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

<title>Daily Darwin: Friday, March 15, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Daily Darwin: Friday, March 15, 2024

 Always grab onto an electric fence just to see if it's turned on or not....

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

Andrew Rossi

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

When Carolyn Gose Foster went to open her family’s storage unit in Powell, she could tell something was wrong. When she finally managed to get it open, the object she was most worried about was gone.

It wasn’t jewelry or furniture. It was a massive, 60-million-year-old petrified log from the ranch her family homesteaded in eastern Wyoming.

“That was such a blow to the gut for me,” Foster told Cowboy State Daily. “My dad was always afraid someone would steal it, and we told him no one could ever steal it. We never laughed at my dad, except about that.”

Foster isn’t concerned about the monetary value of the petrified log. She just wants her family heirloom back.

“It’s a matter of heart,” she said. “It connects me to my father, my family, and the ranch we homesteaded. I was floored.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Petrified Wood Purloined"}]

The petrified log was in one of two storage units rented by Foster’s parents at Branch Line Storage in Powell. They used to have five units, but the other three and all of their contents were lost in a fire in 2020.

Foster, who lives outside Denver, Colorado, swung up to Powell to look in on the units when she was in the Bighorn Basin for work this week. She immediately sensed something was amiss when she approached.

“When I drove up to work on my parents' storage, and I couldn't get the door open,” she said. “It had been pushed off the side rails on both sides, so it was jammed.”

That’s when she noticed “a shiny new lock” on the door that she’d never seen before. Strangely, the new lock had the same combination as the old one.

When she managed to open the unit, her worst fear was realized. Her father’s petrified log was gone, and someone had gone through a lot of effort to get it.

“You could see the scour marks on the concrete floor,” she said. “They didn’t just mark it. They put grooves in the concrete.”

Foster assumes whoever stole the log must have used a winch to remove it from the unit. It’s the only way her father could move it.

“It was impossible to move by hand, no matter how many people,” she said. “It was too heavy and dense. They had to have used a winch or heavy lifting equipment.”

[{"type":"text","text":"The log wasn’t the only object stolen from the unit."}]

According to Foster, the other items missing include an antique double-handed copper boiler, filled with pieces of petrified wood and agate, a cream can, and a set of deer antlers.

Naturally, Foster hopes to recover everything, but nothing matters more than that heavy piece of  petrified wood.

[{"type":"text","text":"“I never thought anyone would steal it,” she said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Eyes On The Skies"}]

Robert Oren Gose was a Wyomingite with an exceptionally accomplished career. 

He was born on the Gose family ranch, which straddled Crook and Weston counties, in 1921.

He joined the U.S. Air Force during World War II, serving as a B-24 bomber pilot and lead combat pilot in the Eighth Air Force — known as the “Mighty Eighth” — through the end of the war. 

He went on to be a flight instructor and test pilot during the Korean War.

After earning a Master of Science degree in jet propulsion engineering from the California Institute of Technology, Gose worked for several aerospace and energy companies. 

He helped develop the MINUTEMAN I, II, and III ICBM weapon systems and collaborated with NASA as the agency prepared for and eventually launched the Apollo missions.

“He credited the one-room schoolhouse on the ranch, with only his siblings as classmates, as being what got him started and made it possible for him to achieve so much,” Foster said.

After retiring from aerospace, Gose served as joint chair and CEO of the Wyoming Business Council. Even after he moved out of Wyoming, he remained highly respected in the Cowboy State.

“He was honored by the commander of the 20th Air Force in Cheyenne about 10 years ago,” Foster said. “He loved propulsion, working cattle, and being part of the fabric of Wyoming.”

Gose loved the historic homestead where he grew up, which was first settled by his ancestors. He worked as much and as often as he could while pursuing his career.

Selling the ranch in his twilight years “broke his heart,” according to Foster.

“He hated selling the last part of the ranch, but he was in his late 90s and wasn’t in the  physical shape to run it anymore,” she said.

[{"type":"text","text":"Gose died in Littleton, Colorado, on Sept. 15, 2020. He was 98 years old."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“He was an amazing man,” Foster said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Artifact, Heirloom, Touchstone"}]

Foster said her father found the massive chunk of petrified wood on the family ranch decades ago. It was probably from the trunk of a 60-million-year-old metasequoia, as

 fossilized forests of these prehistoric redwoods

 are scattered throughout northern Wyoming.

“It was very dense and beautiful, and he really valued it,” she said. “Wherever my parents moved, he always moved with them.”

Gose and his wife, Vivienne, lived in Powell for a time. The log ended up in one of their storage units, and Foster oversaw it when her parents decided to move out of state.

Foster was devastated to see that it had been stolen in what, she assumes, was a targeted theft. 

“Someone knew exactly where it was,” she said. “I checked with the owner and the manager, and they said that there had never been thefts there. I made a report with the Park County Sheriff’s Office, and nothing’s come of it.”

Foster has shared images of the petrified log in the hopes someone will let her know if they’ve seen it. She said it was stolen within the last year, since that’s how much time had elapsed since her visits to the storage units in Powell.

Foster isn’t interested in the scientific or monetary value of the lost log. For her, it’s a sentimental “touchstone” to her family and their history, both the good times and the bad.

“My brother, Robert, died on our ranch when he was 19 and I was 17,” she said. “We were very close, and I never got to say goodbye. That’s why I cherished that thing. It was my connection to my late parents, my brother, and our ranch. It was my touchstone.”

Petropfied log stolen inset IMG 5304 5 30 26

<title>Huge 60-Million-Year-Old Petrified Log Stolen From Powell Family's Storage Unit | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Someone has stolen a massive, 60-million-year-old piece of petrified wood from a storage unit in Powell. “My dad was always afraid someone would steal it,” said the daughter of the WWII pilot who treasured the artifact, which had become a family heirloom.

Huge 60-Million-Year-Old Petrified Log Stolen From Powell Family's Storage Unit

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

CASPER — More than a year after Gloria Fuller’s death, her daughters have begun dismantling a world she spent nearly 80 years building.

Down in their mother's basement, beneath exposed studs, cobwebs and insulation, they found a vintage 1950s Coldspot refrigerator still humming with life.

Glowing softly in the dim light like a mirage of mid-century America, the old appliance not only was still running, still held 30-year-old cans of Schlitz — cold to the touch.

In another life, the refrigerator held grenadine, soda bottles and trays of hors d’oeuvres for the cocktail gatherings Fuller hosted downstairs. 

Angie Hoven, one of Fuller’s daughters, remembers her mother as a meticulous hostess.

“She was well-known,” Hoven said with a chuckle, tears welling in her eyes.

If refrigerators could talk, this one would recall laughter rising through smoke, the crack of ice trays and somebody asking Gloria for “just one more” drink before heading home, Hoven said.

Now it sits in a basement frozen between eras, still doing the job it was built to do nearly 75 years ago.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Machine That Wouldn’t Die"}]

The Coldspot itself belongs to another chapter of American manufacturing entirely.

Built by Sears before Kenmore overtook the brand, the refrigerator represents the thick steel, rounded-edge philosophy of postwar appliances — heavy, mechanical and intentionally durable. 

No touch screens. No computer boards. Just compressors, fans and stubborn engineering that doesn’t quit.

At 88 years old, Thermopolis appliance repairman Martin Andreen — 

—still speaks about old refrigerators the way ranchers talk about reliable pickups.

[{"type":"text","text":"“They were good machines,” he said. “Simple.”"}]

Andreen said the old Coldspots were built simply enough that most problems can still be repaired decades later. 

The biggest headache, he said, is when the freezer fan goes out, though even that usually isn't difficult to fix.

His brother owned a Coronado refrigerator that ran for more than 60 years before eventually being moved into a family member’s shop in Douglas.

[{"type":"text","text":"“For all I know, it’s probably still running,” Martin said."}]

Hoven recently listed her mother’s Coldspot on Facebook classifieds for $1,000 — a figure she admits is ambitious. 

Before the listing went public, she said somebody once offered nearly double that for it, though the deal eventually fell apart.

The Coldspot's longevity is impressive, but Andreen laughed at the idea of paying $1,000 for “that old thing.”

Even $200, he admitted, feels high to him, though he acknowledged vintage refrigerators have become collectible for people chasing retro aesthetics and mid-century Americana.

[{"type":"text","text":"“I’d probably try to get the price down,” he said with a laugh."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"An Empire Of Trinkets"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"The old refrigerator isn’t the only monument to another era."}]

Inside the Fuller home, antiques spill from shelves and tabletops like the lacy buttercream frosting of a 1980s wedding cake.

Cream and burgundy wingback chairs face each other beneath crystal chandeliers, doubled in the reflection of gold-framed mirrors. Dappled sunlight filters through gathered lace curtains and bounces off old vases bursting with artificial roses.

The dining room table remains crowded with shimmering glass pitchers, crystal bowls, ornate candlesticks and floral centerpieces arranged as though guests might still arrive at any moment.

“She was a perfectionist,” Hoven said of her mother. “And a collector.”

[{"type":"text","text":"The deeper you move into the house, the denser it becomes."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Lampshades wear fringe and lace collars. "}]

Decorative stained-glass flowers cast rainbow light across bedrooms crowded with brass bedframes and heaps of blush-colored pillows arranged for the heads of sleeping dolls in gauzy dresses that drift toward the carpet like fog.

“Mother would’ve turned over in her grave if she could see what we’ve done to the place,” Hoven said, turning to the cleaning supplies and boxes stacked in every corner, explaining her mother always kept an immaculate home.

“It has been extremely hard,” Hoven said. “Our mom was our world. At first it was hard to part with anything.”

Hoven now moves through the home attached to an oxygen tank, frequently stopping to rest while battling the same COPD that ultimately killed her mother.

[{"type":"text","text":"Still, she continues sorting through thousands of objects piece by piece."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Weight Of Inheritance"}]

Across America, adult children increasingly find themselves inheriting homes like this — houses dense with objects tied to another era of domestic life.

China cabinets. Crystal bowls. Crochet tablecloths. Figurines. Curio shelves. Heavy wooden furniture built well enough to outlive multiple generations.

The problem is that while the emotional value remains enormous, the market value often does not.

Estate sale organizer Robyn Cutter has spent so many weekends clearing out people’s homes she has earned an unofficial Ph.D. in the business of “stuff”: what Americans save, what strangers covet and what nobody can seem to give away.

China cabinets, she said, are notoriously difficult to move. Crochet tablecloths can be hit-or-miss. Dolls fluctuate wildly depending on the buyer.

[{"type":"text","text":"Cast iron cookware almost always disappears quickly."}]

Looking at a photo of Fuller’s Coldspot, Cutter estimated it would probably bring somewhere between $100 and $200 locally.

Still, she understands why people become attached to objects like that refrigerator.

“It’s too gut-wrenching,” Cutter said of families watching strangers buy pieces of their loved one’s lives.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"One Last Goodbye"}]

An auctioneer from Buffalo is expected to sort through the Fuller house’s remaining heaps.

The family also sells items through Facebook Marketplace and eBay, including the refrigerator.

They haul boxes to antique expos at the Ford Wyoming Center, arranging and rearranging fragments of their mother’s collection beneath fluorescent lights while strangers wander past.

By the end of most estate sales, Cutter said, families usually stop focusing on individual objects and start feeling something closer to relief.

[{"type":"text","text":"The stress lifts. The house empties. Life begins moving again."}]

“They just breathe,” she said. “They’re like, ‘Wow, this is great.’”

That sense of closure is still a ways away for Hoven and her sister inside their late mother's home, where mountains of clothes, cups, quilts and figurines still wait to be sorted.

[{"type":"text","text":"And downstairs, the refrigerator keeps running keeping the Schlitz cold."}]

Coldspot composite 5 30 26

<title>75 Years Later, a Casper Woman’s Fridge Is Still Running, Cold Schlitz Inside | Cowboy State Daily</title>

More than a year after a Casper woman died, her daughters found a 75-year-old Coldspot refrigerator, hidden by cobwebs and insulation, humming with life. In fact, the fridge from the 1950s, was keeping 30-year-old cans of Schlitz ice-cold.

75 Years Later, a Casper Woman’s Fridge Is Still Running, Cold Schlitz Inside

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's general assignment reporter, Clair McFarland.

Clair McFarland

Politics

Wyoming laws governing which state and local Republican Party officials can vote for  leaders are constitutional, and the state Republican Party’s rights to dictate its own membership don’t trump those laws, a judge ruled Friday. 

Uinta County District Court Judge James Kaste’s Friday ruling gives a concrete, though appealable, answer to the state GOP’s yearslong agenda to shrug off the restrictions Wyoming law places on it and behave as a private group.

The dispute in this case started in March of 2025 when Joe Martinez and Phillip Scheel won election to the seats of Hot Springs County Republican Party Chair and state committeeman, respectively. 

But the state party’s Dispute Resolution Committee, after a controversial mediation process, then arbitration process, ruled that two “provisional” ballots of former Vice-Chair Brayden Harvey and former Secretary Mary Ann Jager should have counted in that election.

The ballots tipped the scale and made Harvey chair, and Russell Lewis state committeeman instead. 

But Harvey and Jager weren’t precinct committee people, meaning, they weren’t elected to the county central committee by their Republican neighbors as of the most recent primary election. 

State law says only people elected in that fashion can vote for the county party leaders. 

The Wyoming and Hot Springs County GOP bylaws, conversely, say the officers can vote even if they’re not precinct committee people. 

The state party asserted that because the First Amendment confers to private groups a right to dictate their own membership, the party’s bylaw should defeat state law. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Kaste disagreed. "}]

The state GOP’s most-referenced case in this matter, Eu v. San Francisco County Democratic Party Central Committee doesn’t fit this case, the judge ruled. 

That case, which the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1989, conferred broad associational rights on political parties. 

But it stems from a situation in which the state of California laid much heavier restrictions on the Democratic Party, Kaste noted. 

He ruled that Harvey and Jager’s provisional ballots don’t count. 

“Martinez and Scheel won the election and should have been installed in those offices,” wrote Kaste. “The Dispute Resolution Committee made a manifest mistake of law in concluding otherwise.”

Kaste ordered that Martinez and Scheel should be installed “immediately” into the offices of Hot Springs County Republican Party Chair and state committeeman, and the case dismissed. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Case Autopsy"}]

Former state Rep. Clark Stith, who’s now a judge, filed this case last April on the Martinez group’s behalf. 

Kate Mead, the mother of U.S. Senate candidate Sam Mead, took it over when Stith became a judge earlier this year. 

“I think the judge made the right decision,” said Kate Mead in a Saturday phone interview. “He was super well-prepared, had gone through all the briefs with a fine-toothed comb, had researched the heck out of it.” 

Mead noted that the party can still appeal, and that this time, it has raised its constitutional concerns and the attorney general has had a chance to defend those. 

So the Wyoming Supreme Court can address those concerns. 

The party can also file separate action asking a judge to declare that it’s above the state laws that restrict it. 

“It was obvious that the Republican Party had screwed up by suggesting to the Hot Springs people that my clients weren’t elected, when they were validly elected,” said Mead. 

This case cost people a lot of time, she said, adding, “I’m always kind of offended by that.” 

Mead said that she had to read a lot of documents to enter this case in its final phase, but Stith had done 90% of the work - and the attorney general also defended the state law well. 

Wyoming GOP Chair Bryan Miller told Cowboy State Daily the party is “

highly disappointed” but unsurprised at the ruling. 

“The Party is considering our options including an appeal to the Wyoming Supreme Court,” Miller said. “In the meantime, the Party will abide by the district court's order to seat the plaintiffs while we prepare for our next actions.”

Miller said the party, “in support of our 210,000+ registered Wyoming Republican voters, will continue to defend its freedoms of association under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, as confirmed by the United States Supreme Court."

He had announced to a bylaws committee at the party’s April convention that the party is planning to challenge state laws in federal court. 

Mead emphasized in her interview that this case only addressed the state laws that came to bear on this conflict. The party can’t address some of its other angst with state laws, such as a ban on financially backing one Republican candidate over another before the primary election, through an appeal in this case should it choose to file one. 

“I was very pleased with the amount of research (Kaste) put into this matter,” said Martinez in a Saturday phone interview. “I certainly appreciate his diligence in trying to ensure that he’s making the best decision possible based on all the information.” 

Martinez said he looks forward to filling the county party role to which he won election, and performing party work at the state level as well. 

“And just moving forward,” he added. “I think that’s the big thing, is it’s time to move forward and not look back.” 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"A Little More About That Spring"}]

While the dispute over who won the chair and state committeeman position for Hot Springs County was still ongoing last spring, the state party had its Dispute Resolution Committee convene to address the question, April 8, 2025. 

Vince Vanata, committee chairman, presided over the meeting. 

The attorney representing Martinez, Scheel, Meri Ann Dorman and Clay van Antwerp at that meeting was excluded from the call because he wasn’t a member of the state central committee. 

Van Antwerp was excluded too because he didn’t sign a confidentiality agreement within the timeframe the committee required. 

After about two hours, says Kaste’s order, Vanata declared the committee’s mediation efforts unsuccessful and said the committee would switch to arbitration. 

Martinez, Scheel, and Dorman were “terminated from the call” and excluded from that process, the judge wrote. 

The Dispute Resolution Committee issued its arbitration order the next day, proclaiming the provisional ballots valid. 

Meaning, the committee chose to go by the party bylaws rather than state law. 

The Wyoming Supreme Court in 2023 had upheld that same state law over a similar bylaw in a Uinta County Party dispute. But the high court didn’t address the political group’s associational rights debate at that time because no one had invited the state Attorney General, then Bridget Hill, into the case to defend the state law

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Wyoming Law"}]

Wyoming election law imposes numerous tasks and restrictions on major parties - as well as benefits, like letting them help fill vacancies when their incumbent leaves an elected office. 

County central committees consist of men and women, in this case registered Republicans, elected at the biennial primary election by their neighbors, or precincts. 

The law tells the county central committee to elect its officers and state leadership delegates, called state committeeman and state committeewoman, during odd-numbered years. 

The state central committee in turn calls conventions in even-numbered years. 

County central committees help fill vacancies in county elected offices, and the state central committee or local portions of it in state-level elected offices. 

The state party convention also nominates presidential electors, elects the party’s national committeeman and committeewoman, and adopts the party platform, among other duties.  

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"The Judge’s Analysis"}]

Kaste found that the election code doesn’t dictate the party’s membership directly. 

Freedom of association is a right, and does give political parties some protection from state infringement, noted Kaste, from a 1986 case called Tashjian v. Republican Party of Connecticut. 

But courts also use a balancing test called the Anderson-Burdick test when parties assert this right, and they consider how burdensome the state’s laws are on that right. 

If the burden is severe, the court judges the state’s infringement under a rigorous constitutional standard that most laws do not survive, called strict scrutiny.

But if the state is only imposing a “lesser burden” on the party, then the state’s important regulatory interests are usually enough to justify “reasonable, nondiscriminatory restrictions,” Kaste noted from an earlier case. 

State party leaders sued in this case claimed Wyoming violated the party’s rights. 

“Defendants are incorrect,” wrote Kaste.

The state laws impose minimal burdens on the party’s associational rights, and the state’s important regulatory interests justify them “amply,” said the judge. 

He added that the party relied on oblique cases while ignoring cases “that are more squarely on point.”

Wyoming law lays some tasks and formational requirements on the party, but the party’s role in filling vacancies is a privilege in which the state has an imnportant interest, he added. 

Kaste rebutted a point the Wyoming Republican Party has made not just in this case, but repeatedly in public - especially while rewriting its bylaws in April to conflict with state law on purpose. 

“Defendants assert that this case is more like Eu,” Kaste wrote, referencing the 1989 case. “The Court disagrees.” 

In that case, the California election code dictated the party’s composition, terms, and leaders’ residence, among other restrictions. 

The laws unduly burdened the party’s rights. 

They’re not comparable to Wyoming’s major party laws, the judge wrote. He added:

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"“Eu is inapplicable.”"}]

The Wyoming laws challenged in this case impose only a minimal burden on the party, says Kaste’s order. 

The state has a legitimate interest in how office vacancies are filled, he wrote. 

“It would be a real problem if a vacancy occurred in a public office and the State had no one to call,” Kaste said. He said the biennial election also ensures orderly election tasks, like nominating presidential electors before general elections. 

Update: This story has been updated to include a comment by Wyoming Republican Party Chair Bryan Miller  

Gop courthouse 5 30 26

<title>Judge Orders Wyoming Republican Party To Follow State Law | Cowboy State Daily</title>

In a setback to the Wyoming Republican Party’s long mission to gain independence from state law, a Uinta County judge Friday upheld multiple Wyoming election laws, dismissing the state Party’s claims that its rights trump them.

Daily Darwin: Friday, March 15, 2024

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