Wyoming History: President Ford Came From Wyoming Roots He Never Really Knew

Reality rivaled a soap opera with characters and a script initially set in Wyoming’s more than century ago.

The leading figures involved a central Wyoming pioneer and his “spoiled” son who would father a future U.S. president.

The plot includes riches, an alleged threat with a knife, a divorce and years later a teen’s ignorance of his true identity. That changed when a stranger from Riverton, Wyoming, showed up at restaurant in Michigan to tell Gerald R. Ford at age 17 that he was his father and that his birth name was Leslie King Jr.

The nation’s 38th president, who came to office following the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974, began his life as a grandchild and potential heir to one of Wyoming’s early entrepreneurs — and possibly the state’s richest man in the late 1890s and early 1900s.

Ford was born in Omaha, Nebraska, on July 14, 1913, to the former Dorothy Gardner and Leslie Lynch King, son of Charles Henry King who made a name and fortune in several businesses including ranching, wool, mercantile stores, a freight line and banking. His estimated worth was $20 million.

First Interstate Bank in Casper today can be traced back to C.H. King & Co. Bankers, which was the second bank in the community in 1890.

Pioneer Days

Charles King was instrumental in creating Fetterman City, Douglas, Casper and Shoshoni. Newspapers from the 1880s through the early 1900s chronicle his trips, family events and even a late-night card game at his mansion on the corner of 1st and Center streets in Casper.

A newspaper called The Rowdy West on Oct. 10, 1886, reported that King wasted no time moving his business from Fetterman to Douglas during the first month of that new community’s existence.

“C. H. King purchased lots 18 and 19 in block 12, corner of Center and Third streets, and early the next morning a force of men and teams were excavating for the basement of the brick wholesale and retail grocery store, 25 x100, that now looms magnificently on said corner,” the newspaper reported.

King a native of Pennsylvania arrived first in Nebraska and then Wyoming. He invested in businesses along the railroad lines. When the railroad moved on from Douglas to Casper, he moved as well and created the Lander Transportation Company to haul goods between the Wind River region and Casper.

The Cheyenne Daily Leader reported on March 12, 1892, that his “C. H. King & Co. of Casper and Douglas were forming a new corporation that would expand operations in Casper and Ogden, Utah.

By 1898, the 45-year-old patriarch felt comfortable enough with his companies that he could spend winters where the climate was more forgiving.

“A few invited guests gathered at the beautiful home of Mr. And Mrs. C. H. King last Friday to enjoy an evening. Card playing did not commence until about 10 o’clock but the early part of the evening was spent in social conversation, the company being royally entertained by the host and hostess,” the Natrona County Tribune reported on Dec. 15, 1898. “At 12 o’clock an elegant lunch was spread which all enjoyed. After lunch the guests reassembled in the parlors, and after an hour of sociable conversations, departed for home wishing Mr. and Mrs. King a pleasant journey and safe return from their visit to California, where they will go to spend the winter.”

As for Leslie Lynch King, he was born July 25, 1884. He is mentioned in a 1929 “30 Years Ago” column in the Casper Daily Tribune. He participated in a cake walk in 1899 with two of his siblings, Savilla King and Marietta King.

Move To Omaha

The King family relocated from Casper in early 1900s to Omaha, Nebraska, when Leslie King would have been in his early 20s. In 1908, the father and son were sued for striking an Omaha employee.

A Natrona Country Tribune editor in an article on Dec. 16, 1908, asked the elder King about the incident as he passed through Casper from Shoshoni, headed back to Omaha.

“Referring to the $50,000 damage suit brought against him and his son Leslie by John N. Baurer … Mr. King said he had to fight Bauer or turn the business over to him and let him run it as he wanted to,” the paper reported. “And rather than do this, he knocked Bauer down a couple of times and gave him a few kicks where it would do the most good. Mr. King says the damage suit is a farce and his is sure it will result in his favor.”

In Nebraska, Leslie King’s role was manager of the Omaha Wool and Storage Co. pioneered by his father. The younger King met Dorothy Gardner through his sister. They were roommates at St. Mary’s School in Knoxville, Illinois.

While visiting his sister, Leslie King allegedly boasted to Gardner about his $6,000 salary as manager of his father’s company. King was 28 and Gardner 20 when they married Sept. 7, 1912, in Illinois. He took her home to his parents before heading out on a honeymoon.

The Gerald Ford biography “An Ordinary Man” reports King’s mother was not pleased with her.

During the honeymoon, Leslie King allegedly beat his new wife when he thought she nodded to another man, and on a different occasion she woke with him striking her in a train sleeping car because he accused her of “hitting him with a pillow,” the biography states.

When the newlyweds returned to the 15-room mansion in Omaha, the new Mrs. King was pregnant. After leaving her new husband to return to Illinois following his alleged abuse, Dorothy King returned to Omaha and the couple lived in a basement apartment.

As the birth drew near, they moved back into the King mansion for the birth of their son on July 14, 1913.

A Threat

According to the biography and statements on file at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, Dorothy King said on July 28 while she was still in bed battling a gallbladder inflammation, Leslie King appeared in her room waving a butcher knife and threatening both her and their son.

An attending nurse called police who removed Leslie King from the home, the biography states. Mother and son left to return first to Dorothy King’s sister’s home and then eventually to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where her parents moved and where the eventual Gerald R. Ford would be raised.

Leslie King sued for divorce alleging that “his wife had treated him cruelly” by leaving his home and returning to her parents, according to an Omaha Daily Bee article on Aug. 22, 1913. Dorothy King countersued alleging “extreme cruelty towards the defendant in that he was very abusive of his marital relations.”

Newspaper records from the time show that Dorothy King won a divorce settlement that included $3,000 alimony payment and monthly support for her son as well as full custody.

Leslie King moved from Omaha back to Wyoming so he wouldn’t have to pay his alimony or child support.

Patriarch Charles King also would move to California and retired from his management roles by 1917. He made the child support payments for his grandson for several years.

In Grand Rapids, Dorothy King met a man named Gerald Ford in church. He was a salesman for a paint and coatings company, at the time. They developed a friendship and married in 1917.

Dorothy called her son “Junie” for Junior because she did not like to repeat her ex-husband’s name. After her marriage “Junie” King was unofficially segued into “Junie” Ford and that was his name as he entered his schooling years.

Never Adopted

As her son received his Eagle Scout award at age 14, Dorothy Ford identified him as J. K. (Junior King) Ford. Shortly afterward, he was reintroduced as Gerald R. Ford Jr. though he was never formally adopted. His official name change would not come until 1935 when he was 22 years old.

Meanwhile Leslie King met another woman in California and married her. They lived in Shoshoni and then Riverton and he continued to manage the family’s business.

Leslie King is mentioned in the Riverton Review in May 1914 as buying a new Hupmobile and driving it home from Casper.

His new family experienced tragedy in 1921 when their 26-month-old daughter Savilla was severely burned when she sat down in a bucket of scalding water.

“The pail of water had been placed on the kitchen floor preparatory to scalding a turkey. The maid had just brought it up from the basement where it had been heated on a stove and placed it on the floor while she went to the back porch to get the bird,” the Riverton Review reported on Oct. 5, 1921. “Mrs. King was using the telephone and the child was therefore unnoticed. It had been her habit to playfully sit down in a pail or tub whenever she got the opportunity.”

The child died of her injuries and is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.

The Meeting

Gerald R. Ford Jr. became a noted high school athlete, and as a football star was offered a job at a diner near the high school. One day in 1930, a stranger walked up to him and asked if he was “Leslie King Jr.”

The future president replied he wasn’t. The man then revealed himself as his true father, something the young Ford had not known. His mother had mentioned to him on one occasion that she had been married before but he was completely unaware that he was not Gerald Ford Sr.’s son.

The man asked to take Ford out to lunch. Ford agreed and learned that his father lived in Riverton, Wyoming. He was invited to come out and spend the summer, according to his biography. Ford replied he would think about it. The man also gave his son $25, which in 1930 as the Depression started rolling in was a substantial sum. Today it would be worth $446.

That night, the teen had an open and long conversation with his mother and step-father about his past.

‘We Sure Like Him’

According to his half-siblings, Ford did visit Riverton two or three times including the summer after Leslie King’s initial visit, according to a Lincoln Sunday Journal and Star Article on Sept. 15, 1974. Their father also visited the University of Michigan graduate and assistant Yale Football coach at Yale.

“It was in Wyoming that the family first got to know him,” said Leslie “Bud” Henry King. “We sure liked him.”

In that same article, Leslie King’s second wife, the former Elizabeth Bloomer, acknowledged that she was with her husband when he first approached his son at the diner in Grand Rapids.

“I know Leslie King, the son I married was spoiled. We went together for about six months, and then one night we eloped to Reno, Nevada, and got married,” she said. “Before we got married, ‘Daddy’ (her name for King) told me he’d been married and divorced and had a small son living with his first wife in the Midwest.”

Elizabeth King said in addition to Ford’s few visits to Riverton, she recalled being with her husband on a trip to Yale University to see Ford when he was the assistant coach there.

In 1936, during his summer from Yale Law School, Ford with help from Michigan U.S. Senator Arthur Vandenberg, got a job as a temporary forest ranger at Yellowstone National Park.

Before reporting for duty, he went to Riverton to see his father and the family, his biographer Richard Norton Smith wrote in “An Ordinary Man.”

“What he saw there — a comfortable home, extensive irrigated ranch lands and a prominent position with a local bank — reinforced the impression of his birth father as a man of hoarded wealth and dubious character,” Smith wrote.

Yellowstone Ranger

At Yellowstone, Ford was characterized as a good ranger, adept at fighting forest fires, and feeding bears for the tourists. One story has him returning to his cabin with a buddy to find a black bear rummaging through their cupboards. They leaped back as the bear took a swipe at them on the way out and Ford allegedly kicked it in the rear end as it went out the door.

During another incident, he and another ranger rescued a visitor who slipped on a cliff and was hanging on a narrow ledge above the Yellowstone River. Ford put a rope around a tree and tied the end to himself and the other to his colleague who went over the edge, grabbed the visitor and Ford pulled them both back up.

“He was so reliable that we looked to him to get difficult assignments done right, even though he was one of our youngest rangers that summer,” Wayne Replogle, the ranger who helped with the rescue is quoted in the biography.

As the grandson of Charles King, Ford automatically qualified as a Natrona County Pioneer Association member because of his grandfather’s citizenship in Casper prior to 1900, according to a Casper Star-Tribune article on Oct. 27, 1974. A Cowboy State Daily search for any Ford visit to the city was unsuccessful.

Ford returned to Yellowstone National Park as president in 1976 to announce a $1.5 billion park expansion program.

“Forty years ago standing on Inspiration Point and looking out over this beautiful portion of our land, I said to myself how lucky I was that my grandparent’s generation had the foresight to save it for us,” he was quoted by the Jackson Hole Guide on Aug. 31, 1976. “Now it is our turn to make our own gift outright to those who will come after us, 15 years, 40 years, 100 years from now.”

Leslie Lynch King died in 1941, long before his first-born son became a congressman from Michigan, House minority leader, vice president, and then president. King was buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, where his father also was buried following his death on Feb. 27, 1930.

Contact Dale Killingbeck at dale@cowboystatedaily.com

Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.