One More For The Road

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Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>One More For The Road: Thursday, October 27, 2022 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

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One More For The Road: Thursday, October 27, 2022

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

CHEYENNE — A dad who once traded a black powder rifle for a rusted Model T decades ago left his four daughters and son with a lot of memories, and a lot of antique cars and parts.

That Model T acquired in the late 1950s began a hobby and series of antique cars that over nearly 70 years kept Alex Connell, who died on May 1, 2025 — and sometimes his kids — digging into Wyoming dirt for rusted treasure. 

They once scoured a national park as part of their dad’s effort to uncover car frames and find parts that would be transformed by the self-taught craftsman.

Now Connell’s legacy fills two garages and a barn on the north side of Cheyenne that contains three Packards mostly restored and nearly all the parts for an extremely rare 1907 American Underslung Roadster.

There also are scores of other parts for Packards, Model Ts and Model As.

“We had Bonhams come and look at them and they were so excited,” said Kathy Dillmon, Connell’s youngest daughter, referring to the international auction house. “We let them take a 1916 Studebaker, it wasn’t the best one.”

The price the car went for at an Arizona auction was well below the value the Bonham representative told the family it would likely bring. 

Their dad left them his estimates of the value of his cars. Now the heirs are looking at a long and winding road to determine next steps in selling their dad’s passion and collection.

The remaining nearly restored cars include a 1909 Packard Limo, 1909 Packard Touring Car, and 1929 Roadster.

Connell’s children — Kim Parker, 72; Kay Irwin, 70; Kris Connell-Johns, 67; Tom Connell, 65; and Dillmon, 67 — now have the cars listed with Horseless Carriage Club of America at reduced prices. 

They know that the older generation interested in antique models like these has given way to Baby Boomers more interested in Mopar muscle cars.

But they have stories to tell about family outings at Cheyenne Frontier Days parades, where they were all dressed in period clothes while riding in one of their dad’s restored machines.

Parker said both of their parents were born in Michigan, Alex Connell in Muskegon and Luann in Holland.

Connell enlisted in the U.S. Air Force after graduation from high school and was assigned to F.E. Warren Air Force Base for his technical school as a lineman.

After arriving on the base in 1952, one day her dad told his squadron’s leadership a story after mail call.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Story"}]

“Daddy told his commanding officer that he got a woman in trouble in Michigan and he had to get married right away,” she said. “That was a lie.”

The family story is that Connell hopped a train “like a hobo” and went back to Muskegon to knock on the door where Luann lived. 

Her mother answered on a Friday night and asked him what he was doing back in Michigan.

“I’m here to marry Lucy and we’re going to do it tomorrow,” Parker repeated her dad’s lines. “We’re going to get a train and go back to Cheyenne by Monday.”

The unsuspecting Luann, aka “Lucy,” agreed. 

Her mother and grandmother helped put together a Saturday wedding and they were married. She was 17, he was 19.

The couple caught a train back to Wyoming that had them sitting up in passenger seats for 24 hours, Parker said.

When they got to Cheyenne, they walked seven blocks from the depot to an apartment he had rented for them. 

Two years later, both his mother and Luann’s mother died of cancer, and Connell obtained a hardship discharge. They moved back to Michigan with 1-year-old Kim to help their families.

In Michigan, two more daughters (Kay Irwin and Kris Connell-Johns) were born. But the couple missed the West and the mountains. 

They moved back to Cheyenne in 1957 and Connell joined the pipefitters’ union and became an apprentice, and then journeyman, Parker said.

Connell’s children said that their dad’s career involved several construction projects that included schools, a water plant, hospitals and a lot of work for the Air Force on missile silo construction.

Kay Irwin remembers her dad one day being contacted by an F.E. Warren Air Force Base officer to do some welding at a missile site and how a helicopter was sent to pick him up and take him out there. He returned home at the end of the day.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Car Hobby Begins"}]

Tom Connell said his dad’s love of antique cars and restoring began before he returned to Wyoming. 

He had been a aficionado of black powder rifles when he learned about an old Ford someone had in Marne, Michigan.

“He traded a black powder rifle for a Model T,” he said. 

Alex Connell went on to become a self-taught craftsman and expert restoring cars, graduating to Model As and more upscale Packards, American Underslung and Pierce-Arrow Motor Cars.

In an article written for the Horseless Carriage Gazette in 1983, Alex Connell described how he restored a 1910 American Underslung after a friend showed him a flexible brass tube that he found while antelope hunting next to what he thought were remnants of an old Ford.

Connell pestered the friend to take him to the location, and when he got there saw the potential for something special.

“There, in a wash, lay the entire body, fenders and hood from a 1910 American Underslung just as it had been left there during the first part of World War II,” he wrote. “I found the owner of the property and he told me how he wrote to a scrap metal dealer in Torrington and instructed him to go to the ranch … and scrap out the old cars and machinery there and buy war bonds in the name of the owner.”

Connell wrote that he began his effort to restore the car, which spanned several years of finding parts, learning to fabricate his own on a metal lathe or using wooden frames and sheet metal to fashion parts.

Over the decades, his children estimate their dad collected and restored dozens of antique cars, then traded and sold many of them.

As part of their dad’s restoration efforts, the Connell kids remember their mother finding and making period clothing for them all to wear and driving the cars in a succession of Cheyenne Frontier Days parades.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Movie Showcase"}]

Parker said when the movie “The Great Race” was released in 1965 starring Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon,  the local theater recruited her dad to display the American Underslung at the theater.

“It was such a great movie that the Paramount Theater downtown asked dad if they could put his main Underslung in the theater, and it was all roped off with beautiful brass poles and red velvet,” she said. “It was a beautiful showcase car.”

The Connell children grew up in a home that their parents built that came mostly from recycled materials from an Air Force base warehouse that their dad contracted to tear down. 

It was part of several home showcase tours, they said.

All remember their father coming home from work and going to garage where there were metal lathes, saws, and tools for his restoration work. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"There was always a project going on."}]

“I remember when I was, like, 10 years old, he had taken me in his truck and he was going to get this car frame out of Horse Creek that was kind of buried in the sand, and he dug and dug and couldn’t get it out,” Kay Irwin said. 

“And he put a two-by-four under the frame and he had me lean over on that two-by-four and bounce on it and try it get it out of the creek bed. We finally ended up getting it,” she added.

Parker said the only real family vacation they ever took involved their dad announcing they were going to go to Yellowstone. 

The family piled into a cab-over truck with a big trailer behind and instead drove to the south entrance of Grand Teton National Park.

Her dad parked the rig in the middle of a forest. 

That’s when Alex Connell broke the told his family that they weren’t going to vacation in Yellowstone and instead search for a Packard body that he heard was buried in a creek somewhere in Grand Teton.

“So, we spent days and days looking for that body in a creek,” Parker said. “I was walking in the woods and I couldn’t have been more than 12 or 13, and I walked up on an elk that was fully horns.

“I backed up, he just stayed there and watched me.”

After days of no luck finding the Packard, the family went to Yellowstone to visit Old Faithful, watched it erupt, then drove to Thermopolis to go swimming, she said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Restoring Pierce-Arrow"}]

Tom Connell tells the story of his dad meeting a man in a town east of Colorado Springs who owned an old Pierce Arrow Roadster that was identical to his dad’s Packard. 

The owner who was up in years told Alex Connell he bought the car when he was kid.

“He wanted to drive that some day before he died and he didn’t want to sell it,” Tom Connell said. “Right next to it was an old Lincoln Bus, and in the spur of the moment (dad) said, ‘I’ll take that car home and restore if for you in exchange for that Lincoln Bus.'”

Tom Connell said he and his dad hauled the Pierce Arrow back to Cheyenne and over a period restored it so that it was able to be driven and returned it to the Colorado owner. 

That man cried when they brought it back to him.

Alex Connell got the Lincoln Bus, but never got around the restoring it. It remains on the property as an item for his children to deal with.

Dillmon said her father sold and traded his restored cars and parts with people throughout the country and Europe, and she has boxes of his correspondence about parts and other facets of his restoration expertise.

Alex Connell also got into refurbishing big, old Minneapolis Steam Tractors and took a class to learn to drive them. 

The family story is that Luann Connell made him sell them because one day he drove a tractor into the house. The tractors were sold to a man in Argentina.

Working hard on his restoration efforts into his 70s, Alex Connell slowed down in the last two decades of life, but maintained his efforts in the garage for as long as he could. 

Luann Connell died in January 2025, and that same month Alex Connell fell and developed a brain bleed that required surgery.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Alex Connell died May 10, 2025. "}]

His children remain busy trying to find the right homes for his beloved antique vehicles and parts, but thankful for the memories he left behind.

“The goal is to find passionate buyers within the vintage car community who will drive, preserve, and enjoy them,” Dillmon said.

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<title>Cheyenne Dad Leaves His Five Heirs Antique Packards — And A Lifetime of Memories | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The children of a Cheyenne car restorer inherited a lifetime collection of antique Packards and car parts that include a nearly complete disassembled 1907 American Underslung Roadster. Their goal is to find a buyer who will preserve and enjoy them.

Cheyenne Dad Leaves His Five Heirs Antique Packards — And A Lifetime of Memories

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Outdoors

Hunting

Forget about e-bikes, ATVs and other wheeled vehicles. 

The latest powered outdoor trend is people strapping on devices called powered exoskeletons and becoming faster, stronger cyborg versions of themselves.

Battery-powered knee and hip-assistance devices have been around for a while. 

But some reviewers say products like one called the Vastnaut One 4x4 have taken things to a new level by supplying additional support and power to the hips and knees simultaneously.

The company claims that its contraption can boost the wearer’s climbing power by 30%.

Its rechargeable batteries last 4.5 hours, enough to cover about 12.5 miles, according to Vastnaut.

Prices for the devices run from about $1,000 to $2,000.

Seasoned hiker John Housel told Cowboy State Daily that at age 73, he’s had to slow down somewhat, but he’s not sure he’s ready to strap on a set of robot leg boosters.

“I’m a great believer in self-locomotion,” he said. "I would be hesitant about exploring that (using an exoskeleton) much further.

“I can see if I got to the point where I was wearing out before I got to the top of one of my favorite local mountains, I might look into that,” he added.

Even so, he can see drawbacks, such as the batteries wearing out or the contraption getting damaged.

“What if I fell on my descent? The falling might bend a joint on that apparatus, and I’d have to get back down on my own,” he said.

Housel added that it could be better to accept the natural limitations that come with age.

“If I get to the point where I just can’t go somewhere, maybe I’ll just not go to that place anymore,” he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Shrinking The Land"}]

Housel said that exoskeletons could add to a trend that outdoor enthusiasts call “shrinking the land.”

In other words, the more means there are available to traverse territory more quickly, the “smaller” the land gets and the fewer places there will be where one can go to find utter solitude.

Housel said that over the years, he’s seen some of that happen as technology has improved ATVs and e-bikes.

 over whether they blur the lines between human-powered and motorized backcountry transportation.  

However, he’s skeptical that exoskeletons will have that much of an impact, at least not anytime soon.

The prices could be a barrier for many people, Housel said.

“I don’t think they’re going to be that popular. I think the pricing will be a factor,” he said.

He added that people might be hesitant to spend $1,000 to $2,000 on products that might be found primarily online, and not yet in retail stores.

“I think anybody who would be interested in that would want a demonstration” before spending the money, he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘Mr. Gadget’"}]

The makers of Vastnaut and similar devices claim that they can increase users’ weight-carrying capacity.

That could be a selling point for people like northeast Wyoming resident Owen Miller. 

He frequently hunts deep in the backcountry, in places where killing an elk means facing a long trek out with heavy packs full of meat.

“This looks like a product for ‘Mr. Gadget,’” he told Cowboy State Daily.

“I can definitely see that there’s people that would use this, and it could be compared to the e-bike where you’re biking, but you’re not really biking,” he said. "(This is) like assisted biking, but this is assisted hiking/walking."

Miller said he favors simplicity in the backcountry. So, he’s skeptical about the possible complications of exoskeletons, such as limitations on battery life.

He noted that it might be good for “somebody with a leg injury, or even a back injury.”

Miller said he doesn’t think he’ll buy an exoskeleton anytime soon.

“In my opinion, everything can have its place and be useful for the right person. But as long as I’m healthy, I personally wouldn’t use it just to use it,” he said.

 Avid backcountry elk hunter Bruce Cooper of Bondurant also said he can see the usefulness of exoskeletons for those with injuries or mobility challenges.

He noted that his wife has had two knee surgeries.

“This would help her maybe keep pace with me and have less fatigue,” Cooper said.

“I personally would not have a use for it when hunting. I tend to go distances that would burn the battery, and through heavy timber. I would then have to carry it back when the battery is dead,” he said 

Where exoskeletons might shine in Wyoming is among people hiking for fun in the front country, Cooper said.

“I think it could be beneficial for those who are walking more on (established) paths and trails, and who may benefit from the knee support and need for assistance in walking or hiking,” he said.

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<title>Powered Exoskeletons Could Turn Wyoming Hikers, Hunters Into Backcountry Cyborgs | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Forget about e-bikes, ATVs and other wheeled vehicles. The latest powered outdoor trend is people strapping on powered exoskeletons and becoming faster, stronger cyborg versions of themselves. One company says it can boost climbing power by 30%.

Powered Exoskeletons Could Turn Wyoming Hikers, Hunters Into Backcountry Cyborgs

Julie Mankin

GILLETTE — The only notion that high-school junior Caden Shear had of a pioneer-style wagon is what he’d seen playing “The Oregon Trail.”

Yes, the wildly popular 1974 computer game is still teaching kids about frontier life on Nintendo, Xbox and PlayStation consoles.

Today, it has a phone app called OG Trail and an update letting players use trading and crafting to upgrade their wagons, buy food and cure ailments.

[{"type":"text","text":"But Shear’s classmate, Dyson Eixenberger, had no such concept."}]

“When our teacher said we were going to build a sheep wagon, I was confused,” said the Campbell County high school student. “I thought he might be talking about a trailer to put sheep in.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Thousands Of Sheep Wagons"}]

The idea to have construction fabrication classes at each of Gillette’s high schools build new sheep wagons was the brainchild of Jeff Wasserberger.

His Board of Cooperative Higher Education Services gathered the donated materials and tasked Thunder Basin High School teacher Nick Newman and Campbell County High teacher Pete Stocker with helping their students each put together sheep wagons much like the one invented by a Rawlins blacksmith in 1884.

The world’s first mobile home for sheepherders was 12 feet long and 6.5 feet high with a built-in stove, bed and cabinetry.

By 1910, Wyoming boasted more than 5 million sheep and was the second-largest wool-producing state in the nation after Texas.

Protection and care of the wooly critters required a herder for about every 3,000 ewes, meaning thousands of sheep wagons dotted the plains and peaks of Wyoming.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Original Van-Lifers"}]

While Shear admitted that living for weeks at a time in a sheep wagon would be better than sleeping in a tent, it’s tight inside, he said.

He lamented that everything you needed either pulls out or is tucked under something else.

But sheep wagons aren’t that far removed from the modern van-life movement, where people pack their lives into mobile tiny homes on wheels.

“I didn’t expect it to be that hard of a build,” said Shear, who plans to become a civil engineer. “It was really time-consuming, but it was pretty fun building it.”

The finished wagons, which took two years to complete, were donated for fundraisers.

The Thunder Basin wagon went to the Gillette College Foundation, while the CCHS wagon donation hasn’t been finalized, but options include the local YES House or local SkillsUSA chapter.

That was a big ask for students accustomed to taking their finished projects home with them, Stocker said.

“Motivation was tough,” he said. “It was a long project, and as a society, we are instant-gratification people.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Cutting It Close"}]

Eixenberger admitted he wasn’t sure his team’s wagon would ever be finished.

“Cutting wood to make it look curved was pretty hard,” said the 16-year-old. “There were people in that class who didn’t know what they were doing, and we ended up redoing a lot of things.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Shear also found it “weird” to put tin on a curved ceiling."}]

“I can do stuff creatively, but I always have a reference,” he said. “For a sheep wagon, there’s not even a (period) reference. But it was cool to build.”

In fact, sheep wagons were often built on the fly on the frontier out of whatever materials were on hand. That really threw the teens for a loop, said Newman.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Working Through Rivalry"}]

Newman, 40, and Stocker, 37, both attended Casper College, have ranching roots and are wrestling coaches at their respective high schools.

Working together isn’t something that comes natural to the rival Gillette schools.

“There’s always some (rivalry), because he wears blue and I wear purple,” said Stocker.

The two visited each other’s shops over the past two years to compare progress and pick each other’s brains.

“Pete’s sheep wagon is a Cadillac,” said Newman, whose students fabricated their own bench brackets and welded an extended frame. “His is shiny. They did a good job over at Campbell County. We went for functionality. Ours is longer and wider.”

The Thunder Basin-made wagon features white oak and everything is tongue-and-groove. The CCHS wagon is smaller, featuring a canvas roof and beautiful hickory interior.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"New Life As Airbnbs"}]

Since herders began zooming out to the sheep via motorbikes or ATVs in the 1960s and ’70s, the antique wagons have been obsolete.

But a few fully restored “star-gazing one-bedroom sheep wagons” are advertised by Airbnb as a way of “glamping on a working ranch” or even as private guest quarters.

That could be the ultimate fate of the new wagons after they’re auctioned or raffled.

While had Stocker never built a sheep wagon, it was actually on Newman’s bucket list.

“I grew up working for the Nicolaysen outfit — a huge sheep producer near Casper,” he said. “The foreman, Kelly Glause, refurbishes sheep wagons and in our downtime, we helped him.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Newman feels he was born a century too late."}]

“I’ve always ridden on the shirttails of the old-timer’s stories about moving herds and working on open range,” he said. “Today, ranches have portable corrals every quarter-mile and pickups and trailers make everything so easy.

“Just living off the land and being out there all the time? That was the deal, to me.”

Trying to explain that romance to today’s teenagers was tough, the teachers said, but worth it.

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<title>Gillette Teens Spend 2 Years Building Sheep Wagons As Class Project | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Gillette high school students spent the last two years building sheep wagons as a class project. Teacher Pete Stocker said it was a challenge to keep everyone motivated. “It was a long project, and as a society, we are instant-gratification people."

Gillette Teens Spend 2 Years Building Sheep Wagons As Class Project

Jen kocher

Jen Kocher

Crime & Courts

Law Enforcement

Lt. Doug Fisher had been about a week away from flying to Wisconsin to arrest Roger Durkee when he got the news: Durkee was dead.

The cat-and-mouse game Durkee had been playing with Elko County Sheriff’s Office (ECSO) detectives for the past few years was officially over.

[{"type":"text","text":"Fisher called the news bittersweet."}]

He and ECSO Det. Alex Cox had been looking forward to finally putting the cuffs on Durkee, who had spent 32 years eluding authorities after allegedly murdering an unidentified woman and dumping her nude body at a remote desert exit off Interstate 80 in Nevada.

but both officers agree that identifying Durkee’s victim 

For decades, she was known only as “Shafter Jane Doe,” named for the highway exit where she was found in November 1993.

detectives finally identified her as Marion Hertha Alexander

, a 25-year-old German immigrant who had been living in Salt Lake City, Utah, when she crossed paths with Durkee.

The woman also had spent seven months in Afton, Wyoming, shortly before she was killed, which was determined in 2010 via a breakthrough isotope testing procedure. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Family Devastated"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Alexander’s mother was devastated, Fisher said."}]

He and Cox had driven to her California home in January to tell her in person. She had met her husband, a

She married him and returned to California with him and her children in 1972.

Alexander left home in her late teens — a free spirit, her mother told detectives, who drifted and grew distant from the family.

They had not known she was missing and were devastated 

A detective was about to fly to Wisconsin to arrest the lead suspect in the 32-year cold case of a woman whose nude body was dumped along I-80 when he got the news the suspect was dead. The woman's time in Wyoming led to the breakthrough in the case.

One More For The Road: Thursday, October 27, 2022

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