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

<title>You Still Here? Sunday, January 21, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

You Still Here? Sunday, January 21, 2024

 Oh good, a master class on how to avoid water while getting in your car...

Employee kate meadows cropped

Kate Meadows

Government & Politics

A controversial flood mitigation effort that brought 150-200 goats to graze along Bitter Creek in Rock Springs is on hold, at least for now.

After spending about $200,000 over three grazing sessions since the spring of 2025, the Rock Springs City Council chose not to budget additional money for the project in the coming fiscal year, instead directing funding toward cemetery lighting.

"This will be the last we see goats, at least for the next fiscal year of operations," Councilman Dan Pedri told Cowboy State Daily.

The decision at least temporarily halts a program that has generated equal parts criticism and curiosity.

Some residents questioned whether taxpayers should spend tens of thousands of dollars to have goats eat weeds. Others regularly stopped to watch the herd quietly graze along Bitter Creek.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"It's a little source of entertainment,\" Pedri said."}]

During the latest grazing session, which began April 1 and ended June 30, the goats removed roughly 35 tons of vegetation, according to mayor Max Mickelson.

“This does not meet the creeks are ‘fixed',” he said. “It means one more piece of the long-term flood mitigation work was completed.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Different Approach"}]

Rock Springs has struggled with periodic flooding for decades, Mickelson said, dating to alterations made to the creek channel by the former Union Pacific Coal Company.

"The goal was simple," Mickelson said of the Bitter Creek project. "Reduce noxious weeds, brush and fuel load along the creek corridors so water can flow more freely, fire risk is reduced, and our intermittent creek system is in better condition before the next major storm event.

"Our broader work is about protecting homes, businesses, infrastructure and development opportunities from recurring floodplain impacts."

The city brought in goats in the spring of 2025 on a trial basis, paying a Cheyenne operation $50,000. Mickelson said the goats “performed better than expected.”

Council member Randy Hanson had asked the council to look into goats, pointing to other Wyoming communities such as Cheyenne and Gillette that were using them successfully for targeted grazing.

[{"type":"text","text":"“We aren’t pioneers of this process by any means,” Pedri said."}]

Farson land and livestock owner Josh Skorcz caught wind of the project “through the Rock Springs grapevine” and pitched himself as a local solution to the flood-risk problem.

[{"type":"text","text":"Skorcz was the only person who bid."}]

“I provide a service,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “I saw an opportunity where we could supply a service to a local entity that needed it.”

In the fall of 2025, the city paid $58,000 to Skorcz’s LS 5 Livestock for eight weeks.

Then, in April, the Rock Springs City Council voted 6-2 to use goats for a third year for $92,000 – a 59% cost increase.

The increase was largely due to more acreage and longer duration, Skorcz said.

"The city did not pay $34,000 more for the same amount of work," Mickelson said. "The scope, timing, staffing and logistical burden increased in relation to the scope of the project."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Why Goats?"}]

Skorcz said goats can reach steep, brush-choked areas where heavy equipment struggles to operate, reducing vegetation that can create debris dams during high-water events.

[{"type":"text","text":"The work, however, is labor intensive."}]

Under the city's contract, the herd had to be supervised around the clock. Workers also installed and repeatedly moved roughly 10,000 feet of portable electric fencing by hand.

"We're trying to see that incremental decrease over time of the amount of noxious weeds and thick vegetation," Skorcz said. "You're always going to have vegetation, but the type is what's important."

Mickelson said alternatives such as mechanical removal, herbicides, prescribed burning or major construction each come with significant limitations, permitting requirements or environmental restrictions.

Despite reaching stated goals, the project’s growing price tag remained a sticking point.

Pedri and Councilman Rick Milonas – a vocal critic of Mickelson and a contender for this year’s mayoral seat – voted against approving this year's $92,000 contract, saying many constituents questioned the expense.

"That's why I opted not to do it," Pedri said. "My vote was based on the constituents that reached out to me and my promise to be the voice of the majority."

The cumulative cost — roughly $200,000 over three projects — has also become an issue in the mayoral race.

Candidate Katherine Phelps has repeatedly criticized the program on social media. She did not respond to Cowboy State Daily's request for comment.

[{"type":"text","text":"Pedri said the debate ultimately came down to competing priorities."}]

Like many cities, Rock Springs faces a limited budget while weighing other costly needs, including long-term repairs to its civic center.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Could The Goats Return?"}]

Although the goats won't return next year, Mickelson said the city is awaiting a vegetation study from LS 5 Livestock evaluating the project's effectiveness.

That report will help determine whether targeted grazing is included in future budgets after the 2027 fiscal year.

"We intend to make it an annual tool," Mickelson said, "based on council deciding to allocate funds for it."

[{"type":"text","text":"He acknowledged the program's cost can be difficult to justify."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"Nobody likes spending $92,000,\" he said."}]

But he said he believes prevention is ultimately less expensive than recovering from flood damage.

"A community pays one way or another," Mickelson said. "We can pay in steady, boring maintenance before the storm, or we can pay in emergency response, damaged property and regret after it.

"I would much rather answer hard questions about prevention today than stand in front of flooded homes and explain why we didn't use a cost-effective tool we had available."

For now, the city will continue monitoring the Bitter Creek corridor. If conditions create an immediate flood or fire risk, Mickelson said, the council could consider a future budget amendment.

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<title>Rock Springs Ends Controversial Goat Grazing Program After Spending $200,000 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

After spending about $200,000 in goat grazing for flood mitigation since 2025, the town of Rock Springs is putting an end to it for now. One council member said residents say it’s too expensive. "This will be the last we see goats,” he said.

Rock Springs Ends Controversial Goat Grazing Program After Spending $200,000

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Crime & Courts

Public Safety

A Fourth of July fundraiser concert at a Gillette bar had ended, the music was over and patrons were beginning to head home when a firework exploded outside the entrance, blowing all the fingers off one man’s hand and injuring four other people.

"I tried to light a firework and throw it, it blew up instantly," Matthew Lynch said in a public apology he issued Monday about the mishap. "People got hurt and I feel like total shit for it.

[{"type":"text","text":"“I’m sorry for being wreckless (sic) and injuring anyone.\""}]

The explosion happened around midnight early Saturday outside the Otherside Bar & Grill, where a concert raising money for a reproductive health clinic had wrapped up about 30 minutes earlier.

"I almost bled out and got life flighted to Billings,” Lynch wrote in his apology posted to Facebook. "I'm gonna be fine. I'm back home. I'm positive and feel OK, other than immense pain."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Bleeding Profusely"}]

Otherside Bar & Grill owner Chris Ingersoll described the scene to Cowboy State Daily on Monday.

"There was a gentleman with an arm injury bleeding profusely,” he said.

Ingersoll said someone — possibly one of his bartenders — applied a tourniquet before first responders arrived. 

Police officers were only about a block away and reached the scene within minutes to begin rendering aid, he said.

Ingersoll said he believes a man who had come over from another nearby bar ignited what appeared to be a large firecracker near the front entrance.

Surveillance cameras captured the incident, and the video has been turned over to investigators, he said.

Lynch also wrote that he lost all the fingers on his right hand, shattered the bones in his left hand, suffered burns, hearing damage and partial blindness.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Investigation Ongoing"}]

Gillette Police Department Interim Chief Brent Wasson said the incident remains under investigation and no tickets or arrests have been made.

He also pushed back on early reports that the firework had been "launched" from the man's hand.

"There were no launching of fireworks," Wasson told Cowboy State Daily, cautioning against relying on initial reports while investigators continue determining exactly what happened.

[{"type":"text","text":"Whether alcohol played a role remains unknown, he said."}]

According to Wasson, the person who was handling the firework suffered the most serious injuries and was transported by ambulance to the emergency room at Campbell County Health.

Two additional people were taken by ambulance but declined treatment at the hospital, while two others refused transport at the scene.

Ingersoll said he believed the man who was holding the explosive was out of the hospital and back in Gillette, which Lynch confirmed.

[{"type":"text","text":"Messages left for Lynch weren’t returned by publication."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Explosion, Not Fire"}]

Campbell County Fire Department Battalion Chief Cam Siplon said firefighters were dispatched to the bar for a report of an explosion.

By the time crews arrived, the Gillette Police Department and EMS personnel were already treating patients, he said. Firefighters found no fire or smoke, only a crowd gathered in the parking lot.

Based on the severity of the injuries, Siplon said he would expect the firework was something larger than a typical firecracker, although he emphasized that was not an official determination.

He also could not confirm who applied the tourniquet because EMS had already begun treating the injured man when firefighters arrived.

Siplon urged people to leave fireworks to professionals, noting that serious injuries are more common than many people realize.

"Our best bet is that fireworks should be left to the professionals," he said. "They tend to be better anyway, and not as many people get hurt that way.”

Otherside bar and grill gillette 7 6 26

<title>Gillette Man Blows Fingers Off Hand With Firework Outside Bar, Four Others Hurt | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A man blew the fingers off his hand and injured four other people outside a Gillette bar around midnight Saturday. In a public apology, the man, who was life-flighted to Billings, said he tried to throw the firework "but it blew up instantly."

Gillette Man Blows Fingers Off Hand With Firework Outside Bar, Four Others Hurt

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily State Government and Politics reporter, Leo Wolfson.

Leo Wolfson For Cowboy State Daily

Outdoors

Looking up at Colorado's Aspen Snowmass Ski Resort, you'll see large, white tarps covering a mysterious mass two to three stories high. No, the circus isn't in town — it's a matter of snow security.

As unusually warm, long fall seasons become more frequent — like 

 — ski areas across the West and around the world are seeking new ways to guarantee they can open on time. 

One solution is pushing together snow left over from the previous winter, storing it in enormous piles, and reusing it the following season.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Harvesting the Snow"}]

Known as "snow harvesting" or "snow farming," the practice is now catching on at resorts across Idaho, Montana, Utah and Colorado. 

By securing snow piles under thermal mats, blankets, tarps or even hay bales, resorts keep their snow in a giant cooler of sorts, shielded from the heat, sun and rain. 

That means they no longer have to anxiously watch the thermometer for temperatures cold enough to make snow, or wait on natural flakes from the sky.

Antti Lauslahti, CEO of the snow-storage company Snow Secure, believes these efforts will follow the same path as snowmaking equipment did in the 1970s. Most mountains were impressed by the technology at the time, he said, but skeptical that anyone actually needed to make snow.

"Then they started to do it for just the early season, and little by little it just took off," he said.

Lauslahti said Big Sky Resort in Montana — a favorite of many northern Wyoming residents — is running a small-scale test of Snow Secure technology to use on its slopes next season. 

Snow Secure makes white polystyrene thermal mats that fold out like an accordion and can stretch as long as a football field while keeping snow insulated, much like the insulation in a house, at near freezing temperatures.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The New Snowmaking"}]

In recent years, warm weather has repeatedly kept ski areas from meeting their traditional opening dates, sometimes pushing openings past Christmas or forcing seasons to be canceled altogether. 

Early season skiing is one of the industry's most profitable stretches, when public enthusiasm runs highest — especially among casual skiers. The Christmas holidays alone can account for 20% of a mountain's annual revenue, Lauslahti said.

"The beginning of the season is becoming more unpredictable," he said. "A bad start means you lose season-pass sales. If there's at least a minimum amount open in the early season, people accept it better."

Bogus Basin in Idaho and Aspen Snowmass have both recently invested in Snow Secure's mats to guarantee a solid snow base for next season. 

In Aspen, the mats now cover piles on Buttermilk and Snowmass mountains — the equivalent of 3.5 million gallons of water, mostly man-made snow left over from the previous season. 

Beyond saving the snow itself, the practice preserves the money already spent making it and can cut the cost of snowmaking for the season ahead.

Having snow ready to go also gives mountains flexibility to time their snowmaking for the most efficient conditions. 

Snowmaking machines work better the colder it gets, so instead of blowing snow in marginal early-season conditions out of desperation, resorts can draw on their stored supply for a usable base. 

Others are preemptively making a deep base of snow during winter's coldest stretches, either to extend their seasons into May or to save it for the next one.

"It's economically really, really viable," Lauslahti said. "It's really fast, really cost efficient. You need snowmaking, you need groomers, but the point is, you have a new tool."

Lauslahti noted that Levi, a Finnish mountain that traditionally hosts the season's first FIS World Cup race each November, relied entirely on snow stored inside the Snow Secure mats to host the event this past season. 

The mountain itself opened a few years back on Oct. 6 thanks to their snow-storage efforts.

Chris Miller, senior vice president of sustainability at Aspen Snowmass, told the Aspen Times saving snow expands the resort's climate-resilient toolbox for navigating volatile weather.

Snowmass Mountain's relatively low base elevation of 7,870 feet leaves it especially vulnerable to warm, dry early-season spells. 

As host of the Winter X Games, Snowmass produces enormous amounts of snow each fall to build the massive terrain-park features the globally televised event requires. By piling up and covering the leftover snow for the following year, the mountain saves significant money.

Soldier Hollow Nordic Center in Utah has joined the trend too, preserving a 15,000-square-foot mound under the Snow Secure mats. 

At just 5,600 feet of elevation, the venue is slated to host cross-country events for the 2034 Winter Olympics, though that may not happen naturally if Utah sees another winter as poor as this past one.

Luke Bodensteiner, Soldier Hollow's general manager, told NBC News he views the effort as a contingency plan, and hopes that snow farming plus new snowmakers could make Soldier Hollow the first Nordic venue in the country to open this coming fall.

"If we get the results that we think … in the summer of 2033, we'll probably have three to four of these piles going around the venue," he told NBC.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Heat Resilient"}]

Back in Aspen when interviewed last month, Miller said temperatures beneath the Snow Secure blankets were registering at 32.6 degrees. 

Even when outdoor temperatures top 100 degrees, the insulated barriers keep the snow between 35 and 37, Lauslahti said, and can limit melting to about 20% of the original mass over an entire summer.

The mats were put to the test last summer at Bogus Basin, a mid-sized ski area outside Boise, where temperatures outside the piles hit 119 degrees. The snow held up fine, and despite recording its warmest November on record, the resort still managed to open that month.

Snow Secure isn't just for the biggest resorts with the biggest budgets. Lauslahti argues the tarps offer even more value at smaller areas with shorter runs, where every saved inch counts — pointing to a small Wisconsin resort that’s invested in the product. "The first chairlift isn't so long, so you don't need so much material," he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Other Snow-Storage Efforts"}]

Copper Mountain in Colorado stores snow for its summertime private Woodward camps and public hike park. At each season's end, the mountain pushes 

thousands of cubic yards of leftover snow

 from its runs, terrain parks and superpipe into huge piles; months later, it spreads the snow back out into a short run with a roughly 25-foot base, letting the public ski all summer.

Trollhaugen in Wisconsin insulates its snow with 

hay bales and a large tarp weighed down by car tires

 for a terrain-park event it hosts each fall.

Snow farming Ruka 15 Snow Secure 7 5 26

<title>Save It For Later: 'Snow Farming' Is Keeping Ski Seasons Alive Across Rockies | Cowboy State Daily</title>

As temperatures soar in the summer, ski resorts in the Rocky Mountain West are "farming" snow, storing it under giant thermal mats as insurance for the upcoming season. Snow stays close to freezing in the summer even in triple-digit temperatures.

Save It For Later: 'Snow Farming' Is Keeping Ski Seasons Alive Across Rockies

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Jackie Dorothy.

Jackie Dorothy

Around Wyoming

 overnight in the Wyoming Territory with canvas tents, sectional housing and buildings on wheels. It was July 1868 and the town “bred by the devil” was ready for business.

“There are perhaps, three thousand people in and around Benton,” brothers Legh and Fred Freeman wrote in the Aug. 11, 1868, Frontier Index newspaper. “To give an idea of the on-wheels movement we will mention that the office of Wells, Fargo & Co., torn down at Laramie three days before, had its sectioned shingle roof on, and stage business resumed in it that night.”

The Frontier Index, known as the “Press on Wheels,” was also a 

 business that published its paper in these overnight towns.

“Business was so lively that we telegraphed the Laramie editor of our paper, to wheel on at once to Benton,” the Freeman brothers wrote. “We since learn that our new power press is threshing out the work there.”

Benton was an end-of-track town on the construction front of the Union Pacific Railroad, about 12 miles east of present-day Rawlins and just west of present-day Fort Fred Steele.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Baddest Reputation"}]

 the worst of these Hell’s Tent Towns, with claims that 100 men had been murdered there in its short lifetime. Their reputation as a home to “bawdy women and swindlers” was earned when visitors passed through and were shocked by what they saw.

According to historians Mary Lou Pence and Lola M. Homsher, co-authors of “The Ghost Towns of Wyoming,” one 

 that portrayed Benton’s devilishness had been a misunderstanding.

Water for this new town was one of its most valuable commodities. It had to be carted by team and tank from the North Platte River two miles away. The water hauler charged an exorbitant 

Seeing a new way to advertise, a whiskey distiller paid the hauler to paste large billboards on each side of his tank that read "Tanglefoot Whisky."

A Mormon woman soon arrived by train and was waiting for a stagecoach for the next leg of her trip to Brigham's Temple. When she saw the poster-plastered wagon and women rushing from their doors with pails in hands, Pence and Homsher said she became  indignant.

 woman said. “They're buying whisky by the bucketsful!"

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Grant & Buffalo Bill Campaign"}]

To add to Benton’s reputation, even future presidents visited the tent town. Ulyssis S. Grant arrived with Buffalo Bill Cody. The Republican candidate was said to have given a stump speech at Benton to an eclectic group of people, ranging from gentlemen to railroad laborers. 

The Freeman brothers were heavily Democratic and former Confederate soldiers so the story they ran in the Aug.11, 1868, Frontier Index was a satirical attack on Grant and Buffalo Bill.

“When Useless Slaughter Grant was at Benton the other night, Buffalo Bill mounted a dry goods box at a street corner and returned thanks to the people for the splendid ovation (that was not) given the military commander in chief,” they wrote.

The editors claimed Buffalo Bill then auctioned off an old watch to pay for Grant's expenses on his campaign in Wyoming. Otherwise, Grant would be forced to “bum” his way back to Washington, D.C.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Mundane Shootings"}]

In the same paper, when the Freeman brothers shared the local gossip, usually reserved for such tidbits as who had arrived in town or who was engaging in business, the story was about the latest shootings. This time Brownsville, a construction camp not far from Benton, was the scene of several murders.   

— a criminal offense involving at least two people —

 occurred on the streets between two men employed in Creighton's telegraph outfit, the Freeman brothers reported. 

[{"type":"text","text":"As the story goes:"}]

“They had been throwing dice for a pistol, when they became dissatisfied, and the person who owned the pistol — James Williams — refused to give up the money received, which led to a difficulty in which he was shot and supposed mortally wounded. The murderer has escaped.

"A man, named John Wood, accidentally shot himself on Sunday morning while drawing his pistol to shoot a man in a gambling house. He is now in the hospital and is doing well.

"Mike Meehan was shot by a ranchman near Reynolds & Dowling's grading camp, about eight miles from Brownsville. 

"The cause of the affair was, the graders were on a strike, and passed an order amongst themselves that any ranchman who would interfere with their strike or sell liquor to drunken men, they would clean out, and after giving them warning, they still sold liquor to the men, when the graders turned out and demolished some fourteen saloons. 

"During the row, Michael Meehan was shot and instantly killed. The ranchman delivered himself up to the military authorities at Fort Steele."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Rise and Fall of Benton"}]

During its short existence, 200 framed tents and portable buildings had been erected, lots sold to the highest bidder, from $800 to $1,000, and dusty streets laid out. Benton was plotted into five wards and a mayor and one alderman from each ward had been appointed.

might become a more permanent town. A forwarding house was even established to take advantage of the active business taking place.

The most prominent building was described by Pence and Homsher as an immense canvas tent lit by imported chandeliers.

“An immense plate-glass mirror behind the corner bar reflected a strange hubbub of humanity,” Pence and Homsher wrote. “Pistol-packing mamas; lace-gowned and French-heeled dancing damsels; plaid-vested and fob-twisting come-on spielers; campaign-uniformed Indian fighters; corduroyed and buckskinned freighters; bow-tied and velvet-coated dude dandies — all taking chances with fate.”

The historians claimed  more than once during his night shift an overworked barkeep would have to change into another clean white coat to be rid of spatters of beer, bullets or blood.

By September 1868, the railroad had moved on, and so did nearly everyone else. 

The depot was moved east three miles to Fort Steele and Rawlins was designated a rail terminal. Pence and Homsher said that as tents were erected in the new town of Rawlins, former Benton residents were hesitant to buy lots and be fooled again into spending money on real estate that would not last.

Benton only existed for three months before the town was dismantled and it became one of Wyoming’s most infamous ghost towns.

Benton 1 Benton A C Hull Photo 7 5 26

<title>Wyoming History: 100 Murders In 3 Months, Lawless Benton Was ‘Bred By The Devil’ | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Of the Wyoming Territory towns that arrived on wheels along the Union Pacific Railroad, none were as tawdry, bawdry and lawless as Benton, which witnessed as many as 100 murders in its three-month lifespan. Benton, it was said, was "bred by the devil."

Wyoming History: 100 Murders In 3 Months, Lawless Benton Was ‘Bred By The Devil’

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

Renée Jean

Wyoming Life

DUBOIS — When Marion Taylor talks about America, there’s a little catch in her voice that she just can’t help any more than she can help how her eyes start misting over.

That was doubly true Saturday on a flag-lined main street in a tiny Wyoming mountain town, where thousands gathered to celebrate America’s 250th birthday by watching one of the nation’s most unique parades. 

Each year, Dubois fields something few towns or cities of any size could manage — a parade of roughly two dozen military tanks and other vehicles, hand-picked by National Museum of Military Vehicles founder Dan Starks to tell a sweeping story of American freedom.

“This means something to me because I wasn’t a natural born U.S. citizen,” Taylor told Cowboy State Daily. “I immigrated from Canada as a child and we were so — I can almost cry, thinking about it.”

The memory that came flooding back was a much smaller, quieter parade when she was being sworn in as a U.S. citizen at 19 years old.

On America’s 250th, Dubois did something few towns in America can do — fielding a parade with more than two dozen military tanks and vehicles spanning 80 years of U.S. history. "It’s the most unique parade in America,” said one patriotic-feeling parade-goer.

You Still Here? Sunday, January 21, 2024

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