For two hours on the afternoon of Friday, Oct. 30, some of Casper's most formal buildings will be staffed by people handing out candy to small ghosts and goblins. Natrona County's community trick-or-treat runs from 3 to 5 p.m. at three county facilities downtown: the entryway of the Townsend Justice Center at 115 N. Center St., the Natrona County Courthouse at 200 N. Center St., and the Hall of Justice at 201 N. David St.
The county announced the event on Wednesday, Oct. 15. County employees and officials will man the buildings with candy for young Halloween enthusiasts, and the event is free and open to the public, with no tickets or registration. The county has asked that trick-or-treaters use the marked crosswalks as they move between the three stops.
The route is short but unusually scenic as far as candy-gathering goes. The courthouse and the Hall of Justice are physically connected, so two of the three stops are effectively a single walk.
That last building carries most of the history. It began life in 1923 as the Townsend Hotel. The architects were Garbutt, Weidner & Sweeney, and the result was a five-story brick landmark in the middle of downtown.
The Townsend was one of three grand hotels built in downtown Casper, alongside the Henning and the Gladstone. It is the only one still standing. It was also the site of a piece of Wyoming broadcasting history: the five-story hotel was home to Casper's first radio station, and the first commercial station in the state, which went on the air for the first time on Jan. 2, 1930 — the station now known as KTWO, K2 Radio.
The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on Nov. 25, 1983. By the 2000s it had outlived its hotel days; the county purchased the old five-story structure in 2007, and it was renovated and expanded for government use in 2008 and 2009, reopening in late 2009 as the Townsend Justice Center. It now houses court offices, including the district court and the county court clerk. The county's own directions to the building point visitors past the Dick Cheney Federal Building, with the justice center sitting between A Street and First Street.
The courthouse next door has its own pedigree. Built between 1938 and 1940 in an Art Deco style to designs by Goodrich & Krusmark, with Rugnstad & Olsen and John W. Howard as contractors, it is a two-story white limestone and concrete structure facing east on landscaped grounds. Inside, the entry hall has terrazzo floors and marble walls, and the ornate bronze elevator doors are decorated with farming and ranching scenes on the first story and tipis and other Native American symbols on the second. The stairways on either side of the entry climb to the former courtroom on the second floor, now the Commissioners Room, whose double doors are trimmed with hand-carved leather panels — squares of intricate foliate designs bordered with local cattle brands.
Natrona County itself takes its name from the natron, or soda, produced in the region; "natrona" is Spanish for "soda." The county was created on March 9, 1888, with Casper as its seat from the start. Casper began as a wool town, its economy boosted by wool sacks shipped out from the rail depot, before oil discoveries in the early 1890s and the first refinery in 1895 turned it into what was billed as the oil capital of the Rockies. By 1929, Natrona County had the greatest assessed valuation of any county in the state.
County trick-or-treating at the government offices is not a one-off experiment. A prior county announcement, reported by Wake Up Wyoming, described the same three-building format on Halloween itself, running the same 3-to-5 p.m. hours, with a press release inviting "little ghosts and goblins" to bring their parents and come trick-or-treat the county employees, and reminding drivers and trick-or-treaters to use the provided crosswalks. This year the county has moved the event to the Friday before Halloween rather than the holiday itself.
For families, the appeal is straightforward: a daytime, walkable loop through three downtown buildings, candy from the people who normally process deeds, court filings and commission business, and an excuse to look up at the bronze elevator doors and carved courtroom panels on the way through. The county asks those with questions to call the County Commissioners Office at 307-235-9202.