Charles E. Winter

Biography

Born in Muscatine, Iowa, he attended public schools and Iowa Wesleyan College at Mount Pleasant. He graduated from the Nebraska Wesleyan University at Lincoln in 1892, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1895 and commenced practice in Omaha, Nebraska. He moved to Encampment, Wyoming in 1902 and to Casper, Wyoming in 1903. He was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1908 and was a judge of the sixth judicial district of Wyoming from 1913 to 1919. He resigned from the bench and resumed the practice of law at Casper. Winter was elected as a Republican to the Sixty-eighth, Sixty-ninth, and Seventieth Congresses, serving from March 4, 1923 to March 3, 1929; he was not a candidate for renomination in 1928, but was an unsuccessful candidate for election to the U.S. Senate. He was attorney general of Puerto Rico in 1932 and 1933, and served as Acting Governor. He resumed the practice of law, and died in Casper; interment was in Highland Cemetery. During the summer of 1903, while traveling on a train in Pennsylvania, Winter wrote the lyrics to "Wyoming", the official state song. His western novels included Grandon of Sierra, about a cowboy who gives up ranging to be a prospector in the Encampment copper rush, and Ben Warman, filmed several times, firstly as Dangerous Love (1920 film). Gold of Freedom was set in Wyoming's South Pass.