Where Was The First Indoor Toilet In Wyoming?

Recently, while researching my next book, I visited the Wyoming State Archives in Cheyenne.

Talk about OLD SCHOOL! I had to flip through long lines of old card catalog drawers to find what I was looking for.

That led me to filing cabinets with files full of documents and old newspaper clippings.

That's when I found a headline in an old Wyoming newspaper.

Namesake House To Contain First Bathroom.

This had NOTHING to do with what I was researching.

But it made me stop and read it.

Where was the first indoor bathroom/toilet in Wyoming?

Let's define what a "bathroom" is.

Before indoor plumbing, people pooped in a small building outside called an outhouse.

There would have been a pot under the bed for when someone had to pee in the middle of the night. That would have been disposed of in the morning.

If you read the old Wyoming-based novel The Virginian, you'll find references to someone "making their toilet" in various rooms. The word "toilet" had to do with washing, shaving, and combing the hair, and maybe some perfume. It had nothing to do with what you sat on when nature calls.

Then came indoor plumbing.

But there was nowhere to put the sink and latrine (we later began to refer to the latrine as the toilet). So the plumbing was installed in the biggest closet in the house. That's where we got the term "water closet" from.

Later, homes were built with rooms just for the toilet, sink, and bathtub. Since we were to bathe in this room, it was called "the bathroom."

So when and where was the first "bathroom" built in Wyoming?

According to this article, it was in the Mills Hotel in downtown Mills, Wyoming.

The article was published by the Casper Star Tribune on March 28, 1976.

But, obviously, the first bathroom would have been installed long before that date. The article refers to The Mills Brothers who founded the town in the 1920's.  But one would think that the first indoor plumbing would have been built before then.

The first patent for an indoor flushing "toilet" was filed in 1776, in the USA. Yeah, the same year as the revolution.

The lady who runs the Wyoming State Archives cautioned me as to the accuracy of such an article. She advised me to make sure it was not written on April 1st. Much like today's news, how do we know that this reporter got this story right? As the old saying goes, don't believe everything you read in the newspapers.

I did a little online digging and found something in The Laramie Boomerang. 

Two years earlier, it was reported the Trabing Building at Second and Garfield streets (then South C Street) was to have an indoor bathroom. Though big news at the time, it is not clear if the drain was to be connected to a cesspool or to the river.

A municipal sewage system did eventually develop; most Laramie houses built after 1885, including the 1892 Ivinson Mansion, had indoor plumbing. Few, if any, of the original privies still exist in the oldest parts of Laramie. Their original locations are clearly marked on the 1883 Sanborn insurance maps available on microfilm at Laramie libraries.

That's the best I could find concerning where the first Wyoming bathroom might have been. Probably because people think that there are more important events to remember.