to It's like they were gonna try
to make their main export tourism or their main industry
tourism at some point. Yeah, but they had no claim
to any of that stuff. Total flex. But are you
are you familiar with um the very very popular Twitch
streamer by the name of Dream. He goes by Dream.

(28:06):
I only I only know about this because of my kid. Uh.
It's it's a world that she's all of a sudden,
mega mega entrenched in. But it's all about Minecraft. And
in Minecraft, the SMPS, which is basically like a special
invite only server, they have like literal states and boundaries
and like different countries that people have created. Uh. And

(28:27):
Dream has a feud with this dude who goes by
wilbur Soot, who is a British young man, Um who
is he writes kind of funny songs and he's a
Twitch streamer and does uh and does all this uh
this Minecraft stuff on YouTube and he basically like seceded
from Dreams SMP country and started his own country called

(28:52):
laman berg l apostrophe m A N b U r G.
And it has a flag and it's like a big
it's a flag. It's like, I think it's sort of
a disk to dream because Dreams logo is like a
black smiley face and so like the left hand corner
of the of the flag is a black circle with
an X in it and then two more excess and
then blue, white and red. So the flag is very important.

(29:16):
They describe it as a horizontal tricolor with a yellow
arc filled with black and three crosses in the style
of the Amsterdam flag. The blue stands for freedom, the
red stands for the fighting and the blood spilled for
the country. The white stands for peace. The yellow black
denote the wall which stands between I think dreams, country
and Laman Bird. But it is interesting, like these things matter. Uh,

(29:38):
these thing the idea of borders even in fictional universes. Yeah, yeah,
this is this is a discussion for all the amateur
vexillologists in the crowd, which is a word I never
get to use. Man, it's the study of flags vexillology,
which is a super cool word that sounds like it
should describe something. Don't know a little more space age.

(30:01):
But yeah, flags are important, boundaries are important, and public
awareness is important. And since Swickard is not trying to
raise an army, he is instead focused on trying to
win the hearts and the minds of the public. Sounds
like a crazy idea, yeah, but is it just crazy

(30:22):
enough to work? It turns out this Absorca movement had
a pretty hefty impact before it began to fade away.
This this is where Governor Swickard, as he calls himself
self appointed Governor Swickard is right and high on the
publicity from that beauty contest, from the parade, from tricking

(30:46):
these European royalties into a period to support his state.
Uh So he starts holding what are called grievance hearings.
He says, come to Sheridan, people of Absorca, come to Sheridan,
tell me what's going on in your neck of the woods,
and let's see if we can fix some stuff. What
has Whyoming done to you? And people do show up.

(31:10):
People show up and they're like, hey, Governor, uh Swickard,
Wyoming has been a real pill to me about you know,
mineral rights are about taxation, things like that. And the
hearings make it into the news and way over and shy,
and someone at that big hotel is listening, and the

(31:33):
big hotel, yeah, and they're they're they're reading this, and
imagine how they feel. They're like, wow, this, this guy
is really getting a lot of press, and it's making
it look like we are not doing a particularly great
job for parts of our constituency. And so leaders in
both Wyoming and Montana began to pay much more attention.

(31:58):
They started to keep their eyes on this, and the
attention for some reason, maybe the attention resulted in actual
better legislation because people who were part of this secessionist
movement started to walk it back a little bit because
they felt like the leaders of their existing states were

(32:20):
finally starting to listen to their problems. And then, of course,
World War Two hits the global stage, and the spirit,
I would argue, the spirit of like maintaining domestic unity
took precedent over the idea of creating your own state.

(32:41):
So people were like, Okay, Avsorka will save this for now,
Let's all get together as Americans for for at least
the you know, the state of the war. And then
after World War Two, it was kind of I don't know.
In many ways, it was kind of a forgotten issue.
So much stuff had happened. We're we're in the Eisenhower era.

(33:01):
Now you can have your license plate, but you'll also
have a you know, a real US license plate. Yeah,
I mean, lets let's think of whatever the hot news
item was before the pandemic. I don't know what it was.
It's sort of like that World War two sort of
like overshadows literally everything. Uh, and all of the momentum
that he had gained um in this quest to succeed

(33:24):
just kind of fizzled because you know, we've got bigger
fish to fry here, guys. You know, we've got a
lot more important things to do with our time. Yeah,
we've got We've got way better trout. Let's focus on
the track. So it's it's weird. This movement had a
very h strong chance being lost to history and kind

(33:48):
of relegated to the archives of various newspapers at the time,
were it not for another new deal project, the Federal
Writers Project. This is an amazing story all its own
that comes from the Depression era. A lot of writers
were sent out all across the US to create a

(34:10):
series of travel guides and also to learn more about
local folk ways like cooking culture and so on. And
during the collection process for the Federal Writers Project, they
found the Absorker story and they published it in nineteen
forty one. Is kind of kind of a novelty, like, hey,

(34:31):
look at this that you didn't know about this. It
kind of had that that mental philosoph vibe or atlas
obscura vibe, a predecessor of those at least, And there
are numerous examples of the contributors that worked worked in
this regard. And the thing was in the nineties there

(34:51):
were a ton of what you might call professional authors
in in the area at the time, so people who
are leading the Wyoming aspects of the Federal Writers Project
started looking for just anyone who could put some words
on paper in a good sounding way. So that's where

(35:11):
you find interviews with really eccentric characters. Uh, there's one
contributor who was writing from jail, and there was there
was another who was interviewing people at the frontier and
delivering her manuscripts on horseback. Very odd bedfellows came together
and the weirdest partment Obsorca or the territory that wanted

(35:36):
to be Absorca once upon a time. Remember they're pretty conservative,
and they thought, or many in the community thought it
was kind of weird and maybe foolish for the government
to pay writers at all. And so because they didn't
value that as a as a trade or something, or
as a as a skill. I guess so, yeah, or

(35:56):
maybe saw the mentality kind of yeah, maybe saw it
as a waste of money or being frivolous. So the
state director of the of the project in Wyoming did
something really really cool, and it was it was kind
of in the spirit of Absorca. She just made up

(36:16):
a publication that didn't exist, the Wyoming Stockman Farmer, and
then she passed herself off as a reporter for that publication.
There's a great article about that in the New York
Times by Kirk Johnson, a state that never was in Wyoming.
But that's so funny to me too. Like you go
to someone, you say, hey, I'm part of the Federal

(36:37):
Writers Project, uh, and I'm here to interview you. And
then someone says, oh, I don't need some fancy Washington
writer coming in and trying to steal my stories the
way those folks in Cheyenne steal the coal. But then
they come back and they say, sorry, my bad, I'm
actually a reporter for a magazine about ranching. Is that

(37:03):
that that passed the stiff test? And they're like, oh yeah, sorry,
come on in, come on in. Indeed, and it's interesting
because people who live in the regions that we've been
talking about today that would have made up absorca uh
still heavily debate the geographic and cultural disconnect between the

(37:26):
east and the west of the region of the state,
UM and whether the people are just fundamentally different because
of these things. And Nate Peterson of South Dakota Magazine
puts it this way. Is West River a land of
rough and ready ranchers and libertarians? Is East River the

(37:47):
place for farm populace and business types who more willingly
embrace government as a means to solve problems. And you know,
we know that Swickard was absolutely trying to capitalize on
the these differences, on these this dis divide that apparently
still exists today. UM. And it certainly seems that he

(38:08):
a lot of this stuff and the state did kind
of exist largely in the imagination of a R. Swickerd
um And and perhaps the imagination of the people, um
who wanted it to to who wanted to will it
into existence, right to make this new state a reality
that ultimately was never to be. So it's a failed

(38:28):
it's the failed state that never was. Yeah. Yeah, and
it's in it's a response again, it's a It is
a valid response, an understandable response, too deep and troubling
problems that people in the area were experiencing. But should

(38:48):
it have should it have succeeded? I mean, did they
seriously wanted to succeed or was it all just a
very clever publicity stunt, you know what I mean. I
think people who consider themselves part of the movement of
ABSORCA were probably at different opinions on that. Like I
think there are some people who genuinely believed, yes, this

(39:09):
will be the forty ninth state. There are other people
who thought this is this is a fun in joke
and it's a smart, non violent way to confront these
serious problems. Last fun fact for me, No, I I'm
still baffled by this. I think we may have mentioned
it before, but you know, apparently Wyoming only has two
escalators in the entire state. That's crazy. Well, I don't

(39:34):
understand I'm confused. Uh, maybe it's just population. We know
that The Atlantic and MPR have written about this, uh,
saying that it's home to Well, I guess you could
say four escalators because it's two sets of escalators. But
there are escalator experts, self professed kind of the same
way Swickard was a self professed governor that say there's

(39:57):
no there's no real explanation for why there are no escalators. Still,
let us know what you think about escalators, and let
us know if what you think about the idea of
forming one's own state. Secessionist movements never went away, there's
still around. I mean, keep in mind that Noel Casey,

(40:19):
Andrew and I and many of our colleagues are in
the Southeast US, and then the southeast US has no
uh dearth of would be secessionist movements. Right, Like there
was a thing called calling itself the Sovereign State of Georgia. Uh,
they were motivated by very different reasons. But I don't know, man,
it just it doesn't seem like the smartest or most

(40:42):
practical solution to solve problems by like saying, like, you know,
Atlanta traffic is terrible, Does that mean we should form
a different state. I don't know, man, Yeah, it's sort
of the whole like I'm taking my ball and going
home mentality as opposed to trying to band together and
work with people that are different than you to make change.
But we also know that that's really difficult, especially nowadays

(41:05):
as we live in a more and more divided country,
even a divided state. Knowing that Georgia, you know, went
blue by a razor thin margin, which means that you know,
we're probably about split down the middle, aren't we, in
terms of like a conservative and a little more liberal. Yeah. Absolutely,
And I think that's I think that's an important takeaway.

(41:28):
I like the way you put it there, that we
get long lasting, better results as a community when we
work together, you know what I mean, instead of taking
the ball, whatever the ball is and just going home.
But still, it's it's fascinating so many like if every
single statehood movement that we've talked about was successful, how

(41:52):
many stars would be on the flag today? Are? You know,
we've got a couple of places that may become US
states with thin our lifetimes, like Puerto Rico, for instance,
has a strong movement to become the fifty one U
s state. We hope you enjoyed today's episode, folks, and
if you live in Wyoming, let us know if you've
seen an escalator. I don't know why this is the

(42:15):
This has become like a focus point for me. It's
just a weird fact. Uh. And then let us know
if you have heard of other secessionist movements or proposed
states in your neck of the woods. We'd love to
hear from you. We try to be easy to find online.
Shout out to ridiculous historians our Facebook page, but breaking

(42:35):
news this just in. You can also contact us as
individuals online. That's right. You can find me on Instagram
where I am at how now Noel Brown not much
of a tweeter, but Ben prolific and high quality tweeter.
Where can folks find you, Sir Chucks thinks no. Well,
if the spirit so moves you, you can always find
me on Twitter at Ben Bulan hs W. You can

(42:59):
also find me on Instagram at Ben Bowling bo w
l I N. Thanks as always to our super producer
Casey Pegram and our guest producer Andrew Howard. Huge thanks
to research or extraordinaire Gabe Louisier. Gabe Louizier Gabe blues
g L. Thanks Bud. We have to have you back
again very soon. I think we we sort of made

(43:21):
a pact, a blood pact in fact of sorts to
have him back, uh you know, a very least quarterly,
if not once every couple of months or so. If
that the same as quarterly, I don't know. Um. Thanks
to Christopher haciotas here in spirit Jonathan Strickland, the notorious Quister.
That's sketchy, dude. Um, we hope to have him back again.
To that, we got got a soft spot in my

(43:41):
heart for the Quister. How about you been? Uh yeah,
I was just thinking he would totally make his own state.
So what would the name of the Quister state be?
Quiz Topia, quiz Topia, Quisitaria, Uh yeah yeah, Quizzica, Yeah
yeah yeah, I like those. I feel like he would
choose a very British or at least very European sounding named.

(44:05):
And you know what, I am sure Noel that if
we ask him the next time he's on air, he'll
tell us that's not that I'm getting too close today,
more of the precipice. Yeah. So that's that's our show.
And of course also thanks to Alex Williams who composed
that beautiful theme song that you hear at the beginning
end of every show and no thanks to you, I

(44:27):
I can't would you? Would you ever? Start? A state?
Man asks a lot of work. I just gotta stick
with this podcast game to get an island, run this
thing into the ground, and then and then try to,
you know, diversify it. We'll see you next time. For

(44:57):
more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.