Misty:This is Misty, and I am with...

Lindee Strangard: Lindee.

Misty: Lindee. And what is your last name, Lindee?

Lindee: Strangard.

Misty: Lindee Strangard. I'm in Gillette at the library.

Lindee: Alright. So my family's been in Wyoming for quite a while. I think my grandpa was originally born in Nebraska, but then they moved to Wyoming, and that's where we've been.

I have a lot of family history in Midwest Edgerton, and a lot of my memories. We did everything in Casper. All of our church trips, all of my dad's business trips were to Casper.

So I have a lot of very strong, connected memories to the road between Gillette and Casper. Oh. You'd hit Highway 50, you'd hit 287. And so a lot of little snapshots of just that drive feel like home. Oh. When I think of Wyoming, it's that drive. I mean, you've got the buttes, you've got the plateaus, you've got places you can see the Bighorns. You've got these giant basins of prairie. Um, so I mean, as you leave Gillette, kinda the first chunk you hit would be Savageton, and there's not much there anymore, but I think they still have...As kids, we were just so magically watching, there's a baseball field out in the middle of the prairie. And that, that baseball field has an outhouse. And I remember as kids, my mom needing to use the bathroom pretty frequently, and so sometimes we just ended up at this random outhouse in the random baseball field in the middle of the prairie.

And there was just something cool about that. We'd get to get out of the car and stretch our legs, and watch out for rattlesnakes and all of those little things. And then, um, you hit the end of Highway 50, and there's a building at the end of the road that we always imagined was a one-room schoolhouse.

Oh. And there was another bathroom break for my mom when we were kids. And, um, she went around the corner of the building, and then she came tearing back because she smelled a skunk. And so she was afraid she was gonna get skunked while using the bathroom at this building. we've never done the investigation, but in my head, that's still a one-room schoolhouse.

And then you keep going down, and there's parts where the prairie just... I don't know, it lives. People talk about Wyoming being a boring place to drive or a boring place to live, and as somebody that's grown up here, born, and raised here, I don't feel that way.  I have a little bit of an artistic streak, so I drive through the prairie, and you see that this specific type of grass has a blue-green tint.

And so if I were painting this, then this patch on this hillside would have a little bit of blue-green underneath the brown, underneath the yellow. Um, and as you come up to Midwest Edgerton, there's these parts where the sandstone shows through. And these beautiful... This, the striping of the different geological layers, and the way the wind has carved things away into these beautiful rounded shapes- I mean, you go from basically looking out on flat to here the river has carved, the creek.

Let's be real, it's Wyoming, so it's a creek. The creek has carved, and there's a cliffside here. Um, at one point, as you're driving before you get up to Midwest Edgerton, there's a, um... They moved the highway at some point.

So there's the gulch that goes down underneath. You cross a bridge. Well, if you look at the right angle just as you're going over that, there's the old bridge.

And there's no road on either side. It's just a cement bridge in somebody's ranchland. And once upon a time, a friend and I pulled over and hopped the fence and went to just check out that bridge. And it feels abandoned, and it feels magical 'cause it's just, it's Wyoming. It's permanent, and we're temporary, and our buildings are temporary, but this bridge, for the time being, is still holding on. Um, so Midwest Edgerton is probably where I'll kind of end my little anecdote, but there's a lot there. So my mom's grandparent, or my mom's... Yes, my mom's grandparents lived there, so every summer she and her brothers would get sent down there for the summer. And so my uncle tells stories of, so that was the oil boom. And, um, you know, all of these could probably be historically checked and may or may not be accurate, but these are the memories that my family has been given, which I feel is the stories.

Misty: It's accurate in that way. Yeah,

Lindee: Yeah. And so, all the little oil towns would just boom, and they'd grab the oil, and then it would run out, and then they'd move. Oh. And so my family told me they moved them so quickly that all these camps weren't really towns, so they didn't name them, so they just numbered them.

Misty: And so, where are you living?

I'm living at number 12. I'm living at number 8. Or whatever. And so there's stories of my uncle as a kid going out on the prairie, and you'd find bottles, and you'd find trash heaps, and you'd find the curb of a sidewalk that someone poured because they thought this would be permanent, and then they moved on, and it was not permanent. And so he would find these lost civilizations, right..., just scattered all over as a kid exploring.

Misty: Did he become an archeologist?

Lindee: No, he's an engineer of some sort.

Misty: Ah, okay.

Lindee: Yes. You drive into Midwest Edgerton, and up on the hill, there's a cross. And my mom or grandma would tell me that during World War II, there was a plane that was running some training, and it went down on the prairie right there.

Oh. And both the pilot and co-pilot passed away in that accident.

Misty: There's still a cross?

Lindee: There's still a cross up there.

Misty: Nice.

Lindee: My mom one time drove us by where their house had been located, and my grandma once upon a time shared the memory with me of her, maybe it was my mom, about her grandpa being on the fire brigade, and it was a bucket brigade. wow. You know, a house, a house on fire, and all the men of the town, just buckets. And you picture that when you think of Little House on the Prairie- Right ... or you picture that with, you know, old old. But these were people that were my family. Right. And that was Wyoming, and these were our towns. My grandma was a very churched person, so she talked about, you know, memories with her church. She said at one point in time, there were a few months where Midwest Edgerton had gotten this... Because the oil boom was so important, they had had this influx of things, and so the town for a few months had the most medically advanced hospital in the entire country, until someone surpassed them.

So, like those are the stories I'm like, maybe it felt that way. But, um, and then, you know, you go through Midwest Edgerton and the highway splits, and you either... go north or you go south. And we had a competition one time, and okay, going, going south, you're on the highway longer. It's like two minutes faster, even though you hit the interstate. But the way my family pitched it as when we were kids, was, "Do you wanna see the cemetery or do you wanna see the swimming pool?"  So, if you go right from Gillette and you go north to hit the interstate faster, they have moved the town of Midwest Edgerton. And so, when you move a town, you only exhume as many bodies as you can find.

So, the old, original place where the cemetery was was someplace you could still see along the highway, at that time. But if you went left and you went south, a very similar thing, they had moved to the town, or they had moved a different town and combined. And so somebody's swimming pool, their empty swimming pool, was just out there on the prairie. And of course, as kids, we always voted to see the swimming pool, which I a little bit regret now, because I think seeing the cemetery would be really cool. But, um, I know probably 8 or 10 years ago they went and filled in that swimming pool, so you can't find it anymore. Oh. But that's one that I specifically have my own memories of. And just finding these- forgotten civilizations. You know, bridges and swimming pools and cemeteries and curbs on the prairie. And I just think Wyoming is amazing for those sorts of things, like history is not as far away here as it might be in other places.

So that's my story.

Misty: That was lovely. I'm so glad you walked in. Thank you.

Note: The transcript above has been condensed from its original audio recording to improve the flow and readability of the story.