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

<title>You Still Here? Saturday, February 10, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Now let's all find out what a chicken prefers to seat: seeds or KFC.

You Still Here? Saturday, February 10, 2024

 Now let's all find out what a chicken prefers to seat: seeds or KFC.

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Outdoors

Hunting

A Wyoming man is apologizing for tossing, kicking and stabbing a coyote in a controversial video that went viral last week.

Aron Snyder posted a video statement on social media over the weekend in which he says the coyote video was taken in Texas in 2019 or 2020.

He said that he finished off the wounded coyote with a knife because he didn’t have a firearm with him at the time. He also admits that the video is "a very bad optic."

Snyder also confirmed that because of the video, his employment has been terminated, and that he accepts that decision.

 to Cowboy State Daily last week, saying that Snyder is from Riverton. The video and accompanying information were also sent to wildlife agencies and animal welfare groups in Wyoming and several other states.

There was no response to messages to cellphone numbers registered to Snyder.

Cowboy State Daily reached out to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD), asking if the department is investigating the incident depicted in the coyote-killing video, and if any reaction might result.

TPWD law enforcement spokeswoman Maggie Berger promptly responded with an email saying she would check into it, but was swamped early Monday.

“We are currently responding to service calls due to flooding and severe weather in multiple areas of the state as well as much time being dedicated to the new world screwworm response,” she stated.

There is concern in Texas that an emerging screwworm infestation in cattle will 

. There’s also worry that it could eventually hit big game herds in other states, including Wyoming.

Response to the coyote video has been overwhelmingly negative. Some hunters and animal welfare advocates have condemned the depicted actions as unethical and cruel.

However, some social media commenters have supported Snyder, saying the video shows him doing what he had to do to kill the coyote with the means he had at hand at the time.

In the video, Snyder is seen stabbing the coyote once in the shoulder area. Supporters have commented that indicates he was trying to puncture the coyote’s lungs and/or heart, which would have resulted in a quick death.

In his statement, Snyder said the video was taken during a coyote hunt “after an ice storm” in Texas.

“The coyotes were wreaking havoc on my buddy’s cattle, horses (and) dogs, as they do,” he said.

He said he drove an ATV to the location where the coyote in question was, but had left his gun behind in a pickup.

“When I got to it (the coyote), um, it wasn’t dead, it was still alive,” he said. "Pulled it out of a brush pile, um, kicked its legs out from under it, stabbed it, you know, it was growling at me, I kicked it again."

He also said he performed a “dead check” on the animal. That’s a term hunters use for checking to make sure an animal is dead.

Snyder said he recalled that he might have stabbed the coyote once more, although the video clip shows him stabbing it only once.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘Bad Optic’"}]

Regarding the video, Snyder admits that “it’s a very bad optic, I understand that, for the hunting community. That wasn’t my intention but even when I watched it, it looked bad."

He said that if one watches predators “tear apart” wildlife, dogs and livestock “you do lose value and respect for them (predators)."

“That’s not an excuse that’s just a fact of life, and my actions that day showed that,” Snyder said.

Snyder also said the fallout from the video could be a “blessing in disguise” because it gives him a reason to get off social media and simply enjoy being outdoors.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Fired From Born Primitive"}]

After the video emerged, the Born Primitive Outdoor clothing and gear company announced that it had 

“Born Primitive Outdoor supports ethical hunting and holds itself and its partners to that standard,” the company says in the announcement. "The behavior shown in the video involving Aron Snyder does not align with that standard. 

"As a result, Aron Snyder is no longer an employee of Born Primitive,” 

A message requesting further comment from Born Primitive was not answered by publication time.

In his video statement, Snyder confirmed his termination from the company saying, “my actions are mine. Born Primitive should not be held responsible. I respect their decision.”

Aron Snyder inset 6 15 26

<title>‘A Very Bad Optic’: Wyoming Man Apologizes For Controversial Coyote Killing Video | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Wyoming man named Aron Snyder confirms he’s the person seen tossing, kicking and stabbing a coyote in a video. The video is “a very bad optic,” he says while apologizing in a weekend social media post.

‘A Very Bad Optic’: Wyoming Man Apologizes For Controversial Coyote Killing Video

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

CHEYENNE — A dad who once traded a black powder rifle for a rusted Model T decades ago left his four daughters and son with a lot of memories, and a lot of antique cars and parts.

That Model T acquired in the late 1950s began a hobby and series of antique cars that over nearly 70 years kept Alex Connell, who died on May 1, 2025 — and sometimes his kids — digging into Wyoming dirt for rusted treasure. 

They once scoured a national park as part of their dad’s effort to uncover car frames and find parts that would be transformed by the self-taught craftsman.

Now Connell’s legacy fills two garages and a barn on the north side of Cheyenne that contains three Packards mostly restored and nearly all the parts for an extremely rare 1907 American Underslung Roadster.

There also are scores of other parts for Packards, Model Ts and Model As.

“We had Bonhams come and look at them and they were so excited,” said Kathy Dillmon, Connell’s youngest daughter, referring to the international auction house. “We let them take a 1916 Studebaker, it wasn’t the best one.”

The price the car went for at an Arizona auction was well below the value the Bonham representative told the family it would likely bring. 

Their dad left them his estimates of the value of his cars. Now the heirs are looking at a long and winding road to determine next steps in selling their dad’s passion and collection.

The remaining nearly restored cars include a 1909 Packard Limo, 1909 Packard Touring Car, and 1929 Roadster.

Connell’s children — Kim Parker, 72; Kay Irwin, 70; Kris Connell-Johns, 67; Tom Connell, 65; and Dillmon, 67 — now have the cars listed with Horseless Carriage Club of America at reduced prices. 

They know that the older generation interested in antique models like these has given way to Baby Boomers more interested in Mopar muscle cars.

But they have stories to tell about family outings at Cheyenne Frontier Days parades, where they were all dressed in period clothes while riding in one of their dad’s restored machines.

Parker said both of their parents were born in Michigan, Alex Connell in Muskegon and Luann in Holland.

Connell enlisted in the U.S. Air Force after graduation from high school and was assigned to F.E. Warren Air Force Base for his technical school as a lineman.

After arriving on the base in 1952, one day her dad told his squadron’s leadership a story after mail call.

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

“Daddy told his commanding officer that he got a woman in trouble in Michigan and he had to get married right away,” she said. “That was a lie.”

The family story is that Connell hopped a train “like a hobo” and went back to Muskegon to knock on the door where Luann lived. 

Her mother answered on a Friday night and asked him what he was doing back in Michigan.

“I’m here to marry Lucy and we’re going to do it tomorrow,” Parker repeated her dad’s lines. “We’re going to get a train and go back to Cheyenne by Monday.”

The unsuspecting Luann, aka “Lucy,” agreed. 

Her mother and grandmother helped put together a Saturday wedding and they were married. She was 17, he was 19.

The couple caught a train back to Wyoming that had them sitting up in passenger seats for 24 hours, Parker said.

When they got to Cheyenne, they walked seven blocks from the depot to an apartment he had rented for them. 

Two years later, both his mother and Luann’s mother died of cancer, and Connell obtained a hardship discharge. They moved back to Michigan with 1-year-old Kim to help their families.

In Michigan, two more daughters (Kay Irwin and Kris Connell-Johns) were born. But the couple missed the West and the mountains. 

They moved back to Cheyenne in 1957 and Connell joined the pipefitters’ union and became an apprentice, and then journeyman, Parker said.

Connell’s children said that their dad’s career involved several construction projects that included schools, a water plant, hospitals and a lot of work for the Air Force on missile silo construction.

Kay Irwin remembers her dad one day being contacted by an F.E. Warren Air Force Base officer to do some welding at a missile site and how a helicopter was sent to pick him up and take him out there. He returned home at the end of the day.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Car Hobby Begins"}]

Tom Connell said his dad’s love of antique cars and restoring began before he returned to Wyoming. 

He had been a aficionado of black powder rifles when he learned about an old Ford someone had in Marne, Michigan.

“He traded a black powder rifle for a Model T,” he said. 

Alex Connell went on to become a self-taught craftsman and expert restoring cars, graduating to Model As and more upscale Packards, American Underslung and Pierce-Arrow Motor Cars.

In an article written for the Horseless Carriage Gazette in 1983, Alex Connell described how he restored a 1910 American Underslung after a friend showed him a flexible brass tube that he found while antelope hunting next to what he thought were remnants of an old Ford.

Connell pestered the friend to take him to the location, and when he got there saw the potential for something special.

“There, in a wash, lay the entire body, fenders and hood from a 1910 American Underslung just as it had been left there during the first part of World War II,” he wrote. “I found the owner of the property and he told me how he wrote to a scrap metal dealer in Torrington and instructed him to go to the ranch … and scrap out the old cars and machinery there and buy war bonds in the name of the owner.”

Connell wrote that he began his effort to restore the car, which spanned several years of finding parts, learning to fabricate his own on a metal lathe or using wooden frames and sheet metal to fashion parts.

Over the decades, his children estimate their dad collected and restored dozens of antique cars, then traded and sold many of them.

As part of their dad’s restoration efforts, the Connell kids remember their mother finding and making period clothing for them all to wear and driving the cars in a succession of Cheyenne Frontier Days parades.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Movie Showcase"}]

Parker said when the movie “The Great Race” was released in 1965 starring Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon,  the local theater recruited her dad to display the American Underslung at the theater.

“It was such a great movie that the Paramount Theater downtown asked dad if they could put his main Underslung in the theater, and it was all roped off with beautiful brass poles and red velvet,” she said. “It was a beautiful showcase car.”

The Connell children grew up in a home that their parents built that came mostly from recycled materials from an Air Force base warehouse that their dad contracted to tear down. 

It was part of several home showcase tours, they said.

All remember their father coming home from work and going to garage where there were metal lathes, saws, and tools for his restoration work. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"There was always a project going on."}]

“I remember when I was, like, 10 years old, he had taken me in his truck and he was going to get this car frame out of Horse Creek that was kind of buried in the sand, and he dug and dug and couldn’t get it out,” Kay Irwin said. 

“And he put a two-by-four under the frame and he had me lean over on that two-by-four and bounce on it and try it get it out of the creek bed. We finally ended up getting it,” she added.

Parker said the only real family vacation they ever took involved their dad announcing they were going to go to Yellowstone. 

The family piled into a cab-over truck with a big trailer behind and instead drove to the south entrance of Grand Teton National Park.

Her dad parked the rig in the middle of a forest. 

That’s when Alex Connell broke the told his family that they weren’t going to vacation in Yellowstone and instead search for a Packard body that he heard was buried in a creek somewhere in Grand Teton.

“So, we spent days and days looking for that body in a creek,” Parker said. “I was walking in the woods and I couldn’t have been more than 12 or 13, and I walked up on an elk that was fully horns.

“I backed up, he just stayed there and watched me.”

After days of no luck finding the Packard, the family went to Yellowstone to visit Old Faithful, watched it erupt, then drove to Thermopolis to go swimming, she said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Restoring Pierce-Arrow"}]

Tom Connell tells the story of his dad meeting a man in a town east of Colorado Springs who owned an old Pierce Arrow Roadster that was identical to his dad’s Packard. 

The owner who was up in years told Alex Connell he bought the car when he was kid.

“He wanted to drive that some day before he died and he didn’t want to sell it,” Tom Connell said. “Right next to it was an old Lincoln Bus, and in the spur of the moment (dad) said, ‘I’ll take that car home and restore if for you in exchange for that Lincoln Bus.'”

Tom Connell said he and his dad hauled the Pierce Arrow back to Cheyenne and over a period restored it so that it was able to be driven and returned it to the Colorado owner. 

That man cried when they brought it back to him.

Alex Connell got the Lincoln Bus, but never got around the restoring it. It remains on the property as an item for his children to deal with.

Dillmon said her father sold and traded his restored cars and parts with people throughout the country and Europe, and she has boxes of his correspondence about parts and other facets of his restoration expertise.

Alex Connell also got into refurbishing big, old Minneapolis Steam Tractors and took a class to learn to drive them. 

The family story is that Luann Connell made him sell them because one day he drove a tractor into the house. The tractors were sold to a man in Argentina.

Working hard on his restoration efforts into his 70s, Alex Connell slowed down in the last two decades of life, but maintained his efforts in the garage for as long as he could. 

Luann Connell died in January 2025, and that same month Alex Connell fell and developed a brain bleed that required surgery.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Alex Connell died May 10, 2025. "}]

His children remain busy trying to find the right homes for his beloved antique vehicles and parts, but thankful for the memories he left behind.

“The goal is to find passionate buyers within the vintage car community who will drive, preserve, and enjoy them,” Dillmon said.

Dads Cars Connell Siblings 6 14 26

<title>Cheyenne Dad Leaves His Five Heirs Antique Packards — And A Lifetime of Memories | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The children of a Cheyenne car restorer inherited a lifetime collection of antique Packards and car parts that include a nearly complete disassembled 1907 American Underslung Roadster. Their goal is to find a buyer who will preserve and enjoy them.

Cheyenne Dad Leaves His Five Heirs Antique Packards — And A Lifetime of Memories

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

Renée Jean

Business & Tourism

Business

CHEYENNE — America is in a digital arms race right now with other countries, Gov. Mark Gordon told construction workers during a tour of the 

data center site this past week, and Wyoming can be part of winning that race.

“We need to have AI, we need to own that property,” he said. “We need to make sure that our data is better, stronger, and more efficient than anywhere else. You all are the vanguard of that, and I say, God bless you.”

Wind gusts punctuated the governor’s hard-hat tour of Related Digital’s facility on Thursday, kicking up little dust devils as Gordon and Cheyenne Mayor Patrick Collins walked to and from the rapidly rising concrete walls for the data center. 

Work is nearing completion on the first 184,000-square-foot phase of the campus, which is expected to be finished in late 2026. 

The tour was an opportunity for an inside look at how this $1.2 billion data center will operate, as far as fire suppression, energy use, and water cooling. 

It was also a chance for Gordon and Collins to talk about things like affordable housing, worker training, and opportunities that can keep Wyoming youths at home.

Related’s Cheyenne campus will ultimately deliver up to 420 megawatts of computational capacity for its client, CoreWeave, and they claim will generate more than $250 million in tax revenue for Cheyenne over its first 15 years of operation. 

Gordon said Related Digital is offering a model for how data centers can and should be built in Wyoming. 

“What Related has done here is absolutely astounding,” Gordon said. “I used to work for an oil and gas company, and I have a ranch, and I’ve tried to bring that same philosophy to it, too.

“But you have demonstrated it here, and that’s do the right thing, do it the right way, and do it right away.”

One challenge Wyoming faces will be affordable housing.

“One of the things that’s really important is that if you’re going to get educated, and if you’re going to have a job, we want to make sure you have a place to live that you can afford,” Gordon said. “And that’s something I know that (Cheyenne) Mayor (Patrick Collins) has put a tremendous amount of effort into.”

For Gordon and Collins, the real test of projects like Related’s won’t be just the servers humming on the prairie, but whether the jobs and housing they help create give more Wyoming families a reason — and a way— to stay in Wyoming.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"How The Power Flows"}]

A member of the Related Digital team explained how power leaves the Black Hills substation, disappearing underground in buried lines that have been tucked safely away from the wind, before rising again into two massive switchboards that feed the front and back halves of the data halls. 

Traditionally, the electrical “guts” of a data center have been assembled on site, the employee added. 

But to speed the process along, Related’s gear was built off-site and shipped in fully formed blocks. That’s allowing contractors to set and wire everything more quickly.

Such speed-to-market tactics are what the market demands right now in the race to build out a massive surge in artificial intelligence and data centers.

Row upon row of batteries stand quiet but ready outside the building. They can provide about seven minutes of battery time.

If the power dips or there’s an outage, those batteries take the load instantly while it’s passed along to backup generators. 

This approach ensures a constant flow of power to Related’s servers, which are running 24-7. 

Black Hills Energy will deliver power to Related under Wyoming’s large-load tariff, which has been designed to ensure data center companies are paying 100% of their costs, including the infrastructure required to serve them.

From there the tour filed into the Related Digital Facility itself. 

A huge concrete wall swallowed tiny humans whole and the sound of blustery wind was replaced with the light and easy hum of machinery. 

Inside the facility, the tour stopped near a wall of fans and coils which are an integral part of keeping the facility at an even 73 degrees. 

“The racks are laid out kind of perpendicular to where we are,” a Related Digital employee explained. “Each of those racks has a chimney system taking the hot air out.”

The air chillers work in combination with a closed-loop, direct-to-chip, liquid cooling system, which soaks up heat directly at the source and moves it to a heat exchanger. 

“We use the environment of Cheyenne, which has some colder temperature throughout the year,” an employee explained. “The evolution of these (systems) has gotten significantly more energy-efficient. 

"That overall kind of allows us to build a closed system and run a highly efficient animal.”

As long as the closed-loop system is kept tight and filled, there’s essentially no ongoing makeup water required, he added. 

“It’s basically set as soon as this is put in place,” he said. “It’s like your car radiator. If it’s leaking, you have a problem. Otherwise, you’re set.”

Magnetic-bearing compressors help the chillers remain efficient even when temperatures outside climb above the optimal 70 degrees. 

Those compressors will work harder, but remain highly efficient, thanks to advanced technology.

Related’s approach is about four times more efficient than past approaches, which allows the company to run its server racks more densely, creating more computing power per square foot.

Fire Protection For Billion-Dollar Building

Fire safety is not an afterthought at a facility like a data center. The strategy there focuses heavily on mitigating risk, while avoiding water damage. 

“All of our systems are pre-action systems,” a fire protection expert explained, which will remain dry under normal conditions.

A box on the wall constantly sniffs at the air to detect smoke. Only when both air sampling detection and other triggers align will water finally surge into the pipes through sprinkler heads.

That helps prevent accidental deluges on millions of dollars of sensitive equipment. 

Separate pods throughout the facility, meanwhile, each have their own shutoff valves, so that an incident in one area doesn’t necessarily have to knock the entire building offline. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Not Just Jobs, Careers"}]

It wasn’t all about the building during the tour. Gordon and Collins also had panel discussions with employees of various contractors to talk about how they came to be part of the project, as well as what kind of training was required.

One worker talked about bringing his son into the trade, and having him help with side projects and shop work, to help him learn a skill that could keep him in Wyoming.

That was a point that particularly interested both Gordon and Collins. 

Wyoming, Gordon said, has invested heavily in career and technical education (CTE), in an effort to give high school students and community college enrollees a head start on apprenticeships and technical credentials.

Staffing the projects has been a challenge, a different employee noted but, those who do come to Cheyenne are often finding there’s plenty of work to keep them in Cheyenne long-term.

Brad Harless, for example, originally came to Cheyenne to work on Microsoft data centers.

“They kept sending me to Cheyenne for work,” he said.

So he just decided to move to the area and stay.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Miles Of Pipe"}]

Related Digital broke ground in October and has since installed about 80,000 feet of chiller pipes, 40,000 feet of medium-voltage conduits to feed the data center power, which is 111 football fields long, according to Related Companies CEO Jeff Blau. 

There’s another 21,000 linear feet of underground utility pipe going in, which is 90% complete.

All of that work has been done by Wyoming businesses and Wyoming workers. 

“That’s exactly why I feel good standing here with the governor and saying that I believe this project lives up to the principles you outlined in your executive order,” Blau said. 

“The governor laid out a vision for attracting investment and creating jobs, while protecting Wyoming’s water and natural resources, respecting local communities and ensuring growth creates lasting benefits to the state,” he added.

The closed-loop system and high-efficiency air chillers mean water use will be on the order of a standard office building, said Blau.

“We’re very proud of that responsible approach,” he said. “The executive order also talks about protecting ratepayers. This project pays the full cost of the energy infrastructure it requires and then some. 

"We’re investing more than $20 million to purchase a new transformer and expand the existing substation to service this data center.”

That investment bolsters the overall energy grid in the region, and will help protect ratepayers from future cost increases.

“Gov. Gordon’s order also talks about workforce growth and opportunity,” Blau said. “Just look around this tent. We have over 400 construction workers today, and we’ll have more than 700 at peak. 

"We’re going to need another tent. Continuing to invest in infrastructure and development enables workers to have careers, not just temporary jobs.”

Related is also going the extra mile, Blau added, by contributing to organizations like Wyoming food banks and supporting regional and cultural events like Cheyenne Frontier Days. 

They’ve also made a $3.5 million commitment for affordable housing in Cheyenne, something Blau said he’s particularly proud of doing. 

“Related is building and preserving a part of Cheyenne where there’s a true need for affordable housing,” he said. “Since the very beginning, Mayor Collins and the governor provided the leadership and partnership to make this project possible. 

"That’s not to say every step has been easy. They’ve held us accountable to make sure we live up to each of these promises.”

Related Digital 20260611 105807 6 12 26

<title>Inside The $1.2 Billion Data Center Campus Being Built In Cheyenne | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Work is nearing completion on the first 184,000-square-foot phase of the Related Digital data center campus in Cheyenne, which is expected to be finished in late 2026. The company says because of its closed-loop system, there’s no ongoing water required.

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