You Still Here

[{"type":"text","text":"This kid is smarter than all of us..."}]

You still here 2 28 24

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

<title>You Still Here? Wednesday, February 28. 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

This kid is smarter than all of us....

You Still Here? Wednesday, February 28. 2024

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

Renée Jean

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

It’s a scene that feels like it belongs in a sepia-toned, black-and-white movie, but it’s living color at Slack Elementary School near Parkman, Wyoming. 

Students there begin and close out their school year by riding their horses to the one-room schoolhouse on horseback.

Picture a dozen or so kids, legs swinging in sometimes too-big stirrups, strung out along a narrow ranch road. 

For the last day of school in May, the Bighorn Mountains might still hold a streak or two of snow while ahead a tiny, white schoolhouse awaits. 

The horses plod along at a slow walk — by strict family decree — helping create a moment of what feels like suspended time. 

“If you let one horse start trotting, then you’re going to have a horse race on your hands,” ranch mom Jill Kerns told Cowboy State Daily with a chuckle. 

Three of her four children have been young enough to participate in the tradition. 

“It usually takes about 10 to 15 minutes,” she said. "Honestly, it takes longer to catch the horses and saddle them than it takes to ride down there.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"One-Room School That Still Works"}]

The end point of the horse parade is the historic Slack Elementary School, one of about a couple dozen remaining one-room schoolhouses in Wyoming. 

The Slack School opened in 1890, giving it 136 years of history in this ranching community. The present building was buildt in the 1930s, after the original schoolhouse burned down. 

Although no one is quite sure when the first- and last-day horseback rides began, they are a cherished community tradition, one that honors the school’s heritage in a ranching community and salutes the history of the American West.

Teachers at Slack use the activity to throw open a window to local history and lifestyles, pointing out there was a time when the ride wasn’t ceremonial at all. 

Jill’s father-in-law Krayton Kerns remembers when the school used to have an old barn for people to put their horses in during the day.

“It was pretty well used up by the time we got here in ’65,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “And I’m not sure when it got torn down the rest of the way, but prior to my time at Slack School, the generation before, they rode to school because that was their only transportation.”

Krayton, meanwhile, walked to school every day. 

“Dad mentioned to me that he always walked to school,” he said. “So I decided I was going to do that, too, even though we had a bus driver who ran a Suburban van that hauled a bunch of kids to school.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Big Brother, Big Sister Teaching Method"}]

Slack might seem on the surface like it’s some kind of throwback. But there’s more value in this old-fashioned approach than people realize, and parents say they see their children earning a leg up in key areas like reading.

“The teachers have told me when the Slack kids get to Tongue River, they tend to be a little bit ahead,” Jill said. “By the time they leave Slack, they’re very well prepared, if not ahead.”

Jill’s son Henry, who had one year at Slack, told Cowboy State Daily he was able to work at his own pace, which meant he didn’t have to wait on learning new material. 

“You get to just keep going if you’re ahead on stuff,” he said. “You learn a lot more that way.”

In a classroom with just a few kids per grade, there’s also no hiding in the back row. Everyone is going to get called on, and that means everyone better be on their toes.

Older students also help the younger ones, and everyone has chores to do around the school. Those things have made the students more tightly knit together, more like family than a typical school. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"'Great Way To Grow Up'"}]

Krayton, who is a veterinarian, believes Slack School gave him the best possible foundation for his future career. 

He never felt, as he was pursuing his doctorate, that the one-room school had disadvantaged him in any way. 

Part of it, he believes, was how the older students were quietly absorbing lessons meant for the grades below them, retraining their minds on past materials, ensuring there were never any gaps in their learning. 

“The teacher would have the attention of the first graders and get them lined out on a job,” he said. “Then she’d go to the next grade. … You could sit there and kind of absorb it all.”

The sixth graders, meanwhile, often helped the younger students with schoolwork if they were having some issues, which further helped them become experts at the material.

“The teacher couldn’t be involved with everybody at each instant,” he said. “So the older kids were always willing to help us if we had a question on something. 

"These were upperclassman, but they were still just your friends, and you were interacting and playing with them at recess.”

Socially, it gave the younger students a sense that they had big brothers looking out for them. On the flip side of that coin, the older students felt a certain responsibility to look out for their younger classmates.

“It was a great way to grow up, learn, and mature,” he said. “You soon realized that you had not only classmates but an entire community who knew who you were, and you were expected to be on your best behavior at all times. 

"If you weren’t someone would catch it, and you would get it once you got home.”

Krayton has seen the one-room school in Slack have positive effects on his grandchildren’s attitude toward school.

“The eagerness to go to school is pretty high down here,” he said. “They started out in Billings, so they were going to classrooms that had 30 and 40 students. But when they moved down here, all of a sudden you’re one of 10 in the school. It’s just a totally different perspective.”

The eagerness is something Jill has also seen playing out with her own children.

Connor, her youngest, started Slack in kindergarten and is now in second grade, while her daughter Nora just finished fourth grade this spring and heads to Tongue River Elementary in the fall. 

Henry had a single year there, while her oldest son never attended Slack at all.

The differences have been noticeable to her in both academics and attitude.

“It just kind of speaks to that one-on-one nature,” she said. “When they get to Tongue River, they adjust, and are able to fit right in with their classmates without any issue.”

She credits the social skills they’re learning thanks to the closer-knit environment.

For Nora, this spring’s last day ride was her last to Slack. Connor, though, still has two more years of first and last-day horseback trips ahead of him.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Ranch-Style Recess"}]

Recess is another memorable part of the Slack experience. 

The playground, for example, grows larger on really hot days, taking in a shallow swimming hole the kids know by heart. 

“There’s a rope swing and you swing off of it,” Jill’s daughter Nora told Cowboy State Daily. “But it was never really deep enough, so you have to like belly flop on it before you actually land.”

The playground also includes a few nontraditional items, like roping dummies, which the children can practice during recess. 

“The para (a teaching assistant) who is there right now, her name is Ashley, and she is working with the kids on roping and things like that,” Jill said. “Things you just won’t get to do at a school in town.”

Nerf gun wars sometimes break out during the 45-minute recess, too, with kids dashing around the old schoolyard like they’re in a Wild West movie — minus the real bullets, but plus streams of really cold water to shoot at each other.

Krayton remembers similar recess experiences growing up, like playing hockey on a makeshift skating rink.

“If the snow was really good or the slough froze up, we could play hockey,” he said. “It wasn’t a fourth the size of a basketball court, but we’d go out there and bang a can around like we were playing real hockey.”

Playground equipment then was more unforgiving than now, though.

“This was the good old stuff that you could fall off of and break an arm,” he said with a chuckle, recalling a tall metal slide and other relics. “It had a little adventure to it.”

The lessons learned on a playground like that went far beyond the lessons of today, Krayton believes. Students had to learn to improvise on such a playground, using imagination to create their own fun.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"How Long Can It Last?"}]

As wonderful as the whole experience is, Krayton observed uneasily how much the world is changing around the school, and he can’t help but wonder how long it will last.

Where once there were dozens of small cattle outfits up and down the creek sending kids to school, now there are just a few large operations here and there.

“Most of the ag country around here has been bought up by two or three large, big-money landowners,” he said. “We’re hitting a point where the generation that’s raising children isn’t out here anymore. That generation may be dying out.”

That’s part of what makes the little horse parade to Slack feel larger and more important lately. It’s a bittersweet moment that’s more than a photo-op. It’s a link to a vanishing way of life, one that nurtured generations of Americans.

Still, all is not yet lost. The number of children may be dwindling, but there are still children left who are ready to catch a horse and tighten a cinch and head down the narrow road at a slow walk. 

They will have the chance one day to help keep Slack what it’s always been. A small, sturdy place where children can grow up with a sense of all that America once was, and, if they have their way, will continue to be.

Riding to school At Slack Elementary near Parkman Wyoming kids still ride horses to a tiny one room schoolhouse on the first and last day of class 6 6 26 jpeg

<title>Kids Still Ride Horses To This One-Room Wyoming Schoolhouse | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Kids who attend the one-room school near Parkman, Wyoming, still ride horses to their schoolhouse on the first and last days of class. “If you let one horse start trotting, then you’re going to have a horse race on your hands,” one ranch mom said. 

Kids Still Ride Horses To This One-Room Wyoming Schoolhouse

Jen kocher

Jen Kocher

Crime & Courts

Law Enforcement

Editor's note: This is the first of a two-part series on the infamous "Rawlins Rodeo Murders." Part two will be published Sunday and will focus on the suspects that have cropped up over the last 52 years.

It was the early 1970s and Rawlins was at the dawn of an energy boom. Oil and gas rigs studded the high-desert plains while Union Pacific trains hauled out coal around the clock. 

The population swelled to nearly 11,500 — many of those people transitory workers drawn to southwest Wyoming by high-paying jobs. 

New houses cropped up in the formerly empty fields around the county faster than downtown businesses could absorb the growth. It was a prosperous time. 

Then girls started to vanish before anyone could figure out what was going on. 

[{"type":"text","text":"The first two disappeared on Fourth of July weekend in 1974. "}]

They were 19-year-olds Carlene Brown and Christine “Christy” Gross, who had been visiting Rawlins from South Dakota. 

The pair had gone to the Little Britches Rodeo at the Carbon County fairgrounds, and just vanished.  

[{"type":"text","text":"Neither was seen again. "}]

Nine years later, Gross’ remains were discovered in a field 3 miles outside the neighboring town of Sinclair. 

[{"type":"text","text":"Brown has never been found. "}]

The third was 15-year-old Deborah Meyer, who disappeared on her way to the movie theater downtown. Meyer had been visiting her aunt from Red Lodge, Montana. She was last seen leaving her aunt’s house near Seventh and Spruce streets downtown.  

She told her family she was off to see a movie, but never made it to the theater. 

[{"type":"text","text":"Meyer also remains missing to this day.   "}]

Then the disappearance and death of 10-year-old Jaylene Banker at the Carbon County Fair in late August brought the community to a breaking point — the last in a string of losses that summer that the city has never fully recovered from.  

The culprit behind the disappearances and murders has never been identified, despite decades of investigation by law enforcement in what is now colloquially known as the “Rawlins Rodeo Murders.” 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Terrible Summer "}]

Ken Klouda, now 78, remembers this summer well. He was 25, fresh out of the Air Force and working in the mechanical department for Union Pacific Railroad.

[{"type":"text","text":"“The town was booming,” he said.  "}]

Klouda, who has lived in Rawlins for most of his life and is now president of the Carbon County Museum board, remembers the whirl of activity in the gas and oil field on top of coal mines with upward of five mines in the Hanna Coal Basin alone. 

The sudden 3,000-plus swell in population led to a bustling downtown that turned the once sleepy town into a thriving city. One friend fresh to town that summer told Klouda it reminded him of Las Vegas with all the blinking neon bar signs and active downtown. 

Up until that summer, they were used to bar fights and petty crimes, but not the disappearance of two 19-year-old girls. 

Klouda knew the Brown family and remembers people searching their yards and outbuildings when the teens vanished. People began paying careful attention to their surroundings, he said. 

[{"type":"text","text":"Everybody was talking about the missing girls. "}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘Would Have Been Right Beside Her’ "}]

Details are vague about their disappearance. It’s not clear who last saw or spoke to them. 

Their van was found parked at the fairgrounds, former Carbon County Deputy Sheriff Jeff Faycosh said in a November 1983 Casper-Star Tribune article. 

Other unofficial accounts say the vehicle was found abandoned more than 200 miles north in Worland. 

Initially, police believed the teens may have run away despite their parents' belief that something was terribly wrong.   

Some thought Brown may have gone to her mother’s house in Colorado Springs. Her parents were divorced, with her father staying in Rawlins. Brown would float back and forth between the two houses. 

After a week with no trace of her, however, the grim truth set in that she and Gross were really missing. 

Mary Kay Albrechtson, now 71, was Brown’s close childhood friend who had planned to go with her that night to the rodeo and carnival.  

“I was sick and so I didn’t go,” she said. “Otherwise, I would have been right beside her.” 

It’s a guilt — and deep pain — she still carries more than five decades later. 

“It brings great sadness to me,” Albrechtson said, as she continues to search for her friend.  

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘Who Is Christy Gross’? "}]

Oddly, Albrechtson said nobody knew Gross. That was the first question she and Brown’s friends asked after they vanished: “Who is Christy Gross?” 

Amateur sleuth websites offer little more, noting only that Gross was from Bowdle, South Dakota, was visiting friends or family in Rawlins at the time, and had been an active participant in high school life — band, choir, track, cheerleading. 

It’s not clear how Brown and Gross knew one another or who might have been driving that night. Albrechtson couldn’t recall if Brown had a vehicle and instead remembers her riding a motorcycle.  

The disappearances remained a mystery for nine years until October 1983, when Gross’ body was found in a field 3 miles south of Sinclair off Interstate 80.  

[{"type":"text","text":"She’d been killed by at least two blunt blows to the head.  "}]

The official cause of death was trauma to the head with the manner of death “pending investigation,” according to a docket report from Brittany Nyman, Carbon County coroner.  

Gross was identified through partial dental records and an “unusual ring” made by her uncle, stated news reports at the time.  

After Gross was found, Sheriff Faycosh was quoted by news media as saying that they “do have new leads and at least one suspect.” 

He further said that the suspect had been located but that a warrant would not be issued until more information had been gathered. He estimated it would take a month.

It’s not clear if that arrest ever came or whether that suspect was eventually cleared.  

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Not Afraid To Take Risks "}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Brown, too, is suspected to be deceased though not yet located.  "}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Albrechtson still misses her friend. "}]

After she vanished, Albrechtson had a reoccurring dream in which Brown turns up at her front door looking for her shoes.   

She described Brown as having a wild spirit who liked adventure. Brown’s “shenanigans” sometimes led the friends to getting in trouble, she said.

“We were opposites in that aspect but maybe that’s also why I liked her,” she said. “She had the nerve to venture out.” 

[{"type":"text","text":"She also wasn’t afraid to take a risk, Albrechtson said.  "}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“Unfortunately, that is also what took her life,” she said.  "}]

She believes that Brown willingly got into a car with a stranger the night she disappeared. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Lasting Pain "}]

The next to disappear was 15-year-old Meyer, who vanished one month later on Aug. 4, 1974.  

Meyer had been visiting her aunt in Rawlins from Red Lodge, Montana. She set out on foot to go to the downtown movie theater but never made it. 

[{"type":"text","text":"She has yet to be found. "}]

Her disappearance sent shockwaves back home. Even today, her oldest friends find it too painful to drudge up the memories and declined to be interviewed. 

Others who knew Meyer posted their thoughts about her life and disappearance on a January 2025 post on a Red Lodge Facebook page. 

Her mother, Diane, had been a beloved teacher and her dad, Ron, a crop duster pilot. Both have since died.  

They were Finnish, one friend posted, sharing her fond memories of using their sauna with Meyer and friends. 

Others expressed their shock upon learning she’d vanished and how terrifying and heartbreaking it was for all of them. 

“She is missed by all of us and we have never stopped hoping her remains could be found and put to rest,” wrote Jean Anderson Loyning. 

[{"type":"text","text":"It’s not clear why Meyer was in Rawlins at that time. "}]

One person posted that Meyer had been sent to her aunt’s while her mother was in the hospital for surgery. Another said that Meyer planned to spend the summer at her aunt’s to work at a restaurant her aunt either owned or worked at. 

Rare for a girl her age, Meyer had upper and lower dentures, several noted, which will make it easier for her to be identified should her body be found.  

Nobody back then, or today, thinks that Meyer willingly left on her own accord and suspect foul play.  

Janet Franson, then a cold case investigator for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), interviewed Diane before her death. Diane was adamant that her daughter would not have run away and had no reason to do so.  

Before their own deaths, Meyer’s parents had her legally declared dead with the date of her disappearance listed as the date of death. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Fourth Missing Girl "}]

Jaylene Banker, 10, vanished on Aug. 23, 1974, from the Carbon County Fair after becoming separated from friends at the rodeo grounds. The fairgrounds were less than five blocks away from the Banker home in Rawlins.  

The community instantly rallied around the family, pooling together nearly $14,000 — the equivalent of roughly $95,000 today — as a reward for information leading to her safe return. No one came forward. 

Former Carbon County Sheriff C.W. “Chuck” Ogburn organized multiple searches and volunteers went door to door in search of the girl.  

Desperate for answers, law enforcement even took tips from psychics all over the country. 

One extrasensory perception specialist was brought from Omaha to join in on a search, according to local media reports from the period. 

Another tip from an Arkansas psychic who offered a description of the perpetrator and a possible location prompted a search for a shallow grave south of Rawlins that also proved futile. 

Meanwhile, Banker’s family held out hope that their “shy” girl would be found. 

“It’s just as if she sprouted wings and flew away,” her mother told the Casper Star-Tribune in September 1974.  

Mrs. William Swanson, a neighbor of the Banker family, said that several people had called in reporting “visions” of the 10-year-old alive and heading east in a black pickup. 

Rawlins, home of the Wyoming State Penitentiary, is no stranger to violent crime, Swanson told the newspaper. But Banker’s disappearance, she said, had “clicked an emotional switch” in the community. 

Swanson said the disappearance had drawn the town together, with residents turning out in force to help search. Among them was a group of young girls who went door to door collecting money, carrying a sign that read: “We Want Jaylene Back. Can You Help Us?” 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Another Lead Gone "}]

In September, a promising lead emerged when police detained two Salt Lake City men on public intoxication charges. Both carried lengthy criminal records, one of which included child molestation, United Press International reported.  

A local detective determined the men had passed through Rawlins around the time of Banker’s disappearance, based on their travel route between Casper and Salt Lake City. 

 The FBI examined their vehicle and their fingerprints were submitted to the Carbon County Sheriff’s Office. The lead went nowhere. 

The following month, Ogburn announced renewed efforts to “start from scratch,” the Casper Star-Tribune reported. This included giving polygraph test to five unidentified people, two adults and three teens.  

By December and with no new leads, Banker’s mother, Alline, told the media that she hoped her daughter was still alive. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Soft Spot For Kids "}]

Klouda remembers the fear and frenzy of those days, and a the community reeling from the loss and brutality while authorities scrambled to find whoever was responsible and bring them to justice. 

He said then-Rawlins Police Chief Phil McGee and Sheriff Ogburn were working on overdrive, especially Ogburn, who had a “soft spot” for young people despite his otherwise stern demeanor.  

“Chuck scared a lot of us straight, but he worried about kids,” Klouda said. “I know his department was really looking for these kids and trying to find out what happened.” 

All hope dissipated when eight months later in April 1975 a city engineer running with his dog found Banker’s badly decomposed body in a field near local gravel pits about 2 miles outside town and approximately 5 miles from the fairgrounds in an area that had previously been searched. 

Banker was found lying face down in a rocky area after being hit in the head. Her official cause of death is a fractured skull with the manner of death a homicide, according to the coroner’s docket report. 

She was found with two red tennis shoes, two blue stockings and a pair of blue cotton slacks, the report states. 

Rawlins rodeo murders main 2 6 6 26

<title>More Than 50 Years Later, ‘Rawlins Rodeo Murders’ Of Young Girls Remain Unsolved | Cowboy State Daily</title>

More than 50 years after four young girls vanished in what has become known as the “Rawlins Rodeo Murders," the case remains unsolved. "We lost our innocence. That summer we lost that. We were never again the same,” said one longtime resident.

More Than 50 Years Later, ‘Rawlins Rodeo Murders’ Of Young Girls Remain Unsolved

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

Outdoors

Public Lands

The Bureau of Land Management is investigating multiple incidents of “irreparable” vandalism at six Native American rock art sites in the Bighorn Basin.

The BLM's Cody Field Office reports there was significant damage to multiple rock panels containing petroglyphs created by Wyoming's indigenous tribes. Many of the panels have been defaced with names carved into them, including “Erin,” and phrases scratched into the rock containing the ancient images.

A bonfire had been burning directly underneath one of the panels, which cracked and discolored the surface. Also, the BLM Cody Field Office said several panels were damaged by what appears to be gunfire.

“This intentional damage takes away future generations’ ability to view this part of our human history and to study these sites,” said Cody Field Office Archeologist Karina Black in a statement about the vandalism.

The BLM hasn’t released many additional details on the vandalism, but believes the illegal acts were “recent.” 

Damaging petroglyphs and rock art sites can result in criminal charges, including felonies, and violations can be pursued through civil action as well.

Cowboy State Daily was unable to reach the BLM Cody Field Office at the time of publication.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Persistent Problem"}]

According to an assessment by the Wyoming Cultural Records Office, at least 157 of Wyoming's 666 known petroglyph sites — more than a quarter of what’s known — have been vandalized.

Bonnie Smith, president of the Wyoming Association of Professional Archaeologists, was distraught when she learned of the extent of the damage to the sites in the Bighorn Basin.

“The rock art of Wyoming is not just images on stone,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “It is a conversation across generations. Once damaged, that conversation is silenced forever.”

Finding and prosecuting those responsible for rock art vandalism is difficult for the BLM, which is often unable to conduct extensive investigations due to a lack of staffing and funding.

In October 2025, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department offered a $10,000 reward for information on whoever 

 an important archaeological site near Dubois.

The BLM is investigating multiple incidents of “irreparable” vandalism at rock art sites in the Bighorn Basin. They were burned, shot and had names scratched into them. "People get away with this all the time,” said a Wyoming archaeologist.

You Still Here? Wednesday, February 28. 2024

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