When it was first built, it was called various names depending upon who the owner was at that particular time, but it was one of the first ones built and it was clearly there in an 1868 photograph of the town, and the Sherlock Hotel, very early in its existence, fell into the ownership of a woman who'd become one of the most important first settlers and then residents of South Pass City. My great-grandmother and great-grandfather came into South Pass in 1868. She came from Scotland, he came from England, and they were Mormon converts, so of course the Mormons helped them get over here https://www.casinoslots.co.nz/.
They came by wagon train out to Salt Lake City. They lived there for several years, and then they were thinking about going to California for the gold rush. Then they heard about South Pass. She came in the first boom and she came with her first husband, and Mr. Sherlock eventually died about four years into their stay. At that point in time, she found herself with several kids and she needed to make a living. She got the lease and contract on the South Pass City Hotel, and opened it up for business. She bought that hotel and a boarding room that was attached to it and she cooked for the miners up at the mine. They'd come down and have their dinner at the hotel, at the boarding house down there, and a lot of them stayed in the hotel. She bought that in 1872, and that was a respectable job for a woman in that time. The family lived downstairs in their private quarters. The children were all expected to work... emptying chamber pots, carrying water, chopping wood, whatever was needed to run the family business. The guestrooms were upstairs -- only one, the honeymoon suite, had a stove for warmth. The rest relied on an opening above the door to let in heat. Janet soon remarried local business owner James Smith. Lane: She eventually opened the Smith-Sherlock Store, which was the major mercantile. The Sherlock Store here on South Pass City Main Street, they were making money like you wouldn't believe. They were supplying food and equipment and fuels to the mine. We have evidence of timber contracts, timber cutters going into the mountains, cutting cords and cords of wood to fuel the boilers up there. They were certainly making money. In addition to the gold and commerce, South Pass City was becoming an important population center in a region with an emerging identity. The Wyoming Territory was created in 1868 for two reasons: and we often hear and most people understand, it was because of the Union Pacific Railroad building across the southern part of the territory, but it was also because of the South Pass area gold mine. South Pass City was just as important as Cheyenne, and Laramie, and Green River, and some of the Union Pacific towns at that time. Those were the two center of populations in Wyoming Territory that eventually convinced the Dakota Territory to give up its claims to the western part of its area, and for Congress to create the Wyoming Territory. South Pass City was at the center of at least one additional historic episode in the newly created Wyoming Territory. And of course South Pass City was key to the creation of Women's Suffrage. William Bright, saloon owner, former Justice of the Peace and a well-respected individual who had a wife who was a Suffragette and went to Cheyenne from South Pass City as part of the first territorial legislature and towards the end of that first territorial legislative session, he used his position to introduce a Women's Suffrage Bill. The Democrats passed the first Women's Suffrage Bill and the Republican Governor signed it, which surprised a lot of the Democrats! So in any event, Wyoming, the Territory became the first Territory or state in the country to allow women the right to vote.
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