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[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"text":"**NOTE: No one was harmed."}]

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

<title>You Still Here? Sunday, April 28, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

You Still Here? Sunday, April 28, 2024

 If you have to get hit by a truck, this could be the best way to do it.... **NOTE: No one was harmed.

Bill Sniffin

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

ARLINGTON, Texas – There are not many Sunday afternoons when Wyoming feels like the center of the baseball universe.

Being down here in the big, air-conditioned comfort of the Texas Rangers’ ballpark on Sunday, it sure did.

I am writing after attending a big-league baseball game in Arlington, between Dallas and Fort Worth.

And if you are from Cheyenne, or anywhere in Wyoming for that matter, you would have been proud. It was fun wearing my gold Wyoming Cowboy hat to help celebrate our home-grown hero.

The Rangers celebrated their right fielder with a full-blown promotion with bobblehead dolls, a pregame ceremony, and a nod to a past that feels about as Wyoming as it gets.

The bobbleheads showed Nimmo not just as a ballplayer, but as a bull rider. That’s right. Before he was chasing down fly balls in right field, Nimmo perhaps dreamed of riding bulls.

That little detail tells you just about everything you need to know about the kid.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"First, Bull Riding"}]

He grew up in Cheyenne, where rodeo isn’t a hobby, it’s a way of life.

Like a lot of Wyoming boys, Nimmo probably spent his early years thinking about chutes and corrals, dreaming maybe someday he would also make his name at Cheyenne Frontier Days instead of a Major League ballpark.

He has said in prior interviews that his dream as a kid was to be a professional bull rider.

But along the way, baseball won out — and thank goodness for that, especially if you were in the stands here on Sunday.

The Rangers even had a rodeo clown walking around the stadium celebrating Brandon, rodeo, and Wyoming.

The Rangers honored Nimmo in a way that had to tug at his heart.

They brought his 90-year-old grandfather, Darrel Nimmo, out to throw the ceremonial first pitch. It was a moment that felt genuine and grounded, the kind of thing that cuts through all the noise of modern sports.

You could almost see the story in that one toss, from a Wyoming upbringing to the big leagues in Texas.

Nimmo has become, quietly but surely, Wyoming’s most prominent current Major League Baseball player.

That’s no small thing for a state that doesn’t exactly churn out big leaguers.

When one of ours makes it, we tend to follow closely. And when one of ours thrives, we take a little ownership in that success.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Winning Play"}]

On this day, Nimmo gave folks plenty to cheer about.

Batting in the lineup and patrolling right field, he looked right at home.

He smacked a double, the kind of clean, confident swing that shows why the Rangers believe in him.

Out in the field, he made a couple of outstanding defensive plays, tracking balls, covering ground, doing the little things that don’t always make highlights but win ballgames.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"And win they did."}]

The Rangers rolled to a 10-0 victory over Cleveland, and while it was a total team effort, Nimmo was right in the middle of it.

It is not hard to see why the Rangers have embraced him. He plays the game the right way, no flash for the sake of flash. Just solid, dependable baseball.

There is a workmanlike quality to him that feels very Wyoming.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"He Earned It"}]

You get the sense he would be just as comfortable fixing fence or loading hay as he is standing in the batter’s box in front of 34,851 people.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"That background matters."}]

Nimmo’s journey was not the fast track. Although by Wyoming standards he was a standout, he was not a can’t-miss, five-star phenom who had the baseball world at his feet from Day One.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"He had to earn it."}]

From East High School in Cheyenne, then grinding his way through the minor leagues, he built his career the hard way.

 overall by the New York Mets in 2011, which was highest in Cowboy State history. Now 33, he was called up to the big in 2016 and played 10 years with the Mets before joining the Rangers this season.

His parents, Ron and Patti Nimmo of Cheyenne, always believed in Brandon.

They even built a heated and insulated indoor batting cage in their barn for him to practice hitting during those long Wyoming winters.

Those who watched him early remember a kid who competed in everything he did. Baseball or whatever was in front of him, he was all in. That kind of mindset doesn’t go away. It just gets refined.

Now here he is, wearing a Rangers uniform and getting his own bobblehead night.

The scene at the ballpark had a little bit of everything.

It was festive and loud, with kids clutching their Nimmo bobbleheads like treasures. The food was good, the crowd was lively, and there was that sense you get on a perfect baseball day when everything just clicks.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Not everything, of course."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Rangers Crowd Was Excited"}]

At one point, a foul ball found its way into the stands a few rows below us and struck a young fan.

It looked serious, maybe even a broken arm, as attendants quickly moved in and escorted the child out. It was a sobering reminder that even on a day of celebration, the game can turn in an instant.

But the crowd recovered and the energy returned. This day still belonged to Nimmo.

For fans back in Wyoming, this is the kind of story you hold onto. A kid from Cheyenne who once may have dreamed of riding bulls now making a name for himself in Major League Baseball.

His bobblehead doll bridged two worlds: rodeo and baseball, small-town roots and big-league lights.

And he hasn’t forgotten where he came from.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"That might be the most important part."}]

In an era where athletes can sometimes feel distant, Nimmo still carries Wyoming with him. You can see it in the way he plays, in the way he handles himself, and in moments like today when his family is front and center.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Grandpa Threw Out First Pitch"}]

His grandpa throwing out that first pitch wasn’t just a ceremonial act. It was a symbol of family, of roots, and of the long road from Cheyenne to Arlington.

If you were sitting here on this night, you would have felt it. And if you are reading this back home in Wyoming, you should feel it too.

Because Brandon Nimmo isn’t just playing for the Texas Rangers, he’s playing for all of Wyoming.

Bill Sniffin can be reached at: Bill@CowboyStateDaily.com

Brandon Nimmo Getty Images 2280365562 6 8 26

<title>Texas Rangers Salute Wyoming’s Brandon Nimmo With His Own Bobblehead Night | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Wyoming's own Brandon Nimmo was honored by the Texas Rangers on Sunday with his own bobblehead night. Brandon's 90-year-old grandpa threw out the first pitch. "If you're from Wyoming, you would have been proud," writes Bill Sniffin, who attended the game.

Texas Rangers Salute Wyoming’s Brandon Nimmo With His Own Bobblehead Night

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Jackie Dorothy.

Jackie Dorothy

Bessemer Bend, a true Wyoming ghost town, has been claimed back by nature and alfalfa fields. 

Before its demise, Bessemer was where Wyoming’s oldest cabin was built by desperate fur traders with the Pacific Fur Co. 

Decades later, Bessemer became part of the Oregon, California, Mormon, Pony Express, and Overland trails that all crossed at Red Buttes/Bessemer Bend.

Later, the famous Goose Egg was built on the spot. This extravagant stone mansion is said by some say to have inspired scenes in Owen Wister’s “The Virginian.” 

Today, Bessemer Bend is a broad loop of the North Platte River southwest of Casper that shows no signs of the failed city. 

The landscape is dominated by irrigated fields, ranchland, cottonwoods along the river, and the red hills and buttes that explorers and Oregon Trail emigrants knew as Red Buttes. 

The town of Bessemer, now long gone, had gained a reputation as the “Queen City of the Plains.” Her founders believed that their city would one day be the grandest in Wyoming. 

Their hopes were dashed by a rigged election and the railroad. 

Ultimately, Casper “stole” the honor from them when it became the seat of Natrona County instead and, one by one, the residents of Bessemer hauled their homes over to Casper.  

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

Bessemer first appeared in written record in the 1812 diary of fur trader Robert Stuart. 

Stuart had been hired in 1810 by John Jacob Astor to work for the Pacific Fur Co. and was on the company ship, the Tonquin, when he became marooned at Fort Astoria.  

The crew had sailed first to the Falkland Islands and then around Cape Horn and up the western coast of North America, reaching what is now Astoria, Oregon in May 1811. There, they established Fort Astoria.

When the crew sailed farther north, to Vancouver Island, an interaction with Native Americans resulted in many deaths and the destruction of the ship. 

It was left to Stuart and a small group of men to return eastward overland. The party left Astoria on June 29, 1812, bound for St. Louis. With Stuart were Ramsay Crooks, John Day, Benjamin Jones, François LeClerc, Robert McClellan, and André Vallé.

They started up the Columbia River in canoes. Before they were out many days,  John Day became “demented" and was sent back to Astoria in the care of some friendly Indians. 

In a few days, they came across some men who had been separated from another party and gave them provisions. 

A man named Miller joined Stuart in Day's place according to Molker. 

The group headed east, through what is now Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Wyoming, traveling on what would later become the Oregon Trail. 

Highlights of their journey that Stuart detailed in his diary included paddling down the Snake River, crossing Teton Pass and seeing Jackson Hole, and discovering the South Pass.

By the time they reached Bessemer, the seven men were starving and weak, desperate to rest. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Refuge"}]

Described as “footsore, hungry, and utterly weary,” fur trader Robert Stuart wrote in his diary that he and his six companions had been following a river (the North Platte) for two days but had to find a place to stop and recuperate. 

The cabin they were soon to build would become the oldest recorded cabin in Wyoming. 

It was November 1812 when Stuart described how they had found a low point of land on a bend in the river and had selected it for their winter camp. 

There were cottonwoods and willows there for building materials and firewood and the area had plenty of wildlife to sustain them. 

The men had already seen the Grand Canyon and discovered the passage through South Pass. They had their horses stolen by the Crow and were on foot. 

Weakened by their trek, they had started missing shots and were starving when they had finally succeeded on killing an injured bull buffalo. 

Though tempted to eat the meat raw, Stuart had fed the men broth to regain their strength. 

Stuart describes their cabin at Bessemer as eight feet wide and 18 feet long. The walls were six feet high and the whole was covered with buffalo skins. 

The fireplace was in the center and the smoke found its way out through a hole in the roof.

“As the slaughter of so many buffaloes had provided the party with beef for the winter, in case they met with no further supply, they now set to work, heart and hand, to build a comfortable wigwam,” Stuart wrote. “In a little while, the woody promontory rang with the unwonted sound of the axe.”

He said that by the second evening, the cabin was complete. 

They rested and recuperated from the exertion and hunger they had suffered. They had been in their little cabin for five weeks when a small band of Arapahoe Indians visited them for a few days. Although the Arapahos did not harm them, Stuart was concerned that they might return in “another mood.” 

He packed up his men and some provisions and moved on toward the east, leaving behind their home on Bessemer Bend. When Stuart’s party arrived at Saint Louis they had shortened the route of Lewis and Clark, had discovered the Sweetwater and North Platte rivers and had discovered the most important gateway through the Rockies, South Pass.

Mary Lou Pence and Lola Homsher in their book, “The Ghost Towns of Wyoming,” said that some pioneers claimed the cabin stood for many years while others said the Indians immediately swooped down and burned it. 

Whichever the case, the cabin has long been gone when the Oregon Trail followed part of the same route first made by the small party of fur traders. 

The Goose Egg, or the Searight House, was built on Bessemer Bend and by 1888, a town had been planned, adopting the name of Bessemer. 

The founders had high hopes of being a metropolis. A sawmill and brick plant were brought in and homes and businesses sprung up quickly. 

When a brewery and liquor house were brought in by Max Jaensch, the residents of Bessemer saw a bright future.

“For as one citizen put it,” Pence and Homsher wrote. “Here the consumption of distilled waters was far above the average in American communities.”

In 1888 to 1889, the town promoters laid out 49 blocks and reserved land for what they hoped would become Wyoming's future capitol building. Bessemer grew quickly and attracted settlers, ranchers, and businesses. 

As Wyoming was preparing for statehood, Bessemer entered the race to become the county seat of the proposed Natrona County.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"However, it was not to be. "}]

According to Pence and Homsher, just as Bessemerites were sitting back “gloating” over the meager 304 pollings cast in Casper as compared to their 667 count, it was announced that some “skullduggery” had been perpetrated. 

The investigators ruled that Bessemer had cheated and had more votes than residents. Their count was thrown out and Casper became the county seat in 1890. 

Residents of Bessemer were still angry when they spoke to historians Pence and Homsher in the 1950s. 

“They say we cheated and voted every man, woman and kid,” one old-timer told Pence and Homsher. “Well, I know one of their men who voted three times. But they don’t tell about that!” 

The following year, the printing press for the Bessemer Journal was seized and moved to Casper to become the Natrona Tribune. 

The railroad selected Casper as the regional rail terminal and the end of Bessemer was official.

Many of the buildings were moved to Casper until only the Goose Egg and a few others remained. Eventually, even the stone mansion was torn down and Bessemer quietly faded into the past. 

“When they said the Goose Egg was no more, you could hear that awesome hush,” Pence and Homsher wrote. “You could almost see Chalkeye and Fingers and Honey Wiggin and Baldy and Missou wipe away a tear.”

Bessemer is now returned to pasture and agricultural land. However, the memory of the ghost town and the first cabin from 1812 remain. 

“You can rip a house to pieces, ’til it ain’t no more, but you can’t tear up the things that happened there,” an old-timer told Pence and Homsher in remembrance of his beloved Bessemer and the people that once lived there.

Bessemer Bend and inset 6 7 26

<title>Wyoming History: Once A Bustling City On Oregon Trail, Bessemer Now A Ghost Town | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Bessemer Bend, now peaceful ranchland, was once a stop on the Oregon Trail and a bustling city known as the “Queen City of the Plains.” Now it’s a true Wyoming ghost town that disappeared when Casper was picked as the county seat. 

Wyoming History: Once A Bustling City On Oregon Trail, Bessemer Now A Ghost Town

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

Renée Jean

Growing up, the only mushrooms retired mycologist Jack States ever really noticed were puffballs. They were great targets for kicking down the street.

But eating them? Forget about it. That was the last thing on States’ mind.

Years later as a young graduate student, he had his heart set on being a plant ecologist.

Still, mushrooms didn’t figure in his plans at all.

Then one semester he found himself enrolled in a class with internationally acclaimed mycologist and microbial ecologist, the late Dr. Martha Christensen.

“She was one of the best instructors I think they ever had at the University of Wyoming,” States told Cowboy State Daily. “And she had me do a project on isolating molds from soil, which I thought was kind of ridiculous, but I thought I would be interested in knowing what kind of molds grew on herbivore dung.”

That led to a capstone field project collecting molds from elk, moose, deer, and rabbit droppings. 

Even though he thought at the time it was “ridiculous” to sift through rabbit dung to see what would grow, he had soon found a species of mold no one had ever documented. 

It was a discovery that would attract pharmaceutical money and pull him into a lifetime of chasing fungi from Wyoming to the far corners of the world. 

Along the way, he would identify a dozen new truffle species, reshape forest management in the Southwest United States, and change how scientists think about wildlife diseases and even the Red Desert’s shifting sands.

All of it started with the “ridiculous” student project and a legendary University of Wyoming mycologist pushing him into the strange, hidden world of fungi.

The mold he’d discovered would go on to produce not only a new moth insecticide, but also lysergic acid compounds used in LSD-related research.

Aspergillus leporis, as the mold would be named, is now famous in international mycology and pharmaceutical circles. 

At the time, what it meant for States was a research assistantship under Eli Lilly pharmaceutical company that supported his entire master’s program.

“Money was scarce in those days, and I wasn’t getting any offers from any other place,” said States, who’s now known as Lander’s Mushroom Man. “So that’s what I ended up doing. I isolated and worked on that new species of mold.”

Despite discovering an internationally famous mold, States wasn’t completely abandoning his first love — plants. Fungi just gave him a different perspective on plants.

“It turns out that the fungi are the major decomposer, we call them associates for plants,” he said. “That is, they cause most of the plant diseases, rather than bacteria, which causes the most diseases in animals. 

"Because of their strong relationship to plants, I just parlayed that into plant ecology.”

The underground world of plants — the mycorrhizal partnerships between tree roots and fungi — is still a vast and understudied universe. 

Diving into that allowed States to break lots of new ground over his career, including the discovery of 12 new species of truffles.

It’s also given him what he affectionately describes as the world’s largest collection of squirrel poop.

“All that craziness out there on the highway has paid off,” he said. “And I think (new discoveries) are what makes the career of a scientist so rewarding.”

Many of States’ discoveries have involved adventures to other countries with his wife, who studies both plants and birds. 

One of the most humorous adventures, though, didn’t happen in a remote jungle. It started in an ordinary university mailroom.

“Mushrooms were so popular then — even more so than today,” States said. “And in the Southwest, people automatically assumed I knew everything there was to know about mushrooms, and I didn’t.”

That led to occasional packages of mushrooms mailed to him for identification, including a particularly malodorous specimen called stinkhorn.

“Stinkhorns, when they produce their mature spore mass, the odor is like a rotting cadaver,” States said.

The smell was so bad that a couple of people from the campus post office delivered the package to States in person — along with a request.

“Whatever is in this package, don’t ever have anybody send it to you again,” he was told. “We’ve had to fumigate our entire post office.”

States counted himself lucky that the police didn’t show up to ask why people were mailing him dead bodies.

“So, I decided to write a book to protect myself,” he said. “I thought I’d write a book so they will read that and not send me anything else like that again.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Lessons In Root Beer"}]

Stinkhorns weren’t the only mycological misadventure in States’ career.

To feed his students’ huge and curious appetite — and to attract more students to his program — States looked for creative lesson plans that would draw people in.

At first, he settled on growing some psychedelic mushrooms. He was mindful that such mushrooms were only legally problematic at maturity, so he focused his lesson plans on immature mushrooms. But someone still broke into the building to clean out his entire growth chamber.

He needed a new lesson plan after that, so he switched to fermenting root beer in class using a special, French yeast. It was a big hit, but the students loved the root beer a little too much. They drank it down to the last drop — including the yeast sediment.

“It created almost instant diarrhea,” States recalled. “We had to put warning labels on the bottles after that. Just don’t drink the whole thing. Leave the sediment in the bottom.”

States himself had to learn the hard way that mushrooms are a strange world, with dangers that are not always completely predictable.

“There’s a mushroom that grows in Ponderosa pine forests in Arizona and New Mexico associated with Aspen trees,” he said. “And it produces a mushroom with very strong garlic flavor, which sheep herders in those areas have used for decades to flavor their dishes.”

One year, that was about the only mushroom he could find, so he decided to try it for himself and see if it really did taste like garlic.

“I had heard that some people have an allergic reaction to it, sort of like poisoning,” he said. “But since it just causes gastric upset, and obeying my rules — if you eat a mushroom for the first time, don’t eat more than a teaspoonful — I tried it.”

An hour later, States was doubled over in pain and violently vomiting, forcing him to go to the emergency room — even though his wife, who had also eaten some of the mushroom, had no reaction at all.

He was given painkillers to deaden muscle contractions and kept overnight for observation.

“I was laying there and had one last vomit,” he said. “Out came just a little, tiny piece of that mushroom. Once that came out, there were no more symptoms and I felt really great.”

States realized he must have had an allergic reaction to the mushroom, since his wife was not affected.

“Then the night nurse came in and asked me how I was feeling,” States said. “I said I was feeling great, because I’d gotten rid of that last piece of that mushroom.”

The nurse asked if it was one of those “wild” mushrooms and States admitted it was.

“Then she said, ‘You know, maybe you should leave the mushroom eating to the experts,’” States said with a chuckle.

She had no idea States had literally written the book on mushrooms.

States’ research hasn’t just expanded the catalog of weird fungi. It’s also changed how forests in the American Southwest are managed, and changed the understanding of certain wildlife diseases in Wyoming.

The work he’s proudest of is identifying a three-way symbiosis between truffle-producing fungi, squirrels, and ponderosa pine forests.

The truffle-producing fungi help roots absorb nutrients, while squirrels use the truffles as food, and help spread more fungal spores with their droppings.

Cut too many trees, States found, and that disrupts squirrel populations, chokes off truffle dispersal, and even knocks down northern goshawk numbers, since the raptors overwinter in pine forests and depend on squirrels for food. 

Ultimately, that becomes a negative feedback loop for the health of the forest itself.

As a result of States’ research, the U.S. Forest Service changed its timber harvest practices in Southwestern forests.

His work with molds in soil, meanwhile, was part of a breakthrough discovery about the connections between soil microbes, heavy metals and fighting off wildlife diseases in Wyoming.

“Selenium causes what they call alkali poisoning, where animals eat vegetation of certain plants that have accumulated selenium, and then it causes all kinds of diseases,” States said. “It was happening up there in the elk herd in Jackson Hole.”

With a grant for research in Grand Teton National Park, States was able to show that certain molds in soils could change selenium from a solid salt to a gas, helping reduce concentrations of the metal in soil, making it so it was no longer toxic.

“That was a project we parlayed into studies about Bighorn sheep herds at Whiskey Mountain,” he said. “And that parlayed all the way from elk in Jackson Hole up to the sheep herd in Dubois.”

He also studied biological soil crusts in Wyoming’s Red Desert and discovered the sands are actually held together by delicate communities of fungi, algae and tiny plants, which help keep the sands from simply blowing away.

Energy exploration and truck or ATV traffic break down such crusts, speeding erosion and dune movement. The finding caught the attention of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Proulx, who invited States to contribute a chapter for her anthology, “Red Desert: History of a Place.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Staying Curious"}]

These days, States is technically retired from academic life and formal study of mushrooms, but that world still calls to him.

“I’ll never leave mycology,” he said. “I can’t walk anywhere in this world without seeing them and their involvement in all kinds of biological interactions.”

Lately, he’s bumping into a lot of do-it-yourselfers cultivating, cloning, and growing mushrooms at home — and he can’t resist helping them out.

“The people who want to make hard cider with yeast fermentation, Farmstead Cider in Jackson Hole, I’ve been helping them out,” States said. “Those guys started out with some of my apples for their fermentation.”

He’s also been helping a mushroom growing business called Uncle Sassy.

A project digging through rabbit poop led mycologist Jack States — aka Lander's Mushroom Man — to discover a famous mold and 12 new species of truffles. His research has changed how scientists view wildlife diseases and has reshaped forest management.

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