Daily Smile

[{"type":"text","text":"Let's go swimming with the dog!!!"}]

Smile 7 14 23

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

<title>Daily Smile: Friday, July 14, 2023 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Let's go swimming with the dog!!!

Daily Smile: Friday, July 14, 2023

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

Andrew Rossi

Wyoming Life

The Cody Stampede Parade made a big impression from the start Friday with Miss Rodeo America, Olivia Favero of Taylor, Utah, riding “Clyde McBuffalo,” 

 from the Mortenson Ranch in New Mexico.

What better way than a buffalo to kick off a parade celebrating 250 years of America in Buffalo Bill’s town?

Clint Mortenson, Clyde’s owner, was happy with how well his bison did strolling down Sheridan Avenue with an experienced rider on his back.

[{"type":"text","text":"“He did good,” he said. “So did Miss Rodeo America.”"}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Big Names And Bands"}]

The Cody Stampede Parades, on July 3 and 4, attract some of Wyoming’s biggest names, bands and patriotic exuberance.

“Cody knows how to celebrate Independence Day,” said Mack Frost, a member of the Cody Stampede Parade Committee. “We wowed the hell out of the folks from Pasadena, California, who do the Rose Bowl parade. They couldn't believe that we were doing what we did.”

One sign of a parade’s prominence is its grand marshal. “The Duke” himself, John Wayne, was given the honor during America’s bicentennial celebration in 1976.

For the semiquincentennial, the Cody Stampede Parade Committee looked closer to home. Instead of one grand marshal, they had five.

A surprise last-minute addition to the grand marshal group was actor Dougie Hall. He’s had prominent roles in the series “Landman” and “1923," one of the many “Yellowstone” spinoffs and starring Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren.

After the U.S. Marine Corps Mounted Color Guard, the last one remaining in the Marine Corps, and the Cody Stampede Rodeo’s Renegade Riders and rodeo clowns, the grand marshals appeared.

While Hall was on horseback, the others rode in a wagon built for the 1990 Wyoming Centennial Wagon Train.

“It made the 260-mile trip ending in Cody on July 4, 1990, and it's back in 2026,” Frost said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Rifle And Royalty"}]

One of the most anticipated entries in the parade was 

Originally built for the 1976 bicentennial parade, it was removed from the roof on which it had perched for the last half-century, restored and returned for the nation’s semiquincentennial.

“We put it back to what it was in 1976, as best we could,” said Mike Darby, owner of the Irma Hotel and the giant Winchester. “We’re putting it right back where it was on July 5 and, hopefully, it’ll be there for the next 50 years.”

The giant Winchester was escorted down Sheridan Avenue by the Cody Gunslingers, who have been performing in front of the Irma’s porch for decades.

Since the Cody Stampede is the place to be for rodeo riders, a lot of royalty appeared in the parades. The “Miss Rodeos” of Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska were all there, along with the Rodeo Queens of Cody, Cowley, Sheridan, Meeteetse and Fremont County.

Miss Rodeo Wyoming, Kate Budge, was going to accompany Miss Rodeo America until Favero decided to lead the parade via celebrity bison.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"More Georges And Johns Than Bills"}]

For some, it’s an annual tradition to see how many Buffalo Bills appear in the Cody Stampede Parade. In 2026, the consummate showman was upstaged in his own town.

While Buffalo Bill was certainly present, he was outnumbered by multiple appearances of Betsy Ross, Paul Revere, and no less than six George Washingtons.

Abraham Lincoln appeared multiple times as well. He was even driving one of the two dozen vintage John Deere tractors, meticulously restored and making their memorably noisy appearance for another year.

Jim and Jess Brittain’s “Johnny Poppers” are always a crowd favorite. The lineup of tractors extended uninterrupted for three blocks.

No parade is complete without vintage vehicles, and the Cody Stampede Parade had more than a few.

The Big Hat Ranch has one of the 16 surviving 1925 White Model 15-45 passenger touring buses from the Yellowstone Transportation Company. It carried hundreds of tourists into Yellowstone from 1920 to 1925.

The biggest cheers were for the Team USA and Team Canada Can-Am All-Stars. The 6-Man football teams, with players from Wyoming, Colorado, Montana, Texas and Nebraska, are competing in the 28th annual Can-Am Bowl in Meeteetse on July 4.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Glorious Returns"}]

There have been many hallmarks of the Cody Stampede Parade that have come and gone over the years. For the 2026 parade, many people were delighted to see some familiar sights.

Hope Sheets, “The Pink Lady,” had been a flamboyant fixture of Cody’s parade for 40 years until she passed away May 18, 2025, at age 88. Her poignant absence was felt by many in the 2025 parade.

In 2026, Lisa Kealey honored her mother’s legacy by getting pretty in pink.

Dennis Haugen made his own mark as the stilt-walking “Long Tall Uncle Sam.” He started during the 1976 bicentennial and walked tall through Cody until he retired in 2016.

For the semiquincentennial, Haugen returned, stilts and all, to honor the nation’s 250th birthday. He stood even taller than before, riding rather than walking.

Nobody seemed more eager to be back in the Cody Stampede Parade than the Cody Volunteer Fire Department. Absent in protest in 2025, the entire fire engine fleet was the parade’s grand finale, with plenty of water for everyone.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Another 250 Years"}]

One of the biggest additions to the 2026 Cody Stampede Parade was also one of the most subtle.

A livestreaming webcam was installed on the balcony of the Irma Hotel, overlooking the intersection of Sheridan Avenue and 12th Street, offering one of the best views in town as the parade rolled through.

That was a first for one of the biggest parades in Wyoming, and a step into the 21st Century in a town seeped in the history and mythology of the American West.

For Frost, Independence Day in Cody is too fun, popular and strategically placed to pass up.

“If you plan your vacation properly, you can have one heck of a good time in Cody and northwest Wyoming in general,” he said. “If you're in Cody, it's just a short hop up the highway to Yellowstone National Park. We're just a magnet for the tourists. It's a great way to spend the Fourth of July. There's no doubt about it.”

Cody Stampede Parade 5

<title>America At 250: Thousands Pack Downtown Cody For Stampede Parade | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Thousands of people packed along the route of the Cody Stampede Parade on Friday to kick off America’s 250th birthday. There were six George Washingtons, five grand marshals and a restored 40-foot Winchester that made its parade debut 50 years ago.

America At 250: Thousands Pack Downtown Cody For Stampede Parade

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

Clair McFarland

Government & Politics

A federal judge declined Thursday to make Wyoming and Nebraska irrigation districts open a competitive bid for the sake of a drilling company that missed out on the chance to bid a $100 million job on the Goshen County tunnel project.

But the judge also ruled that Drill Tech Drilling & Shoring Inc. 

, at this phase, in claiming that the Wyoming-based Goshen County Irrigation and Nebraska-based Gering-Fort Laramie Irrigation Districts violated their states’ public-records laws by not giving information the company had requested.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Lock In"}]

Drill Tech Drilling & Shoring Inc. filed a federal lawsuit against both districts in May.

The lawsuit asked U.S. District Court Judge Scott Skavdahl, of Wyoming, to intervene in what Drill Tech called an unlawful bidding process that cut it out of the opportunity to win a job on the massive tunnel repair.

One of the two 119-year-old tunnels suffered a catastrophic failure in 2019. The other is reportedly in dire need of a rebuild.

The districts assigned Atkinson Construction LLC as construction manager at-risk (CMAR) over the project, which means Atkinson can oversee and work with subcontractors, court documents say.

Drill Tech alleged that for the $100 million drill project it had sought to perform, the irrigation districts should have held — and didn’t hold — a competitive bidding process. The districts gave the job instead to their CMAR, Atkinson, court documents say.

[{"type":"text","text":"In his Thursday order, Skavdahl countered. "}]

He said the laws of both Wyoming and Nebraska appear to support the CMAR’s authority to self-perform this kind of work. Drill Tech has not shown substantially that it has a right to enter a competitive bidding process for this project, he added.

Skavdahl wrote that requiring the districts to pause or backtrack their work and hold that bidding process could harm the agricultural community by stalling the long-awaited repairs even longer — and he declined to do that.

The public has an interest in government entities abiding by the open bidding process, wrote Skavdahl.

“On the other hand, the Irrigation Districts are right that ensuring irrigation water to the thousands of acres of farmland served by the tunnels is also in the public interest,” he added. “In light of Drill Tech’s failures (to show it deserves court intervention) as well as the serious risks to the farmers and public from another tunnel collapse following any delay in this construction project, the preliminary injunction requested by Drill Tech is more contrary to the public interest than in support of it.”

Drill Tech had waited several months to sue, though it had reportedly learned it had been cut out of the job last summer, Skavdahl noted.

He declined to let that delay kill the case altogether, but he factored the delay into his decision not to order the open bid.

The judge’s order doesn’t end the case. It just denies Drill Tech’s request to have Skavdahl intervene in this early phase.

Skavdahl gave his early conjectures that Drill Tech isn’t likely to win on the bidding question, only for the purposes of declining to compel the districts to change course immediately.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Might Win That One"}]

Drill Tech had also accused both irrigation districts of violating their states’ open meeting laws and assigning the job in secret.

[{"type":"text","text":"Skavdahl said the company looks unlikely to win that challenge as well."}]

But, the judge wrote, Drill tech appears likely to win two of its claims: that the Wyoming irrigation district and the Nebraska one both violated their states’ public-records laws by not giving Drill Tech information it had requested.

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

The complaint says the two districts contracted Atkinson to be the construction manager at risk and provide oversight for the Fort Laramie Canal Tunnel 1 and 2 rehabilitation project.

That project is expected to benefit more than 100,000 acres of farmland across eastern Wyoming and western Nebraska.

 that the U.S. Department of Interior has chosen to use $100 million of its $889 million One Big Beautiful Bill appropriation on the tunnel project.

The tunnel collapsed July 17, 2019, cutting off irrigation water to the region and flooding fields. The infrastructure was more than a century old.

Temporary repairs restored most of the system’s capacity in time for the 2021 season, but it still needs long-term solutions. Repairs to Tunnel 2 also are in the works so that it doesn’t suffer the same catastrophic failure.

During the bidding process, Drill Tech’s complaint alleges, the two irrigation districts confirmed Atkinson would have to comply with Wyoming and Nebraska laws, and that it may be able to self-perform the construction work in the project, but would competitively bid that work.

But 18 months after Atkinson became the project manager, the districts “fundamentally changed the (manager’s) agreement to allow Atkinson to self-perform all the construction work for the Project under the guise of a contract amendment,” the complaint alleges.

This transformed the contract into a standard prime contract for the massive project “with no competition for the construction work,” says Drill Tech’s complaint. 

The project manager no longer had to open competition to the public bidding process, it adds.

Drill Tech Drilling and other interested parties were cut out of the process, the complaint says.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Asking For Documents"}]

Drill Tech didn’t ask to become the project manager because it wanted to work on the tunnel rehabilitation work packages instead, the complaint says, adding that Drill Tech has experience with the method that project requires.

On July 25, 2025, Drill Tech sent a letter to the two districts, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and one of the project designers, HDR Inc., to raise concerns that Atkinson was no longer required to bid projects competitively and in public.

Drill Tech noted in that letter that it had been monitoring the project for two years, waiting for the bid advertisement.

Nearly a month later, the Goshen County Irrigation District’s attorney acknowledged the district had received the letter and thanked Drill Tech for its “continued interest in the Project,” court documents say.

That December, Drill Tech submitted public-records requests to both districts under the public-records laws of each state, the complaint says, asking for all post-award modifications and amendments regarding the project manager’s agreement, and for a copy of the procurement plan.

The Nebraska-based district never responded to that request, the complaint says. The Wyoming-based district reportedly responded two months later, Feb. 10, 2026.

Goshen District’s public records yield was “heavily redacted,” says Drill Tech’s complaint. The district claimed those redactions were justified as trade secrets, privileged information, confidential commercial, financial, geographical or geophysical data.

The complaint disputes that. It shows a side-by-side comparison of the same page of the scope of the project manager’s services.

The page that was publicly released in the request for proposal, and the page Drill Tech received in its public records request, are vastly different, with the latter about 75% or more redacted.

“Reactions such as these were pervasive” throughout the agreement, the complaint says.

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

Copies of the changes to that agreement also had “pervasive redactions,” it adds.

Still, says the document, Drill Tech learned that the agreement was amended before Drill Tech’s July 25, 2025, letter requesting information about whether public bids were still required.

The complaint says the district knew the agreement had already been changed to edge out competitive bidding, but didn’t tell Drill Tech that when the company asked.

The complaint also says the district didn’t provide notice of an important public meeting.

By Feb. 20, 2025, the Goshen district board voiced concerns about HDR’s original maximum price estimate of $87 million swelling to more than $120 million, the complaint relates from the meeting minutes.

HDR proposed a confidential guaranteed maximum price proposal and non-disclosure agreements so there would be “no worry about (Atkinson) getting underbid,” the document alleges.

There was, the complaint says, no documented vote for Atkinson to self-perform the task they were discussing without publicly bidding the work packages, but the district did vote to approve changing the design plan.

It’s “entirely” unclear what role the Nebraska-based district played here because it didn’t respond to Drill Tech’s public records requests, the complaint alleges.

The document says that on July 8, 2025, the Goshen district and Atkinson signed an amendment to change the agreement, so that the latter was no longer required to advertise bids or publicly open them.

In the July 17, 2025, meeting minutes, “Atkinson was already apparently working with a vendor for the digger shield, but there was no indication that Atkinson has publicly bid or competitively awarded the subcontract for the digger shield.”

Irrigation Tunnel Gary Stone Nebraska Extension 5 4 26

<title>Judge Says $100M Goshen Tunnel Project Won’t Stop For Company That Couldn't Bid | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A federal judge declined Thursday to pause the $100 million Goshen Tunnel project for a company that missed out on a chance to bid on the work. He also ruled the company has a valid case against two irrigation districts in charge of the tunnel.

Judge Says $100M Goshen Tunnel Project Won’t Stop For Company That Couldn't Bid

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Wildlife

A northern Colorado rancher who lives near one of the state’s reintroduced wolf packs said she and her neighbors are becoming increasingly frustrated because when wolves aren’t threatening livestock, coyotes are.

Amanda Cerveny said she spotted and took video of a lone canine crossing her property near cattle.

She thought at first it could have been a small or young wolf, but also thought it might be a coyote.

Her latter suspicions were confirmed by biologist Doug Smith, who texted “100% coyote” to Cowboy State Daily after viewing Cerveny’s video.

Cerveny told Cowboy State Daily after seeing the first coyote she returned to her house to retrieve her rifle.

As in Wyoming, it’s legal to shoot coyotes on sight to protect livestock.

By the time she returned, the animal was gone.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘Two Knuckleheads’"}]

A short while later while walking down a lane on her property, “that’s when I saw these two knuckleheads attacking a calf," she said.

About 250 yards away, Cerveny saw two canines chasing and harassing one of her neighbor’s calves. She took video of that scene as well.

At the time, she was reasonably confident those two canines were coyotes.

But, as she noted, in Colorado, anything less than 100% certainty over whether the critter is a coyote or a wolf can be good reason to hold your fire.

"At 250 yards, how can I be absolutely certain whether it’s a coyote, or an uncollared wolf pup, or yearling?” she said.

Smith, who led the wolf program in Yellowstone National Park for nearly three decades, told Cowboy State Daily this year’s wolf pups wouldn’t leave the immediate area of the den this early in the year.

Pups don’t usually start venturing out until September or October, he said.

However, “come winter or fall,” it might be difficult to discern a coyote from a wolf pup at a great distance, he added.

Cerveny said her hesitancy to open fire on the canines she saw harassing the neighbor’s calves, even at a time when she could be reasonably sure they were coyotes, is indicative of the quandary she said she and her neighbors face.

Wolves remain protected in Colorado, and killing one, even by accident, could result in thousands of dollars in fines, Cerveny said.

It is legal for Colorado ranchers to shoot wolves if they catch them “directly in the act” of attacking cattle, she said.

But in most cases, the burden of proof is so high, ranchers might hesitate. And in her case, she said, it caused her to not even shoot at coyotes.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘More Aggressive’"}]

Cerveny said that as far as she knows, her neighbor’s calf wasn’t seriously. Even so, she worries coyotes getting away with attacking a calf might embolden them to keep doing so.

Cerveny said that she, her husband and others in the area think that coyotes might be getting "more aggressive."

She said she showed the video of the coyotes attacking the calf to her husband.

“He said, ‘in 30 years of doing this (ranching) I’ve never seen anything like that',” she said.

There have always been instances of coyotes darting in to attack a sick or wounded calf, or “going after the afterbirth” during calving season, she said.

But nobody in the area seems to recall many instances of coyotes, which are usually opportunistic hunters, going directly after healthy livestock.

Smith said coyotes generally favor small prey, such as rodents. They do tend to “hunt in pairs” and will on rare occasions go after something bigger, such as sheep or a calf, he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Are Wolves To Blame?"}]

Cerveny said she and her neighbors wonder if coyotes are more aggressively going after cattle “because of competition from wolves” for other prey.

Smith said that almost certainly isn’t the case.

“Coyotes do what coyotes do, and wolves do what wolves do," he said. "They’ve lived alongside each other for hundreds of thousands of years. One doesn’t force the other to do anything.” 

Smith added that wolves returning to an area where they’ve been absent for a while, such as Colorado, doesn’t change that dynamic.

“Pull them (wolves) away for a few decades, and that’s not really going to change coyote psyche and behavior,” Smith said. “It’s the ghost of evolution past."

Wolves are thought to have wandered into Colorado from Wyoming and formed a pack in about 2020.

The state also began reintroducing wolves in December 2023.

Smith said elk might leave an area this time of year to move to higher elevations, and leave both coyotes and wolves in the low country.

But as he sees it, both canine species can get by without elk.

Outside of rarely taking an calf, coyotes don’t rely on elk as a prey source, he said. And wolves’ dependence upon elk might also be greatly overestimated.

Wolves are actually lousy elk hunters, Smith said, succeeding only about 5% to 15% of the time they set out to kill elk.

When elk leave an area, it’s probably not because wolves scared them, Smith said.

“Elk stay where they want to stay because of food,” he said. “They aren’t hype-afraid of wolves, because if they encounter a wolf they’re likely to live.”

Coyotes and wolves 7 3 26

<title>Rancher Says Wolves Making Colorado Coyotes More Aggressive With Livestock | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Ranchers in northern Colorado wonder if the growing wolf population is causing coyotes to be more aggressive toward livestock. "In 30 years of doing this, I’ve never seen anything like that," a rancher said about two coyotes attacking healthy livestock.

Rancher Says Wolves Making Colorado Coyotes More Aggressive With Livestock

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

Renée Jean

Energy

When Wyoming oilman Howard Cooper finally got word he could drill two 2.5-mile-long horizontal wells in the Powder River Basin, it wasn’t just a triumph of geology. It was a marathon for the key federal lease that made his wells economic. 

Those two leases were but thin slices of the 2.5-mile-long lateral that made up each horizontal well, cutting across the line, but might as well have been the Great Wall of China as far as Cooper was concerned.

Cooper, who owns Three Crown Petroleum, told Cowboy State Daily he can permit and drill a typical oil well on private minerals in about five weeks in Wyoming, at least on paper. That’s two weeks for state permits, one week to build a pad and move in a drilling rig, and two weeks to drill. 

But when federal leases are involved, timelines can stretch dramatically, particularly if litigation and additional environmental reviews are triggered. 

That makes any well with a federal lease a gamble with million-dollar stakes.

Cooper’s two-well program is a case study in how even the tiniest sliver of federal land can hang up a drilling project, tying up capital while the operator misses out on economic opportunities vital to keeping smaller companies afloat. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Lease That Sat For Years"}]

The story starts long before Cooper, with a federal lease that sat in limbo for years. 

The lease was originally issued to Anschutz as part of a series of federal sales between 2015 and 2020 across several western states, including Wyoming, which accounted for 1,232 of the 1,323 leases sold during that time. 

The leases were challenged by conservationists, who said the environmental analysis of water usage, sage-grouse protections and greenhouse gas emissions were inadequate.

A judge agreed, ordering a 200-page supplemental environmental review to redo aquifer and sage-grouse analysis for the sales, which also included some areas in Nevada, Utah and Montana.

Bureau of Land Management spokesmen said at the time that such reviews have been required under the National Environmental Policy Act in similar cases to ensure impacts are fully considered before development moves forward.

To create a viable oil and gas well, Cooper needed to add Anschutz’s disputed lease to existing leases he already held in the area. He had already put together enough leases for a 1.75-mile and a 1.25-mile well, but for the project to be economic, Cooper said he needed each well to have a lateral of at least 2.5 miles.

“That essentially doubles your reserves,” he said. “But doesn’t add that much more to the cost.”

So Cooper signed an agreement to purchase Anschutz’s lease, despite the ongoing legal and regulatory uncertainty tied to it, on Nov. 4, 2025. 

They were the last two puzzle pieces he needed for a viable project. 

From then until now, when he’s finally received the go-ahead to drill, it’s been eight months. 

Taken together, though, that thin slice of federal minerals — from its original lease sale years ago to final permitting today — carries a timeline of roughly seven years. 

That piece was essential, however, to extending Cooper’s wells to 2.5 miles, making the overall project economic.

During that time, Cooper estimates he committed in excess of $1 million across the two Powder River wells — money he had to pay up front 

 while also keeping his business afloat. 

Putting a well together involves is an exercise in a bit of business gymastics, with a dash of mathematics and puzzle making thrown in.

Cooper sited his well pad just outside of the sage-grouse corridor Wyoming has established, saving him an additional $375,000 per well by not having to purchase sage-grouse credits. 

Cooper also bundled two other wells in nearby Johnson County into his Powder River project to further lower the cost of drilling. So, even though the Johnson County wells didn’t have the same federal complications, they couldn’t move forward either until the entire package was ready to go.

“By signing a four-well drilling program, we save a considerable amount of money,” Cooper said. “So we went down this road of one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight months of our capital is tied up. 

“It’s a lot of capital tied up. We know the oil is there, if they would just let us drill and produce it.”

Meanwhile, the market shifted substantially. 

“If we could have drilled these wells three months ago, we would have had three months of oil at $100 a barrel,” he said. “Now we’ve lost 30% of value. It’s gone from $100 a barrel to $70.”

Cooper estimates that, taken together, the four wells would have produced around 300,000 barrels of oil during that three-month period of $100 oil. He bases that figure on production from nearby offset wells, which have already extracted roughly 100,000 barrels each.

A Wyoming oilman says it missed out on $100-a-barrel oil during a seven-year fight to get the OK to drill on federal land in the Powder River Basin. "We would have had three months of oil at $100 a barrel,” the owner said. “Now we’ve lost 30% of value."

Daily Smile: Friday, July 14, 2023

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