Daily Smile

[{"type":"text","text":"This dog knows who's boss..."}]

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

<title>Daily Smile: Tuesday, April 18, 2023 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

This dog knows who's boss...

Daily Smile: Tuesday, April 18, 2023

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

Around Wyoming

For many Wyoming communities, Sunday was the hottest day in recorded history.

The hottest in Worland’s recorded history was June 30, 1990, when it was 107 degrees. According to the National Weather Service office in Riverton, the high at Worland Municipal Airport on Sunday was 110.

The daytime high at Sheridan County Airport was 109 degrees. That broke the old record of 104 set in July 2021.

Buffalo's all-time high was also 104 degrees, set in July 2021. Its threshold was broken with a high of 105 degrees Sunday. 

At Lake Yellowstone in Yellowstone National Park, Sunday’s high was 88 degrees. The previous record was 86, set on July 19, 2021.

“It was certainly a hot day in Wyoming,” said meteorologist Trevor Lavoie with NWS Riverton.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Hot, Hot, Hot"}]

Lavoie said the source of Sunday’s high temperatures was “an anomalous area of high pressure” that settled over the Rocky Mountain Region this weekend. Wyoming was on the outside edge, so it didn’t get as hot as it could have.

Miles City, in eastern Montana, reached an all-time high of 115 degrees Sunday. That’s two degrees shy of the hottest temperatures ever recorded anywhere in Montana.

In Wyoming, Riverton also experienced an all-time record-high temperature.

“Riverton Airport hit 104, breaking the all-time record of 102 on June 18, 2006,” Lavoie said.

The temperature most notable to Lavoie was a tie for the all-time high in Lander.

“Lander tied its all-time record at 102, set on July 27, 1935,” he said.

That 102-degree tie stood out because Lander has one of the longest climate records in Wyoming, going back to 1896.

“Some records are longer, and there might be outliers in those records,” he said. “The fact that Lander tied its all-time record is, in and of itself, significant.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Called It, Don’t Read Into It"}]

Cowboy State Daily meteorologist Don Day wasn’t surprised by the records. He also discouraged people from trying to make broad assumptions from that data.

“I don't think you should try painting with a broad brush with this from a geographic standpoint,” he said. “Sunday was certainly extreme, there's no doubt about it, but breaking an all-time record on Sunday means it’s the hottest since they’ve been keeping records.”

Many Wyoming communities broke records for July 12, specifically, but not all-time highs. That was expected, according to Day.

“The southern part of the state was saved by upslope, so we didn't see any records,” he said. “Cheyenne didn't break a record. Laramie didn't break a record. Douglas did by one degree. This heat wave was biased toward the northern part of the state.”

Day went as far as to say it was “the most intense heat wave in the Northern Hemisphere this summer.” However, Wyoming got off comparatively easy.

“Ground zero was southeast Montana and the western halves of the Dakotas,” he said. “That’s why we didn’t see as many all-time records broken in Wyoming. It’s hard for a heat wave to break all-time high records, even in July, which is the hottest month of the year.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Barely Cooling It"}]

Monday wasn’t as warm as Sunday, but temperatures still hit triple digits in Greybull, Riverton and Shoshoni. Greybull might have set an all-time high Sunday, but it hadn’t been reported as of Monday afternoon.

The extended forecast isn’t providing much relief. Both Day and Lavoie said Tuesday is poised to be as hot as Monday, if not hotter, and the rest of the week will be only slightly cooler.

“We’re still looking at temperatures in the range of 100 to 105 degrees east of the Continental Divide on Tuesday,” Lavoie said. “The main factor that will be a bit of a hindrance to the heat is an increase in moisture and a rise in the dew points later on this week.”

Higher dew points mean more moisture in the atmosphere. That will decrease daytime temperatures across Wyoming, even if only by a few degrees.

There will be more relief as the “anomalous area of high pressure” starts to dissipate and shift eastward. When that happens, the void could be filled by cooler, wetter weather.

“Temperatures will spike up on Tuesday, but I don't think they'll go back to Sunday's levels,” Day said. “Once we get into mid to late week, we're going to start to see subtropical moisture get into northern Wyoming. That will produce some cloudiness and a few showers, which will be enough to stave off the worst of it.”

Of course, Wyoming’s weather is never a one-size-fits-all solution. While relief will slowly reach everyone, some will be waiting longer than others.

“I need to make it absolutely clear that the western side of the state is going to have the first taste of (monsoonal moisture) later this week and this weekend,” Day said. “It’s not going to get into Cheyenne, Laramie, Casper, Torrington, Gillette, and Sundance until next week.”

That means Wyomingites need to keep themselves well hydrated and out of the sun, if they can, during the heat of the day, he said. There’s another week, at least, of scorchingly high temperatures to endure.

Can it get worse? It’s possible, but Day said he believes it’s unlikely.

“I would say that it's going to be warmer than average for the rest of July and early August,” he said. “However, I don’t think there’s going to be another mechanism that could get as intense as or surpass what happened on Sunday.”

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<title>Northern Wyoming Bakes Under Highest Recorded Temps Ever, Awaits Relief | Cowboy State Daily</title>

For many northern Wyoming communities, Sunday was the hottest day in recorded history. Worland, Riverton, Sheridan and Buffalo set marks of between 105 and 110 degrees. Even Yellowstone hit a record.

Northern Wyoming Bakes Under Highest Recorded Temps Ever, Awaits Relief

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Energy

Agriculture

A massive data center and power generation complex is being proposed for 5,344 acres of ranchland northeast of Wheatland in Platte County near the Goshen County line, on property owned by the Lazy V Six Ranch.

The developer, a company called Site Layer 4, has filed an application to rezone the land from agricultural to industrial for what it describes as a $26 billion data center campus with co-located, utility-scale energy generation. The property is roughly 13 miles east of Interstate 25, in an area now used for grazing and agriculture.

Public hearings for the rezoning have been set for 7 p.m. Aug. 11 before the Platte County Planning and Zoning Commission and 10 a.m. Aug. 20 before the Platte County Commission. 

Site Layer 4 says in its application that the project would be built over multiple years and is designed to concentrate infrastructure in one unified location. 

Residents who live around the Goshen Hole Rim say that location also happens to include springs, mule deer habitat and big-sky views their families have cherished for generations. 

In its application, Site Layer 4 describes the Wheatland project as a long-term phased industrial campus that could scale with market demand. 

“Rezoning the proposed project area would allow well-planned large-scale industrial development in an appropriate location, and protect private landowner rights to use property for business and economic purposes in a manner reasonably balanced with regulatory oversight,” Site Layer 4 wrote in its application. 

Site Layer 4 also emphasizes that the project area represents less than half of 1% of the acres devoted to ranching and agriculture in Platte County.

“The project area has been selected specifically because it enables development of a unified, co-located facility, limiting potential sprawl of infrastructure and associated regional impacts,” the company added. “The project area has access to critical grid interconnection and other necessary existing infrastructure, is separated from residential uses and public spaces, and is visually buffered via topography from the community of Wheatland.”

Site Layer 4 further promises that the campus would include stormwater drainage and other environmental controls consistent with local, state and federal requirements, and would “prioritize environmental protection and effective mitigation of potential environmental impacts.”

That might sound good on paper, one of the project’s neighbors, George Gamblin conceded. But, he said, the project’s footprint falls within a dramatic and scenic portion of Goshen Hole where Platte County’s plateau drops hundreds of feet into canyons and draws before flattening out again across Goshen County.

“You can see clear into Nebraska from here,” Gamblin said. “You can look all the way across Goshen County.”

The area is a unique land feature for the area, a place where there are plants and animals that probably should not be there, and would not be there, but for a micro-climate that’s supporting what would typically need more water.

“I probably have a couple hundred acres of pine trees on my little property that are not even really supposed to be there,” He said. “I think it’s about a 12-plus precip zone, and they’re not even really supposed to be growing there. But some of these trees are probably 100-plus years old. And they contain a lot of birds and things like that, which typically don’t exist in this area out here in the plains.”

Gamblin’s family has been in the location for close to 90 years.

“I live on Goshen Hole Rim, which dissects Platte and Goshen counties,” he said. “And in places, from the rim to the bottom is anywhere from I don’t know, 400 to 600 feet that drop and what you have in those canyons, there’s a lot of varied habitat.”

Ponderosa pine, mountain mahogany and little riparian areas near the natural springs that come up in the bottom of the canyons lie within a half to three-quarters of a mile from the proposed rezoning.

“Some of the wildlife we have out there — it’s pretty amazing,” Gamblin said. “I had some professional birders come out and they got I believe over 40 species of birds in like seven or eight hours walking along the rim.”

There’s also a diversity of wildlife, including elk and mule deer, as well as occasional mountain lions — which Gamblin noted wasn’t mentioned in the wildlife portion of the application.

“There’s just any number of things that are very unique to Platte County, and especially this part of Platte County,” he said. “So I would like to see, at the very least, some kind of buffer for that kind of habitat.”

From his place, much of the proposed industrial zone would sit less than a mile and a half away, with the rezoning boundary coming to within about a half-mile of his property.

“That’s a huge tract of land that’s going to affect quite a few people,” he said. “I understand private property rights and I respect them, but that needs to work both ways in my mind. You need to respect the neighbors. There’s no reason where they can’t protect Goshen Hole Rim and still probably have everything they need down there on the lessee’s land.”

Gamblin added he’s not against the project at this point, but he does want to hear that appropriate steps will be taken to protect water, wildlife and the view.

“I would rather not see it go in at all,” he said. “But I do understand the private property issue and I understand people wanting to make more money to benefit from it, so I’m not opposed to it.”

Water and the view are the two biggest issues for Kathryn Stevens, who lives across the rim on the Chugwater Flats about 5 miles from the proposed industrial zone.

“We moved out here specifically for the wide-open space, for the landscape, for the beauty, because we wanted to be homesteaders,” she said. “We moved out here to appreciate the heritage of the land.”

The project has taken her and her family by surprise.

“I came from western Washington, where that land, which is really beautiful land, has been exploited,” she said. “And it’s so sad to see that. I just shudder to think of that happening here in an area that’s in many ways kind of untouched. I can look out my window and see for 40 miles, and I don’t know what would compel somebody to destroy that or put a huge building there. I just don’t understand that.”

The family, like their neighbors, all depend on domestic wells for water, so how much water the data center might use is her biggest concern. 

“Everybody knows we’re in a drought,” she said. “Farmers are plowing under their wheat because it’s too low to even harvest and a lot of farmers didn’t even plant this spring. We are an ag community. Water is life. If you don’t protect your water supply, you’re going to be real sorry.”

The flats have no access to municipal water, Stevens added. 

“The people who live here rely on their wells solely,” she said. “If our wells were to go dry or become intermittent, then we wouldn’t be able to live up here. Like, there’s no alternative, and you also wouldn’t be able to sell our land for anything.”

The developer’s documents say the data center will use a closed-loop system to minimize water use. Its annual water use would be comparable to that of 25 to 30 residential homes, which Platte County Economic Development Executive Director Josephine Young characterized as watering about 5 acres of hay a year.

Young said she’s fielded phone calls, emails and social media posts about the project, some of which are mixing concerns for Wheatland with stories from Georgia and Cheyenne. 

She hopes residents will zero in on the specifics of Site Layer 4’s project and judge the project on its merits. 

“I’m sure you’ve been to Wheatland plenty of times,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “There’s a lot of vacant buildings. I think something everyone can relate to is wanting a place where their kids can come back to. I have an 8-year-old little girl, and I know we don’t want to lose our small-town culture, but we also want to thrive.”

Contrary to what some social media posts have suggested, the data center would offer between 250 to 300 permanent positions, which she said is “massive” for Wheatland.

“I mean, that would be one of our largest employers,” she said. “So I guess, if I could plug one encouraging statement, it would be to judge each project on its own merit and application, versus what Google says or what a standalone data center might offer versus one with power generation, because that does change a lot.”

The project, Young added, is in its infancy right now, and its application to rezone is just the first step of many to come. The application also doesn’t mean the project is necessarily a “done deal” either.

If it does come about though, the community benefits have potential to be “transformational.”

“I think the sales tax revenue would, gosh, triple our county budget,” she said. “It would be an influx. And I keep trying to tell myself, like when Laramie River Station — Basin Electric — came in, there was a lot of contention around it and now it’s the lifeline of our county.”

Platte County Commissioner Ian Jolovich told Cowboy State Daily he’s keeping himself at arm's length from the project, at least until the rezoning formally lands before the commission.

“I make a point to let the planner do — to not insert ourselves into the deal and to let them make an unmolested decision at the planning and zoning commission level,” he said. “I do know what’s coming down the pipeline but, typically, that’s how I feel like you get to muddy, if you start digging around too early.”

Commissioners will get a “full staff briefing” in time for the meetings, and until then Jolovich plans to stay “agnostic” about the project, though he did add that he is typically “for private business.”

“There’s some good and bad in everything,” he said. “So just find the good and regulate or treat the bad.”

Water will be a big issue to Jolovich as well, he confirmed.

“I’m in agriculture so I have a different perspective on water and its uses and whatever else,” he said. “Basically, what we do is we turn water and sunlight into beef, and so, when there’s no water, you can’t make beef.”

The nearby Laramie River Station power plant already uses 18,000 gallons of water per minute, which dwarfs the data center’s projected use. 

“The water issue is almost a solved problem to me,” he said. “The biggest issue with water is what happens to the stuff that is wastewater … So I’m interested to see what wastewater treatment practices and force majeure practices are, if say, something goes wrong, act of God, and something gets out and gets into the aquifer or whatever.

"That’s more of a detriment to the existing water supply. It’s not the use of it. I think they’ve got the use dialed down.”

Like Young, Jolovich, too, worries about young people leaving Platte County in the search for better job opportunities.

“I want more productive people in Platte County,” he said. “Our people are very productive, but we’re getting older and there’s not as much opportunity for kids to stay around.”

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<title>Ranchlands Near Wheatland Eyed For $26 Billion 'Transformational' Data Center | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A company called Site Layer 4 wants to rezone 5,344 acres of ranchland near Wheatland for a data center and power plant. The project, they say, adds 300 jobs and substantial tax revenue, but neighbors worry about water, wildlife and the viewshed.

Ranchlands Near Wheatland Eyed For $26 Billion 'Transformational' Data Center

Outdoors

 at Yellowstone National Park’s Bridge Bay Campground has a long road of recovery ahead of him but is expected to recover. 

He was even making jokes about it in the moments after it happened, 

the photographer who witnessed the event tells Cowboy State Daily

Carl Ison-McDaniel, 65, of Kendall, Washington, 

by a bull bison Friday. He remains hospitalized as he recovers from being thrown at least 8 feet 

[{"type":"text","text":"On Sunday, he posted a brief note on Facebook."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“Thank you everyone I am OK,” he wrote."}]

, said he’s been in contact with McDaniel’s grandson, who was with him when it occurred.

“(The family) seems to be protecting their privacy, so I don’t want to pry any more than I already have,” he told Cowboy State Daily.

He did, however, say that McDaniel was “in good spirits” immediately after his harrowing ordeal.

“He was in a lot of pain, but was conscious and joking the whole time,” he said.

McDaniel was walking past the Bridge Bay Campground with his 

 grandson around 8:30 p.m. when the incident occurred. The bull bison had been there for some time, running through the campsites and mock-charging people, tents and picnic tables.

When McDaniel and his grandson arrived, the bison was rolling in a dust wallow, and it seemed to have momentarily calmed down. The pair was unaware of how aggressively it had been behaving moments 

“They weren't even in that camping loop,” McLeod said. “They were walking along the road, quite a ways away from the bison. They stopped, got their phones out, and took some pictures, and when the bison started to get up, (McDaniel) was like, “OK, time to leave.’”

MacLeod has emphasized multiple times, during interviews with national and international news publications since the incident, that McDaniel and his grandson did nothing to provoke the bison and weren’t acting irresponsibly.

When the bison started running toward them, McDaniel ran behind a line of trees to put something between himself and the bison. He couldn’t have anticipated the bison would run into the trees, undeterred by the barrier.

“(McDaniel) made a lap around the trees, and the bison chased him through the trees,” MacLeod said. “I thought he'd lost him, but the bison kept going around and came out the other side.”

That’s when the bison hooked its horn around McDaniel’s leg and tossed him into the air. He landed hard on his right side, resulting in several broken bones.

At that point, MacLeod put his camera down and ran at the bison, "making myself as big and loud as I could," to drive it off. When several other observers followed suit, the bison ran off.

In one sense, McDaniel was lucky. He didn’t appear to have been gored by the bison’s horns, which could have made the incident fatal.

“Another gal and I did a blood sweep, but we couldn’t find any blood,” he said. “(McDaniel) was conscious and in good spirits until EMS arrived.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Community Leader"}]

McDaniel didn’t share any additional information on the incident or his condition, although his situation has improved from “critical” to “serious.”

, McDaniel is an active member of his community in northwest Washington.

He’s on multiple boards in Kendall, including Foothills Community Alliance and the Columbia Valley water and parks districts. He’s also one of the co-founders of The Foothills Communication Hub, an online publication with news and event information for Kendall and several other communities in northwest Washington.

[{"type":"text","text":"He’s not likely to forget his visit to northwest Wyoming anytime soon."}]

MacLeod said he shared his videos of the bison with McDaniel’s grandson. He wanted to review his actions to see if there was any way he might have contributed to the bison’s aggression, and MacLeod repeatedly reassured him that he didn’t do anything wrong.

“He was really worried and wanted to see the video to make sure that it wasn't his fault,” he said. “It’s not his fault. You can tell from the very beginning. That was a really, really angry bison.”

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<title>Washington Grandfather Recovering In Hospital After Yellowstone Bison Attack | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The man who made international headlines after being attacked by a bison in Yellowstone on Friday is in a hospital recovering with several broken bones. Carl Ison-McDaniel of Kendall, Washington, thanked well-wishers and said he was doing "OK."

Washington Grandfather Recovering In Hospital After Yellowstone Bison Attack

Wyoming Life

It’s often said that a picture is worth a thousand words, but it’s worth more than that at the Bone Daddy Outlaw Bar and Grill in Dubois, which has undergone a dramatic transformation since it was purchased last year by Ben Barto and his wife, Sherry.

Hanging in one corner of the bar is a picture that says it all, even if few might guess at all the layers of meaning it holds for its owner.

It is a photo of motorcycle handlebars looking out at a scenic vista. The words say simply, “Life Behind Bars.”

“I was in junior high when I had my first motorcycle,” Barto told Cowboy State Daily. “And I had a neighbor with a faster motorcycle. He always used to brag about how he would outrun the cops when he was speeding.”

The brag turned out to be just that — as Barto soon discovered.

“We were riding together one time and we decided we were going to take off and see who was faster,” he said. “No sooner did we get started than there was a highway patrolman coming at us.”

The patrolman flipped his lights on, and the neighbor who loved to brag about outrunning the law meekly pulled over to the side. 

Barto, who’d never made such a claim, kept right on going.

“So the cop chased me for a while, and I couldn’t take a corner very well,” he recalled. “I had to lay the bike over and he caught up to me.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"'He Was A Friend Of Mine'"}]

Barto knew this was bad in every possible way, but he didn’t know just how bad until he got a look at the officer’s face.

“He was a friend of mine,” Barto admitted.

It was a friend who was shocked to see just who he’d been chasing.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"It grew worse as the night went on."}]

“My uncle, who also happened to be a policeman and lived right across the street from me, was at the jailhouse that night,” Barto said. “And my folks were on vacation.”

While his uncle was disappointed in Barto, he decided not to throw the youth in jail, saying he knew his dad too well. He knew what would happen to Barto when his father found out his son had been arrested.

“He did issue me a ticket,” Barto said.

When Barto’s dad did come home, it didn’t take him long to hear through the grapevine what his son had been up to while he was away. 

“He took me to the jail and had my uncle take me downstairs to the jail,” Barto said. “He had me put in the jail and shut the door.”

For a moment, all was silent but for the echoing clang of the heavy door closing.

Then his uncle said words Barto has never forgotten.

“The way you’re going, you’re going to spend a lot of time behind bars,” he told him. 

And then he left Barto there to think it over for a while.

Barto decided then the only bars he ever wanted to live behind were the right kind — his motorcycle bars or, in this case, the bar he’s purchased in Dubois and is restoring. 

The photo is his reminder every day that he chooses the life he wants to live. That includes staying away from the wrong kinds of bars. 

“I haven’t outrun any cops since then,” Barto said with a chuckle.

Decades after that lesson in “life behind bars,” Barto has traded the threat of steel jail doors for steel blades married to custom-carved antler bone handles — a business he calls Bone Daddy Knives. 

The business has quietly been putting Dubois on the map for almost three decades, starting with a contract he picked up after a Montana gift rep died, leaving a shopkeeper with a demand and no knives.

Today, 2 miles inside the Wind River Indian Reservation, Barto buys about 25,000 pounds of antlers a year from local “shed heads,” or antler hunters. The best of the pieces become Bone Daddy knife handles, while the rest become part of the booming antler dog-chew trade.

He and his small crew turn out a couple thousand knives a year, each one a custom job, which sell well across the West.

Barto also at one time carved ornaments from bone antlers, as well as hat pins and figurines, which were sold at gift shops in Yellowstone National Park, Gardiner, West Yellowstone, Sturgis, as well as to larger chains such as Cabela’s, Sportsman’s Warehouse and Bass Pro Shops.

Barto jokes, like a lot of craftsmen, that making knives was something he once liked — back when it was still a hobby.

“Now it’s a business,” he said with a chuckle. “But when you’ve got a business that provides you the funds necessary to keep going in whatever adventure you want to go off into, I guess you still have to keep doing it.”

It’s all about the kind of bars Barto wants to live behind.

The knife business is bankrolling his transformation of the Outlaw Bar from a dive — where 

 in Cowboy State Daily noted people might be concerned for their safety — to an establishment where the opposite is true.

When he and Sherry bought the bar it was, to say the least, not exactly turnkey.

“This was just a dump when we bought it,” Barto said. “But they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

Barto could immediately see the potential. His wife took a little more sweet-talking.

“She was going crazy,” Barto admitted. “She’s like, ‘At your age, you want to start another project?!’”

Barto took it slow. He’d take his wife to the bar now and again for drinks. And just about every time the occasion presented just the right moment to say something like, “Oh look dear, you know what we could do with this part of the building?” Or, “Could you imagine if we did this in this room?”

Barto held up the mirror often enough that his wife finally gave in and said, “Yeah, let’s go ahead and do it.”

The bar’s biggest potential, he realized, wasn’t just what he could do with an artist’s eye and aesthetic inside. It was its position on a main highway to Yellowstone and the Tetons, a high-traffic strip where lots of tourists, sportsmen and bikers are roaring through town looking for their next adventure.

Its other big advantage is a deep lot, stretching far enough behind the bar to create a parking lot. 

“There is no parking anywhere else in town,” Barto said. “All of the Outlaw’s customers have been complaining about it for years.”

So Barto started his work in the back of the bar, carving out what he hopes will become a signature beer garden and games yard, with expanded parking, turf, fencing and, eventually, a raised stage for large outdoor events.

“We still have room to go back another 100 feet and still have a space for a possible stage up on top for a big venue,” he said. 

Inside, the transformation is further along, and personal. 

He’s hung up some of his and his wife’s work, tracing the arc of their lives from the early Bartolo Collectibles days to the present Bone Daddy Knife days, as well as wildlife mounts from hunting trips and, of course, the poster that captures his life’s motto to live his life behind only the bars he chooses.

There is still much dirt yet to move and asphalt to pour, but Barto is already thinking big for this bar, five to 10 years down the road.

“We want to be the best cowboy biker sportsman bar in Wyoming,” he said. “And from what we’ve been hearing from all of the locals lately, this new makeover has created a vibe all its own. That’s what they’re calling it. They say this place has vibe now.”

The “vibe” was on full display during the Fourth of July weekend, Barto added, when the bar hosted the band Eight Second Ride. 

“I have never seen the bar that busy in my entire life,” he said. “It was standing-room-only Friday night.”

During Dubois’ famous tank parade, announcers even gave Barto a shoutout for cleaning up and reinventing the bar.

Barto is clear that, aside from aesthetics, he’s also made it a priority to clear out questionable clientele.

On his first night as an owner, he spotted a drug dealer working the room and said he “86’d” her on the spot. 

Dubois craftsman Ben Barto owns Bone Daddy Knives, a hobby turned big business that’s now bankrolling a transformation of Dubois' Outlaw Bar and giving the once-seedy watering hole a new vibe. “This was just a dump when we bought it,” Barto said.

Daily Smile: Tuesday, April 18, 2023

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