Historical Marker
Bill Hooker
Converse County · Wyoming
Erected by F. W. Lafrentz, 1931
The man this stone commemorates was alive to see it. William Francis Hooker, born in 1856, came west from Wisconsin in the early 1870s and drove ox teams hauling for army posts and agencies, then wrote it all down in a book, The Bullwhacker. By 1931 he was a New Yorker and a member of the Oregon Trail Memorial Association, whose medallion caps this stone, and that June he sat for a statue of Oregon Trail days. He died in 1938, seven years after F. W. Lafrentz raised this.
What the plaque says
Oregon Trail Memorial Commemorative of Bill Hooker Bullwhacker who built and lived in a cabin on LaBonte Creek ten miles from this point on the Bozeman Trail in 1874 Erected by F. W. Lafrentz Pioneer of Wyoming 1931
Where it stands
42.76644, -105.47936 · Directions
More markers nearby
- Douglas World War II POW Camp — 3.8 mi
- John Hunton — 4.6 mi
- The One Mile Hog Ranch — 6.5 mi
- Oregon Trail — 6.8 mi