Paul Hagenstein was born in Denver CO, August 3, 1927. He was one month old when Marjorie & Paul C Hagenstein adopted him and he began a lifetime in Pinedale, WY. His parents had been here since 1917. The other children in the family were Freddie, Emma Lee, and Marjorie Ann. They were all adopted but are not blood related. Paul’s natural grandfather was a Presbyterian minister and from information the birth mother gave, Paul believes his daughter Leslie looks like his blood mother.

Mapfel Street in Pinedale was named by taking the first letter of Paul and his siblings names. Paul’s dad built the Harrower Tractor Building and ran it as a car dealership and gas station. Paul remembers being sent to the Pine Creek bridge to fill jugs for battery water as it was purer than city water. His mother made root beer that they sold at the garage. The family lived for a short time in Superior, WY, when Paul’s dad was in the bank there.

Paul remembers that Skyline Theatre on north Franklin was across from Belle Bradley’s Trails Hotel (in the 1990s it was McGregor’s). “If you parked in front of her place to go to the theatre, your tires would mysteriously become flat”.

In 1944 Paul graduated from high school and went off to Laramie. The next year his parents started a dairy, his sister Marjorie Ann died on Mother’s Day and in the fall, his father died. Paul came back and taught Chemistry and Geometry in Pinedale for a year. He said, “I’d taken a political science class and that was the only prerequisite for me to get an emergency teaching license. One of my students was one day younger than me”. In 1946 Paul went into the service and served in Occupied Japan. “We got our eyes opened pretty wide with a different culture,” he said. When he returned to Pinedale he married Bette Power whose great uncle was Norris Griggs. They joined his mother in the dairy business. In 1960 they were “burned out by a fire” and no longer milked cows, but instead became the distributors for large dairy companies. “We took care of stores, restaurants and homes. All the dairy products in Pinedale went through us.” They quit the dairy business completely in 1973. Paul remembers, “We bred our brown Swiss milk cows to Red Angus bulls. Then we went to completely registered Red Angus until 1997 at which time we sold our cows and started herds all over the country.” In 1980 the ‘Pine Creek Canal #1 Enlargement of the Lee’ (erroneously shorted to ‘The Lee Ditch’) that runs along the hill east of town, burst. Paul said, “It took us 12 years to get back to the hay production we’d had in 1979.”

Paul and Bette Hagenstein have two daughters, Valerie and Leslie. They have one grandson, Sam. Bette and Paul are both Scotch-Irish and music runs in their family. Bette was in a Pinedale singing group, the Mad Hatters. Paul’s mother died in a retirement home in Denver and his brother Freddie went to ‘pick her up’. When he got to Pinedale he drove into the ranch yard. When asked what he was doing, Freddie said, “I’m driving her around the ranch one last time.” When Freddie died, Leslie did the same for him. Paul has been “on just about every board but the School Board”. He was a County Commissioner and is active in the Sublette County Historical Society/Mountain Man Museum. He and Bette love history and it is a delight to sit with them at Rendezvous Pointe and just listen.

By Judi Myers

Printed in Rendezvous Pointe (Pinedale WY Senior Center) Newsletter, May, 2006