Bayard Dodge Rea

Bayard Dodge Rea was born on Armistice Day, Nov. 11, 1929, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He spent most of a long and astonishing life in service to his family and his community of Casper, Wyoming where he died August 24, 2025. Bart was the youngest of eight siblings in a large house in a close and rambunctious family. From his earliest childhood he spent time outdoors, deeply curious about and attentive to rocks, plants and animals, especially birds. In 1951, he graduated from Princeton University with a degree in geology. The following year, at the height of the Cold War, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. He served on a small ship mapping the northwestern coast of Greenland. A love of maps and mapping stayed with him throughout his life.

In 1952 he married the artist Liz Smith of Beirut, Lebanon, whom he had met in Princeton. After the Navy he took a job in Casper with Stanolind Oil and Gas, later Pan American Petroleum, and he and Liz began their long life together in the West. The family transferred with Bart to the company’s Billings office in 1960 and back to Casper in 1963. By then there were three children in the family and that year Bart resigned from Pan Am and went to work with independents Barlow and Haun in Casper. A few years later Bart and his partner Carl Jenkins opened a small geological consulting firm of their own.

Over the decades he always kept a rock hammer in his car for rocks, binoculars for birds and maps to make sense of landscapes. For Bart the geologist, that meant landscapes visible on the surface and the ones hidden underground. But for him maps were also historical documents that revealed a lot about the mapmakers. A map, for him, was only a moment in time; the date of the map was as important to him as its accuracy. He had a powerful sense of direction. Whenever possible with the family, he took a different route home from the one that had taken them away.

He built pathways both literally and figuratively. He was a founder in the 1980s of the Platte River Parkway, which now stretches ten or more miles along the north Platte River to the delight of runners, walkers and bicyclists. After the Amoco Refinery closed in 1991—a huge blow to Casper’s economy—Bart and a small group of others brought together a government-industry partnership that in three decades has changed a 900-acre industrial wasteland into a community gem. It includes a golf course, a whitewater kayak course, a leafy riverside park and a business park with new roads and infrastructure. And with an 8,000-foot long steel barrier wall driven into the riverbank, it protects the river from the generations of hydrocarbons the refinery left behind. These efforts have changed Casper from a town that shunned its river for generations to one that loves and enjoys it every day. He was a visionary with vigor.

A truly great birder, Bart served many years on the board of the National Audubon Society and for his entire time in Casper was active with the local Murie Audubon Society. That is, he was both oilman and conservationist. A longtime friend said recently, “He made you think about the true meaning of conservation, which is thoughtful use of resources, but still knowing as a society that we need these resources.”

His children remember that when they were small he read to them every night after supper until he fell asleep in his chair. He wouldn’t buy them a television, but he let them have charge accounts at Lange’s Book Shop downtown. He taught one of them to sail, he taught them all to camp and fish. And he put many of their friends and relatives to work, some for pay, some not, building a cabin on Casper Mountain, digging ditches peeling logs, cutting notches and building roof trusses, nearly all of the work with hand tools. After their children were grown, Bart and Liz traveled together, mostly on nature tours, to places as far flung as Machu Picchu, Kenya, Gibraltar and Baffin Island.

He was a lifelong Presbyterian and he and Liz were early members of Shepherd of the Hills Presbyterian Church. He loved exploring the intersection of theology and science. He could be sitting in a cafe somewhere right now chatting about the concept of perpetuity as it relates to geologic time and how that relates to eternity in relationship to theological time.

At 95, he slowed down somewhat. After Liz died in 2021, he told a relative, “I’m lonely. But I’m never bored.” He lived independently and kept active. The day he died he was exploring alone, on foot, near the river by Fort Caspar, undoubtedly looking at birds and rocks. He may have been searching for the original Platte River crossing or scouting a proposed site for a new footbridge. He will be remembered for a deep understanding of the past and for dedicating his life to building a strong community. He died under a tree by the Platte at the perfect intersection of history and the future, between earth and sky.

He was preceded in death by his parents, James and Julia Rea, his wife Elizabeth Smith Rea and his seven siblings and their spouses. He is survived by his children Marjory, Dan and Bill (Suzy) and their children Mackenzie and Katie.

A memorial service will be at 10 a.m. Wednesday, October 8 at at Shepherd of the Hills Presbyterian Church in Casper.

In lieu of flowers, donations to Climb Wyoming, Interfaith, The Lyric, or the Wyoming Symphony are appreciated, or make a donation to your favorite charity in honor of Bart.