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<title>You Still Here? Saturday, October 28, 2023 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

You Still Here? Saturday, October 28, 2023

 Remember, it is never necessary to look for traffic before opening your car doors...

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

Renée Jean

Wyoming Life

Steve Priest grew up on a farm in Ohio, but even he didn’t know what he was in for when his daughter settled on llamas for an FFA project.

It was supposed to be a short-lived livestock experiment.

Instead, it’s become a herd of long-necked pack animals that now escort Elk Mountain visitors on farm tours, appear at parties and holiday events, and could soon return to Wyoming trails for guided treks. 

“They look like something that came out of a Dr. Seuss book with the long necks and everything,” Priest said with a chuckle. “They’re in the camel family, so they look different than a lot of livestock animals people have seen.”

And that’s part of their charm at any celebration.

A goofy-necked llama has a way of making people smile. It’s all giggles and good feelings from there. 

That’s made Priest’s llamas unexpectedly cool party guests in Elk Mountain. They’ve also become a quirky tourism draw for visitors of the nearby Elk Mountain Hotel. 

“A lot of people who stay at the hotel will come over and do farm tours,” he said. “They’ll lead the llamas around, pet them, feed them and play with them.”

Llamas are good sports about it all — even when there’s some dress-up involved.

“They’ll wear hats,” Priest said. “Like we’ve taken them over to the hotel and they do a breakfast with Santa and they have quote-unquote costumes they wear — some that look like reindeer, some that look like elves, or whatever.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Lions And Bears And ..."}]

Llamas have a protective streak in them that makes them effective at fending off predators. And that was about all Priest knew about llamas before his daughter’s FFA project. 

He wasn’t sure how effective they would really be against Wyoming predators, but they quickly showed him — and he was impressed.

“We actually had a mountain lion get in with them, and one of our female llamas fought it off,” he said. “They are very tough, very protective, and they’ve got some big guard instincts.”

He doesn’t believe they’d hold up against a grizzly bear, but so far black bears, too, have steered clear.

“When there’s a predator, they’ll make a sound that’s a cross between a horse and I don’t know what,” Priest said. “We’ve heard it a couple of times because there’s something back in the willows.”

That first call alerts everyone in the group of llamas to orient on the threat. 

“I think there’s enough of them that they would band together and fight it if need be,” Priest said. “A grizzly bear could easily take them down, but the black bears are a little smaller … there’s enough (llamas) that (black bears) have just passed on by.”

One problem with llamas — which leads quickly to getting more llamas — is they’re herd animals. One lonely little llama is going to be unhappy if left to itself.

“So we started out with four,” Priest said. 

Then Priest’s son pointed out that llamas make great pack animals for hunting and hiking — a growing trend in Wyoming — so the family decided to get four more. 

“One of them, Barb, was older and she ended up passing away at I think she was 20,” Priest said. “Our females are Peg and Linda and then our males are Peak, Boulder, Chris, and Kuzco.”

Now Priest is well on his way into a breeding program to grow his small llama herd — even though the daughter and son who started it all are no longer at home. They’ve both gone off to college. Priest’s daughter is studying occupational therapy while his son is working on an agriculture degree.

That makes the llama herd all Priest’s now, but he’s not worried. 

“(My children) will go wherever life takes them,” he said. “That’s what I always tell them. Go wherever life takes you, and enjoy the ride.”

Priest is going to keep growing his llama herd, though he hasn’t decided just how big it should be.

“I’m just playing it by ear,” he said. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Llama Super Powers"}]

Llamas have a chill and calming demeanor, one humans find catching. It’s one of the first traits Priest appreciated. 

“I work in technology for my job,” he said. “And so the ability to just go unplug and take them and be in the outdoors, playing in the outdoors with them, is something I really enjoy.”

They are great hiking companions, Priest added.

“Their eyesight is so much better than ours,” he said. “Like, you’ll be walking and you won’t notice a deer that’s standing 200 yards out, because it’s frozen and not moving.”

The llamas notice it though, and freeze, with their eyes locked in that direction.

“Then you look over there and you’re like, ‘What are you looking at?’” Priest said. “Then it will move a bit and you’re like, ‘Oh I see what you’re looking at. There’s a deer over there.’”

Llamas can carry roughly 70 to 80 pounds, depending on their own weight, and Priest said they’re a little easier to take care of than other pack animals. Their diets aren’t as restricted as horses. They’ll browse woodier plants like thistle, sagebrush, and dandelions. They still require careful pasture management, because some ornamental and native plants can be toxic. 

“Llamas aren’t necessarily as spooky as a horse, and they’ll go anywhere you can go,” Priest said. “You can’t ride them, just lead them, but they’ll follow you along and they’re really fun to have around.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Wool And Whimsy"}]

Ask Steve what the next five to 10 years with his llama herd look like, and he won’t unveil any grand business plan.

He talks in terms of keeping the llamas and enjoying them, sharing them with visitors, and being open to new ideas — like yoga with llamas if someone in Elk Mountain ever wants to teach it. 

“They’re easygoing,” he said. “They would probably just come up and nuzzle people and bother them, because they think they’re going to get a treat while they’re doing yoga.”

Unlike alpacas, which are generally more reserved around human touch, Priest said his llamas don’t seem to mind hugs.

“They’ll come right up to people and let them hug on them and love them,” Priest said. “They’re just a very, very laid-back animal.”

Priest eventually hopes to offer hiking treks in Elk Mountain with his llamas again, but now his focus is on building a healthy, strong herd for hunting with family and friends, as well as funny farm tours and parties.

The side gig doesn’t pay the mortgage, Priest acknowledged. But it helps cover the hay and grain, and it’s bringing tourists all over the country to his pasture for llama selfies. 

He’s also taking the advice he gave his own children — going wherever the llamas in his life take him, and enjoying the ride with a string of long-necked, Dr. Seuss-looking pack animals.

Contact Renee Jean at renee@cowboystatedaily.com

Llamas IMG 2911 Original 8 16 26

<title>Llamas Are Becoming A Big Tourism Draw At Farm In Elk Mountain, Wyoming | Cowboy State Daily</title>

What began as an Elk Mountain girl’s FFA project has grown into a herd of party-going, trail-hiking llamas that draw visitors for farm tours, selfies, and wackiness. "They look like something from a Dr. Seuss book," says owner Steve Priest.

Llamas Are Becoming A Big Tourism Draw At Farm In Elk Mountain, Wyoming

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Seven years in prison beginning at 19 for putting a club into the head of a Swiss miner was followed by a couple of decades as a preacher and labor movement orator.

His personal reformation rewarded him with a Wyoming state role enforcing children and animal welfare.

But after just months on the state job, allegations of “white slavery” involving two teenage Casper girls in 1924 meant Baptiste John Minort needed to resign his state position and pulpit role. 

Those charges were eventually dropped and he was back filling a pulpit in Torrington when a “disturbing the peace” charge in 1926 was filed, alleging he had been in a rooming house with a woman in Nebraska he claimed was his wife under an assumed name.

An old character that many believed was buried and destroyed for the 42-year-old Torrington grain store manager and police court judge suddenly had resurfaced.

“Torrington Pastor Slays Family, Suicides,” the Casper Daily Tribune reported on Nov. 15, 1926. “Wife and Four Children Dead as Climax to Late Scandal.”

Newspapers across the country carried the headlines that an Associated Press reporter wrote likely were caused by “wagging tongues” and “domestic difficulties.”

Minort was born Feb. 20, 1884, in France and emigrated to the U.S. in 1892 to Missouri.

In 1901, at 17, he married Luisa Elizabeth Huber and they had five children, including Baptiste John Jr. in 1902, sons Carl, David and Clarence in 1912, 1915, and 1917, and daughter, La Von in 1922.

When he was 19, Minort was charged and convicted for killing a Swiss miner, Vincent Gaffney, at a coal camp in Riverton, Missouri, in March 1903 after a dispute about missing money from Gaffney’s room. Gaffney boarded with the Minort family.

“Minort claimed that Gaffney drew a revolver on him, then, in order to protect himself, he struck Gaffney twice on the head with a club, knocking him against a barbed wire fence, after which he choked him,” the Henry County Democrat reported on March 26, 1903. “Gaffney died as a result of his injuries.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Second-Degree Murder"}]

After his conviction on a second-degree murder charge, Minort was sentenced to 10 years in prison but was released after seven.

Newspaper accounts state that while in prison he started reading the Bible and when he got out moved to Nebraska. Whether he pursued formal religious training is not known.

 In May 1914, he took a role as a pastor at a Sterling, Nebraska, church and also had a role as the chairman and clerk of a Sunday school convention.

The Sterling Sun reported he was helping at a revival meeting in Falls City, Nebraska. His efforts in evangelism and teaching grew his church by 200 people, according to a report in the Norfolk Daily News.

By 1922, he was serving as a pastor in a church in Alliance, Nebraska, and was the main speaker at a Labor Day gathering in Casper.

The Casper Daily Tribune on Sept. 5, 1922, reported that Minort delivered an “inspirational address” that promoted the idea of trade unions and how they eliminated “classes” in society. Hundreds gathered to hear him.

“America has no class from which it is impossible to emerge,” he said. “America is distinguished throughout the world by the high standard of living which the masses of her people enjoy.”

By 1924, he had moved to Torrington and taken the pastorate of a Baptist church. He was appointed by Gov. William B. Ross to be the state commissioner of child and animal protection on July 22. Minort embraced the role by bringing charges against 22 boys and girls involved in a wild Cheyenne party in October of that year at the YWCA and Pine Cove. 

He blamed the parents for allowing their children to be at the party.

He also made headlines by uncovering a plot of a stepson to accuse his stepfather of choking an old man to death so he could inherit his mother’s property.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Mann Act Violation"}]

But on Nov. 8, he was accused by a federal grand jury of transporting two juvenile delinquent girls across the state line to Nebraska for immoral purposes under the Mann Act. Minort had taken the pair from their uncle in Casper and was supposed to take them back to a Cheyenne facility.

“The girls told police and federal authorities that Minort, instead of going to Cheyenne, stopped in Mitchell, Nebraska, where he is alleged to have mistreated them,” the Grand Island Independent newspaper reported on Nov. 12, 1924.

Minort responded that the charges were false and he had taken the girls there to be under the care of an aunt. Still, he resigned from his role as the state commissioner and stepped down from the pulpit. The Torrington community rallied around him and a fund was set up for his defense.

Those charges were eventually dropped by the federal district court in April 1926 because the girls could not be located to testify.

Meanwhile, Minort worked for the Cheyenne Police Department supervising chain gangs and then got a job managing the Torrington grain elevator. When the charges were dropped, he was named as a police court judge in Torrington and he resumed preaching at a church in the city.

On Nov. 7, 1926, Minort was caught by Bayard, Nebraska, police in a rooming house with a woman from Torrington who was not his wife. He had registered under the name of “Joe Lander and wife.”

A man from Torrington saw him and remarked he looked like Minort. The town’s marshal investigated and called Minort’s wife in Torrington at 3 a.m. on Monday, Nov. 8.

“Minort, after admitting his identity, asserted that he had been the victim of a ‘frame-up’ and that he had been forced at the point of a gun at Bayard (by men) to get into the automobile with the woman and had been intimidated into registering with her as husband and wife,” The Wyoming State Tribune reported on Nov. 15, 1926.

The newspaper reported that the landlady of the rooming house did not confirm his story. Minort was fined $25 and ordered to pay costs of $15.

On Saturday, Nov. 13, Minort resigned his post as a police judge for Torrington.

Early on Nov. 14 Minort, who had prepared a sermon he called “Breaking the Alabaster Box” for church that morning, took a 12-gauge shotgun and shot his wife in the head as she lay sleeping in a bed with their young daughter, 4. He then used a .22-caliber rifle to shoot his daughter twice in the head.

Two sons, who lay in their beds, were killed with one bullet to the head from a .32-caliber revolver. His second-oldest son was killed as he entered his mom’s bedroom with a shot to the head. He was dressed and, according to the Wyoming State Tribune on Nov. 15, had been working for another family in the country and likely returned home for church before being shot.

Minort took time to write letters to the sheriff, his surviving son at a college in Missouri, and to the public as well as to a religious rival in Casper.

Then he called the local undertaker just after 9 a.m. and told him he needed him at the house.

When the undertaker arrived, he could see Minort on the kitchen floor, gasping for air before he died, the Wyoming State Tribune reported. Police were summoned and found a mirror on the kitchen table that he apparently set up so he could shoot himself in the head.

They then discovered the breadth of Minort’s actions in eliminating his family.

In his letter to the public, Minort asserted that he had been framed in the incident with the Torrington woman in Bayard. In his note to the sheriff, he gave his son’s address at college in Missouri.

In a letter to his son, he explained that his mother had told him she would kill herself if he brought shame to the family again. Minort wrote he was going to save her from “spiritual torment” by killing her.

“I killed her and the rest of them rather than have the shadow of the past upon them,” he wrote. “Mother and children are in heaven and I suffer my own fate through the hands of destiny.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"No Caskets, One Grave"}]

Minor told Baptiste John Jr. to just dig a hole and bury the family in one grave to save on burial costs and that he could sell a box of shells he had at the grain elevator for $20 to get some money to help with costs.

“Well my son, I must hasten, as the gun beckons to me and I must hurry before I have lost my nerve,” he wrote, adding that the rest of his son’s life was his own. “So, do the best that you can.”

A coroner’s grand jury ruled that the murders and suicide were all the responsibility of Minort. The family members were buried in Valley View Cemetery in Torrington.

Minort’s surviving son was a sophomore at William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri, and learned of the shootings from the college dean as he wrote a letter to his father during the afternoon on Tuesday, Nov. 16, according to the Daily Standard newspaper in Excelsior, Missouri on Nov. 17, 1926.

John Minort along with Minort’s brother, Louis, the mayor of Lexington, Missouri, attended the funeral, which was packed with mourners from the Torrington community. All the slain were in caskets, Minort’s exhortation to his son ignored.

The community bore the costs of the funeral and burials, the newspaper reported.

The Western Nebraska Observer reported on Nov. 25, 1926, that the son “bore up bravely” to the tragedy.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Forgiving Mourners"}]

“It was remarked that the crowd seemingly were forgiving and even sorrowful in their attitude toward the dead man,” the newspaper reported. “Many were seen to pause beside his casket and drop a tear. … Torrington people, heard to comment on the affair after the funeral, declared that Minort had not been himself, to all appearances for several weeks past.”

Three years after the tragedy, the young Minort returned to Torrington and visited old friends. 

The Scottsbluff Daily Star-Herald reprinted a story from the Torrington paper on June 16, 1929, that stated that Baptiste John Jr. had been involved in a cafe business and had to quit college due to lack of funds.

“He has enjoyed a fair success and will continue in the cafe business,” the newspaper reported. “His friends in Torrington are glad to learn that he is pleasantly located and making a success of his efforts.”

Minort went on to marry twice, once in 1934 in Missouri. The marriage lasted a year. He married his second wife in 1945 and became a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. 

Baptiste John Minort Jr. lived his last years in Utah and died on Aug. 16, 1970. 

Heworked as cook for most of his life and is buried in Price City, Utah.

Pastor killed family Valley View Thermopolis 8 9 26

<title>Wyoming History: Disgraced Pastor Shocked State By Killing Family, Self In 1926 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Shocking headlines from 100 years ago after a pastor from Torrington gunned down his wife and four of his five children, then himself. He wrote he had brought shame to them when caught with a woman in a rooming house in Nebraska under an assumed name.

Wyoming History: Disgraced Pastor Shocked State By Killing Family, Self In 1926

Business

Kelli Tracy feels like she’s “living in a Hallmark movie.” She and her husband just closed on their own brick-and-mortar store in downtown Sheridan, and she’s now celebrating her 10th year in business. 

These days, her Lil Bee’s Bohemian clothing line ships all over the world, and the business brings in a comfortable $600,000 to $700,000 a year in sales. 

But, like any Hallmark movie, getting to “happily ever after” wasn’t an easy task. 

The journey started when she was unexpectedly laid off from a big corporate job in Florida as a quality assurance compliance manager. It was scary.

“I had just moved in with my now husband but, at the time, my boyfriend,” Tracy recalled. “And he was like, ‘Well you need to get a job. You need to maybe go back to bartending or go back to doing something so you have money coming in.’” 

Tracy had done plenty of bartending in college and had no intention of going back to it. She had a completely different idea, one people told her was crazy at the time.  

“The next day I started my own boutique with clothing out of my closet,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “That’s when Instagram first started. Like it was just coming out and the algorithms were great. Everything was great.”

She propped a mannequin she bought from California — a model she named Lola — in front of her phone, dressed it in her own clothes, and opened a Shopify account. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Lil Bee’s Bohemian was born."}]

Starting out, her biggest problem wasn’t finding customers. She had plenty of people clamoring for the outfits she was styling. 

Her trouble was finding inventory priced low enough that she could resell it with a healthy profit margin. 

“I didn’t know there were places like Fashion Go or like Marketplaces and all the things,” she said. “You can go to Dallas Market and like find all your vendors.”

Initially, to get inventory, she’d go to places like Ross and Marshalls to buy items for the outfits she was promoting on Instagram. It was rare, but if the outfits didn’t sell, she’d just return them.

That strategy wasn’t going to work long-term, she realized. She had to figure out something else.

“Then I met a lady named Holly who owns Baja Ranch and she’s the one who helped me,” Tracy said. “I was buying a bunch of her stuff off eBay, because it was really cheap, to resell. And so she asked me like, ‘What are you buying all this stuff for?’”

When Tracy explained she was starting a boutique and needed inventory, Holly explained where she could go to find wholesale items to resell. 

“I mean, you can buy from me,” she said. “But you can get all of this stuff here.”

And the prices would be much less expensive. Wholesale pricing, Holly explained, would let Tracy keep her margins, without relying on returns.

Tracy, meanwhile, helped Holly figure out how to start Instagram and Shopify accounts so she could improve her business model.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A $12,000 Surprise"}]

Once she had reliable wholesale sources, sales were booming. But there was a big problem. Somehow, despite making many, many sales, the money wasn’t adding up. 

“I was like, ‘Man, where is all the money?’ Like I know I didn’t spend all this money,” she said. 

Eventually she figured out that many of the purchases were landing in her business’ PayPal account. She thought that money would transfer to her bank account automatically, but it was sitting there, quietly waiting for her to go in and authorize its transfer.

“I was almost to the point of bagging it,” Tracy said. “I was like, ‘I don’t think I can do this. I can’t really afford more stuff.’ And then I wound up with all this extra money.”

The business was saved, and Tracy realized she had to get more organized. The scare pushed her to tighten up her books and treat Lil Bee’s less like an experiment and more like the real business it was becoming.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"One Closet Wasn’t Enough"}]

As the business grew, so did its footprint inside the couple’s home. 

It was no longer just her own closet. It was every closet in the house. She put racks in the spare bedroom, the living room, and even one hallway.

“It was just taking over the house,” Tracy said. “It was bad. I remember looking over at my husband and his two kids and the dog and they all looked at me like I was crazy.”

Finally, one day her husband said, “Hey, if you go get a place like a studio or like an office, this whole entire closet here could be your personal closet.”

Tracy heard what he was really saying. It was time for Lil Bee’s to grow wings and fly. 

“I had the keys to a showroom the next day,” she said. “Within 24 hours.”

The business doubled in size and quickly outgrew the showroom. She moved it next to a big warehouse, and just kept upgrading from there. 

“At one point, I think I had two, maybe three warehouses,” she said. “It just kept getting bigger and bigger.”

The growth looked impressive on paper. At peak, Lil Bee’s was doing more than $1.4 million a year in sales.

But the pace was grueling, the overhead relentless, and she was working all the time. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Right-Sizing Her Business"}]

By year eight, she made some decisions that shape the business as it is today. 

First, she decided to start making her own clothing designs instead of just buying and reselling other people’s ideas.

That would also allow her to boost the quality. No more thin, disposable stuff. She wanted pieces that people could keep and love forever.

She also decided just how big she wanted Lil Bee’s to be. 

“It just got to bee too much,” Tracy said. “It was just more, more, more.”

She realized that if she downsized her business, she’d still remain profitable and she would have more time to focus on her own designs.

That turned out to be a fortuitous move. Her ‘70s-inspired clothes caught the eye of a rising country star — Lainey Wilson.

Wilson, then an artist in Nashville, was a regular customer. 

“She bought bell bottoms from me and she called it ‘Balling on a budget,’” Tracy said with a chuckle. “She even spoke about Lil Bee’s on the Bobby Bones podcast.”

Eventually, Wilson and Tracy teamed up on a collaborative clothing line built around flared jeans and boho blouses. 

“We created four items together,” Tracy said. “It was a really cool, button-down top, a pair of jeans, like acid-washed black jeans, a bandana, and striped bell bottoms.”

As Wilson’s career took off, however, the partnership became more complicated. New managers stepped in, and access to the star tightened. 

“I couldn’t just call her up anymore,” Tracy said. “I didn’t take it personally though. She’s a wonderful person, and she’s the same way in person as she is on stage.”

The Lainey Wilson chapter was a fun, unexpected part of her business journey, but it’s not the one Tracy likes best. 

That's the one she’s in right now, designing her own clothes and selling wholesale to 146 stores across America as well as stores in Canada. She also ships orders direct around the world and has a loyal following in Australia. 

The boutique shop she just closed on in Sheridan exactly 10 years after starting her business is a full-circle moment. 

The store is just 800 square feet. But it feels just right for now.

“It’s packed so full of just amazing beautiful stuff,” she said. “I’ve got my entire line in there — all my blouses, and jewelry.”

There are sweaters, jackets, dresses, tallow makeup, bags and a hat bar, too. 

“When you get in there, it’s like a time capsule back into the '70s,” she said. “It’s groovy, and there’s not one thing that’s plain. It’s like a maximalist dream.”

It’s a dream that’s also planted in the one place in the world she’s decided she likes the best of every place she’s ever roamed — Sheridan. She got to know the town after visiting some friends, and just decided it’s where she’s always belonged.

“It’s just marvelous,” she said. “This last Christmas we had the Holiday Stroll and it snowed. I mean, it snowed so much that night, it was just marvelous. Everyone was out there with hot chocolate and their scarves and I was like this is nuts. Like I’m living in a Hallmark movie.”

Lil Bees and Kelly Tracy 8 16 26

<title>How A Sheridan Woman Turned Her Closet Into A Funky Worldwide Fashion Business | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Laid off from a corporate job, Kelli Tracy started selling clothes out of her closet on Instagram. Ten years later, she owns Sheridan’s Lil Bee’s Bohemian and ships her '70s-inspired designs to people all over the world from her Wyoming storefront.

How A Sheridan Woman Turned Her Closet Into A Funky Worldwide Fashion Business

ELK MOUNTAIN — Margaret Karstoft’s grandfather came to America from Sweden in 1870. He spent three years earning the money needed to bring his family to Elk Mountain, where he worked as a tie hack.

Karstoft is among longtime Elk Mountain residents whose memories are now preserved in a new 30-minute legacy film commissioned by the Elk Mountain Museum. 

Created as an America250 project, the film distills hours of interviews into an oral history of the Carbon County town — from its tie hacks and sheep camps to its blizzards, dances, and stubborn will to survive. 

The museum has also retained the raw interviews as part of its archive, and given copies of the tapes to their families. 

Karstoft’s grandfather had a backbreaking, seasonal job. The men lived in tents, working through the winter on Elk Mountain, a place where the brutality of wind and cold are legendary among locals.

The men hewed their ties by hand, one timber at a time, then hauled them to the river, where they were floated downstream in the spring, after it had warmed up enough to melt the ice. 

“My grandmother wanted to come to this country because she heard that the streets were paved with gold,” Karstoft said in a soft voice. “She wanted to come here because it was hard times in Sweden at that time, too.”

In the film, old-timers tell of wind sometimes so harsh men had to crawl rather than walk, and blizzards where they had to trust their horse to get them home. But they also remember neighbors who banded together to help each other not only survive but thrive.

Tie hack camps in Carbon County shut down as large corporate ventures in 1912, but many people in Elk Mountain were still cutting railroad ties by hand into the 1950s. 

[{"type":"text","text":"Bob Johnson was one of them."}]

“It was before chainsaws or anything like that,” Johnson said. “We used a handsaw and an ax. I had a measuring stick and it was 102 inches long. That’s how long a railroad tie was back then. They had to be 102 inches. I cut a lot of those.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Bill Jones remembers peeling the bark off railroad ties."}]

To preserve the town's legacy, old-timers in remote Elk Mountain, Wyoming, are sharing their tales for a film project. The blizzards were so bad, they say, you had to trust your horse to get home.

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