Looking Back: Gossip girls 1870

“Somebody said” has been the start of many untrue stories and gossip in this community since the late 1870s. Reading the local oral histories and talking with history buffs about the different rumors plaguing the White River Valley from the earliest days of settlement, I am struck by the effectiveness of the gossip mill.
While a number of the mule skinners, trappers, cowboys and ranch families certainly stuck close to their own kind, there were…