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

<title>You Still Here? Wednesday, April 26, 2023 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

You Still Here? Wednesday, April 26, 2023

 We don't know what's going on but we do love watching this dog mow the lawn...

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

Perched atop a rocky knoll along the Snowy Range Scenic Byway in the Medicine Bow Mountains of southern Wyoming, the Libby Flats Observation Area rises nearly 11,000 feet above sea level.

Its weathered stone wall, turret facade and steep wooden staircase lead to a platform where visitors can look out at the Snowy Range to the north and the Laramie Valley to the south.

It looks more like what’s left of the ruins of a Medieval castle than a modern attraction.

For Laramie photographer David Peel, it's been a source of fascination for much of the last half-century.

"It's like an old ancient structure," Peel said. "Your mind kind of starts making up some fancy histories about it.”

Peel said its weathered stone and isolated perch above the tree line remind him of places far from Wyoming — Ireland, old European ruins and the kinds of structures that are much older than the observatory.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Mystery Of The Tower"}]

The site is managed by the Medicine Bow National Forest and was approved in 2024 as a $5-per-vehicle day-use recreation site.

It’s also not ancient. It was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in the 1930s, according to F.E. Warren Air Force Base.

Aaron Voos, public affairs specialist for the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest and Thunder Basin National Grassland, said U.S. Forest Service maps mark the location as an "observation point" as early as 1956 in its records.

Engineering blueprints from 1959 show plans for a parking area, footpath, restroom and the stone observation tower visitors see today, said Voos. 

The overlook typically opens with the Snowy Range Scenic Byway each spring and remains accessible through the summer and fall before winter snow closes the road.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Where The Stars Take Over"}]

Peel said he has spent countless nights at Libby Flats photographing the Milky Way, auroras, and sunrises.

The high elevation and lack of light pollution create some of the darkest skies in Wyoming for photographers.  

"Up in the Snowies, it's nearly pristine," Peel said, adding that the tower is one of his favorite places to take photos. 

On moonless nights, the Milky Way stretches across the sky with a clarity that's difficult to appreciate until you're standing beneath it, he continued. 

Illuminated by starlight, Peel says the structure resembles a watchtower guarding the edge of the continent. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'The Flats Of Libby' "}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Peel has lived in Laramie for nearly 47 years."}]

He's hiked the Snowies, camped beside alpine lakes and brought his children into the mountains when they were young.

[{"type":"text","text":"The observation tower remains one of the places they always returned to."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"His children thought it looked like a castle."}]

After decades of hiking, camping and photographing the Snowies, Peel found himself writing about them too.

One of his Irish compositions, "The Flats of Libby," borrowed its name from the windswept landscape surrounding the overlook .

More than 60 years after it first appeared on Forest Service maps, and nearly a century since the CCC built it, the overlook remains one of the most recognizable stops in the Snowy Range, drawing everyone from road-trippers and hikers to photographers chasing the stars.

Libby Flats Observation Tower Pat and Chuck Blackley via Alamy 5 30 26

<title>What The Heck … Is That Medieval Castle-Looking Thing On The Snowy Range Byway? | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The observation deck that looks like a Medieval castle ruin has turned heads for decades in the Medicine Bow range. For Laramie photographer David Peel, the 11,000-foot elevation and lack of light pollution make it a great place for astrophotography.

What The Heck … Is That Medieval Castle-Looking Thing On The Snowy Range Byway?

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Outdoors

Wildlife

A rare all-white pronghorn made a brief appearance in Goshen County, much to the delight of a couple of local wildlife watcher. But whether the animal is an actual albino remains a mystery.

Matthew Pancake and his wife, Maricela, make a regular habit of taking walks to admire wildlife, including small local herds of pronghorn, commonly called antelope.

“We’re old people, we like to get our exercise by walking,” he quipped during a telephone interview with Cowboy State Daily.

They were out on Memorial Day when they spotted a buck pronghorn with two does, and one of the does was completely white.

“I said, ‘That sucker’s white. Is that an albino?’” he said.

Albinism occurs in humans and numerous animal species. It’s essentially a complete lack of pigmentation, wildlife biologist Rich Guenzel told Cowboy State Daily.

In some animals, including pronghorn, a recessive gene can also cause a few rare individuals to have all-white hair or fur. But they’re not actual albinos, said Guenzel, who worked for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department from 1986-2011 and has a special interest in pronghorn.

It’s most likely that the Goshen County doe has the recessive gene, but isn’t an albino, he said.

Pancake said the antelope in his area seem to be a bit sparse. He wonders if herds are still trying to recover from an especially harsh winter a few years ago.

The white doe he saw on Memorial Day and the other two antelope with her all looked lively and healthy, Pancake said.

“She looked at us for a little while and then started running,” typical of what antelope do when humans are near, he said.

He’d never seen the white doe before. On Wednesday, he said he hasn’t seen her since.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Answer Is In The Eyes"}]

True albino animals have strange-looking eyes. In pronghorn, an albino’s eyes will be “reddish-pinkish,” Guenzel said.

Pancake said he "didn’t get close enough to see the eyeballs of that antelope,” so he can’t be sure whether she had that tell-tale feature.

Pronghorn rely heavily upon their vision, and albinism not only makes the eyes strange colors, it can sometimes affect an animal’s vision.

That’s more reason to think that the Goshen County doe is a recessive gene white specimen, he said.

“That’s an adult that’s survived at least one winter,” Pancake said.

He added that he’s seen only “one specimen” of an albino pronghorn, but has never seen such an animal in the wild.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Air Force Base Buck"}]

Guenzel has seen white, nonalbino pronghorn in a few places in Wyoming, including in the Shirley Basin and the Buffalo area.

“They’re neat to see, they’re a rare animal,” he said.

In the early 2000s, an all-white pronghorn buck that hung out around F.E. Warren Air Force Base near Cheyenne became something of a local wildlife celebrity, Guenzel said.

Sadly, that buck was struck and killed by a vehicle, he said.

The recessive gene that causes all-white fur apparently doesn’t directly manifest from one generation to the next, Guenzel said.

So, if the Goshen County doe ever has fawns, odds are good they’ll have normal-colored fur, white in the belly area, and tannish on the back and flanks, he said.

That pattern has served pronghorn well over the ages, causing them to “blend in” with the landscapes they inhabit.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Evading Predators"}]

An all-white pronghorn might be easier for predators to spot. But since she’s a full-grown doe, good luck catching her, Guenzel said.

Pronghorn fawns might be vulnerable. The adults can run at roughly 55 miles per hour for extended periods. They developed that speediness ages ago, when their ancestors had to evade 

But those lightning-fast cats, which weren’t actually cheetahs, are long since extinct. And nothing else alive today with teeth, claws and a taste for meat can keep up with pronghorn.

And pronghorn also have exceptional vision, said to be about as good as a human looking through a powerful set of binoculars.

Pronghorn are designed to deal with predation. Once they get to be a yearling or above, their survival rate is pretty good, because they can out-run everything and out-see everything, Guenzel said.

All-white bison are also head-turners, and are regarded as sacred by Native Americans.

 born in Yellowstone in June 2024 caused a stir as many visitors rushed to catch a glimpse of the rare animal.

Albino antelope 1 5 31 26

<title>‘Extremely Rare’ All-White Antelope Captured On Video In Goshen County | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Wildlife watchers in Goshen County got a rare treat on Memorial Day — a brief encounter captured on video of an all-white pronghorn. Such animals are “extremely rare," but usually not actual albinos, a biologist said.

‘Extremely Rare’ All-White Antelope Captured On Video In Goshen County

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

Renée Jean

Fifty years ago, the cameras rolled on “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” beneath the soaring columns of Devils Tower.

Locals are still talking about the summer when Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi vision transformed their corner of Wyoming into a cinematic landmark.

It all started in May 1976 after a quiet handshake between a young, then-unknown Spielberg and Crook County rancher Jesse Thomas Driskill. It would go on to completely reshape tourism in northeast Wyoming, though no one knew it at the time.

For the movie’s legions of fans, this anniversary will mark the making of a cult classic, which was released in 1977 by Columbia Pictures more than a year after filming its defining scenes of making first contact in Wyoming. 

For people who live and work in the shadow of Devils Tower, this 50th anniversary marks the moment just before everything changed.

Thanks to the film, Devils Tower went from a curious landmark as the nation’s first national monument to a bucket-list stop for movie lovers — and believers in extraterrestrial life — from around the world.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Hayfield"}]

When Spielberg first showed up, though, the land around the monument’s boundary was just another hay meadow.

Since then, visitation has continued to grow. 

Devils Tower hosts upward of 100,000 visitors per month in the peak months of July and August. It has seen as many as 509,000 visitors in a single summer. 

The influx supports tens of millions in visitor spending in the surrounding communities, according to National Park Service and Wyoming Office of Tourism.

"'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' didn’t just film in Wyoming, it left a legacy behind," said Domenic Bravo, executive director of the Wyoming Office of Tourism. "Decades later, people still chase that feeling: the mystery, the landscape, the sense that something bigger exists around Devils Tower. That’s the power of cinema."

Crook County rancher Ogden Driskill, who is also a state senator, was a junior in high school at the time his family and Spielberg struck their bargain.

“They took the hay meadows at the entrance to Devils Tower and turned them into the decontamination base and the main base where the movie would be filmed,” Driskill told Cowboy State Daily. “And he swore us to secrecy at the time. 

"He was determined that the world didn’t know about Devils Tower, and he wanted to keep it that way until the film happened.”

The Driskill family agreed to keep the secret, though they were sure Spielberg was wrong about all that. Surely everyone already knew about Devils Tower.

When the film finally came out in 1977, though, Spielberg’s instincts proved to be right on the money; it was a box office smash hit,

The first sight of the tower in the movie was mind-blowing for audiences, many of whom couldn’t fathom that such an unusual geologic feature existed in America. They had to go see it for themselves.

“That basically doubled tourism visitors,” Driskill said. “The movie really elevated Devils Tower to the next level. We are truly a nationally known destination at this point.”

Dreyfuss Vs. John Wayne And Mashed Potatoes

While Driskill watched his family’s hayfield turn into both a “Decontamination Unit” and the film’s headquarters, Barbara Wilson-Sowerwine was watching Hollywood drift in and out of her parents’ country store a few miles down the road.

No one had any idea that the movie was going to be a blockbuster. 

Financial writer William Flanagan, in fact, predicted the movie would be a flop. Spielberg and George Lucas, meanwhile, decided to hedge their bets after visiting each other’s sets. 

Each was so convinced the other’s movie would do the best at the box office they pledged to share 2.5% of their movies' profits with each other.

Close Encounters star Richard Dreyfuss was just a nice guy, Wilson-Sowerwine recalled, at the time the biggest “non-star” star she’d ever met.

“Dreyfuss just liked hanging out,” she recalled.

That’s what he was doing one night when a group of regulars came in for their usual broasted chicken dinner at the little restaurant where Wilson-Sowerwine worked.

He was standing by the counter when talk turned to the movie that was being filmed nearby, prompting one rancher to snort and say, “Well, it’d be one thing if they had some real actors like John Wayne,” Wilson-Sowerwine recalled.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Dreyfuss didn’t miss the comedic beat. "}]

“He’s a character actor and he’s famous,” Wilson-Sowerwine said. “So I think he just thought it was funny. His reaction was like, ‘Well, I’m no John Wayne.’”

The funny story and the transformation of the hay meadow into a movie set, complete with a government “decontamination unit,” are the things Wilson-Sowerwine will never forget.

She’ll also never forget the mashed potatoes scene, when Roy Neary, played by Dreyfuss, uses a fork to shape his fluffy spuds into a miniature Devils Tower in front of his confused family.

Then he starts weeping and says one of the movie’s most classic lines.

“This means something,” he says, insistent despite their wild, wide-eyed looks. “This is important.”

Mashed potatoes have never been the same for her since, Wilson-Sowerwine said.

“I can’t look at a pile of mashed potatoes without wanting to make a tower,” she said.

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

Back when Spielberg’s crew rolled into town, there wasn’t much of a campground at all. Not like there is today.

There was an A-frame, Wilson-Sowerwine said. And there was the small country restaurant and a scattering of other campsites.

The movie crew slapped a “Decontamination Camp” sign over the front of the A-frame right away, then built out from there until they had the full-blown ground zero for alien invasion that’s so familiar in the movie. 

It was amazing to see that come to life, Wilson-Sowerwine said.

Then, almost as quickly as they’d blown into Wyoming, the movie crew was gone, leaving behind a hayfield that was, to a farmer and rancher, a real mess.

Instead of simply reclaiming the hay field, the Driskills decided to use the cleanup money they’d been given to 

, an idea that came from Ogden's mother, Ellen.

It turned out to be an incredibly smart move, Driskill said. One that’s been helping to sustain the family’s ranch land ever since.

In fact, the film has helped sustain many businesses in the community.

“It was incredibly game-changing,” Driskill said. “At the time the movie was filmed, the A-frame down there had maybe a couple of people working at it. Devils Tower Trading Post had a postmaster and a couple of people. The business on top of the hill wasn’t there yet.”

That was the extent of Devils Tower tourism before Spielberg’s movie came out. After, as visitors started showing up to see the tower, the community realized they had just struck tourism gold.

“We all ganged up together and the state invested lots to promote Devils Tower,” Driskill said. “So now those businesses employ more than 100 people, and I don’t know what the tax revenue is, but it would scare you. The gross income off of all those businesses is in the double-digit millions at this point.”

Driskill is among the first to grouse about bumper-to-bumper traffic from July to early September, but he knows it’s been good for the area. It’s a better economic avenue, in his opinion, than seeing ranchland and wildlife habitat fragmented by random subdivisions.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Cowboys And Aliens"}]

Today, Devils Tower has become a pilgrimage for movie buffs who want to stand where Roy Neary’s mashed-potato vision finally made sense. 

Once they get there, they’re greeted with a blend of “Cowboys and Aliens” kitsch that’s popped up all over the Devils Tower area, including at the Driskills’ campground at the tower’s base.

“People ask about that all the time,” campground manager Andrea Wood told Cowboy State Daily. “And we tell them, ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ was filmed here, and that’s why we have aliens everywhere.”

This summer, there’s a mural going up on the pool house that fuses the theme of ranch hands and flying saucers. The swimming pool, meanwhile, is shaped like a cowboy boot, to honor the family’s cattle-trail roots.

Some new, life-size aluminum alien figurines have just been purchased for the golf course, which has nine holes devoted to the family’s ranching history, and nine for the campground’s Close Encounters story.

Driskill tracked the figurines down in Texas, buying up what he said will be that store’s last.

Tariffs and aluminum prices have made the statues much more expensive and harder to come by, so Driskill bought out the store’s remaining stock.

Heads turned all the way back home to Wyoming, Driskill said, and people tried to buy the aliens right off the trailer, but they were not for sale.

Wood said she is planning events to mark the 50th anniversary of the movie’s release next year, but will likely aim for September rather than the filming months of May, when the campground is already quite busy. 

She’s also more likely to target the release date of the movie, rather than its filming.

There will likely be souvenirs, to mark the occasion, including T-shirts, ball caps, stickers and more.

“I know part of what we’re going to do is the 3K race, the CE3K,” she said. That’s shorthand for Close Encounters of the Third Kind. “That will require people to have a costume related to the film, and every 1K they’ll have to stop and do a movie-related activity.”

As dusk settles in over the Driskill family’s KOA campground and the stars come out, the film that inspired the campground and changed tourism in northeastern Wyoming flickers to life again every summer night.

The Driskill family has been showing "Close Encounters" every night of the summer for the last 40 or so years, and has no plans to ever stop.

“It’s the longest-running movie in a single location ever,” Driskill said. “We still show it every night.”

It’s a tradition that brings people back year after year, Wood added.

Some nights, the audience is two and other nights 200.

“There are tons of groups dedicated to 'Close Encounters' with people from all over the world,” she said. “People come to stay with us because it’s the filming location — and because we show that film every night.”

Wood, who has watched the movie more times than she can count, never gets tired of it.

“It’s such an interesting film from a humanitarian standpoint,” she said. “If you really think about, what that story is telling us about humans and other-worldly beings, and what our connection to them may or may not be — it’s just such an interesting concept. 

"Spielberg was a genius in developing characters and plot lines that really make you think about things.”

Wood has been told by people inside Hollywood that Spielberg’s film still commands a lot of respect, not just for its emotional depth, but for the new ground covered by its cutting-edge special effects and soundstage work.

“When we went to California and listened to him talk about the movie, it was clear how much it shaped his career,” Driskill added.

Close Encounters came right after “Jaws,” when Spielberg needed to prove his success was no fluke, and right before “E.T. the Extra Terrestrial."

Driskill said he’d love to meet Spielberg again someday to tell him how much Close Encounters has meant to his family and to Wyoming.

It’s a story he and his family love to tell, about how a mysterious rock, a handshake deal, and a strange, little sci-fi movie quietly rewrote the destiny of an entire corner of the Cowboy State.

“On multiple levels, that film changed many things,” Wood said. “People come here from all over the world because of it.”

They come to sit under the stars and wonder as they watch Spielberg’s mothership rise up again in a film that’s stood the test of time, night after summer night.

Contact Renee Jean at renee@cowboystatedaily.com

Close encounters devils tower 5 31 26

<title>50 Years Later, Sci-Fi Fans Still Find Their ‘Close Encounters’ At Devils Tower | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Fifty years ago, the cameras rolled on “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” at Devils Tower after a handshake between a then-unknown Steven Spielberg and rancher Jesse Thomas Driskill. It would go on to completely reshape tourism in northeast Wyoming.

50 Years Later, Sci-Fi Fans Still Find Their ‘Close Encounters’ At Devils Tower

EVANSTON — One of the first times Jim Davis walked into the city’s historic Roundhouse and Railyards decades ago, it was like a scene from a movie. 

There was the crumbling railroad roundhouse, with its broken windows and pigeon feathers floating on the air, spinning as his footsteps stirred little puffs of dirt.

The rusted tracks disappeared into darkness. The roof was leaking, and the smell of that decay was everywhere. 

But there were rays of sunlight shining down into that darkness, and he had the sudden sense that all was not lost here. 

This was something special, something worth saving. 

Saving Evanston’s roundhouse has taken $28 million in private money and grants, as well as decades of volunteer time and effort, Davis said. 

But that’s given Evanston something few communities in America have — a completely functioning, fully intact roundhouse that he believes could be a tourism powerhouse, if Evanston ever decides to lean into promoting it. 

Everyone he has ever taken to see the building, without fail, has the same reaction, Davis told Cowboy State Daily. 

“Every single time I open the doors and walk into the roundhouse …. the first words out of their mouth are, ‘Oh my God,’” Davis said. “Their reaction was it was so phenomenal to see that space the way we were able to fix it up.”

 is a 63,000-square-foot, 96-foot-deep curved brick-and-mortar behemoth built around a post-and-beam interior.

The walls are lined with huge banks of wood-framed windows to provide natural light. It has a two-level terraced roof, and the face of the terrace is covered with windows to provide additional natural light. 

Davis likes to go up to the mezzanine level, where there’s a small kitchen area and space for parties.

“It’s just a beautiful space,” he said. “And I really enjoy taking people up there. It’s really well-thought of and the architects were so good to work with.”

Keeping it a roundhouse, Davis believes, is key to its intrigue. 

To think that inside that cavernous, multistory space lit by sunlight still that huge train cars were driven inside on tracks and then rotated by the gigantic round wheel inside to one of 28 stalls is awe-inspiring. 

All the historical photos, meanwhile, help tell a timeless legend of how America was built.

A Roundhouse Corridor That Built Southern Wyoming

Once upon a time, there were dozens of roundhouses like Evanston’s in towns across Wyoming and the West, Davis said. 

They were positioned all along the tracks, about every 100 miles. That’s about how long trains could go in the beginning without having to stop to refuel and repair. 

Over time, they became more and more efficient and roundhouses began to close. Evanston’s was slated for closure in 1926, putting at least 100 people out of work.

“We were the first roundhouse in the state to close,” Davis said. “Engines had become more efficient and they could run from Green River to Ogden without stopping in Evanston.”

It seemed unfortunate at the time, but it set off a series of events that would ultimately help save the facility.

“The city leaders thought we need those jobs now,” Davis said. “So they got on a train to Omaha, which is the headquarters, and begged them to keep the buildings open.”

Union Pacific ultimately did listen, and reopened the roundhouse and rail yard the following year as a reclamation plant, which added 200 jobs to the former 100, making for a total of 300.

“That saved those buildings,” Davis said. “They fixed all kinds of equipment for Union Pacific.”

Other roundhouses in Wyoming shut down: Laramie, Rock Springs, Rawlins, and even Cheyenne.

But Evanston’s, as a reclamation facility, kept going until 1971, after which Union Tank leased the facility from Union Pacific, and then Union Pacific quit-claimed the 21-acre property — depot, roundhouse, machine shop, yard, and related buildings — to Evanston in 1973.

For decades after that, almost nothing was done to maintain it. 

Windows broke and stayed that way. Boards were put up to block most of the rain, but roofs leaked and kept on leaking. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"First Came The Depot"}]

A century after Union Pacific stopped using it, decades of work has saved and restored Evanston’s historic Roundhouse and Railyards. The $28 million spent so far has made it one of the rare roundhouses in the U.S. that’s still completely operational. 

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