From trout to tuna in one generation

by Susan Anderson
Tuesday, November 27, 2007 1:09 PM MST

I wish that a camera had been shooting continuously for the past 120 years from a perch on Center Street between Second Street and Midwest.

It would have recorded changes that show how a frontier town with dirt streets slowly turned into a place that hosts a classy sushi restaurant in the very building where generations of people came to buy guns, skis and fishing poles.

From shopping at Dean’s Sporting Goods for equipment to stalk the wily trout to eating raw tuna wrapped with seaweed while sipping white wine is a striking transition in one little space.

It’s a block that ladies avoided for decades, thanks partly to the popular Wonder Bar, famous for its picture of a rider on horseback getting a beer at the bar.

Even in the ’50s, according to Lynne Cheney, moms told their daughters to cross the street and walk only on the east side of the 200 block of Center. While this block included the social attractions of the soda fountain at the Tripeny drug store, it was still hard to shake its hard-drinking image.

But the guns and gear store turned into a sushi bar is the best evidence that times are changing.

Stools still survive

A block away, Woolworth’s five-and-dime has gone through a similar metamorphosis. I was having lunch at the Jazz Spot with my Casper native friend Janet when she took a long look at the stools at the bar, preserved from when it was Woolworth’s soda fountain and lunch counter.

“I sat on that stool when I was 4,” she said, pointing to a particular seat at the counter. “My mother took me to Woolworth’s for a soda when I learned how to tie my shoes.”

That stool is now occupied on weekend nights by blues fans who come to hear the live music. And, of course, thanks to Velcro, hardly anybody ties their shoes any more.

At what was once the phone company, people now eat breakfast and lunch. The former Prairie Publishing building hosts 303 Restaurant and Elixir’s nightclub.

You might think that Casper has become all about eating, with these businesses turning from merchandise and manufacturing to food.

But the Casper Journal and Bamboo Spa actually went the opposite direction. Where editors edit and manicurists paint, people once ate Red’s Barbecue. And Buffalo Creek still is selling clothes in the old J.C. Penney location.

The biggest change is in the Sand Bar, famous not that long ago for houses of ill repute. Bakeries, radio stations and antique stores have cleaned up the place, and more is on the way with the City Council’s efforts to create a western corridor that could some day include a performing arts center and library.

To get a perspective on the changes in Casper, I like to think of a story that the late newspaper editor and photographer Frances Seely Webb told me. She said that her father brought the family to Casper in the 1890s because “he thought there were too many people in Deadwood.”

A mining boom had ballooned that South Dakota town to a population of 3,500. At that time, Casper’s sleepy town of a thousand was more appealing to a genuine western individualist. He might not appreciate our Thai and sushi restaurants or the 13 movie screens downtown, but he still could say that it’s a more peaceful place than Deadwood.

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