You Still Here

[{"type":"text","text":"Who says chivalry is dead??"}]

You still here no play

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

<title>You Still Here? Saturday, October 21, 2023 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Who says chivalry is dead?

You Still Here? Saturday, October 21, 2023

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

Renée Jean

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

Fifty years ago, the cameras rolled on “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” beneath the soaring columns of Devils Tower.

Locals are still talking about the summer when Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi vision transformed their corner of Wyoming into a cinematic landmark.

It all started in May 1976 after a quiet handshake between a young, then-unknown Spielberg and Crook County rancher Jesse Thomas Driskill. It would go on to completely reshape tourism in northeast Wyoming, though no one knew it at the time.

For the movie’s legions of fans, this anniversary will mark the making of a cult classic, which was released in 1977 by Columbia Pictures more than a year after filming its defining scenes of making first contact in Wyoming. 

For people who live and work in the shadow of Devils Tower, this 50th anniversary marks the moment just before everything changed.

Thanks to the film, Devils Tower went from a curious landmark as the nation’s first national monument to a bucket-list stop for movie lovers — and believers in extraterrestrial life — from around the world.

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

When Spielberg first showed up, though, the land around the monument’s boundary was just another hay meadow.

Since then, visitation has continued to grow. 

Devils Tower hosts upward of 100,000 visitors per month in the peak months of July and August. It has seen as many as 509,000 visitors in a single summer. 

The influx supports tens of millions in visitor spending in the surrounding communities, according to National Park Service and Wyoming Office of Tourism.

"'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' didn’t just film in Wyoming, it left a legacy behind," said Domenic Bravo, executive director of the Wyoming Office of Tourism. "Decades later, people still chase that feeling: the mystery, the landscape, the sense that something bigger exists around Devils Tower. That’s the power of cinema."

Crook County rancher Ogden Driskill, who is also a state senator, was a junior in high school at the time his family and Spielberg struck their bargain.

“They took the hay meadows at the entrance to Devils Tower and turned them into the decontamination base and the main base where the movie would be filmed,” Driskill told Cowboy State Daily. “And he swore us to secrecy at the time. 

"He was determined that the world didn’t know about Devils Tower, and he wanted to keep it that way until the film happened.”

The Driskill family agreed to keep the secret, though they were sure Spielberg was wrong about all that. Surely everyone already knew about Devils Tower.

When the film finally came out in 1977, though, Spielberg’s instincts proved to be right on the money; it was a box office smash hit,

The first sight of the tower in the movie was mind-blowing for audiences, many of whom couldn’t fathom that such an unusual geologic feature existed in America. They had to go see it for themselves.

“That basically doubled tourism visitors,” Driskill said. “The movie really elevated Devils Tower to the next level. We are truly a nationally known destination at this point.”

Dreyfuss Vs. John Wayne And Mashed Potatoes

While Driskill watched his family’s hayfield turn into both a “Decontamination Unit” and the film’s headquarters, Barbara Wilson-Sowerwine was watching Hollywood drift in and out of her parents’ country store a few miles down the road.

No one had any idea that the movie was going to be a blockbuster. 

Financial writer William Flanagan, in fact, predicted the movie would be a flop. Spielberg and George Lucas, meanwhile, decided to hedge their bets after visiting each other’s sets. 

Each was so convinced the other’s movie would do the best at the box office they pledged to share 2.5% of their movies' profits with each other.

Close Encounters star Richard Dreyfuss was just a nice guy, Wilson-Sowerwine recalled, at the time the biggest “non-star” star she’d ever met.

“Dreyfuss just liked hanging out,” she recalled.

That’s what he was doing one night when a group of regulars came in for their usual broasted chicken dinner at the little restaurant where Wilson-Sowerwine worked.

He was standing by the counter when talk turned to the movie that was being filmed nearby, prompting one rancher to snort and say, “Well, it’d be one thing if they had some real actors like John Wayne,” Wilson-Sowerwine recalled.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Dreyfuss didn’t miss the comedic beat. "}]

“He’s a character actor and he’s famous,” Wilson-Sowerwine said. “So I think he just thought it was funny. His reaction was like, ‘Well, I’m no John Wayne.’”

The funny story and the transformation of the hay meadow into a movie set, complete with a government “decontamination unit,” are the things Wilson-Sowerwine will never forget.

She’ll also never forget the mashed potatoes scene, when Roy Neary, played by Dreyfuss, uses a fork to shape his fluffy spuds into a miniature Devils Tower in front of his confused family.

Then he starts weeping and says one of the movie’s most classic lines.

“This means something,” he says, insistent despite their wild, wide-eyed looks. “This is important.”

Mashed potatoes have never been the same for her since, Wilson-Sowerwine said.

“I can’t look at a pile of mashed potatoes without wanting to make a tower,” she said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Campground Inspiration"}]

Back when Spielberg’s crew rolled into town, there wasn’t much of a campground at all. Not like there is today.

There was an A-frame, Wilson-Sowerwine said. And there was the small country restaurant and a scattering of other campsites.

The movie crew slapped a “Decontamination Camp” sign over the front of the A-frame right away, then built out from there until they had the full-blown ground zero for alien invasion that’s so familiar in the movie. 

It was amazing to see that come to life, Wilson-Sowerwine said.

Then, almost as quickly as they’d blown into Wyoming, the movie crew was gone, leaving behind a hayfield that was, to a farmer and rancher, a real mess.

Instead of simply reclaiming the hay field, the Driskills decided to use the cleanup money they’d been given to 

That’s turned out to be an incredibly smart move, Driskill said. One that’s been helping to sustain the family’s ranch land ever since.

In fact, the film has helped sustain many businesses in the community.

“It was incredibly game-changing,” Driskill said. “At the time the movie was filmed, the A-frame down there had maybe a couple of people working at it. Devils Tower Trading Post had a postmaster and a couple of people. The business on top of the hill wasn’t there yet.”

That was the extent of Devils Tower tourism before Spielberg’s movie came out. After, as visitors started showing up to see the tower, the community realized they had just struck tourism gold.

“We all ganged up together and the state invested lots to promote Devils Tower,” Driskill said. “So now those businesses employ more than 100 people, and I don’t know what the tax revenue is, but it would scare you. The gross income off of all those businesses is in the double-digit millions at this point.”

Driskill is among the first to grouse about bumper-to-bumper traffic from July to early September, but he knows it’s been good for the area. It’s a better economic avenue, in his opinion, than seeing ranchland and wildlife habitat fragmented by random subdivisions.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Cowboys And Aliens"}]

Today, Devils Tower has become a pilgrimage for movie buffs who want to stand where Roy Neary’s mashed-potato vision finally made sense. 

Once they get there, they’re greeted with a blend of “Cowboys and Aliens” kitsch that’s popped up all over the Devils Tower area, including at the Driskills’ campground at the tower’s base.

“People ask about that all the time,” campground manager Andrea Wood told Cowboy State Daily. “And we tell them, ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ was filmed here, and that’s why we have aliens everywhere.”

This summer, there’s a mural going up on the pool house that fuses the theme of ranch hands and flying saucers. The swimming pool, meanwhile, is shaped like a cowboy boot, to honor the family’s cattle-trail roots.

Some new, life-size aluminum alien figurines have just been purchased for the golf course, which has nine holes devoted to the family’s ranching history, and nine for the campground’s Close Encounters story.

Driskill tracked the figurines down in Texas, buying up what he said will be that store’s last.

Tariffs and aluminum prices have made the statues much more expensive and harder to come by, so Driskill bought out the store’s remaining stock.

Heads turned all the way back home to Wyoming, Driskill said, and people tried to buy the aliens right off the trailer, but they were not for sale.

Wood said she is planning events to mark the 50th anniversary of the movie’s release next year, but will likely aim for September rather than the filming months of May, when the campground is already quite busy. 

She’s also more likely to target the release date of the movie, rather than its filming.

There will likely be souvenirs, to mark the occasion, including T-shirts, ball caps, stickers and more.

“I know part of what we’re going to do is the 3K race, the CE3K,” she said. That’s shorthand for Close Encounters of the Third Kind. “That will require people to have a costume related to the film, and every 1K they’ll have to stop and do a movie-related activity.”

As dusk settles in over the Driskill family’s KOA campground and the stars come out, the film that inspired the campground and changed tourism in northeastern Wyoming flickers to life again every summer night.

The Driskill family has been showing "Close Encounters" every night of the summer for the last 40 or so years, and has no plans to ever stop.

“It’s the longest-running movie in a single location ever,” Driskill said. “We still show it every night.”

It’s a tradition that brings people back year after year, Wood added.

Some nights, the audience is two and other nights 200.

“There are tons of groups dedicated to 'Close Encounters' with people from all over the world,” she said. “People come to stay with us because it’s the filming location — and because we show that film every night.”

Wood, who has watched the movie more times than she can count, never gets tired of it.

“It’s such an interesting film from a humanitarian standpoint,” she said. “If you really think about, what that story is telling us about humans and other-worldly beings, and what our connection to them may or may not be — it’s just such an interesting concept. 

"Spielberg was a genius in developing characters and plot lines that really make you think about things.”

Wood has been told by people inside Hollywood that Spielberg’s film still commands a lot of respect, not just for its emotional depth, but for the new ground covered by its cutting-edge special effects and soundstage work.

“When we went to California and listened to him talk about the movie, it was clear how much it shaped his career,” Driskill added.

Close Encounters came right after “Jaws,” when Spielberg needed to prove his success was no fluke, and right before “E.T. the Extra Terrestrial."

Driskill said he’d love to meet Spielberg again someday to tell him how much Close Encounters has meant to his family and to Wyoming.

It’s a story he and his family love to tell, about how a mysterious rock, a handshake deal, and a strange, little sci-fi movie quietly rewrote the destiny of an entire corner of the Cowboy State.

“On multiple levels, that film changed many things,” Wood said. “People come here from all over the world because of it.”

They come to sit under the stars and wonder as they watch Spielberg’s mothership rise up again in a film that’s stood the test of time, night after summer night.

Contact Renee Jean at renee@cowboystatedaily.com

Close encounters devils tower 5 31 26

<title>50 Years Later, Sci-Fi Fans Still Find Their ‘Close Encounters’ At Devils Tower | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Fifty years ago, the cameras rolled on “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” at Devils Tower after a handshake between a then-unknown Steven Spielberg and rancher Jesse Thomas Driskill. It would go on to completely reshape tourism in northeast Wyoming.

50 Years Later, Sci-Fi Fans Still Find Their ‘Close Encounters’ At Devils Tower

Zakary Sonntag

Rusty Rawson was good at asking for trouble. He wasn’t good at asking for help. That started to change one night in a desert wash on the outskirts of Las Vegas.

He was out of work, hooked on meth, and surviving by the reflexes of a gang life he thought he’d left behind.

He slept in a makeshift fort of rods and tarp. He boiled water for hygiene over an open flame and washed his clothes in a splash pad at the public park. 

To sustain his addiction, he beat up pedestrians and robbed them for cash.

Through it all, he had a partner in crime: his 11-year-old son, Sterling.

Rusty knew if they were caught by police the state would take his son. It was the outcome he feared most, and it began to feel inevitable. Then one night a thought dropped into his head.

in our little hut we built in the desert, and out of nowhere I heard something tell me, 'Ask your son what to do. He’s got the answer,'” Rusty said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘Go Back To Casper'"}]

It wasn’t in his nature to take direction, but the thought wouldn’t go away. 

Finally, he turned to his son and said, “What do I need to do for you?” 

Sterling said the question caught him off guard, but the answer came to him instantly.

"I turned to him with as calm a voice as I had, and said, ‘Dad, everything will be OK if we go back to Casper,’" Sterling said. 

Three days later, they were on a bus to Wyoming, where Sterling was raised. 

Now, nearly two years after their return, father and son find themselves within sight of a future that once felt out of reach.

Their turnaround, rooted in the Wyoming Rescue Mission, stands out not just for how far they’ve come, but for the role each played in helping the other get there.

At a time when homelessness has reached record levels nationwide, and growing numbers of children experience housing instability, their story offers a rare perspective about what happens when a child becomes the steadying force in a parent's life.

“The only thing that kept me sane at that time was my son,” said Rusty. “He kept me calm. He was my peace.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Not The One To ‘Test’"}]

Rusty Rawson has a barrel chest and a bald head. 

He grows a mustache to hide his missing teeth, half of which he lost in a blow from a baseball bat. The rest fell out from decay because of meth use, a habit he picked up at the age of 12.

He fidgets with tissue to mitigate his ADHD and bounces his leg when anxious; it bounces a lot when he talks of his past.

He grew up in a trailer home in North Las Vegas. He ran with rough crowds, but he also showed promise as an athlete. 

As a freshman at Western High School, he placed second in state as a wrestler. He placed second again his sophomore year, and then took fifth place in high school wrestling nationals.

All the while his support system at home weakened due to his parents’ failing health.

His father, a Teamsters Union truck driver, was sidelined by a severe bowel condition and repeated surgeries. His mother’s life was upended by a sexual assault and later a brain tumor that led to surgically induced epilepsy.

“I had to fend for myself,” Rusty said. “I started selling drugs, and school was the best place to do that.”

He was caught with marijuana at high school his sophomore year, and administrators responded by barring him from extra-curricular activities, like wrestling. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"That’s when he dropped out."}]

He was one of the few white kids in a predominantly black neighborhood, and he said that made him a target for rigorous “testing,” street speak for measuring whether he’d fold in the face of intimidation, or if he’d fight back.

“I was a white kid in a black neighborhood, so we would get tested a lot more to see if we had the heart, to see if we were down, to see if we could scrap,” he said.

“I always — always — let them know that I wasn’t the one to test.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Life Closing In"}]

He earned respect, but rising in the gang life only put a bigger target on his back. 

His first close call with violence happened in junior high, right in front of his school locker, when a classmate rushed from behind and stabbed him with a knife in the back, narrowly missing Rusty’s spine.

The violence ramped up from there, finding him on street corners, and even at home, endangering not only himself, but his family. 

One evening he was standing in the front room when semiautomatic gunfire ripped through his family’s trailer. 

Rusty was struck in the leg. His uncle, watching television, took a bullet in the arm. His mother ducked below the kitchen counter as shards of a broken coffee pot rained down on her head.

"That’s when they kicked me out,” said Rusty, who was 15 years old at the time. “They didn't like their house getting shot up."

Even as he drifted in and out of trouble through his teens, Rusty yearned to build an honest life. 

By 20, he’d begun work as a truck driver. A few years later, he took a gig with a pipeline company in Rock Springs, Wyoming. 

In Rock Springs, he met a woman and had a son — Sterling.

Sterling Rawson has a long mop of curly hair, reminiscent of a younger Weird Al Yankovic, a stark contrast to his father’s hairless head. 

But they have far more in common than not, beginning with an unwavering loyalty to one another.

Sterling’s first 10 years were relatively stable. He lived with both parents for a while and had good friends at Cottonwood Elementary. 

When his parents separated, Rusty became Sterling’s primary, and then sole, caregiver.

They lived together at the Aspen Trailer Court in Casper until 2023, when a redevelopment project forced them out. That’s when Rusty decided to move back to Vegas to take a job driving dirt trucks.

Once there, it didn’t take long for his old habits to find him again.

“I was clean for four and a half years. But the people that I knew from before, I ran into instantly,” Rusty said. “About 24 hours after being back in Vegas, I started getting high.”

Within a year, meth use caused Rusty to lose his job as well as their rental home. Sterling didn't finish sixth grade. Instead, he got an education on how to survive on the street.

Sterling described homeless life as a grinding, joyless routine.

Every night they set up a shelter. Every morning, they took it down. They dove dumpsters for food, collected empty cans and bottles to redeem for cash. 

On some occasions, they walked as many as 20 miles in a day. They cooled off in the fountains at the city park.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘Death, Rape, Murder'"}]

Sterling talks about this life in a calm, even tone, as if it were merely an unglamorous summer job. 

“There wasn’t anything really fun about it,” said Sterling. “It was just surviving.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"His father spoke of it more cynically."}]

“Death, rape, murder,” said Rusty, listing the dangers prevalent in the encampment. “And I’m out there with my son, trying to protect him while being homeless.”

His father carried the fear for both of them.

“I knew my dad would protect me. I know that I was safe with him. I know what he can do. I wasn’t scared.” Sterling said, offering an example of how his father had fought off thieves in the wash. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Although, there was an exception."}]

“The only time I felt scared was when my dad was getting high; anytime my dad was on drugs,” he said.

As Rusty fell into a state despair, Sterling kept his cool, which is why his father eventually followed the silent prompt he felt that night in the wash. 

Sterling didn’t see the responsibility coming, but he was ready for it.

“When he turned and looked at me and asked me with a kind of a shaky voice (what to do), I just knew that going back to Casper was the only right choice,” Sterling said. 

“It was the best decision we made so far,” he added.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Back To Casper"}]

For a week, they lived out of an SUV parked in the back of a Pilot truck stop in Casper. Then the truck stop clerk told them where they could get a free plate of hot food: Wyoming Rescue Mission.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"They got more than a hot meal."}]

For the last 18 months, Rusty and Sterling have been staying in beds at the Mission, where Rusty has joined its Discipleship Program, a Bible-based recovery program he said has helped him come to terms with his struggle.

When he talked about that day’s program lesson on the letters of Paul, his eyes lit up. His leg stopped bouncing, too. 

“I think there was something divine talking to me in the desert that day, telling me to look towards my son for the answer,” he said. “God, Jesus, the Holy Trinity, however you want to look at it, but that's what it is to me.”

It’s also given his son the stability needed to go back to school. 

If Sterling comes across like a world-wise adult when discussing life on the street, he sounds more his age, now 14, when the topic turns to favorite subjects in school.

He grins while showing off an assignment from wood shop, a “tire thumper” used by truck drivers to get a quick read of air pressure. He made it for his dad. 

Yet living on the street forced Sterling to grow up quickly, and he sometimes feels disconnected from a cohort of classmates his age whose drama strikes him as trivial.

“They all were immature compared to what I've been through. They all acted so immature that it was hard to be friends with them," he said, explaining that he now gravitates toward older company. “Most of my new friends I have are either seniors, juniors, or sophomores.”

He’s taken a special interest in the subjects of culinary arts and mathematics, and despite missing two years of school, this week he finished his freshman year from Kelly Walsh High School with a 3.8 GPA.

This summer he’s going to wrestling camp. Next year he plans to join the JROTC. 

When they first arrived in Wyoming, the father and son were sharing two pairs of shorts and three T-shirts between them. They now have independent wardrobes.

Last week, Sterling’s friend gave him his first pair of Air Jordans. Next week, Rusty will start the process of having new teeth implanted with help from the Mission.

What hasn’t changed is the thing that got them through.

“We’re best friends. We always have been,” said Rusty, turning to his son. “I love you, bro.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"“I love you, too,” said Sterling. "}]

Editor’s Note: Interviews with Sterling and Rusty were conducted independently, as well as together.

Rusty and Sterling Rawson IMG 7504 5 31 26

<title>How A Casper Father And Son Saved Each Other From Lives Of Gangs And Drugs | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Living homeless in a Las Vegas wash, hooked on meth, and surviving by the reflexes of his past gang life, Rusty Rawson turned to his adolescent son for guidance. The answer brought them back to Casper and toward a life that seemed out of reach.

How A Casper Father And Son Saved Each Other From Lives Of Gangs And Drugs

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Jackie Dorothy.

Jackie Dorothy

John “Josh” Deane was 16 years old when he left his home in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, for the Wild West in 1872, lured there by the adventures he had read about in the 10-cent novels of his day. 

Instead of the excitement he dreamed of, the teenager found life a struggle just to survive.

Deane eventually took a job for $75 a month driving freight, a profession known as "bull whacking." 

By 1876, Deane was 20 years old and landed an opportunity that he considered an advancement in life. 

He was hired as a government dispatch carrier at the princely sum of $125 a month. 

In 1928, Deane told his story to a biographer about he carried one especially important dispatch, related in his own words in the book “The Mayor of Meeteetse.” 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Rumors Of A Fight"}]

Deane had arrived at Fort Brown in the middle of June 1876 and was told by Col. Julius Mason to remain a few days. 

Mason had just arrived himself from Fort Riley, Kansas, and was concerned because there were rumors of a fight with the Indians in the Rosebud country. 

“A little later, he decided to send me to the camp of Custer and Reno and told me to select an Indian to accompany me,” Deane said. “I picked Niogen Doget, a Shoshone, and we started out on the morning of June 24, with our saddle horses and one pack horse.”

The two men had orders to reach their destination as quickly as possible, so they traveled fast and light. 

Crossing Cottonwood Creek, they made our way up the slope of the Owl Creek Range. 

On the summit of the mountains, Deane described pausing to look down for the first time into the Big Horn Basin which would one day be his future home. 

“From my point of vantage, I could see the Big Horn River and could trace its course for many miles, by the line of cottonwood timber along its banks,” Deane said. “Not a human being, nor a sign of human habitation, was visible in all the valley.”

As Deane and Niogen Doget took in the view, they were unaware of the danger that Custer, Reno and the others would be facing the next day along the Little Bighorn River.

John “Josh” Deane came West looking for adventure — and got more than he bargained for when he took a job as a military dispatch rider. It was 150 years ago that he found himself carrying the first message about Custer’s last stand to Wyoming’s Fort Brown.  

You Still Here? Saturday, October 21, 2023

In case you missed it

More in You Still Here

Today In The Ultimate Test: Sunday, May 31, 2026

Today In Parenthood: Sunday, May 31, 2026

You Still Here? Sunday, May 31, 2026

Bonus Video 1: Sunday, May 31, 2026

Most read