Liberty Bell Rings Again In Wyoming Ahead of Nation’s 250th Anniversary

Grace Vetter and Maddie Paulson, and the rest of the Jackson Grizzlies fast-pitch softball team, drove across Wyoming on Thursday for theirseason-ending tournament in Cheyenne.

The team has been on a losing streak having won just two games. But on Thursday, the girls got to do something that was completely unexpected, but a real winner. 

The girls were among a handful of people who were allowed to ring the state’s newly restored replica Liberty Bell. It was late Thursday afternoon as part of the state’s kick-off to the national SemiquincentennialCelebration (250 years), as well as a celebration of the state’s 135th birthday. 

“We literally just got here,” Paulson told Cowboy State Daily with an ear-to-ear grin. “And we knew there were some things going on at the Capitol, so we were wondering if we might happen to see the governor.”

They not only saw Gov. Mark Gordon, but he’s actually the one who urged the two girls to come forward and take a ring at state history.

Gordon, in his prepared remarks before the girls rang the bell, told the gathered crowd the state’s Liberty Bell had been in terrible shape.

After decades of display at the Capitol, its wood was rotting away, and the structure that held it up was in danger of caving in on itself.

“Anyone looking at this bell could understand why people were saying, ‘Good Lord, we’ve got to do something about that,” Gordon said. “It was old, it was tacky, it was not looking good.”

Gordon said looking at the bell now, after it was restored, brought to mind a Benjamin Franklin quote.

“Just after the Constitutional Convention, a woman came up to him and said, ‘What kind of government do we have,’” Gordon said. “And he said, ‘A Republic, if you can keep it.’ This bell is an indication of how important it is that we keep the liberty and the strength that was dedicated in this bell when we first rang it.”

With that, Gordon took hold of the red and blue rope holding the bell’s clapper, and gave it a tug, saying let “freedom ring.”

Front And Center

Restoring the Liberty Bell was a five- to six-month project, Cole Horton told Cowboy State Daily.

The bell was taken to Shoshoni for the project, which involved replacing all of the wood and sandblasting its rusted frame before repainting it.

In general, the restoration focused on maintaining the historic nature of the bell, preserving how it had always looked. But one change Horton and his crew added was a stellar frame inside the wood frame on top of the bell, which will strengthen its overall structure.

“It should last another 60, 70, 80 years,” he told Cowboy State Daily.

The project is one of the most consequential he feels he has ever worked on.

“I’ve had six months to think about that,” he said. “It’s cool what they did. And it always fascinates me what they did with the tools they had back then compared to what we have now.”

Nick Neylon, deputy director of the Outdoor Recreation Office and Division of State Parks, and also a member of the 250th anniversary committee, told Cowboy State Daily he’s advocating for the bell to remain in front of the museum, where it will have much better visibility.

Wyoming, he added, has done a better job than many other states of preserving its Liberty Bell.

“I was talking to someone from Utah, telling their task force about our project,” he said. “And she said, ‘I’ve never seen our bell. I wonder if we have one.”

Eventually, she found it, hiding in an isolated storage room, collecting dust. 

“You actually had to go find it,” Neylon said. “It was squirreled away in a little back corner of their Capitol.”

Having the bell front and center, where passersby can see it, is fitting, Neylon said. 

“So we’d like it to stay here,” Neylon said. “There’s a committee that’s in charge of where things will be placed, so they have the ultimate say. And there’s a courtyard over there that’s being redone, so their original idea was to put the bell there. I’m not a fan of that because it just hides it. Here, everyone who comes down the street will see this.”

Polished Statues

The bell-ringing ceremony was just one component of an overall day dedicated to state and national history at the Capitol. 

There were programs about the Buffalo Soldiers, the Wyoming state flag, and there was a recreation of a famous tea with Esther Hobart.

One of the most popular parts of the day, though, were the tours of the recently renovated Capitol, showing off all the craftsmanship and the history of the Capitol, which was built in 1886.

The tours were sold out well ahead of the event, Visitor Services Manager Riana Davidson told Cowboy State Daily. 

“We’ve had a few hundred visitors today,” Davidson said. Some took self-guided tours, in lieu of an organized tour.

Among the guests was a couple from Missouri who were visiting all 50 state capitols. Many others also came from other states to see Wyoming’s gold-domed Capitol, Davidson said.

The dome, Davidson said, has 7 ounces of real gold, pounded paper thin,covering it. Its weight is about the same as a roll of nickels.

“There are two places in the Capitol where there’s real gold,” she said. “So, one is the gold dome, and then the Four Sisters have gold finishes on them. So that’s another fun thing to look for. There are lots of things that look like gold or gold finishes, but those are where the gold is real.”

Four Sisters For Four Wyoming Virtues

The Four Sisters are bronze statutes that were a very recent addition to the Wyoming Capitol, tour guide Ellen Thompson told one of the many tour groups she led on Thursday.

The statues, which look green with age, were actually added to the Capitol in 2019 — but the idea for them was conceived 130 years ago.

“At the time, they could not decide what should go in the niches,” Thompson said. “So they said they would defer that decision until later. Well, 130 years later, they finally got around to it.”

A bid was put out for artists to come and propose a concept for the niches. The winner was a French artist, who has since become an American citizen. He read the state’s constitution to come up with his winning proposal.

“He proposed the Four Sisters, which is what you see above us,” Thompson said. “The first sister is truth, because that was the basis of the Constitution, truth.”

The next was justice, because without truth, there can be no justice. Then came the sister courage, Thompson said, because settling Wyoming took a lot of that. That particular statue wrestles a rattlesnake, something every pioneer no doubt eventually had to do.

“The conditions here were harsh,” she said. “There weren’t highways and byways. They came here on wagons and on trails. They suffered immense blizzards and all kinds of things to settle this land.”

Those three sisters are looking down on everyone who passes through the Wyoming Capitol’s rotunda, Thompson said, and the symbolism is something that permeates the capitol.

Students learn about it, and lawmakers refer to it when they’re arguing for and against legislation.

The fourth, sister,  however, is not looking down. She’s looking to the heavens. That’s because that sister is hope, and hope comes from the heart and from heaven.

Hidden Messages

The official Capitol tour contains many Easter eggs, Thompson later told Cowboy State Daily, and that’s the fun part of the tour.

Thompson loves sharing the upside-down spindle on one of the staircases leading to the second floor. That has never been fixed, because there is a legend that goes with it.

The staircases were made by the Amish, at the time, Thompson said, and all of the wood came from the East Coast, because, at that time, there were very few trees in Wyoming.

“If you know anything about the Amish, they’re very religious people,” she said. “And they believe that only God creates perfection.”

Because of that, the Amish intentionally put a flaw into everything they make.”

As the Amish workmen were installing the staircase, one of the eagle-eyed lawmakers or a project manager happened to spot that upside down spindle.

“Yep, it’s upside down,” Thompson said the worker told the man. “And it’s going to stay that way. Because only God creates perfection.”

The spindle has remained the way it is ever since, and no one has ever tried to correct it.

That’s just one of the many cool surprises on the new Capitol tour, which now features even more explanatory exhibits that tell the history of the Capitol much better than before. The tours may be reserved by calling ahead any time from here on out, Davidson said, for groups of 10 or more. 

“We’ve got an interactive digital timeline, and there’s portraits of history,” Davidson said. “You get to learn about Wyoming’s different stories. And then I think one of the other fun additions is the vault where visitors can open that up and find 17 fake gold bars, and that represents $131,000. That’s what it cost to originally construct the Capitol.”

Paw prints at the bottom of a stool, fossils in the floor, Trompe-l’oeil(French for fool-the-eye) paintings, details in the wood carvings, paintings which date back to 1917 or so — the Capitol is alive with all kinds of history, Davidson said.

While the main thrust of the Capitol restoration was life and safety, as well as a better, more efficient space, Davidson said she can see where the attention to historic details in the restoration is going to be a boon for tourism. 

“We’ve already had some out-of-state visitors,” she said. “We see a lot of regular visitors who are aficionados of all 50 capitols. And there’s a Capitol passport book, and we have a passport stamp for that.”

The self-guided tours can last as long as a visitor likes, Davidson added, and can even be tailored to particular interests.

“It’s like a choose-your-own adventure,” she said. “And there’s different icons to help guide your adventure.”

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.