Shoshoni, Wyoming Postcard. The Casteels Arrive.

About 1905 Archibald and Estella Casteel, my great grandparents were casting about for a new opportunity. Their family had been in Nebraska since the late 1870s, when Archibald’s father, Isaiah Bennett Casteel moved from Grundy County , Illinois and filed a homestead claim in the Loup Valley area of Sherman County. By 1905, the extended Casteel clan centered in the Mitchell/Morrill/Lyman area in the Southwest corner of Nebraska.

In 1904, the townsite of Shoshoni, Wyoming was being developed. The Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley Railroad was building west from Casper, a nearby portion of land in the Wind River Indian Reservation was opened for mineral exploration, and the nearby Boysen Dam and Reservoir was under construction. There were opportunities. 

So the next year, 1905, Casteel loaded his brood of ten children (his eldest, Sam, having left home previously) and possessions onto a railroad car, and headed for Wyoming. The railhead at that time was Moneta, some twenty miles east of Shoshoni. The Casteels traveled the rest of their journey by horse and wagon.

 By 1906, Shoshoni’s population was maybe as high as 2,000, although the city was largely composed of tents. Here is another view of Shoshoni in 1906. Today, about 650 persons live in Shoshoni. 

The Casteel home was one of the first built in Shoshoni, and exists today although vacant and in a very decrepit state.

Roger Doherty

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