Same Guys Dancing

[{"type":"text","text":"Tom Jones -- Delilah"}]

Same guys dancing 9 19 22

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

<title>Tuesday Morning Dance Party: Tom Jones -- Delilah | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Tom Jones -- Delilah

Tuesday Morning Dance Party: Tom Jones -- Delilah

Employee kate meadows cropped

Kate Meadows

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

Most drivers barreling down Interstate 90 in South Dakota’s near Exit 170 don’t expect to see a giant human skeleton walking a Tyrannosaurus rex on a leash.

[{"type":"text","text":"But there they do."}]

The towering roadside sculptures rise from the prairie just east of 1880 Town, an eclectic collection of buildings courtesy of a movie company’s failed venture that turned into a piece of living South Dakota history.

A massive iron skeleton of a human really is leading an iron T. rex skeleton across the South Dakota grasslands like an oversized prehistoric dog.

And the whole thing started with one man who simply wanted a dinosaur and the founder of 1880s Town, the late Clarence Hullinger.

“He always wanted to build a dinosaur,” said Scott Key, who has helped with 1880s Town operations for roughly 45 years. “When he was in his 80s he finally got around to it.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Dinosaur Dream"}]

Years earlier, when the famous T. rex fossil Sue was discovered in Montana in 1990, Hullinger wished South Dakota had a dinosaur skeleton it could claim for its own.

[{"type":"text","text":"So, he decided to build one himself."}]

His vision included a life-sized human skeleton attached to the beast by a leash.

The sculptures eventually took shape on property near 1880 Town, the sprawling roadside attraction west of Murdo filled with historic prairie buildings, antiques and Old West memorabilia.

The dinosaur itself had absolutely nothing to do with the carefully recreated frontier town.

[{"type":"text","text":"That fact mattered to some family members."}]

“My brother never wanted the dinosaur skeleton anywhere near the town,” said Tim Hullinger, who operates the American Inn in Murdo. “He said it didn’t fit.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Clarence, however, had an answer ready."}]

“My dad said the dinosaurs were there before 1880, so it fits,” Tim said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Building A Prairie T. rex"}]

Clarence assembled the skeletons using scrap iron and drawings as a guide, but there was one part of the dinosaur he planned to keep simple: the head.

Clarence’s plan was to cut the skull from flat sheet metal. Tim said he thought the dinosaur deserved something more realistic.

“He was going to cut it out flat,” Tim said. “I said, ‘No, it needs to be three-dimensional.’”

[{"type":"text","text":"So Tim volunteered to build the head himself."}]

Over about four days, he cut holes into sheet metal and hammered the steel into shape by hand before welders assembled the final structure.

Today, the dinosaur’s head still gives the sculpture much of its personality, somewhere between terrifying predator and oversized roadside mascot.

The skeleton man and his skeleton dinosaur pet seem to be heading to 1880 Town, but whether that was intentional is anyone’s best guess.

So Strange People Tried Stopping On The Interstate

The sculptures quickly became a roadside phenomenon. Drivers slowed down. Some stopped altogether.

According to both Key and Hullinger, the state eventually installed “No Parking” signs on I-90 near the sculptures because too many tourists were pulling over along the interstate shoulder to snap photos.

“The only thing we get questions about is if people can walk out there,” Key said.

[{"type":"text","text":"The answer is no."}]

The sculptures were never meant to be explored up close. The land around them is fenced, and visitors are discouraged from stopping along the interstate.

Instead, the giant skeleton and his dinosaur are intended as a drive-by curiosity — something motorists glimpse at 80 mph before wondering if they imagined it.

[{"type":"text","text":"Apparently, people remember it."}]

At one point, Tim received a photo from Italy showing someone wearing a T-shirt featuring the famous skeletons.

[{"type":"text","text":"The family had never made or sold such a shirt."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“I have no idea where the T-shirt came from,” Tim said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"How 1880 Town Began"}]

The dinosaur sculptures may steal attention from passing motorists, but the attraction they stand beside has its own unusual history.

The roots of 1880 Town date back to 1969, when Richard Hullinger —  Tim's brother — purchased 14 acres at Exit 170 near Murdo. Initially, there were no plans for a tourist attraction.

[{"type":"text","text":"A gas station came in 1972."}]

Then a movie production company arrived nearby to film an 1880s-era movie. The company built a frontier-style main street set and borrowed Indian artifacts and antiques from Clarence Hullinger.

[{"type":"text","text":"Winter weather shut the production down before filming was completed."}]

When the movie company abandoned the project, it gave the western set to the Hullinger family.

[{"type":"text","text":"That’s when 1880 Town was born."}]

Over the decades, the attraction grew into a collection of authentic prairie buildings and artifacts from the late 1800s and early 1900s, including a one-room schoolhouse, barns, shops and antique collections.

Visitors can also come face-to-face with animals commonly found in the region during the 1880s: horses, chickens, ducks — and even a camel.

Still, for many travelers speeding across South Dakota, the first thing they remember is the skeleton walking a dinosaur through the prairie grass.

[{"type":"text","text":"Honestly, that’s probably exactly what Clarence Hullinger hoped for."}]

T rex on a leash 471761113 10160610337881475 3683588698791023165 n 5 30 26

<title>Near Wyoming: The Skeleton Who Walks A Giant T-Rex On A Leash In South Dakota | Cowboy State Daily</title>

For decades, motorists speeding down Interstate 90 in west-central South Dakota have done double takes at a towering human skeleton leading a T. rex on a leash. It’s a quirky prairie creation born from one man’s lifelong dream to build his own dinosaur.

Near Wyoming: The Skeleton Who Walks A Giant T-Rex On A Leash In South Dakota

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

CASPER — More than a year after Gloria Fuller’s death, her daughters have begun dismantling a world she spent nearly 80 years building.

Down in their mother's basement, beneath exposed studs, cobwebs and insulation, they found a vintage 1950s Coldspot refrigerator still humming with life.

Glowing softly in the dim light like a mirage of mid-century America, the old appliance not only was still running, still held 30-year-old cans of Schlitz — cold to the touch.

In another life, the refrigerator held grenadine, soda bottles and trays of hors d’oeuvres for the cocktail gatherings Fuller hosted downstairs. 

Angie Hoven, one of Fuller’s daughters, remembers her mother as a meticulous hostess.

“She was well-known,” Hoven said with a chuckle, tears welling in her eyes.

If refrigerators could talk, this one would recall laughter rising through smoke, the crack of ice trays and somebody asking Gloria for “just one more” drink before heading home, Hoven said.

Now it sits in a basement frozen between eras, still doing the job it was built to do nearly 75 years ago.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Machine That Wouldn’t Die"}]

The Coldspot itself belongs to another chapter of American manufacturing entirely.

Built by Sears before Kenmore overtook the brand, the refrigerator represents the thick steel, rounded-edge philosophy of postwar appliances — heavy, mechanical and intentionally durable. 

No touch screens. No computer boards. Just compressors, fans and stubborn engineering that doesn’t quit.

At 88 years old, Thermopolis appliance repairman Martin Andreen — 

—still speaks about old refrigerators the way ranchers talk about reliable pickups.

[{"type":"text","text":"“They were good machines,” he said. “Simple.”"}]

Andreen said the old Coldspots were built simply enough that most problems can still be repaired decades later. 

The biggest headache, he said, is when the freezer fan goes out, though even that usually isn't difficult to fix.

His brother owned a Coronado refrigerator that ran for more than 60 years before eventually being moved into a family member’s shop in Douglas.

[{"type":"text","text":"“For all I know, it’s probably still running,” Martin said."}]

Hoven recently listed her mother’s Coldspot on Facebook classifieds for $1,000 — a figure she admits is ambitious. 

Before the listing went public, she said somebody once offered nearly double that for it, though the deal eventually fell apart.

The Coldspot's longevity is impressive, but Andreen laughed at the idea of paying $1,000 for “that old thing.”

Even $200, he admitted, feels high to him, though he acknowledged vintage refrigerators have become collectible for people chasing retro aesthetics and mid-century Americana.

[{"type":"text","text":"“I’d probably try to get the price down,” he said with a laugh."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"An Empire Of Trinkets"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"The old refrigerator isn’t the only monument to another era."}]

Inside the Fuller home, antiques spill from shelves and tabletops like the lacy buttercream frosting of a 1980s wedding cake.

Cream and burgundy wingback chairs face each other beneath crystal chandeliers, doubled in the reflection of gold-framed mirrors. Dappled sunlight filters through gathered lace curtains and bounces off old vases bursting with artificial roses.

The dining room table remains crowded with shimmering glass pitchers, crystal bowls, ornate candlesticks and floral centerpieces arranged as though guests might still arrive at any moment.

“She was a perfectionist,” Hoven said of her mother. “And a collector.”

[{"type":"text","text":"The deeper you move into the house, the denser it becomes."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Lampshades wear fringe and lace collars. "}]

Decorative stained-glass flowers cast rainbow light across bedrooms crowded with brass bedframes and heaps of blush-colored pillows arranged for the heads of sleeping dolls in gauzy dresses that drift toward the carpet like fog.

“Mother would’ve turned over in her grave if she could see what we’ve done to the place,” Hoven said, turning to the cleaning supplies and boxes stacked in every corner, explaining her mother always kept an immaculate home.

“It has been extremely hard,” Hoven said. “Our mom was our world. At first it was hard to part with anything.”

Hoven now moves through the home attached to an oxygen tank, frequently stopping to rest while battling the same COPD that ultimately killed her mother.

[{"type":"text","text":"Still, she continues sorting through thousands of objects piece by piece."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Weight Of Inheritance"}]

Across America, adult children increasingly find themselves inheriting homes like this — houses dense with objects tied to another era of domestic life.

China cabinets. Crystal bowls. Crochet tablecloths. Figurines. Curio shelves. Heavy wooden furniture built well enough to outlive multiple generations.

The problem is that while the emotional value remains enormous, the market value often does not.

Estate sale organizer Robyn Cutter has spent so many weekends clearing out people’s homes she has earned an unofficial Ph.D. in the business of “stuff”: what Americans save, what strangers covet and what nobody can seem to give away.

China cabinets, she said, are notoriously difficult to move. Crochet tablecloths can be hit-or-miss. Dolls fluctuate wildly depending on the buyer.

[{"type":"text","text":"Cast iron cookware almost always disappears quickly."}]

Looking at a photo of Fuller’s Coldspot, Cutter estimated it would probably bring somewhere between $100 and $200 locally.

Still, she understands why people become attached to objects like that refrigerator.

“It’s too gut-wrenching,” Cutter said of families watching strangers buy pieces of their loved one’s lives.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"One Last Goodbye"}]

An auctioneer from Buffalo is expected to sort through the Fuller house’s remaining heaps.

The family also sells items through Facebook Marketplace and eBay, including the refrigerator.

They haul boxes to antique expos at the Ford Wyoming Center, arranging and rearranging fragments of their mother’s collection beneath fluorescent lights while strangers wander past.

By the end of most estate sales, Cutter said, families usually stop focusing on individual objects and start feeling something closer to relief.

[{"type":"text","text":"The stress lifts. The house empties. Life begins moving again."}]

“They just breathe,” she said. “They’re like, ‘Wow, this is great.’”

That sense of closure is still a ways away for Hoven and her sister inside their late mother's home, where mountains of clothes, cups, quilts and figurines still wait to be sorted.

[{"type":"text","text":"And downstairs, the refrigerator keeps running keeping the Schlitz cold."}]

Coldspot composite 5 30 26

<title>75 Years Later, a Casper Woman’s Fridge Is Still Running, Cold Schlitz Inside | Cowboy State Daily</title>

More than a year after a Casper woman died, her daughters found a 75-year-old Coldspot refrigerator, hidden by cobwebs and insulation, humming with life. In fact, the fridge from the 1950s, was keeping 30-year-old cans of Schlitz ice-cold.

75 Years Later, a Casper Woman’s Fridge Is Still Running, Cold Schlitz Inside

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

Clair McFarland

Politics

Wyoming laws governing which state and local Republican Party officials can vote for  leaders are constitutional, and the state Republican Party’s rights to dictate its own membership don’t trump those laws, a judge ruled Friday. 

Uinta County District Court Judge James Kaste’s Friday ruling gives a concrete, though appealable, answer to the state GOP’s yearslong agenda to shrug off the restrictions Wyoming law places on it and behave as a private group.

The dispute in this case started in March of 2025 when Joe Martinez and Phillip Scheel won election to the seats of Hot Springs County Republican Party Chair and state committeeman, respectively. 

But the state party’s Dispute Resolution Committee, after a controversial mediation process, then arbitration process, ruled that two “provisional” ballots of former Vice-Chair Brayden Harvey and former Secretary Mary Ann Jager should have counted in that election.

The ballots tipped the scale and made Harvey chair, and Russell Lewis state committeeman instead. 

But Harvey and Jager weren’t precinct committee people, meaning, they weren’t elected to the county central committee by their Republican neighbors as of the most recent primary election. 

State law says only people elected in that fashion can vote for the county party leaders. 

The Wyoming and Hot Springs County GOP bylaws, conversely, say the officers can vote even if they’re not precinct committee people. 

The state party asserted that because the First Amendment confers to private groups a right to dictate their own membership, the party’s bylaw should defeat state law. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Kaste disagreed. "}]

The state GOP’s most-referenced case in this matter, Eu v. San Francisco County Democratic Party Central Committee doesn’t fit this case, the judge ruled. 

That case, which the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1989, conferred broad associational rights on political parties. 

But it stems from a situation in which the state of California laid much heavier restrictions on the Democratic Party, Kaste noted. 

He ruled that Harvey and Jager’s provisional ballots don’t count. 

“Martinez and Scheel won the election and should have been installed in those offices,” wrote Kaste. “The Dispute Resolution Committee made a manifest mistake of law in concluding otherwise.”

Kaste ordered that Martinez and Scheel should be installed “immediately” into the offices of Hot Springs County Republican Party Chair and state committeeman, and the case dismissed. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Case Autopsy"}]

Former state Rep. Clark Stith, who’s now a judge, filed this case last April on the Martinez group’s behalf. 

Kate Mead, the mother of U.S. Senate candidate Sam Mead, took it over when Stith became a judge earlier this year. 

“I think the judge made the right decision,” said Kate Mead in a Saturday phone interview. “He was super well-prepared, had gone through all the briefs with a fine-toothed comb, had researched the heck out of it.” 

Mead noted that the party can still appeal, and that this time, it has raised its constitutional concerns and the attorney general has had a chance to defend those. 

So the Wyoming Supreme Court can address those concerns. 

The party can also file separate action asking a judge to declare that it’s above the state laws that restrict it. 

“It was obvious that the Republican Party had screwed up by suggesting to the Hot Springs people that my clients weren’t elected, when they were validly elected,” said Mead. 

This case cost people a lot of time, she said, adding, “I’m always kind of offended by that.” 

Mead said that she had to read a lot of documents to enter this case in its final phase, but Stith had done 90% of the work - and the attorney general also defended the state law well. 

Wyoming GOP Chair Bryan Miller did not immediately return a Saturday voicemail request for comment. 

He had announced to a bylaws committee at the party’s April convention that the party is planning to challenge state laws in federal court. 

Mead emphasized in her interview that this case only addressed the state laws that came to bear on this conflict. The party can’t address some of its other angst with state laws, such as a ban on financially backing one Republican candidate over another before the primary election, through an appeal in this case should it choose to file one. 

“I was very pleased with the amount of research (Kaste) put into this matter,” said Martinez in a Saturday phone interview. “I certainly appreciate his diligence in trying to ensure that he’s making the best decision possible based on all the information.” 

Martinez said he looks forward to filling the county party role to which he won election, and performing party work at the state level as well. 

“And just moving forward,” he added. “I think that’s the big thing, is it’s time to move forward and not look back.” 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"A Little More About That Spring"}]

While the dispute over who won the chair and state committeeman position for Hot Springs County was still ongoing last spring, the state party had its Dispute Resolution Committee convene to address the question, April 8, 2025. 

Vince Vanata, committee chairman, presided over the meeting. 

The attorney representing Martinez, Scheel, Meri Ann Dorman and Clay van Antwerp at that meeting was excluded from the call because he wasn’t a member of the state central committee. 

Van Antwerp was excluded too because he didn’t sign a confidentiality agreement within the timeframe the committee required. 

After about two hours, says Kaste’s order, Vanata declared the committee’s mediation efforts unsuccessful and said the committee would switch to arbitration. 

Martinez, Scheel, and Dorman were “terminated from the call” and excluded from that process, the judge wrote. 

The Dispute Resolution Committee issued its arbitration order the next day, proclaiming the provisional ballots valid. 

Meaning, the committee chose to go by the party bylaws rather than state law. 

The Wyoming Supreme Court in 2023 had upheld that same state law over a similar bylaw in a Uinta County Party dispute. But the high court didn’t address the political group’s associational rights debate at that time because no one had invited the state Attorney General, then Bridget Hill, into the case to defend the state law

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Wyoming Law"}]

Wyoming election law imposes numerous tasks and restrictions on major parties - as well as benefits, like letting them help fill vacancies when their incumbent leaves an elected office. 

County central committees consist of men and women, in this case registered Republicans, elected at the biennial primary election by their neighbors, or precincts. 

The law tells the county central committee to elect its officers and state leadership delegates, called state committeeman and state committeewoman, during odd-numbered years. 

The state central committee in turn calls conventions in even-numbered years. 

County central committees help fill vacancies in county elected offices, and the state central committee or local portions of it in state-level elected offices. 

The state party convention also nominates presidential electors, elects the party’s national committeeman and committeewoman, and adopts the party platform, among other duties.  

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"The Judge’s Analysis"}]

Kaste found that the election code doesn’t dictate the party’s membership directly. 

Freedom of association is a right, and does give political parties some protection from state infringement, noted Kaste, from a 1986 case called Tashjian v. Republican Party of Connecticut. 

But courts also use a balancing test called the Anderson-Burdick test when parties assert this right, and they consider how burdensome the state’s laws are on that right. 

If the burden is severe, the court judges the state’s infringement under a rigorous constitutional standard that most laws do not survive, called strict scrutiny.

But if the state is only imposing a “lesser burden” on the party, then the state’s important regulatory interests are usually enough to justify “reasonable, nondiscriminatory restrictions,” Kaste noted from an earlier case. 

State party leaders sued in this case claimed Wyoming violated the party’s rights. 

“Defendants are incorrect,” wrote Kaste.

The state laws impose minimal burdens on the party’s associational rights, and the state’s important regulatory interests justify them “amply,” said the judge. 

He added that the party relied on oblique cases while ignoring cases “that are more squarely on point.”

Wyoming law lays some tasks and formational requirements on the party, but the party’s role in filling vacancies is a privilege in which the state has an imnportant interest, he added. 

Kaste rebutted a point the Wyoming Republican Party has made not just in this case, but repeatedly in public - especially while rewriting its bylaws in April to conflict with state law on purpose. 

“Defendants assert that this case is more like Eu,” Kaste wrote, referencing the 1989 case. “The Court disagrees.” 

In that case, the California election code dictated the party’s composition, terms, and leaders’ residence, among other restrictions. 

The laws unduly burdened the party’s rights. 

They’re not comparable to Wyoming’s major party laws, the judge wrote. He added:

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"“Eu is inapplicable.”"}]

The Wyoming laws challenged in this case impose only a minimal burden on the party, says Kaste’s order. 

The state has a legitimate interest in how office vacancies are filled, he wrote. 

“It would be a real problem if a vacancy occurred in a public office and the State had no one to call,” Kaste said. He said the biennial election also ensures orderly election tasks, like nominating presidential electors before general elections. 

Gop courthouse 5 30 26

<title>Judge Orders Wyoming Republican Party To Follow State Law | Cowboy State Daily</title>

In a setback to the Wyoming Republican Party’s long mission to gain independence from state law, a Uinta County judge Friday upheld multiple Wyoming election laws, dismissing the state Party’s claims that its rights trump them.

Judge Orders Wyoming Republican Party To Follow State Law

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

Renée Jean

Cheyenne and Evanston are hearing the same pitch from data centers — closed-loop cooling, big megawatts, and even bigger paychecks. But while Cheyenne has a petition going for a moratorium on data centers, opposition in Evanston is much more muted.

Tuesday Morning Dance Party: Tom Jones -- Delilah

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