Rolling Stones 1972 Album Exile on Main Street inside sleeve of the album. Top of the image shows Casper, Wyoming.
Have you ever found people from your hometown staring back at you when you opened up a book or looked at the illustrations on the music album you were playing?
Hidden on the inside sleeve of the Rolling Stones 1972 album “Exile on Main Street”’ is a picture of servicemen saluting during an event. This photograph was taken in Casper, Wyoming, and the servicemen saluting were identified as men stationed at the Casper Filter Center* in 1956. How do we know it was taken then? Enterprising researchers used motor vehicle records to determine the photo was taken in 1956 by using the visible license plate on the KSPR panel truck.
Over time some of the saluting soldiers and spectators have been identified. A serviceman standing in the middle of the photo was identified as a Sgt. Maxwell by a Mrs. Claude Key, who gave a call to the Casper Star-Tribune with the identification. The spectator holding his hat in the middle of the photo has been identified to the Casper Star-Tribune by two Mills, Wyoming residents as Perry Abar. Abar lived in Mills, Wyoming, at the time of the photo.
This Casper picture is called a mystery photograph. Nobody is sure what the occasion of the photo was or who took the picture. A further mystery is, why was this specific photograph chosen for the album sleeve? What connection do the Rolling Stones have to Wyoming? These questions have no answers as of yet. Still, maybe one day, with the public’s help or with a Rolling Stone’s tell-all book, this small photographic mystery will have a satisfying conclusion.
Do you know anything more about this photograph? Leave your comments here!
Casper Star-Tribune, May 8, 1973; Partial ‘Mystery’ Solved
Casper Star-Tribune, May 9, 1973; Mystery Picture Clearer
* The Casper Filter Center is the location where volunteer civilian Ground Observer Corp plane spotters from all over the state of Wyoming call in planes spotted flying in Wyoming air space. The Casper Filter Center volunteers plot and track the planes. Necessary information about the planes are then relayed to the Air Defense Corp who make the decision if the incoming planes are hostile.
Wyoming Postscripts 