Can Town Of Daniel Ever Regain Old Image Of Fishing And Hunters' Paradise?

DANIEL — Settled back in 1899, the best view of rustic Daniel, Wyoming, is from the Mount Olevet Cemetery on a panoramic vista overlooking the town.

Signs of life are visible everywhere.

Before the story of a tormented wolf flashed viral a few weeks ago — the one where a local man entered a local bar with a barely-breathing wolf with its muzzle taped shut to show off how he had dropped it with a snowmobile — Daniel was a sleepy place.

Before the wolf incident, Daniel’s reputation had always been having blue-collar, hard-working folks who ranch cattle and horses. Nearby is the 7R Ranch, Dogwood Valley Ranch, Miller Livestock, Noble Ranch and Pape Ranch, to name but a few.

There’s also lots of history in this part of northwestern Wyoming.

A mile east of the cemetery, Jesuit missionary Pierre-Jean De Smet conducted the first Catholic mass in the Cowboy State more than 180 years ago.

Just west of Daniel at the confluence of the Green River and Horse Creek is one of the first fur trade sites in Wyoming from the 1830s.

Sometimes fly fisherman and Sublette County resident Paul Ulrich can be seen in a drift boat along the Green River trying to catch rainbow and brown trout, or a cutthroat.

“It’s one of the most beautiful places in the world,” Ulrich said.

At Mount Olevet Cemetery, there’s a steep, cliff-like slope that drops down into what is called the Upper Green River Valley at 7,195 feet in elevation. Sagebrush, prairie grasses and horse nuggets cover the higher up ledge.

The meandering Horse Creek twists and turns in the bowl-shaped land in the valley with cottonwoods growing within a stone’s throw from the Green River that it empties into.

Lots of people drive around in this area with fishing rods tossed in the beds of their trucks.

The water moving along the riverbed is audible from the vista perch.The fast-moving water babbling over the river’s rocks produces a soothing trickling sound.

The Green River in Daniel’s backyard defines the valley.

“It’s just kind of there,” Ulrich said.

In the distance, black angus can barely be spotted on the open pastures, feeding on clumps of grass. A cowboy also can be seen galloping on his horse to check on them. A few seem to have become stuck in a ditch.

Straight ahead, looking westward from Mount Olevet beyond Daniel are the Wyoming Mountains, thickly clustered with towering white pines and snowcapped summits. To the north and west is the Gros Ventre Range and Wind River Mountains, with jagged outcroppings slicing through the skies and lakes tucked deep between them.

This Is Daniel

Wolves have been spotted throughout the mountain ranges surrounding the Upper Green River Valley, as have grizzlies, moose, elk, antelope and mule deer, said John Lund, Pinedale Region wildlife supervisor for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

He told Cowboy State Daily that wolves seem to be confined to the Wind River Mountains and Gros Ventre Range, but they’ve also been spotted to the west several miles beyond Daniel along Daniel Merna Road where Cody Roberts lives.

Roberts, 42, is the local man everyone in this tightknit, rural community has known for at least a couple decades. More on Roberts later.

The brisk winds blowing through the valley with 50-degree temperatures this past weekend were enough to tousle anyone’s hair.

On Saturday, a few gunshots could be heard echoing through the valley from the vista.

Down below in the basin along U.S. Highway 189, the tiny community of Daniel was coming to life a few hours after the sun burst above the range.

The population, for anyone counting, is 108. That’s more than the number of bodies buried in Mount Olevet Cemetery.

A woman was observed sitting on the doorstep of her rear porch watching her child play near the center of Daniel.

Another woman wearing dark-shaded sunglasses pulled over to the side of the road with her eight-cylinder pickup to talk about a moose she saw about a mile south of Daniel.

Barely a half-mile from Daniel’s now-infamous Green River Bar — where cigarette smoke is thick in the air and talk of the wolf incident is verboten — a farmer drove his tractor out of a dirt road alongside the Green River and out onto U.S. 191, hauling a bale of hay. He immediately steered back down another driveway to bring the fodder to his cattle.

Turned Upside Down

Welcome to Daniel, the international focus of public outrage over the wolf abuse, torture, mistreatment — there have been many adjectives to describe what the animal was put through before it was killed. Around Daniel, the locals prefer “torment.”

The outcry erupted after a Roberts was accused of capturing a wolf by running it down with a snowmobile, taking it home, then showing it off at a local bar Feb. 29 before taking it behind the bar and killing it.

Daniel hasn’t been the same since.

Residents in nearby Pinedale also are angry that this story is all anyone cares about. They privately complain that there’s more to Pinedale and its stepchild community of Daniel.

Over the weekend, there was a mound of garbage trash bags filled with bottles and cans piled up behind the Green River Bar.

The attention on the bar has only grown since news first broke about a month after Roberts showed off the wolf. Short video clips of the captured wolf show a man identified as Roberts stooping down over the wolf to kiss its muzzle, which had been taped shut at one point.

A photograph of Roberts with the wolf also emerged. In it, Roberts poses beside the wolf, with its muzzled taped and head is cast downward. Roberts is smiling in the photo, with his arm around the wolf’s neck, seemingly to hold its head still. He has a beer in the other hand.

Roberts was fined $250 by Wyoming Game and Fish for possessing a live wolf, which further outraged many people who consider the penalty too lenient. Authorities have said they are investigating the incident further, and there could be more penalties, including loss of hunting privileges.

The wolf incident has brought on a flood of criticism, inundating local law enforcement and Game and Fish phone lines with accusations that the state’s wolf management is too lax, helping to foster questionable practices. There also are threats, some promising violence or even death.

Local law enforcement has been caught by surprise over the attention.

After all, Daniel is normally quiet.

The Sublette County Sheriff’s Office in Pinedale responds to calls to Daniel “very minimally,” said Sgt. Travis Bingham, the spokesman for the office.

Daniel isn’t a drug haven. It’s a place to stop for a hot dog and beer at the local bar after a long day of fishing or hunting.

“Drugs do come through our community from time to time,” admitted Bingham. “But rarely is there a drug involvement locally in Daniel. The Daniel area represents a very small portion of our county crime.”

The biggest issue for the sheriff’s office are calls for cattle or horses that roam onto the road that runs through Daniel, and an officer who might be needed to put the livestock inside a fence, Bingham added.

Heyday Over

This past weekend, the American flag was flying alongside a POW flag on a flagpole outside the Daniel U.S. Post office. Unlike the bar, the post office has limited hours of operation, with everything else seemingly locked up or closed down.

Across from the bar is an old filling station from a bygone era a century ago, rough-hewn housing that appeared deserted, and trailers parked farther west along pockmarked dirt roads closer to the shores of Horse Creek and Green River.

The town’s heyday, if there ever was one, came and went decades ago.

At the front window of the Green River Bar on Friday evening, four deer strolled down the middle of the street.

Bar owner Nan McKeough peered outside and said, “The weather is pretty nice tonight, and there’s no wind.”

In the background, The Cowboy Channel was broadcasting the 103rd annual Red Bluff, California, rodeo championships, the largest three-day rodeo in the United States.

Later in the evening, the channel was changed to the 2017 video game fantasy movie “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” starring Dwayne Johnson, Karen Gillan, Kevin Hart and Nick Jonas.

Scottish army veteran Geo Burns, who had been drinking at the bar for a few hours, regaled the handful of patrons with stories about wearing a kilt to the funeral of Daniel’s famous dignitary, “Mr. Bill,” over a year ago.

After midnight, a muscular and sinewy man called Greg, who sported a black cowboy hat and a pure white Wild Bill Hickok-looking goatee that easily fell 10 inches from his chin, rolled in for a nightcap.

Behind the bar tucked behind whiskey and bourbon bottles was a sign posted to the wall: “No pets allowed.”

“Wanna play pool?” asked Geo’s wife, Brenda.

Nobody took up her offer, and instead everyone began paying up.

Greg got his beers comped. Another patron paid $15 for four long-necked, Budweiser bottles.

Greg walked out the front door — beautifully carved with a grizzly ingrained in the wood — and disappeared into the pitch-black night, into the shantytown across from the Green River Bar.

The road out of Daniel takes a minute or two to drive up to U.S. Highway 191, which connects with sister city Pinedale, located about 12 minutes away to the east.

To the northwest along U.S. 191 is where the billionaires and uber-rich have built their playground in Jackson.

It’s a tough drive at night.

Along U.S. 191, mule deer and pronghorn make their twice-a-year migration from Grand Teton National Park during summer to Red Desert north of Point of Rocks in the south during the winter.

There are highway posts that warn of wildlife every few miles along the road.

Near the intersection of U.S. 189 leading to Daniel, about a mile south of U.S. 191, several miles of 8- to 10-foot-tall fences have been erected to attempt to keep migratory wildlife off the highway corridor from Pinedale to Jackson.

The intersection of U.S. Highways 189 and 191 just north of Daniel also is joined by a third road. This is the east-west Daniel Merna Road, or Wyoming Highway 354, where Roberts lives a few miles in.

Traveling about 10 miles west into the Wyoming Mountains, past the Roberts' house to the end of the road, is the entrance to the Horse Creek Trailhead, where mule deer, elk, grizzlies, moose and even wolves have been spotted, according to Game and Fish’s Lund.

A Town On Edge

Since the pandemic began in early 2020, Realtor Judy Seehafer with Jay Fear Real Estate in Pinedale has seen a boom in valuation of real estate prices in this part of the country: Daniel down to Boulder, about 11 miles southeast of Pinedale along U.S. 191.

“People just want to be in the country,” Seehafer told Cowboy State Daily.

She pointed to another reason for the rise in valuations.

Fueling some of the bullishness in real estate prices is Bondurant billionaire Joe Ricketts, who founded and pioneered online trading firm TD Ameritrade and announced plans in February to buy the White Pine Ski Resort just north of Pinedale, she said. He finalized that deal April 17, giving further reason for the next wave of investment by speculators.

“Prices have come up,” said Seehafer, who sees 10 acres of land selling for over $100,000 and 2.5 acres above $35,000. In some instances, these prices have doubled in recent years.

The wolf incident is giving the area some hesitancy to buy, she said.

“That was ridiculous what he did, but to have it plastered all over the newspapers is not good,” she said. “It’s time to just leave it alone.”

Others in the community feel the same. Many won’t speak to the press on the record and are angry that they are having to defend the reputation of the Upper Green River Valley.

“People hunt here, and wolves are vicious animals. They aren’t dogs, but what he (Cody Roberts) did was stupid,” Seehafer said.

Rancher Dave Pape, who co-owns a spread in Daniel along U.S. 191 near the hatchery, doesn’t even want to touch the topic for fear of retribution.

This is a common theme with many who live in the area, who feel divided over the issue.

“I’m staying out of this. I’m staying out of the whole thing,” Pape told Cowboy State Daily.

Pinedale Mayor Matt Murdock feels the heated controversy needs to be ratcheted down a few notches.

“I regret this issue has become so polarizing and so many people are allowing their anger and frustrations to perhaps guide their comments,” Murdock told Cowboy State Daily.

Some people may be going too far in their attacks of Roberts, including death threats.

Roberts could not be reached for comment.

“What Cody did was inappropriate, but the response has been fairly vindictive,” Murdock said. “I feel like we live in a culture where people feel free to voice their anger as loudly as they want, and it’s accepted in our culture.”

Pat Maio can be reached at pat@cowboystatedaily.com.