First Day of Caching in Casper 7/3/2010

Today was our first day of caching in Casper and come to find out our first cache was about 200' from the coach here in Bar Nunn. It was located in a small park that had a Welcome to Bar Nunn sign and old wagon and a plaque. The plaque had to do with Bar Nunn which use to be Wardwell Field. The 640-acre airport was built in 1927, as Natrona County's airport. In 1929, the county commissioners named the airport in memory of Major Doyan Wardwell, who died in an airplane crash at the airport earlier that year. Wardwell had helped develop the early airport. The 1945 AAF Airfield Directory (courtesy of Scott Murdock) described Warwell Field as a 629 acre irregularly-shaped property within which were three 5,200' asphalt runways & a 4th unpaved runway. The field was said to have a single 150' x 100' brick & steel hangar.
Wardwell Field was described as having service by Inland Airlines, to be owned by Natrona County, and to operated by private interests. In 1952, the county airport was moved to the former Casper Army Airfield, and Wardwell Field was sold in 1954 for the sum of $20,500 to Romie Nunn. The abandoned airport contained 6 miles of paved runways. When Romie Nunn bought Casper's old airport, he had great hopes for what his 640 acres would become, but he didn't know it might become a town named after him. Nunn always hoped the area would be used for raising horses & for horse racing. And until he sold all but 10 lots in 1972, that was how the land was used.
"I was going to make the horse center of the Rockies out of that place," Nunn said.
"I wanted ranch-style homes on those large lots I put in. I thought everyone who would live out there would have a horse. This would be known around the world if we had that," he added. From 1954-72, Nunn sponsored a variety of activities on the land, including square dances, rodeos, a national road race, drag races, and even the filming of a movie. He began to use the old airport hangar as an indoor arena.
"We'd put on at least one rodeo a week and they'd rope in there almost every night," Nunn said. In 1956, the National Road Race was held on the old runways, and later, other car races were run there. In 1958, Nunn subdivided the area, calling it the Bar-Nunn Ranch Subdivision (he acquired the Bar-N brand later). He allowed for residential lots, the indoor riding arena, a half-mile race track, an outdoor riding arena, and 4 miles of bridle path around the perimeter of the subdivision. Nunn set aside land for parks, a school, churches, and businesses, all laid out along streets which were in fact the old runways of Wardwell Field. The foresighted developer was dubbed "The Runway Rancher" in a 1959 Denver Post Empire Magazine story. "When you buy a ranch and build an airport on it, that's one thing. But when you buy an airport and make a ranch out of it, that's Wyoming!" Empire said. In the 1960s, part of the movie "The Hellfighters", starring John Wayne, was filmed on Bar Nunn's old runways. The movie's directors landed a large plane on the runway, a re-creation of a South American airport. Behind the campgrounds is the original hangar which now is Bundy's Marine and is used for boat storage. A sign on the exterior of the former hangar reportedly still reads "Wardwell Field, Elev. 5,282".

After finding that cache we headed toward Casper and a cache in a light post of the Events Center which is about 2 miles from us. Then we did 3 parts of a baseball series of caches which were located on the Casper Bike Trail near baseball fields. Next was a cache in a rock wall at the entrance to a small park. A cache outside the Casper Planetarium, one on a motel sign, on a dead end road in a hollow tree and then 3 nano caches one at a spa, one at a chiropractor office and the other in front of a Goodyear Tire store.

After we were finished we drove around downtown seeing what there was to see. Although Casper is a city almost as large as Cheyenne it wasn't quite as old as Cheyenne was. As Cheyenne and Loveland the city has many many lovely bronze sculptures scattered all around the city streets and some of them are in our pictures. Then it was back to the coach and lunch. Later in the afternoon we had a thunderstorm with a small amount of hail but lots and lots of rain. As the rain quit we had a beautiful rainbow as you can see by the pictures. Later in the evening the sun started to come out as it was setting and it was shining on the base of the mountains which again made for some lovely pictures. Well that's about all from Casper for today so until tomorrow we miss and love you all. Mom & Dad Dori & Dick