Winter began his legal career in
Omaha, Nebraska. He moved to
Encampment, Wyoming, in 1902 and to
Casper in 1903. He was a delegate to the
Republican National Convention in 1908 and was a judge of the sixth judicial district of Wyoming from 1913 to 1919. He resigned from the bench and resumed the practice of law at Casper. Winter was elected as a
Republican to the
Sixty-eighth,
Sixty-ninth, and
Seventieth Congresses, serving from March 4, 1923, to March 3, 1929; he was not a candidate for renomination in 1928, but was an unsuccessful candidate for election to the
U.S. Senate. He was
attorney general of Puerto Rico in 1932 and 1933, and served as
acting governor. He later resumed the practice of law in Wyoming and died in Casper in 1948. During the summer of 1903, while traveling on a train in Pennsylvania, Winter wrote the lyrics to "
Wyoming", the official state song. His western novels included
Grandon of Sierra, about a cowboy who gives up ranging to be a prospector in the Encampment copper rush, and
Ben Warman, which was adapted into the 1920 film
Dangerous Love.
Gold of Freedom was set in Wyoming's
South Pass. ==References==