Daily Darwin

[{"type":"text","text":"We all know what's going to happen but we'll watch anyway..."}]

Darwin 7 4 23

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

<title>Daily Darwin: Tuesday, July 4, 2023 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

We all know what's going to happen but we'll watch anyway...

Daily Darwin: Tuesday, July 4, 2023

 We all know what's going to happen but we'll watch anyway...

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

Andrew Rossi

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

[{"type":"text","text":"American artist Edward T. Grigware is renowned for his murals. "}]

By the time he died in Cody in 1960, his work was featured in banks, hospitals, and Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) chapels from Chicago to Los Angeles and as far as Hawaii.

Grigware’s most celebrated Wyoming mural depicting the history of the LDS church is on display in the Historic Cody Mural and Museum. 

It’s an excellent example of the painter’s commitment to realism in an age when the trendiest art was increasingly abstract.

However, there’s one painting in Grigware’s portfolio that’s full of realism — but a lot cheekier than anything else he ever did.

“Bottoms Up,” his 1940s painting of four curvaceous cowgirls wearing nothing by chaps from the waist down showing their bare bottoms, is Grigware’s only nude.

“It certainly made going into the lounge at the Holiday Inn worthwhile,” said Mack Frost, digital technician at the McCracken Research Library at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. “It was quite the topic of conversation.”

The painting is no longer hanging in the Holiday Inn and hasn’t been seen in years, which now has turned the conversation to whatever happened to “Bottoms Up?"

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Accomplished Artist"}]

Grigware was already an accomplished artist when he moved to Cody in 1936. 

He got his education at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, and his work had been exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago when he was wooed out to Wyoming by Mary Allen Jester, one of the founders of the Buffalo Bill Museum, now the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.

Initially skeptical of living in Wyoming, Grigware quickly came to love the state's landscapes and lived the rest of his life in Cody. 

During that time, he was commissioned to do several murals in Cody and elsewhere.

“He did murals at the Cody Masonic Temple, the old Cody hospital, and the Cody Mural Chapel,” Frost said. “He wasn't a combat artist, but he replicated many of the naval battles that occurred during World War II.”

Grigware spent most of the 1940s working on commissions from the U.S. Navy, which were used for posters and other promotional material. 

In the late 1940s, the LDS Church commissioned him to paint a 360-degree mural depicting the church’s history in the 36-foot-wide, 18-foot-tall rotunda of its then-new Cody chapel. The finished mural was unveiled in 1951. 

, Grigware spent a year researching the church’s history, as he was not a member, and painted the mural on pure Irish linen, “the choicest of artists’ canvas,” which was hard to come by at the time.

[{"type":"text","text":"“It's pretty fantastic,” Frost said."}]

It was around this time as well in the mid-to-late 1940s that Grigware finished an entirely different kind of commission.

[{"type":"text","text":"His work went from sacred to what some would consider sacrilegious."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Getting To The Bottom Of It"}]

The story of how “Bottoms Up” came to be is tricky to piece together. There are several accounts of dubious origin sharing those details.

, “Bottoms Up” was commissioned by “a wealthy Denver-area oilman.” He wanted Grigware to create an alluring painting of a Cody woman who was allegedly his mistress.

Cody historian Bob Richard could verify some of that information, while acknowledging there’s more fiction than fact in most accounts.

[{"type":"text","text":"“Several stories about that painting abound,” he said."}]

One thing he could confirm was that the model for “Bottoms Up” was, indeed, a Cody woman.

Dorothy “Dot” Morris managed the Lazy Bar H Ranch, now the Bill Cody Ranch, between Cody and Yellowstone National Park with her husband, Leonard.

“She was very beautiful and partied a lot with Leonard and other Cody families,” Richard said. “When Leonard took guests to fish for mackinaw, Dot was always there.”

Richard said Morris probably connected with Grigware through the Frontier School of Western Art, a short-lived complex of log cabin studios that drew Grigware and other artists to Cody between 1936 and 1941.

Technically, there’s only one cowgirl in “Bottoms Up.” All four women were modeled by Morris, posed and painted by Grigware four different times.

The final painting is of four cowgirls on a wooden fence, fully clothed in Western attire except for their bare derrieres.

The cowgirls are basking in the warm sun with the familiar silhouette of Heart Mountain in the distance.

The original painting had a pine pole frame made by another legendary Cody artist, Thomas Molesworth. It was delivered to its patron, who hung it in his home in Denver.

“I think the painting was done in the mid-1940s, after the end of the war,” Richard said. “But, to the best of my knowledge, I don’t think Dot was anyone’s mistress.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Bottoms Back"}]

“Bottoms Up” was eventually acquired by Quintin Blair, a renowned Cody businessman who brought the painting back to where it was created.

Blair served with the U.S. Navy in the Pacific Theatre of World War II, so it’s possible some of the battles Blair fought were painted by Grigware.

Blair went on to own several drug stores in Cody, managed the Pahaska Tepee Resort and Buffalo Bill Village, and established Quin Blair Enterprises, now Blair Hotels, which built the Holiday Inns in Cody, Laramie, and Riverton.

Blair was also a patron of the arts. There was no better example of that than his family home.

The Quintin Blair House, Wyoming’s only building by Frank Lloyd Wright, was built for the Blair family. 

Before his death in 2013, Blair was the only living person to have continuously resided in a home designed and built by the famous architect.

Blair was also friends with Grigware and the Denver patron who commissioned “Bottoms Up.” When the patron died, his wife sold the painting to Blair.

According to legend, Blair acquired the painting for $1, with some caveats. The patron's wife wanted the painting publicly displayed in Cody as a slight to “the model,” meaning Morris.

In that story, Morris and her husband moved to San Diego, California, in the 1960s, out of embarrassment that Morris’s bare bottom had returned to Cody.

[{"type":"text","text":"Richard has a much simpler explanation for the move."}]

“Dot and Leonard moved away for no other reason than Leonard retired and sold the ranch,” he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Fact And Fiction"}]

Since the history of “Bottoms Up” is so intertwined with the Blair family, it's the best source of factual information on the painting.

Ted Blair is the CEO of Blair Hotels and Quintin Blair’s son. Like Richard, he’s amazed by the number of stories circulating around “Bottoms Up.”

“Most of what people have heard about it is made-up,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “The number of rumors, stories, and lies about that painting is unbelievable.”

Blair confirmed the core history. “Bottoms Up” was painted by Grigware in the 1940s, with Morris modeling, for a Denver patron whose wife hated it.

“It hung behind red velvet curtains in the bar of their home,” he said. “When he'd have friends over, he'd open the curtains up. When there was nobody there, the curtains were closed, because his wife hated the painting.”

Quintin Blair bought the painting from the man’s widow, but there were no caveats with the purchase.

“Thomas Molesworth's son called my father and said, ‘Remember that nude of Grigware’s? It's for sale.’ My father got a hold of it, and that's how it ended up in Cody again,” he said.

Blair confirmed that his father didn’t acquire and display the painting out of obligation or spite.

“He knew Grigware, he knew the painting, and thought it was fun,” he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Hanging Out"}]

When Blair opened Cody’s Holiday Inn in 1972, “Bottoms Up” was prominently placed in the hotel’s bar, the Daisy Bell Saloon. 

It would later be known as the Bottoms Up Lounge, where the painting was the centerpiece for decades.

Thousands of people dropped by to appreciate the painting, for various reasons. Even Holiday Inn capitalized on it.

[{"type":"text","text":"“They were selling posters of it at one point,” Richard said."}]

The painting made its way onto T-shirts, coffee mugs, postcards, and posters, eagerly acquired by fans of Grigware’s unique piece.

Frost was one of many Cody residents who regularly saw “Bottoms Up” when it hung in the Bottoms Up Lounge. He likened it to the famous pinup girls painted by Alberto Vargas.

[{"type":"text","text":"“It was very Vargasesque,” he said."}]

It’s a notable departure in Grigware’s extensive body of work. According to a blog post about the history of “Bottoms Up” from August 2009, Grigware accepted the commission as his one and only “tasteful nude.”

“It’s the only nude he ever did, as far as I’m aware,” Blair said.

However, tasteful or not, “Bottoms Up” was eventually deemed too distasteful for the public.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Too Much On Display"}]

When Cody’s Holiday Inn completed its most recent renovation, “Bottoms Up” was gone.

“It was in the lounge until a couple of years ago,” Frost said. “I don't know why they took it down. Maybe the Blairs decided that it was no longer relevant, maybe somebody complained about it.”

Richard thought the unique painting was removed at the request of Holiday Inn. Most chain-branded hotels have specific guidelines regarding what artwork can be displayed. 

Quintin Blair was, allegedly, granted a dispensation to display “Bottoms Up” because of its provenance and association with Grigware.

“I think their management decided it was unacceptable, so it was taken down,” he said.

Ted Blair was happy to set the record straight. The painting was taken down because it would have been too visible.

“When we turned the lounge into an open area of the dining room, children would have been able to see it,” he said. “That’s when and why we pulled it down. That’s the decision I made.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Heirloom Or Museum Piece?"}]

As for its current whereabouts, Ted Blair confirmed that “Bottoms Up” still exists.

“I have it where nobody will know where it's at,” he said. “There’s a lot more to it than people realize."

Blair also has photos of Morris, who seemed to be even more free-spirited than her painted bottom in quadruplicate would suggest.

“There was a photography club in Cody that did nude photos of women (around that time), so I have photos, including nude photos, of the lady,” he said.

Many people, then and now, would say such a unique painting should be in a museum, such as the Whitney Western Art Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. 

While he admittedly hadn’t considered the option, Blair doesn’t think “Bottoms Up” would have a home among the Whitneys’ collection.

[{"type":"text","text":"“I don't see any nudes or Grigwares in there,” he said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Art Actualized?"}]

Many of Grigware’s murals and other paintings can be seen in buildings, chapels, and museum collections today. Several, but not all, of his Cody murals are intact.

“Bottoms Up” has largely disappeared from public discussion. Even if its story contains more fact than fiction, the quirky painting is a notable work by one of the great American masters.

There’s one other story that abounds around the story of “Bottoms Up.” Morris was the only cowgirl depicted in the painting, but several people claim they’ve seen a mark-for-mark photograph recreating the painting with four bare-bottomed cowgirls.

“I saw a photographic rendition of that picture once, and I'm not sure who did it,” Frost said. “We certainly do not have that picture in the museum’s collection.”

Someone who called themself “Tippy” claimed to be one of those cowgirls. 

, she claimed the photo was taken by a Cody photographer in the summer of 1976.

“I had the privilege of working for Quin Blair as an entertainer at the famous Chuckwagon and Sarsaparilla Saloon,” she wrote. “After a great performance one night … the female members of the group made arrangements with an Old West photographer to oblige them out in the pasture (and) leaned over the fence overlooking the cowherd to take their picture in a remake of the original oil painting.”

Tippy said the women “mustered up the courage to slap that leather over their bare bottoms” with the assistance of several cocktails.

“They were shot at sunrise with a belly full of Tequila sunrises,” she wrote.

[{"type":"text","text":"Bottoms up, if you will."}]

Could this be a factual or fictional account? It seems the only consistent thing in the history of “Bottoms Up” is the way mystery and fantasy have become part of its legacy.

The reality of “Bottoms Up” is a “tasteful nude” painting from the 1940s by a renowned American artist best known for his murals in church chapels. 

It’s become hard to see, but even harder to forget for those who encountered it.

That's what happens when a realism artist doesn't leave enough to the imagination. It as intriguing in 2026 as it was in 1946.

Holiday Inn Cody inset censored 6 13 26

<title>What Happened To Racy ‘Bottoms Up’ Painting That Hung For Decades In Cody Hotel? | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Whatever happened to the racy painting titled “Bottoms Up" that hung for decades in the Cody Holiday Inn hotel? "The number of rumors, stories, and lies about that painting is unbelievable,” said its owner, adding it’s “where nobody will know where it's at.”

What Happened To Racy ‘Bottoms Up’ Painting That Hung For Decades In Cody Hotel?

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Outdoors

Public Lands

Finding treasure and beauty underwater does not require a trip to one of the nation’s coasts.

Divers in the Mountain West may not get to see sharks, colorful fish and coral reefs, but they pull out antique six-shooters or older Coors cans with no pop tops out of the Colorado River.

They also get views of the rock layers below the surface at Flaming Gorge Reservoir that few every see.

For Las Vegas’ Ken Wige, diving a stretch of the Colorado River below the Hoover Dam has become an ongoing treasure hunt involving recovering lost cellphones for people, wallets, a wedding ring, and even a couple of weapons.

One of those weapons he pulled from the river he can’t talk about except to say that it belonged to someone involved in “national defense,” but the other found about three years ago appeared to be a Western-style six-shooter in a holster that was covered in rust.

“If I were to guess, it probably was down there a good 10-plus years to be able to be stuck in the holster,” Wige said. “It was just an old Western revolver, it looked like. I was dying to get it out of there, but it would not come out.”

Fellow diver Tony “Gunner” Pierce of Provo, Utah — aka Tony “Nitrox” on social media dive pages — plans to join Wige this weekend on the river. 

Like Wige, he is an advocate for diving in the West and enjoys rallying people to different spots from Wyoming to Utah and Idaho year-round to explore what is going on underneath the surface of reservoirs, rivers, and lakes.

Both men have enjoyed more traditional diving hotspots such as Florida or the Mexico coast, but they have stories to tell about the adventures much closer to home and cheaper for those who have the gear and want to enjoy a weekend under the water.

Pierce, a dive instructor, said he became interested in scuba nine years ago after taking his daughter Carly to a dive shop just to do a “discover” dive in a pool to see if they liked the sport. 

That led to certifications and a trip to Florida for an open water dive.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'Hooked'"}]

“We’ve been hooked ever since,” he said. 

Pierce went on to get advanced certifications and not only become a dive instructor, but an advocate for dives that don’t cost a lot of money and bring divers together.

He said he wants to counter the criticism that in Utah and the West, there are no good places to dive and that new divers have trouble finding a dive buddy.

“A long time ago, I pretty much said if anybody wants to go dive with me for free ( they can go),” he said. “It’s just the love of diving and being able to connect with new families, new friends.”

He started posting on social media and now he schedules a year’s worth of dive events in advance, gets the permissions or whatever else is needed, and invites other divers to meet him on location.

A dive in May had him and others at Sulphur Creek and Woodruff Narrows reservoirs in the Evanston, Wyoming, area looking to see if any snowmobiles, four-wheelers or other craft were on the bottom left by ice fishermen. 

He was recruited by the city of Evanston to do the dive.

Pierce said he talked with Wyoming Game and Fish and local law enforcement agencies, which told him they had no open cases related to missing equipment, but they were interested in him taking a look at what was below.

“We got there with other divers and except for the fishing pole, shoe, or hat or sunglasses — some trivial things — the bottom of both reservoirs were spotless,” he said. “There’s no leaking gas, no leaking oil, there’s no rubber in there.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Flaming Gorge"}]

Pierce said his favorite place to dive is Flaming Gorge Reservoir south of Green River.

“When you dive off Flaming Gorge by the visitor dam it’s a sheer cliff,” he said. “The original timbers cut down to help build Flaming Gorge are still there, the ropes are there, the cables are there. It’s just absolutely mind-blowing.”

A long-haul trucker during the week, Pierce said a typical weekend dive for him involves maybe five or six divers. 

They typically meet on a Friday and do a day dive, night dive, and another day excursion on Saturday. 

Dives are kept to 100 feet and above, and the deeper dives will require some decompression stops before surfacing.

In Nevada, Wige, also a trucker, said he started diving seven years ago and is now a master diver. 

A few years ago, he discovered the 2-mile stretch between Willow Beach and Emerald Cove downstream from the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River.

He immediately came across cellphones, fishing lures, and other treasures to return to people. Wige said the current as water is released from the dam constantly uncovers items that he and other divers find along the bottom.

Since the waters are part of the National Park System, he has worked out a protocol with rangers that allows him to take cellphones pulled from the bottom to try and find their rightful owners. 

Every dive, members of his team pull out trash as well as items such as old bottles fishing lures, wallets, and anything else that might fall out of a raft or kayak.

During the past four years, he and his associate divers have found two guns, three boat engines, 15 Apple Watches, 20-30 GoPro cameras, and 254 phones — 50 of which were returned to owners.

“It’s just amazing diving when you find something and can return it to someone,” Wige said. “A lady, I found her cellphone, and I contacted her and she wouldn’t stop crying. I’m like, ‘Ma’am, you phone is working.’ 

"She’s like, ‘No, you don’t understand, I came to Las Vegas to film my daughter giving birth. … You’re telling me I’m getting all that back.’”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Soaking Phones"}]

When they recover phones, Wige takes them home and soaks them in rubbing alcohol for a week and then tries to power them up to see if he can determine the owner. 

If the phone owner cannot be determined within a year, he destroys the phone.

Wige said they’ve also pulled out Coca-Cola bottles from the 1920s and Coors beer cans that need a V-can opener.

Under federal rules, any firearms pulled out of the river as well as suspected historic items must be turned in to National Park Rangers. 

He said the six-shooter pistol that he pulled out of the water was turned over to rangers.

Other old stuff they’ve seen below the water include railroad-like ties that appear they may have come off a sternwheeler or similar boat from the late 1800s.

“The wedding ring, they lost it jumping off cliffs,” he said. “They told us where it was and three weeks later, we made it up there with them. One of my divers found it and returned it.”

Wige said he does not try to sell anything he finds. The valuable recoveries are meant to be given back to owners. Some of the bottles his divers keep. 

He has an ongoing list of people that he gifts the fishing lures to for free.

A typical outing involves maybe eight to 10 divers and Wige uses his powered rubber raft to go out in the river and drop four on five on location. 

He then returns to the beach to get the others and when the first divers air is used up, the next set jump in.

Most of the time they are swimming in 20-40 feet of water, he said.

While he enjoys diving in Cozumel, Mexico, for a couple of weeks a year, finding lost treasures and returning them to others gives him the most enjoyment from the sport, Wige said.

“It just brings a whole new level of experience,” he said.

Colorado river and diver inset Will Eye via Alamy 6 13 26

<title>Six-Shooters And Cellphones: Divers Find All Kids Of Treasure In Colorado River | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Divers who plunge the depths of the Colorado River and Flaming Gorge Reservoir find all kinds of treasure, from antique six-shooters to cellphones. One woman burst into tears when given her phone back that had her grandchild’s birth video on it.

Six-Shooters And Cellphones: Divers Find All Kids Of Treasure In Colorado River

Zakary Sonntag

When Iranian forces brought down a U.S. Army helicopter Monday off the coast of Oman, Dillon Jackson’s reaction wasn't shock so much as recognition.

“The first thing I wondered is what happened, what were they doing?” he said. “What did they see, or not see?”

It’s the reflex of someone who has spent years training for moments just like that.

Jackson, a Wyoming native, spent 22 years in the U.S. Navy flying helicopters over some of the world’s most volatile waterways, including the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.

He retired just one week before the incident off Oman, but incidents like this still pull him back into the same calculus of how things unfold and how quickly they can go wrong.

“There’s a lot of ways that could have gone differently,” he said. “A lot of Navy helicopters go into the water, and one or more of the crew members don’t make it out.”

What People Don’t Understand About Hormuz

For many Americans, a phrase like “naval presence” or “blockade” conjures a simple image of ships lined up on the water like net buoys of a fishing boat. 

Jackson said the reality is much more complicated. 

Across the Persian Gulf, and even through the narrow Strait of Hormuz, there are thousands of miles of water and hundreds of vessels to account for at any given time. Tracking them requires constant surveillance, meticulous coordination, and patience.

“One of our missions in the helicopter community was to fly up and run radar in order to track all the ships out there,” he said, explaining that it gets tough when vessels use radar-avoidance tactics.

“It’s a lot harder when they start turning broadcasting systems off,” he said. “Now you’re trying to find people who don’t want to be found.”

Even an area as confined as the Strait of Hormuz is difficult to manage amid shifting national interests.

“The thing most people don’t understand is just how narrow it is. You can see land on the right side of the ship and land on the left at the same time. These aren’t wide-open places,” he said, adding how in that environment, the margin for error narrows too.

“In some ways, it’s like if Wyoming went to war with Idaho. The countries (in the Persian Gulf) are about that size and the distances aren’t that great,” he said.

Though he deployed in conflict zones around the world, the strain Jackson felt most wasn’t physical. 

The lessons that stand out most from those years aren’t about tactics or preparedness, but about the way life in the Navy can reshape relationships with the people waiting at home.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Cost That Doesn’t Show Up on a Map"}]

As his deployments accumulated in places as far flung as North Korea and the Middle East, physical separation resulted in emotional distance too.

He met his wife while stationed in Pensacola, Florida, where they bonded over a shared love of horses and imagined eventually settling into a quieter life with a few horses of their own. 

Neither anticipated how difficult it would be to build that life around constant movement between different duty stations and long deployments.

It was an emotional balancing act, said Jackson. At points, something as simple as a call home could feel like a tripwire. 

“I might try to make light of things  —tell her I saw whales or a rainbow — and it might be the only good thing that’s happened all month,” he said. “Back home, she’s had a hard day, and it can sound like I’m just out there having fun on some cruise.”

The situation required compartmentalizing, but Jackson needed to be careful not to separate himself too much.

Life “underway” could swing from long stretches of routine to moments of sudden intensity, and the same mental compartmentalization that helped him manage on duty carried over into life at home.

“That compartmentalization helps you function in stressful situations, but if you’re not careful, it can also become a way of keeping parts of yourself walled off, and that’ll show up when you come home,” he said.

The balancing act became additionally hard with the arrival of their two children. 

Dillon Jackson, a Kemmerer native, spent 22 years in the U.S. Navy flying helicopters over some of the world’s most volatile waterways, including the Strait of Hormuz. “The thing most people don’t understand is just how narrow it is," Jackson said.

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