"Powder River, let 'er buck !"

[Jonathan Lighter]

  This is a well-known slogan in Montana and Wyoming, but a quick search of my reference library reveals no "early" examples - or very much else.

  This site will orient you to what the phrase "is all about" (I can't believe I used that expression) :

  http://www.wyomingcompanion.com/history/wchh5_6.html

  Here is an "early" and circumstantial account of its use in the 361st Infantry in 1918:

  1919 William Brown & Birdeena Tuttle  _The Adventures of an American Doughboy_  15 (Tacoma, Wash.: Smith-Kinney) :  In our company we had an old man whom we had nicknamed "Pwder River," long before we left Montana.  His favorite saying was "Powder River--a mile wide and an inch deep--let 'er buck !"  Every time he would say it, another old fellow in the company used to say "Hook 'em cow!"  "Powder River" and "Hook 'em Cow" were great pals.  They were a pair of comical ducks.

  One day...I saw "Powder River" in a black-jack game, and later when I asked him how he came out, he said, "I blowed up--but Powder River's a mile wide and an inch deep--so let 'er buck. I'm just as happy without money as I am with it."

  Well now, some years after, back around 1930, there was a old boy called Powder River Jack Lee who made some phonygraph records, one of which was called, you guessed it, "Powder River - Let 'er Buck!"  Alls I can remember of it was at the end, when Jack sung out, "Powder River !  A mile wide !  An inch deep !  An' she rolls uphill from Texas !"

  And how 'bout "Birdeena" for a front name, cowboys ?

  JL

















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