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[{"type":"text","text":"No, I'm almost positive it's not icy..."}]

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

<title>You Still Here? Tuesday, June 6, 2023 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

No, I'm almost positive it's not icy...

You Still Here? Tuesday, June 6, 2023

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

Renée Jean

Wyoming Life

CHEYENNE — “Potential” is the word T-Joe’s Steakhouse owner Sherrie Lyle thought of the first time she saw the quirky cluster of 1910-era buildings slowly but surely giving way to time and the elements on the city's distressed west side. 

“It’s just these historic, colorful buildings,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “A quirky space. I like it.”

The property was owned by someone else the first time Lyle noticed it, but after those plans fell through Lyle and her children Molly and Jason decided to place an $850,000 bet on the “Ful-O-Pep” grain elevator corner. They believe they can transform it into a cool new destination for Cheyenne.

“It will take a little work,” Lyle acknowledged. “But it won’t take very long.”

Lyle is no stranger to running successful businesses. Her T-Joe’s Steakhouse is a busy restaurant that’s been voted “best steak” a time or two in Laramie County. 

Lyle is confident in this project because she’s already lined up a bakery shop owner who wants to lease the red mini-Victorian home once it’s fixed up. 

She also already has a jewelry shop owner interested in the little green cottage and an antique dealer who wants to turn the carriage house — now just storage — into a shop.

The Blossom Yoga Studio and a neighboring dress shop will stay put and keep operating. Together they’re already covering a substantial portion of the mortgage payment, Lyle said.  

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Liquor-License Bust"}]

The only building with an undecided fate is the 1912 “Ful-O-Pep” grain elevator, which once anchored a redevelopment attempt called the Old Cheyenne Elevator. 

“They had a beautiful idea for a restaurant here,” Lyle said, referring to the former owners. “But they didn’t get the liquor license, so that’s why they sold the place.”

That earlier group, operating as Ful-O-Pep LLC, envisioned a private dining room inside the elevator with a bar out front and a drive-through food-truck court. But their concept required a coveted full retail liquor license. 

They were up against 11 competitors for a single available license, and they ultimately lost. 

Ful-O-Pep’s owners did look at alternative liquor licenses, including the more attainable bar and grill license. But that option mandates a permanent commercial kitchen as well as food sales that are at least 70% of total revenue. 

Retrofitting a 110-year-old elevator with a modern commercial kitchen would have been dramatically more expensive than their original plan, which relied on rotating food trucks instead, so the dream stalled. The property went back on the market, until Lyle stepped in.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Non-Chain Sandwich Shop"}]

Lyle’s first priority is the red mini-Victorian, a place she said has caught people’s eyes for years. 

It’s always been a residence, never a business, but with the mixed-use zoning for the area, it can become a bakery. 

Inside, the walls and floors are in rough shape, with layers of “landlord fixes” meant to disguise problems instead of fixing them. 

It’s being stripped back to the studs and will be rebuilt with better spacing for a coffee shop bakery/deli. Lyle, who grew up in New Jersey, said she’s dreaming of real deli sandwiches — Cubans, thick pastrami, and maybe even her favorite: liverwurst on rye.

“There isn’t a non-chain sandwich shop in town,” she said. “So we can do something that feels different here.”

Next door, the green cottage, which looks small and quaint from the front, will become a jewelry shop. 

Its tiny front is a bit of an optical illusion. The sides are long, giving it 1,000 square feet of overall space — enough, perhaps for an art studio.

In the midst of all that, there’s the carriage house, now serving as storage, which Lyle believes will be just right for an antique shop.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Train Should Go There"}]

The elevator, a wild card right now, will be the last building Lyle and her family work on. 

But it was the first building that caught her attention because of the unused railroad spur along the edge of the property. 

“I saw this and I saw these little train tracks, which are obviously not being used,” she said. “And I said, ‘That’s where I’m putting a train car, right there.’”

Since then, she’s learned the property line doesn’t include the track. But she’s hoping to work something out with the railroad company, because she wants to have a railroad coffeeshop there, similar to one she’s seen in Nederland, Colorado.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Railroad Agreement Pending"}]

Mayor Patrick Collins and City Councilman Pete Laybourne are among city officials excited about what Lyle is doing on Cheyenne’s west side. 

For years, the city has been working on this area, which is part of the Reed Avenue Corridor, hoping to turn a dusty industrial strip with decaying, empty buildings into a greenway-style promenade where people can walk, bike, shop, and dine among repurposed, revitalized, historic warehouses.

“The dirt road that has a railroad track running down the middle of it is eventually going to become a promenade, like a greenway-type trail,” Collins told Cowboy State Daily. “We’re really hoping to bring a lot of those old buildings along there back to life.’

The city has been chipping away at that idea ever since voters approved a sixth-penny tax in 2017. Now there is federal rail money on the table, as well as a critical agreement with the BNSF pending. They own the rights of way.

“I just met with them, and we had a great meeting in my office,” Collins said. “And they really have shared that they’re 100% with us on this. All we’ve got to do is get the final plans to them, so they can sign off that they agree.”

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

Laybourn told Cowboy State Daily that Reed Avenue Corridor is a “passion project” for him and said Lyle’s purchase helps show how committed people in Cheyenne are to improving that area of town.

“I grew up over on Warren,” he said. “I used to ride my bike down here and go down to the creek where we began the greenway right here at Martin Luther King Park.”

Laybourn said Cheyenne has been trying to revitalize the area for 50 to 60 years. 

The city’s present project took so long, he added, because there was a misunderstanding about who owned the right of way. 

“I wasn’t on the council when they did that,” he said. “I’m not one of the visionaries who had that idea. But I’m one of the people who has to make it work, and we’re getting a lot closer.”

Inside the elevator, Lyle’s eyes light up when she talks about saving old buildings the “right” way.

She plans to preserve as much of the original hardware and textures as she can — the old grain scale, wooden beams, carved initials from the 1960s, and even the boxcar boards that railcar restorer Mike Pannell has pointed out to her. 

Lyle jokes that “all the kids’ college money” is tied up in this bet on the West Side, but she’s only half-kidding. It’s a serious investment, and serious vote of confidence, in a part of town that’s been in danger of seeing more demolition than dreams in recent times. 

“I’d like to see this renovated and a really pretty space,” she said. “And it’s always fun to be doing something.”

If the vision pans out, it will be a place where people can buy a New Jersey-style deli sandwich in a charming restored red Victorian house, pick out a ring in a little green cottage, browse antiques in a carriage house, take a yoga class, and maybe, someday, sip coffee in a railroad car parked beside a freshly repainted “Ful-O-Pep” grain elevator. 

Then Lyle will be able to say the corner once stalled by liquor laws and bad timing is living up to the word that first came to her mind when she saw it — potential.

West side 20260804 105521 8 9 26

<title>Cheyenne Woman Saving 1910-Era Grain Elevator Wants To Resurrect City’s West Side | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The owner of T-Joe’s Steakhouse in Cheyenne just spent $850,000 on a cluster of 1910-era buildings that includes the old Ful-O-Pep grain elevator to resurrect the city’s west side. “It will take a little work, but it won’t take very long,” she said.

Cheyenne Woman Saving 1910-Era Grain Elevator Wants To Resurrect City’s West Side

Jen Kocher - Headshot CSD

Jen Kocher

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Crime & Courts

Public Safety

The last thing she remembered was walking into circuit court. To numb the dread, Lisa had smoked fentanyl and swallowed a couple more pills before the hearing.

How do you explain turning to the very thing that’s killing you? For her, it was her daughter’s face: The look in her eyes as she realized, even before the judge spoke, that her mother wasn’t coming home. 

That look broke something nothing could repair for Lisa, a woman in her 30s from southeastern Wyoming who asked to remain anonymous.

“It’s insane,” Lisa said four years later. “The thing that was wrecking me was the only thing I trusted to make the pain stop.”

Her memory of that day broke into pieces: Shaking in front of the bench, the van ride to jail, then strangers leaning over her, pounding her chest. She woke in a hospital with a naloxone drip in her arm. 

They told her later about the Narcan shots and the deputy who’d refused to give up on her.

That was what finally scared her sober. That, and the silence from her daughter, her family — the relationships she’s spent years trying to mend.

“Fentanyl isn’t a high. It’s a terrible way to live,” Lisa said. “Worse than anything else.”

She started because people around her said it was cheaper and didn’t show up on probation drug tests. But once you’re hooked, the sickness that follows keeps you coming back — even if it wrecks your life. 

[{"type":"text","text":"Even if it kills you."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Wyomingites Dying From It"}]

For years, fentanyl has dominated America's overdose crisis. The powerful synthetic opioid has largely replaced heroin in many illegal drug markets and has been found disguised as prescription painkillers, hidden in counterfeit Xanax tablets and mixed into cocaine and methamphetamine.

It’s also costing a lot of lives in Wyoming and elsewhere.

 provided by the Wyoming Department of Health, around 350 Wyoming residents died of an opioid-related overdose. Of these, more than 90% were unintentional.

The demographic hardest hit during this five-year period was men and women ages 35 to 39, which accounted for about 60 of those deaths, followed by those between the ages of 25 and 29 equaling about 42 overdose deaths.

The bulk of these overdoses occurred in Sweetwater County at about 29.4 deaths per 100,000 residents, or an estimated 61 lives lost due to opioid overdoses. This was followed by Fremont County at 18.2 deaths per 100,000 residents.

That number appears to be growing in 2026, with the Cheyenne Police Department issuing  a warning in April of an uptick in overdoses, including five in less than a week. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Two were fatal."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"New Danger Hitting Rockies"}]

Now, federal investigators say they've encountered another unusual combination.

The DEA's Rocky Mountain Laboratory recently identified pills containing both fentanyl and heroin during drug seizures in Colorado and Utah.

The pills have not been found in Wyoming, but officials say that's no reason for Wyomingites to let down their guard.

When Ryan Cox, Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation commander, heard the DEA had identified pills containing both fentanyl and heroin in neighboring states, he wanted to know which drug was being added to which.

"The fentanyl is more potent than the heroin," Cox said. "Heroin laced with fentanyl is more dangerous."

That distinction matters, Cox said, because someone who believes they're buying heroin but unknowingly consumes fentanyl faces a dramatically greater overdose risk.

Someone intentionally seeking fentanyl who unknowingly ingests heroin is still in danger, he said, but the heroin doesn't substantially increase the threat posed by fentanyl.

"The fact that they're adding a lesser substance into a more dangerous substance doesn't cause me as much concern as vice versa," he said.

Cox stressed that either combination can be deadly.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"An Unusual Discovery"}]

Another reason the discovery caught investigators' attention: Heroin rarely comes in pill form.

Steffan Tubbs, a DEA Rocky Mountain Division spokesman, said the DEA routinely sends seized drugs to its laboratory for analysis, but this time chemists identified tablets containing both heroin and fentanyl.

In some cases, they also detected carfentanil — an extremely powerful synthetic opioid originally developed for large animals that is about 100 times more potent than fentanyl.

"It's highly unusual to see heroin mixed in pill form, and then you combo that with fentanyl," Tubbs said. "It is definitely concerning."

The DEA declined to discuss the specific investigations or how many pills were recovered.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Wyoming Drug Hubs"}]

Investigators say geography makes Wyoming vulnerable if the trend spreads.

According to Cox, Wyoming's illicit drug market is heavily supplied through larger distribution hubs in neighboring states.

"Most of our state, our drug traffickers, either travel from Denver or it's locals that travel down to the Denver region ... to obtain drugs that are brought back into Wyoming," Cox said.

Meanwhile, traffickers serving southwest Wyoming frequently obtain drugs from the Salt Lake City area before redistributing them around the state.

In other words, when a new drug trend appears in Denver or Salt Lake City, Wyoming law enforcement pays attention.

The state might be sparsely populated, but its highways are not.

Interstates 80 and 25 remain major transportation corridors connecting drug markets across the West.

"If it's not something that is getting locally done," Cox said, adding as his voice trailed off: "If this is a trend that's coming right from the major distributors ..."

Given Wyoming's close ties to the Denver and Salt Lake City drug markets, Cox said it's exactly the kind of trend investigators will be watching closely.

"Don't think you're immune just because you're in the state of Wyoming," Tubbs said. "The cartels do not care what state you're in. If they can make money and they kill someone, that's the cost of doing business."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Impervious To Danger"}]

Lisa isn’t aware of heroin pills laced with fentanyl in Wyoming but said fentanyl is now being sold in Wyoming in a powder form, which is different.

“I never had any experience with that, but I hear it’s worse,” she said.

She also said each fentanyl pill – which can cost about $30 on the street in Wyoming versus a fraction of that cost in larger cities in Colorado and elsewhere – wildly varies from one pill to the next.

In a batch, she said you might get one that is super potent while an another can seem to contain little drug at all because they are pressed at random with no consistency.

And despite the dangers, Lisa said in her experience the drug is so addictive it’s like it takes over the body and makes you want to do anything you can to get the next dose.

“It’s one of those things that you have to have it in order not to be sick,” she said.

The withdrawal side effects feel worse than death, she said, including nausea, stomach cramps, fading in and out of vision and severe body temperature fluctuations, to name a few.

It’s worse than any other drug she’s experienced, including methamphetamine and heroin.

“When you’re coming off of it, you know it’s not going to kill you, but it’s hard to think that way when you’re going through it,” she said.

If she could say one thing to anyone thinking about trying it, it's: Don’t do it. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"It will ruin your life."}]

“Once you go down that road, it’s quick,” she said.

She’s working hard now to stay sober and attempt to repair all the damaged relationships in her life, which is a slow, uphill climb.

“It can impact anyone,” she said. “It doesn’t discriminate.”

Fentanyl addicts 8 9 26

<title>'It's A Terrible Way To Live,’ Says Former Addict About Wyoming’s Fentanyl Crisis | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Waking up in a hospital with a naloxone drip in her arm after an overdose finally scared Lisa sober, and she's now warning people about the growing access to fentanyl in Wyoming. "It's a terrible way to live, worse than anything else," she says.

'It's A Terrible Way To Live,’ Says Former Addict About Wyoming’s Fentanyl Crisis

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's general assignment reporter, Clair McFarland.

Clair McFarland

Politics

The final days of Wyoming’s primary election season have gotten so negative, Sen. Eric Barlow is wearing a vet sleeve to check his mailbox. 

The Republican gubernatorial candidate is one of the state’s most targeted political candidates, as multiple groups have launched negative mailers and TV commercials against him this summer.

He also has a handy stock of vet gloves from his two decades working as a veterinarian; when he performed pregnancy tests on cattle.

[{"type":"text","text":"That’s a rectal procedure."}]

Checking the mail during election season is also a rectal procedure, Barlow joked in a 

In the video Barlow approaches a row of mailboxes and announces that he and his wife have been on the road for four or five days, and, “well, when you get home, you gotta check the mail.”

He references he numerous TV, text, and mail ads flooding the dog days of the primary election season, which ends Aug. 18. 

“It just doesn’t make any sense, folks, that’s not how we treat people in Wyoming,” says Barlow. 

“So here’s what I suggest,” he continues in the video, donning a vet glove up to his shoulder. “You glove up.”

He adds: “You open carefully. Step back. Yep, there’s some in there, I can see it right from here.” 

Barlow tells the viewers to reach into the mailbox, “pull it out carefully, turn that sleeve inside out.”

The gloved Barlow in the video extricates a fecal-looking lump from the mailbox. 

“There. You’ve got it contained,” says Barlow on the video, inverting the glove and confining the lump inside it by tying a knot. 

[{"type":"text","text":"Technically, Yak Poop"}]

Barlow, a yak rancher, told Cowboy State Daily later that he shot the video using his own mailbox - and real dung. 

“If you want to be really technical, it was yak crap,” said Barlow in a Saturday-evening phone interview. 

The vivid demonstration echoes his veterinary practice, during which his “bread and butter” was pregnancy checks of ranch animals, including cattle. 

A cow’s abdomen isn’t suited for a vet to detect early pregnancy in an abdominal examination, so the vet dons a long-sleeve polyethylene glove up to his shoulder and checks the cow through her rectum, Barlow said. 

“It’s generally pretty dirty,” he said. Shifting back to the metaphor he added, “I don’t think it needs to be that way, but others do. So when you approach your mailbox you gotta be careful.” 

Barlow said from watching Federal Election Commission numbers, his team anticipates he’ll weather as much as another $325,000 worth of negative advertising in the next 10 days. 

One group, Women for Responsible Government Action, derided Barlow for voting against a bill that sought to ban child sex-change treatments in 2023. That same year however, Barlow voted in favor of a different bill with the same goal. 

A similar paradox unfolded when the Wyoming’s Turn PAC launched ads attacking Barlow for voting against a sanctuary cities ban in 2025 - when Barlow had voted in favor of a different sanctuary cities ban that same year. 

The one he voted against was widely opposed by Wyoming sheriffs, and died with around two-thirds of Senate Republicans voting against it. 

Wyoming’s Turn PAC invoked multiple other Barlow votes. The group asserted that Barlow’s record shows him supporting illegal immigrants. He called that a mischaracterization and discussed each vote in an 

He said in his Saturday interview that some people he encounters at events have said they find his humorous take on the negativity refreshing. The preg-check video is the latest in a series. 

[{"type":"text","text":"The governor's race isn’t the only one that has gone negative. "}]

U.S. House candidates Steve Friess and Chuck Gray have both been targeted. So have numerous legislative candidates. 

Barlow said after being on the road for about five days, he found 15 campaign mailers in his mailbox. At least one posed an attack on him, he added. 

[{"type":"text","text":"It’s Almost Over"}]

Barlow faces Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder, retired Marine Corps Col. Brent Bien, and Centennial man Curt Blake in the Republican primary election Aug. 18.

[{"type":"text","text":"Barlow, Degenfelder and Bien all had partial victories in recent weeks. "}]

 - which Cowboy State Daily has reviewed - showing him leading the race. 

 of the Wyoming Republican Party's state central committee. 

Trump-endorsed Degenfelder garnered more statements of support, and a 

The winner of that contest will face Democrat Kenneth Casner and Constitution Party nominee Rebecca Bextel, though Bextel has indicated on Facebook that she will “happily stay home” if Bien or Degenfelder wins the primary election. 

Barlow yak crap 8 8 26

<title>Eric Barlow Jokes About Negative Mailers By Pulling ‘Yak Crap’ From Mailbox | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Highly targeted gubernatorial candidate Eric Barlow joked Saturday about all the negative campaign ads by donning a vet glove and pulling yak dung from his own mailbox. “That’s not how we treat people in Wyoming,” he said in a social media video.

Eric Barlow Jokes About Negative Mailers By Pulling ‘Yak Crap’ From Mailbox

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Jackie Dorothy.

Jackie Dorothy

Outdoors

Jack Baird, who runs sheep and cattle on over 30,000 acres near Thermopolis, calls cheatgrass "a little thief" because it robs moisture from native grasses on the sections of land he uses for grazing.

Fellow rancher Chip Axtell of Hot Springs County estimates at least 20% of his own rangeland and farm have been taken over by cheatgrass, which is only green in the early spring and late fall. This limits where he can graze his cattle and is especially damaging during a drought.

“Cheatgrass grabs up all the moisture, so the native grasses get pushed out,” Axtell said. “If you keep stressing the land further with grazing or drought, it just becomes the predominant grass that's around.”

More than $32 million has been lost in agricultural land and wildlife habitat last year due to cheatgrass, a fast-growing invasive weed known. It is an ecological nightmare for wildlife and land managers.

estimate if cheatgrass continues to spread, annual losses could exceed $109.8 million.

Cheatgrass, also known as downy brome, literally creates a drought state on the landscape even when Wyoming is not in a drought. Since the 1800s, this invasive weed has been choking out native grasses and “cheating” them out of the nutrients and soil.

“It is actually a pretty pathetic grass with a minimal root system,” Nancy Fleming, the Wind River Bighorn Basin District's invasive annual grass coordinator, told Cowboy State Daily. “But it’s seed production is tremendous.”

One cheatgrass plant can produce 200 seeds viable for up to 11 years. Thousands will sit in a seed bank in the first few inches of soil, just waiting to germinate.

“The cheatgrass takeover has been going on for over a century,” Axtell said. “It grows wherever there's a disturbance in the ground such as a two-track, or any digging. The cheatgrass comes in because the seeds get started in that disturbed ground.”

 Axtell said he has been battling cheatgrass his entire life and tries not to graze all the grass in order to leave the native grass healthy and keep the cheatgrass at bay.

 “There's no silver bullet when it comes to invasive annual grasses, particularly cheat grass,” Fleming said. “Cheatgrass is something that we're managing. It's not something that we will eradicate.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Evil Enemy"}]

Cheatgrass is an invasive annual grass that's not native to North America. It came from Europe and Eurasia in the mid- to late 1800s as a contaminant in seed and straw, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

“It's been noted in every state in the lower 48 but it's causing more destruction in the Western States because of our climate,” Fleming said.

Cheatgrass grows in the winter and sprouts its roots under the snow. It is the first plant to green up in the spring. As an annual, it dies off each year and has a different growing cycle that Wyoming’s native perennial grass.

Cheatgrass’ sole purpose is to produce as much seed as possible before dying off every June. Then in becomes another type of menace: Fuel for fire. 

 “It takes one lightning strike to get a fire started,” Fleming said. “That fuel load created by dead cheatgrass helps spread the fire quickly through this country.”

 that cheatgrass has disrupted the fire cycle in sagebrush habitat and other western ecosystems, leading to more frequent and more intense burns. Those fires subsequently destroy native grasses and sage.

“Invasives come back the next year and so the fire doesn't affect them,” Fleming said. “As a result, we see this reoccurring, increased fire cycle that is not typical for this area.”

Fleming said fires typically burn every 30 years in grass and sage ecosystems, but thanks to cheatgrass they are occurring every five years or sooner.

 burned more than 126,000 acres outside of Thermopolis. Several organizations are monitoring the land to beat back the expected surge of cheatgrass. The fire started from a lightning strike on Axtell’s ranch and spread to neighboring ranches.

“Cheatgrass has the first opportunity to get the moisture and get started,” Axtell said. “With this fire, they're really watching to see where it's going to come back.”

Axtell said a grant for more than $8 million has been allocated to fight cheatgrass in the burn area. He is hopeful that by being proactive they will keep the cheatgrass to a minimum.   

Cheatgrass has become a nightmare for Wyoming ranchers, costing an estimated $110 million in annual losses. Hot Springs rancher Chip Axtell estimates 20% of his own rangeland has been taken over by cheatgrass. “It grabs up all the moisture," he said.

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