One More For The Road

[{"type":"text","text":"Yeah, just unload those anywhere..."}]

One more for 9 23 23

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

<title>One More For The Road: Saturday, September 23, 2023 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Yeah, just unload those anywhere...

One More For The Road: Saturday, September 23, 2023

You Still Here

Hilarious rodeo event competition. The ladies had to find their own shoes to get a prize.....

You still here 8 3 26

<title>You Still Here? Monday, August 3, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

You Still Here? Monday, August 3, 2026

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

Renée Jean

Business & Tourism

Trent Tope’s historic general store in tiny Aladdin is particularly counting on Sturgis Rally goers this year. That’s because tourists aren’t spending money like they once did.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, there’s tourists here,” the owner of Aladdin’s only store told Cowboy State Daily. “But they’re just not spending money like normal because they’re putting it all in their gas tanks.”

Fortunately for Tope, the cavalry is coming. 

It’s not a cavalry that rides a horse — though it has plenty of horsepower. It’s a cavalry that rides thousands of motorcycles through Wyoming every year, seeking adventures from Cody in the west to Aladdin in the northeast and from Cheyenne in the southeast. 

All along these adventures, Rally goers will gas up, buy burgers and beer, and fill hotels, motels and campgrounds. It’s a money trail that helps keep many businesses in small and large communities alive. 

“Honestly, if it weren’t for the Rally, (the Aladdin General Store) probably wouldn’t even be economically viable,” Tope said. “So we’re really looking forward to it.”

Aladdin looks to capture up to 60% of its annual revenue during August, all thanks to the many Rally goers who stop in for drinks and a plate of barbecue. 

There will be live music every day of the Rally as well as barbecue plates and an outdoor swimming pool bar. 

Jordan Yates, who co-owns the Aladdin store with Tope, dreams up interesting cocktails for the store’s tiny bar. She has 10 to 12 friends who will come help serve the extra-large crowds, as well as offer their own creative shots. 

“We’re already starting to pick up quite a bit,” Yates said. “I’m hoping we have the calendars by Rally to share, but we’re waiting on the printer.”

Aladdin’s calendar girls, who posed for the annual fundraiser that supports nonprofit causes such as the volunteer fire department and FFA, will be offering a bike wash, too. 

Even if the calendars are not ready, Yates said most of the calendar girls will still have posters to sign, and they will be helping with the bike wash.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Devils Tower Loop"}]

Aladdin is just one of the tiny towns on the Devils Tower Loop, a route many Sturgis Rally goers will ride during their visit. 

The loop runs through Beulah, Sundance, Carlile Junction, Devils Tower, Hulett, Alva, and Aladdin on the Wyoming side. It takes in Whitewood, Spearfish, Belle Fourche, St. Onge and Sturgis in South Dakota. 

Many of the towns along the loop — or even near the loop, like Moorcroft — stage their own events during the Sturgis Rally to draw riders.

Among the best-known of these side events is Hulett’s Ham and Jam, held on Wyoming Wednesday of Sturgis Week, which is Aug. 12 this year. Roughly 

 on one day for a free pork sandwich with classic picnic dishes like pork and beans and potato chips. 

The music and food are free — while supplies last — paid for by the town and sponsors as a thank you to the riding community. The main serving station is right next to Captain Ron’s Rodeo Bar on Main Street, where the idea was born almost 40 years ago. 

Sundance has also made its mark with the 

, where riders gather to shred their tires, producing thick clouds of black smoke, in a 3 p.m. street party that dovetails perfectly with the noon Ham 'N Jam. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"When The Region Goes Black"}]

Ham and Jam time is go-time for the region, Hulett’s Tom Coronato told Cowboy State Daily. He co-owns the Ponderosa Cafe and Bar with his brothers, Dean and Bob Coronato. The latter also owns 

“I think the entire Black Hills, if you actually talk to the liquor salesmen, your food salesmen, and all the purveyors, this is when the entire region goes into the black,” he said. “Most businesses ride the red for 10 months out of the year, but then like July and August put them into the black, until they go back into the red sometime around Christmas.”

It’s a nerve-wracking cycle for the business owners, Coronato said. And it’s one that requires some thought into what the visitors will actually buy. Expensive artifacts and curiosities, for example, not so much. But stickers and postcards with artwork on them are popular as mementoes.

Beyond the short-term lift to businesses though, there’s a longer-term impact that goes beyond how individual businesses do during the rally. The ripple effects start with sales and lodging tax revenues that support county services and spread out to the general impression the area makes, which ultimately attracts new residents.

“I’ve lost count of how many people have moved into the surrounding area,” Coronato said. "Crook County, Gillette, Spearfish — all the surrounding counties — because they’re Rally people who came through here and said, ‘You know what, when I want to move out of my home in Chicago or Denver I want a second home out here because the summers are just outstanding.'”

That’s helping build a larger community, with demographics that can better help support new businesses.

“They may be second homeowners, but they still pay taxes here,” Coronato said. “They still pay school tax. They’re still paying revenue into the communities. They’re putting insurance companies in business and the title companies — the ripple effects are way larger than ‘Hey, I’m able to sell more beer on Wednesday than anyone else.’”

It’s not just small communities that benefit, though. Larger communities such as Cheyenne and Cody also see substantial economic benefit from Rally goers.

Cody Yellowstone Director of Marketing Katrina Southern told Cowboy State Daily that Rally goers show up before and after the Sturgis Rally to check out the Beartooth Loop, which is on Harley-Davidson’s list of top-rated scenic rides. That loop includes Chief Joseph Highway and can easily include side trips into Yellowstone. 

“My husband rides as well, and I mean the twists and turns down Chief Joseph as well as the Beartooth are phenomenal for bike riding,” she said. “And people will also take the Chief Joseph route and loop around, go in through the northeast gate of Yellowstone National Park, and then come back around through the east gate.”

There’s also a scenic loop that goes around to Sheridan and the Bighorn Mountains, as well as loops that run down to Thermopolis and the Hot Springs.

That’s brought some Sturgis Rally goers back to Cody multiple years in a row for new adventures. The late-August riders help bridge the gap between the family-vacation crush of midsummer and Cody’s strong September shoulder season.

“We’ve been essentially a base camp for the Sturgis Rally for quite a few years now,” Southern said. “And everyone here loves having them come in. They’re always so friendly and they’re just looking for a new adventure.”

In Cheyenne, Sturgis brings between $3 to $5 million annually, Visit Cheyenne’s Jim Walter told Cowboy State Daily. While that represents a 1-2% slice of the capital city’s $485 million tourism economy, it’s still a hefty sum in real dollars.

Cheyenne is the “last big stop” for many of the Rally goers, Walter said. It’s where many of the riders stage for the last night in a real bed and the last big restaurant meal before arriving in Sturgis.  

“I know over the years the Plains Hotel has always had motorcycle parking specifically out front for people going to Sturgis,” Walter said. “I think there’s a few bars that do some things as well, like they’ll put out signs that say, ‘Welcome bikers.’”

Walter sees the Rally goers as an essential boost after Cheyenne Frontier Days, when many residents are feeling tapped out and less likely to eat out. 

“Having that Sturgis traffic come through sells that extra cheeseburger, that extra glass of beer, and fills that extra seat in the restaurant when everybody here in the community is all worn out and staying home for a couple of days,” Walter said. “These folks are coming through and doing that for us.”

On a map, the Sturgis Rally looks like a dot in South Dakota, but in Wyoming it’s a long and winding money trail that lifts towns from Cody to Hulett and Aladdin and from Cheyenne to Newcastle and beyond. 

For some places, the trail is just a handy, 1-2% bump, smoothing over a slow period when children head back to school and families aren’t likely to be vacationing. 

For other places, it’s become the difference between life and death for tiny town businesses. 

For them, it’s half a year’s income, crammed into a few loud and boisterous days. 

“There’s basically only four ways to get to Sturgis,” Coronato said. “Every community benefits along those highways for miles. It’s hundreds of miles of benefit.”

Ham and Jam 8 2 26

<title>Sturgis Motorcycle Rally Is Make-Or-Break For Businesses In Small Wyoming Towns | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A stream of bikers on their way to and from the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally create the biggest business week of the year for small northeast Wyoming towns. Bikers stay at motels, pack bars, eat and gas up — helping some businesses thrive, and others survive.

Sturgis Motorcycle Rally Is Make-Or-Break For Businesses In Small Wyoming Towns

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

Andrew Rossi

Around Wyoming

 petroglyph sites in North America is hidden away in a secret spot near Newcastle, Wyoming. The petroglyphs of Whoopup Canyon are among the oldest and most "realistic" known to exist.

Hundreds of images are carved into the sandstone walls across 150 known panels. They depict people, animals and even the technology used by some of the earliest Indigenous people in North America.

A lucky group of people got to visit this protected site July 25 as part of a tour coordinated by the Wyoming Historical Society and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Newcastle office.

The tour was led by Lucas Keeler, a BLM petroleum engineering technician who’s also one of the foremost authorities on Whoopup Canyon.

“It’s one of the largest and oldest petroglyph sites in North America, and it’s a love and passion of mine,” he told Cowboy State Daily.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"It’s Not Art"}]

At many petroglyph sites, it’s hard for most people to recognize what’s being depicted. Images are deliberately abstract or artistic, which some believe is attached to the spiritual significance of the people who made them.

At Whoopup Canyon, little is left to the imagination. The images, free of artistic embellishments, are easy to identify and interpret as what they are.

Ralph I. Olinger, a businessman, amateur archaeologist, and Wyoming House representative from Lusk, noted as much during the first scholarly assessment of the petroglyphs with University of Denver anthropology professor Etienne B. Renaud in the 1930s.

“The deer and elk are mostly pictured, but there are mountain goats, antelope, bison, and a few other animals,” he wrote. “There seems to be none of horses.”

Keeler noted that the realism of the petroglyphs is one of many unique attributes of Whoopup Canyon. That’s also why he emphasized that the images “are not art.”

“It wasn’t art to the people that created them,” he said. “It is a historical record with cultural and spiritual significance. A sacred link to the land. There’s nothing wrong with referring to petroglyphs as ‘rock art,’ but it’s deeper than that.”

That was the background Keeler provided to the tour group before they departed from Newcastle to reach the sandstone canyon. They hiked a mile through chest-high grass, under the shade of ancient cottonwoods, before stopping at the end of the canyon to get a closer look at the panels.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Life And Times"}]

As the group approached the canyon wall, careful not to touch anything, many images were easy to understand. The walls were covered with elk, deer, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, birds, and “Mister Bison,” the only bison depicted along the entire four-mile expanse.

Keeler noted that all the animals are extant, meaning 

 in Wyoming. No mammoths, lions, or other extinct animals 

There are also images recognizable as humans. They aren’t passive figures but are depicted as actively engaged with other figures in the same panel.

According to Keeler, most of the panels depict hunting scenes. It reveals how these nomadic tribes hunted and the tools they used to do it.

“We have a lot of hunting scenes,” he said. “It was a big deal to these people, because it took a lot of time and pride to make these panels. You can see different creators with different techniques.”

Many panels depict human figures wielding atlatls, one of the oldest weapons in human history, as they pursue pronghorn and deer.

Many of those same panels also have a repeating pattern of half-circles along a long horizontal line. Instead of an artistic flourish, this is believed to be another accurately depicted tool.

“We think these are large game nets,” Keeler said. “It was some sort of netting used to capture animals. We'll see a lot of that netting (pattern) with a bunch of animals running up to it.”

Keeler explained that many indigenous tribes set up nets and drove herds of animals toward them. An individual isolated at the point where several nets met would be much easier to kill.

“They would bring this antelope into a three-sided catch, and somebody at the end, the game caller, would whack it on the head,” he said. “It’s well-documented. Lewis and Clark witnessed the Cheyenne using these antelope traps, and they continued to use them up to the 1870s.”

“The game caller” is also a common figure in these rock panels. It’s a humanoid figure wielding a large object, like a club, over their head.

Keeler also noted another intriguing animal depicted alongside the human figures. The best explanation for these four-legged, pointed-ear creatures is that they’re images of domesticated dogs.

“You can see where the dogs were being used, running after the other animals,” he said. “Dogs were domesticated over 10,000 years ago, so that tracks.”

That’s where the age of Whoopup Canyon’s petroglyphs gets interesting.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Oldest Or 'Oldest?'"}]

Whoopup Canyon is believed to be one of the oldest petroglyph sites in North America. However, age can be a tricky thing to determine.

Keeler referenced “Mister Bison” as a textbook example of accurate dating based on the patina of iron oxide and manganese covering the image, contrasted with a nearby elk.

“The elk is pretty cream-colored without much black on it, while the bison is completely black,” he said. “That means the image has to be older than the stuff covering it.”

The iron oxide-manganese patina can be dated using Carbon-14 and cation-ratio dating, and many of the panels have been.

Based on previous dating of the patina, “Mister Bison” is believed to be over 8,000 years old.

That might not even be the oldest image in the canyon. Samples from other panels have been dated from 2,500 years to 10,500 years old.

Today, dating is more difficult due to the mistakes of well-intentioned amateurs.

In 1942, historian and farmer Charles Haas of Rapid City, South Dakota, did an extensive photographic documentation of Whoopup Canyon. To make the images more visible in his black-and-white photos, he traced the images with white chalk.

“The chalking left residue which interferes with dating methods,” Keeler said. “It is estimated that nearly 97% of the glyphs at Whoopup have been chalked.”

Nevertheless, the panels in Whoopup Canyon are still considered among the oldest in North America, and certainly in Wyoming. They’re so old that even today’s tribes have trouble interpreting them.

“We have tribal consultations with various Plains Native American tribes that we periodically bring out to get opinions on the images,” Keeler said. “It can be very eye-opening because (images) go so much further back than the tribes that we know of today.”

Keeler has guided members of the Lakota, Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, Shoshone, and Arapaho tribes to Whoopup Canyon. While spiritually and culturally significant to all of the tribes, the petroglyphs are not ascribed to any of them, because they’re so much older.

“There were no Lakota, Cheyenne, or Arapahoe when these were made,” he said. “These were nomadic tribes, wandering and following game. It was a whole different world back then.”

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

Amid the plentiful images of elk, pronghorn, and people, there are a few images that Keeler found particularly noteworthy.

One, at the far end of the canyon, depicted several people standing close together. Instead of being simple stick figures, each figure has depth and dimension.

“It looks like a family,” Keeler said. “They’re not holding hands, but they’re close together. That whole cliff face had so much going on that’s unlike anything else in the canyon.”

Keeler mentioned that he’s asked about that panel during the tribal consultations.

[{"type":"text","text":"“They all say something different,” he said."}]

A nearby figure, wielding an atlatl, is almost three-dimensional. He has clear proportions that were intentionally carved into the rock.

“He’s about the only person out here that's got any meat on him,” Keeler said.

There are several images and panels that Keeler can’t explain. They include a line of pronghorn, end to end, and something he referred to as “the Unicorn.”

But there’s one panel, on the opposite end of the canyon from the family, that defies explanation.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Skin-Changer?"}]

One of the more unique panels is four humanoid figures close together. They’re unlike anything else in Whoopup Canyon and, to Keeler’s knowledge, any other petroglyph site.

[{"type":"text","text":"He introduced it as “the one the tribes don’t like.”"}]

“There’s nothing else like it here, that’s for sure,” he said. “It's hard to know what was going through their head when they did that.”

The images appear to be part of the same sequence. One of the figures appears to be stretching their head and upper body, while the final figure is holding an object that resembles a torch.

Keeler has no definitive explanation, but he’s wary of one that’s been proposed: the panel depicts the transformation of the Deer Woman.

Many Indigenous American tribes have stories of spirits or “witches” that can turn into animals to disguise themselves and deceive others. The Navajo have “yee naaldlooshii,” “the skin-walker,” and many tribes, including the Sioux, have “the Deer Woman.”

Historically, these spirits have been malicious and duplicitous entities in tribal mythology. That would make a depiction of one on a petroglyph panel unique and unusual.

“A lot of cultures across the world have that story of a bad shapeshifter,” Keeler said. “I don’t know if that’s what’s depicted on the panel, or what it’s trying to symbolize, but there’s a lot going on.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Exclusive Access"}]

Many of Wyoming’s petroglyph sites are open to the public. Whoopup Canyon is not one of them.

While the canyon itself is on BLM land, the only way to access it is by roads going through private ranches. That has given the site some added protection, as it has been vandalized in many ways over the last century.

In 1997, the U.S. Department of the Interior called for an emergency closure of Whoopup Canyon. That closure remains in effect, keeping the canyon 

 to all activity except scientific, educational, and sociocultural projects.

The easiest way to see Whoopup Canyon is to be an elementary school-aged student in Newcastle or Upton.

“The Upton Science Kids come out for one day in June, and I take the Newcastle Elementary School fourth graders doing Wyoming history out in October,” Keeler said. “Those are the only two groups I do every year.”

The June 25 excursion with the Wyoming Historical Society was the first tour of its kind in several years. The group worked with the BLM to get permission from the private landowners to access the site.

“It’s illegal to access without their permission, and it’s still an area of critical environmental concern for the Interior Department, so it’s closed to the public,” Keeler said.

That said, Keeler hopes there might be an opportunity to offer future tours of Whoopup Canyon, perhaps one a year, so more people can experience the canyon and its history.

While the petroglyphs are most closely associated with today’s Native American tribes, Keeler believes anyone can find a connection to the images in the sandstone. The history depicted in the petroglyph panels of Whoopup Canyon is universal.

“For me, the petroglyphs are telling the same story of everyone’s history,” he said. “Wherever we came from, we all go back to these nomadic-type peoples. So many different cultures can relate to these things, because this is our origin story. It’s the roots of so many different people.”

Whoop Up Canyon IMG 1106 8 2 26

<title>Whoopup Canyon Has One Of The Oldest And Largest Petroglyph Sites In North America | Cowboy State Daily</title>

One of the most extraordinary petroglyph sites in North America is hidden away in a secret spot near Newcastle, Wyoming. The petroglyphs of Whoopup Canyon depicted in 150 sandstone panels are between 3,000 and 10,500 years old. Access is extremely limited.

Whoopup Canyon Has One Of The Oldest And Largest Petroglyph Sites In North America

Wyoming Life

CHEYENNE — Every guy, at some point in his life, will say just about anything to get a girl.

Hit by a bolt from the blue, who can blame them? Before they know it, the boldest of promises are tumbling from their lips.

For Cheyenne native George Jay Wienbarg III, that moment of lovestruck convergence hit him one winter day at New York’s Central Park. 

“She was a very clever Korean girl who was wearing these really interesting clothes,” Wienbarg told Cowboy State Daily. “She had made the clothes, and I got to talking to her — she was this very cute, little 5-foot-tall Korean girl — and the clothes were so fascinating, so interesting.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"As was the girl. "}]

Wienbarg was so taken by her, the next thing he knew he was telling her that if she could raise $50,000, he knew he could make her and her clothing line Hollywood famous. 

“I knew I could do it, because I’d already done it once,” Wienbarg said. “And I had confidence because when I got to New York I had just $35 in my pocket, and in three days I had a job doing the morning show at this country western station in New York City.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Not Just Whistling Dixie"}]

As bold as his promise seemed, Wienbarg’s confidence wasn’t totally misplaced. 

Just before coming to New York to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, he had engineered an international publicity campaign to help his friend Hank Berger sell pieces of the original, world-famous Hollywood sign as souvenirs.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"The sign was an icon. "}]

Originally built in 1923 to promote a posh little subdivision, the “Hollywoodland” sign stood five stories tall and stretched over a city block, making it the biggest sign in the world at that time. 

The sign was lit up at night with 4,000 20-watt bulbs placed 8 inches apart, and could be seen from at least 50 miles away. It required a full-time maintenance man just to take care of replacing burnt-out bulbs. 

In 1949, a new letter “H” was erected for the sign. The last four letters, L-A-N-D, were removed, making the sign just “Hollywood.” 

Over the years, pranksters reworked those letters to variations like “Hollyweed" — fun and games. 

Not so fun, however, were the depressed starlets, including Peg Entwistle, who jumped from the letter “H” to their deaths.

By 1978, time and the elements had taken a toll. The sign had become a wreck. 

“It was starting to fall down and it was just thin, rusty old metal on telephone poles,” Wienbarg said. “So they said, ‘Well it’s so famous, we better build a new one.’”

Berger bought the old sign for $10,000 and then called the best marketing person he knew to help him sell off pieces of the sign.

That was Wienbarg, fresh off a stint as news director in Cleveland, where he’d led his team to the No. 1 station in the market. His success there had led him to consulting work in other locations across America, including New Orleans and Raleigh, North Carolina. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Dishwashing Segue Way"}]

Wienbarg had grown tired of news media, though, so when Berger called he was working at the Plains Hotel as a dishwasher.

Selling the world-famous Hollywood sign sounded a little more interesting, so Wienbarg was in. 

First they cut up squares from the Hollywood sign in Berger’s backyard and then they set each square into a beautiful Art Deco lithograph, with the story of the Hollywood sign underneath. 

They took their collectible to a big gift show in New York, to see if it would catch fire as the status gift of 1980. The sales didn’t go well — but not for lack of publicity. 

Wienbarg put together a campaign that sent the story around the globe. There were articles in Germany, Spain, and England, as well as in dozens of American newspapers and magazines, from the Los Angeles Times and Cosmopolitan, to People and Time. 

Working on the Hollywood sign helped Wienbarg realize that a dish-washing job in Wyoming wasn’t going to cut it. He was bored already. 

So he auditioned successfully for a spot with the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. He packed up his life and moved away on July 4, 1981.

Six years later, he met Park on that winter day in New York, and made a promise he knew he had to keep, if he wanted to keep his girlfriend.

“I started selling her clothes,” he said. “I just took her under my wing, and she actually became my girlfriend and her dad came up with the 50,000 bucks so I thought, ‘Well, I better figure out some way to make her famous.’”

Naturally, wrestling with how to do that turned his thoughts to his successful Hollywood sign campaign. 

“So it just occurred to me, trademark the Hollywood sign,” Wienbarg said. “I just said, ‘This sign is up there on the hill, it’s in the public domain, nobody’s ever trademarked it.”

Wienbarg found a clever New York attorney to help him trademark the sign for Park’s clothing line, and then they were in business. Wienbarg soon had articles appearing in places such as Variety, the Los Angeles Times, and many others, delivering on his promise in a big way. 

“This is the most familiar trademark next to Coca-Cola,” Wienbarg is quoted in one article as vice president of sales and marketing for Viola Park Fashion, with a projection of $5 million in wholesale volume in the first year. 

“We started making clothes and we found this really cool fabric,” Wienbarg said, holding up a little black dress that he has kept as a memento from the line. “It was a rayon and nylon on a warp knit.”

The fabric feels silky soft and catches silvery highlights here and there in the right light. 

“There were many pieces in this line, and we sold them in Macy’s in every state,” Wienbarg said. “What we would do is go to the boutique show four times a year at the Jacob Javits Convention Center.”

Stores would come from around the world to place orders. 

“We cut to order, so we didn’t make them and then try to sell them,” Wienbarg said. “We made them to order.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Hollywood Pushback"}]

What Wienbarg didn’t realize was that trademarking the Hollywood sign would eventually put him at odds with Hollywood itself.

“Nobody had ever trademarked the Hollywood sign before,” Wienbarg said. “So I thought it was just a brilliant idea.”

But while he and Park were trying to build the Viola Park Fashion line, Hollywood was taking note of the commercial power of its own skyline.

Articles with headlines like “Controversy surrounds Hollywood sign” started showing up in newspapers with a Los Angeles dateline. 

“People think they own the rights to everything,” one businessman fumed. “If the name of the city isn’t in the public domain, what is? Next thing you know, the state of California is going to charge royalties for using the name California on shirts.”

In the wake of Wienbarg’s trademark, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce spent $25,000 in legal fees to obtain trademark protection for some of its most famous attractions, including the Hollywood Christmas Parade and the Hollywood Walk of Fame. 

Wienbarg ultimately agreed to let the Chamber have the trademark for the sign and license it back from them. In exchange, Wienbarg received permission to use names of stars from the Hollywood Walk of Fame like Frank Sinatra, Johnny Travolta, and Bette Davis to promote his clothing line.

Fame Is Fleeting — Sometimes, So Is Love

The line seemed to be set for takeoff, but behind the scenes, the dream was fraying. Viola’s brother became involved in the business and things began to change. 

“We ended up breaking up,” Wienbarg said. “And then I thought, well, I’ll try to come up with a line myself, and I thought this was pretty ...“

Wienbarg held up a sleeveless, velvet dress with a pastel floral print.

“But I never sold them,” he said, adding, “Fame is fleeting.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"And sometimes love is, too."}]

Wienbarg would stay in New York for another 45 years after that, with a successful radio career and eventually a new wife, as well as a fun side gig managing opera singers, and then a few movies to boot. 

As a young man, Cheyenne native George Wienbarg figured out how to trademark the famous Hollywood sign in L.A. He did that because he fell in love with a Korean fashion student and promised to make her line of clothing famous by associating it with that sign. And he has all the receipts....

One More For The Road: Saturday, September 23, 2023

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