Image depicting a missing headshot of a Cowboy State Daily team member.

CSD Staff

Same Guys Dancing

[{"type":"text","text":"Earth, Wind & Fire -- Let's Groove"}]

Mix Collage 23 May 2024 04 06 PM 2214

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

<title>Saturday Morning Dance Party: Earth, Wind & Fire -- Let's Groove | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Earth, Wind & Fire -- Let's Groove

Saturday Morning Dance Party: Earth, Wind & Fire -- Let's Groove

Employee kate meadows cropped

Kate Meadows

Business & Tourism

Business

[{"type":"text","text":"Trey Scharp received the phone call of a lifetime on his birthday."}]

It was December 2025, and the owners of the historic Flat Creek Ranch northeast of Jackson, Joe Albright and Marcia Kunstel, were calling with an unexpected question.

Would Trey and his wife, Shelby, like to own the ranch they had managed for more than two decades?

Albright and Kunstel, longtime journalists whose careers were built on documenting history, weren’t offering to sell the ranch.

[{"type":"text","text":"They wanted to give it away."}]

“It was truly an amazing birthday phone call,” Shelby Scharp told Cowboy State Daily.

Seven months later, the Scharps are settling into their first season not just as managers but as owners of a 140-acre guest ranch tucked beneath the iconic Sleeping Indian in the Gros Ventre Mountains. 

In a valley where ranches routinely sell for tens of millions of dollars and development pressure never lets up, Albright and Kunstel chose a different path.

"We didn't want it to fall in the hands of someone who would destroy the land, the wildlife or the buildings," Kunstel told Cowboy State Daily. "It deserves to be maintained."

The couple explained their motivation in a newspaper advertisement announcing the transfer: “Why are we doing all this? To keep our 103-year-old Ranch from falling into the wake of Jackson’s rush to develop mega-mansions and hulking hotels.”

As part of the gift, the Scharps agreed not to sell the ranch for at least 10 years and pledged to preserve its historic cabins, off-grid infrastructure and operation as a guest ranch.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"More Than Real Estate"}]

For Albright and Kunstel, both retired foreign correspondents, the decision was about conservation as much as succession.

"We felt that giving this land to people with the talents and background that Trey and Shelby have was the best way to keep this ranch going for another 100 years," Albright told Cowboy State Daily.

The couple spent 27 years restoring and preserving the ranch after buying it back from the Jackson Hole Land Trust in 1998. By then, many of the 1920s-era cabins had fallen into disrepair.

An extensive restoration project returned the historic buildings to life while modernizing the ranch behind the scenes. Today it operates entirely off solar power with a custom-designed water system. The property was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2001 and reopened as a guest ranch that same year.

Its history stretches back even further. A timeline on the ranch’s website is full of gems – characters and moments that have cemented the ranch’s place in time.

[{"type":"text","text":"“There are a million stories within the big story,” Shelby said."}]

In the summer of 1900, cowboy Enoch “Cal” Carrington camped on the land for a few days while working as a cook on a hunting expedition. Carrington returned the following summer, staked his claim and built a small cabin.

In 1917, Cal met Eleanor “Cissy” Patterson – Albright’s great aunt – at the Bar BC Ranch, where Patterson was staying as a guest. Carrington was the head hunting guide.

Carrington obtained a patent for a homestead in 1922 and sold the property to Patterson a year later, for $5,000. Patterson was an heiress to the Chicago Tribune.

Later, her niece and Albright’s mother, Josephine Patteron, would own the property.

In 1928, Cissy Patterson hired a man named Farney Cole to be caretaker. Cole famously beat a black bear to death with a waterlogged aspen limb in 1944. He had been using the limb to break up a beaver dam on the property when the bear, which had two cubs with her, attacked him.

Cissy longed to host Saturday night dances in the lodge at the ranch, and she made that dream come true in 1929, when she had a grand piano shipped to the ranch from Chicago. The instrument was hauled up the primitive bumpy road on an ox cart. It is still in use today.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Jackson Gambling Scene"}]

For a few weeks, Flat Creek Ranch was party to a thriving gambling scene in Jackson in the 1950s, As gambling raids swept through Jackson, hotel staff drove their guests out to the ranch, where a casino room was set up.

In 1986, Josephine Albright donated Flat Creek Ranch to the Jackson Hole Land Trust to guarantee the land’s permanent protection. She ensured that her heirs would have the first option to buy back the ranch at an appraised price upon her death.

Albright and Kunstel had not intended to buy the ranch in 1998, but they fell in love with Jackson and were ready to retire from longtime journalism careers.

The 1920s-era cabins remained on the land but were in desperate need of maintenance and restoration.

Contractor Porgy McClelland headed an ambitious restoration project that lasted four years. Cabins were moved and some were taken apart and put back on new foundations.

During the process, McClelland found old newspapers stuffed between logs for chinking.

, “He opened up one and found a box score for a baseball game in which Babe Ruth hit two home runs. It disintegrated into dust before he could share it too widely.” -

When the ranch was turning 100, Shelby suggested Albright and Kunstel write a book chronicling the history of the ranch.

“They jumped in with both feet and did this incredible coffee table book,” Shelby said.

 during the writing of the book, Flat Creek Ranch: Cissy and Cal Launch a Rip-Roaring Jackson Hole Saga. Newspapers on the platform date to 1911 for the city of Jackson. They also searched land records that told traces of stories.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"An Unexpected Opportunity"}]

The Scharps’ connection to Albright and Kunstel happened unexpectedly, in the early 2000s. The Scharps were managing a fly fishing lodge in Patagonia, Chile, when guests Joan and Huntley Baldwin mentioned friends in Jackson who were looking for ranch managers.

When Trey heard the name "Flat Creek Ranch," he wasn't immediately interested.

[{"type":"text","text":"Growing up in Jackson, he remembered it as a neglected property."}]

He told his wife, “I don’t think we can make a go out of it with an old ranch that is falling apart.”

The Scharps used the satellite internet they were only supposed to use to email their boss in Santiago to do a Google search of Flat Creek Ranch.

“The page loaded so slowly,” Shelby said. “The first five minutes were just pictures of a blue sky.”

[{"type":"text","text":"But when the entire page finally loaded, Trey was stunned."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“We realized the ranch had been completely refurbished,” he said."}]

Later, the Scharps would walk to a phone booth in the middle of nowhere, at a crossroads in rural Chile where busses sometimes stopped. Chickens pecked at their feet as they picked up the phone and called Albright and Kunstel.

[{"type":"text","text":"“I think we had the job two weeks later,” Trey said. "}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Carrying The Legacy Forward"}]

Within their almost 23-year-stint of the ranch’s bigger story, Trey said he can’t think of one memory that trumps all the others; there are too many.

“But there was that bald eagle,” he said. “We watched it take a Canada goose out of the lake.”

Learning that Kunstel and Albright wanted to give them the ranch was a total shock, Shelby told Cowboy State Daily.

During that December phone call, Shelby was nervous at the outset. She said she immediately wondered how she and her husband could afford to take on such an astounding piece of Teton County.

“And then I looked over at Trey and saw how grateful he was and thought, 'I need to be more like that',” she said.

The Scharps have agreed to own and preserve the ranch for the next 10 years. Its future is open-ended after that. They could decide to hold onto it, sell it or transfer it to a younger generation of the Albright family.

“We understood what Joe and Marcia wanted their guests to feel while they’re here,” Shelby said. “We never diverged from that.”

Now that the ranch is entirely in their hands, Trey said they will continue to improve the infrastructure, to keep the 100-plus-year-old cabins looking as good as they did in 2004, when he and Shebly saw the property together for the first time.

Being owners and managers is “the epitome of ‘same same but different',” Shelby said.

The daily grind hasn’t changed. But now, when she walks across a beloved bridge on the property in the early mornings, the reality sinks in: “It’s quiet and it’s like, ‘Oh, this is ours',” Shelby said.

“We’re not luxury. We’re authentic,” Trey said. “It’s authenticity here.”

He added that in the gift is a powerful message about land stewardship: “Not everything is for sale.”

Flat Creek Ranch sign 7 5 26

<title>Jackson Couple Gives Historic Flat Creek Ranch To Longtime Caretakers To Save It | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Instead of selling the century-old 140-acre Flat Creek Ranch for millions, a Jackson couple gave the property to its longtime managers. "We didn't want it to fall in the hands of someone who would destroy the land, the wildlife or the buildings," they said.

Jackson Couple Gives Historic Flat Creek Ranch To Longtime Caretakers To Save It

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

Renée Jean

Outdoors

Public Lands

A small team of volunteers will shoulder heavy packs and follow a string of pack mules into bear country this summer on a narrow trail that leads deep into Wyoming’s Shoshone National Forest. 

Their destination isn’t a scenic vista or a famous fishing hole. It's a weathered lodge built in 1890 that is slowly but surely falling apart. 

It was built on a steep hillside in the nation’s first federally protected forest by one Abraham Archibald Anderson.

The rugged mountain artist studio turned ranch house is where Anderson would begin a fight to save the wilderness from burning down around him.

That fight would take him to the nation’s Capitol and reshape America’s emerging national forest system, even as it laid a foundation for Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks.

HistoriCorps Regional Program Manager Michael Guillot is 

 to save Anderson’s 136-year-old historic cabin.

“He saw a lot of what was happening with unregulated forestry in the area and some of the development that he felt was accelerating without the right kind of guardrails,” Guillot told Cowboy State Daily about the impact of Anderson on public lands policy. “So, he became a big supporter and advocate for clarifying the role of our forest reserve. He’s considered one of the first.”

Anderson’s headquarters for the effort was the Palette Ranch cabin he built in 1890 to serve as his art studio in what is today known as the Shoshone National Forest, which was also the nation’s “first forest.”

That makes the cabin integral to the birth of America's conservation movement.

“These structures should be saved,” Guillot said. “But they are hard to do. They’re hard to get to, and they’re hard to coordinate. But we are uniquely positioned as an organization to take on these kinds of projects.”

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

Anderson didn’t come to Wyoming to begin a conservation movement — at all. 

He was born into a wealthy family in New Jersey in 1847, which allowed him to pursue his two main passions in life, hunting and painting. 

He discovered the territory that would become Wyoming on an 1883 hunting trip in between Paris and New York excursions, and he was struck by the spectacular hunting and the equally spectacular scenery. 

That prompted Anderson to buy a residence at the head of a valley near the Greybull River, a place he called Palette Ranch No. 1, as well as two additional ranches at lower elevations that he called Palette No. 2 and Palette No. 3. 

He built his mountain artist studio — the Anderson Lodge that HistoriCorps is working to save — in 1890, about 6 miles west of his main ranch headquarters.

One summer, he even brought along two female models for nude portraiture to this just-finished, rustic mountain retreat. 

That prompted local cowhands to name one of the adjoining creeks “Warhouse,” a polite version of what they thought was really going on in Anderson’s studio.

Warhouse Creek and Warhouse Trail still remain as colorful reminders of this history.

Anderson made many trips into the adjacent mountains for ranching, hunting, and painting. 

Through that, he witnessed the devastation that was being caused by unsupervised grazing and unregulated hunting and tourism. 

Forage was being deliberately destroyed and timber stands burned in clear-cut fashion to make herding easier, as well as develop new forage fields. 

The fires were destroying watersheds, as well as threatening his home and his ranch. 

That prompted Anderson to join national efforts advocating for real conservation of the resources in Yellowstone. He took a map to President Theodore Roosevelt to advocate that a new boundary be set for the Yellowstone Forest Reserve, as well as plead for better enforcement of existing rules.

Not long after that in 1902, Roosevelt not only enlarged and renamed the area the Yellowstone Forest Reserve, he also appointed Anderson as its special superintendent. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Anderson wasted no time in his new role. "}]

He immediately started surveying the 13,000-mile reserve boundary, accomplishing the work with a small crew in three months’ time. He created new districts with new supervisors whose mission was to tackle the problems caused by unregulated grazing as well as other issues. 

Anderson continued in his role until 1905, and served for a time as the game warden of Wyoming as well. 

He was among the first in the nation to manage public rangelands and timberlands. 

To assist the state in managing its big game herds, he established game refuges throughout the reserves — a legacy that lives on to this day.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Wilderness Designation Adds To Difficulty"}]

The work to save Anderson’s cabin will be grueling, Guillot said, and the logistics involved are complex, starting with just getting volunteers, tools, and materials to the site. 

Because it is a federally designated wilderness area, no mechanized tools or equipment are allowed. That means no chainsaws, nail guns, or anything like that.

The wilderness designation also means every hand tool and all materials must be carried in and out by human hands or pack mule for the entire 7.5-mile trail from the Jack Creek trailhead.  

This includes food and tents to sleep in, as well as all 3,000 pounds of materials and tools for the stabilization project itself. 

Once volunteers hike in, they’ll work five days straight at elevation in true bear country, filtering all their water from local sources and packing out every scrap of food and trash they bring in.

The remoteness of the location means forethought is a requirement of the job. There’s no running to Lowe’s if something was forgotten, and there are no easy exits for bad weather. 

Because of the difficulty of this project, HistoriCorps has capped the number of volunteers to no more than eight for safety’s sake. That means more work for fewer hands to jack up and crib the century-old cabin that was built onto a sliding hillside.

Because of the project’s many challenges, HistoriCorps’ Anderson Lodge project has earned its own designation. 

It’s known as a “HardCorps” project, meaning only volunteers who have high levels of skill in both carpentry and the wilderness should apply.

For volunteers like Leisa Grant, it’s the difficulty that is the draw. 

She’s part of a growing segment of travelers no longer content with just leaving no trace. They want to see the world and make a difference while doing it.

“I love the idea of being part of a small group of people who are dedicated to preserving history,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “We see a lot of places around that are long gone. And it’s neat to see in some ways, it’s like a skeleton where something died. But it’s never coming back.”

Grant has both wilderness and carpentry skills, which is what brought her to HistoriCorps first as a volunteer and now as an employee. Being able to use both skills to see the country and save history has been uniquely satisfying, she said.

“You’re working on stuff where you’re trying to emulate and make that structure exactly like it was when the first people put it up,” she said. “And I think our volunteers are absolutely in love with that idea. We have a strong core of regular volunteers who have become friends over time.

“It’s a special experience, whether you’re a volunteer or a field staff member, which is why I like to do both.”

The areas she’s gotten to see and explore are also places she would never have even known about but for HistoriCorps.

“They are beautiful, breathtaking, raw places,” she said. “Almost always on public lands like BLM and Forest Service. It’s just a neat opportunity to go somewhere that you never even knew existed.”

Anderson cabin Alliance for Historic Wyoming 7 5 26

<title>Inside The Mission To Save 136-Year-Old Anderson Lodge In Wyoming Bear Country | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Saving the 136-year-old Anderson Lodge deep in Wyoming’s Shoshone National Forest is not easy. As it's a wilderness area, no mechanized tools or equipment are allowed and everything must be carried in. There's no running to Lowe’s if something is forgotten

Inside The Mission To Save 136-Year-Old Anderson Lodge In Wyoming Bear Country

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Wyoming Life

There is no speed limit reduction sign for travelers approaching Hiland. 

The drivers along U.S. Highway 20-26 have little reason to tap their brakes from 70 mph as they bypass the weathered and struggling buildings that were a home, a combination store, bar, post office, and little motel four-room motel that a century ago started as a family business.

But Eva Gunn, who inherited those buildings from her mom in 2022, hopes to resurrect the once noted Bright Spot store and lounge, a slice of the past in what now goes for a ghost town.

“I hope to have it open this summer,” she said. “The same as it was before, the bar and the store.”

Her mother received the properties as back wages from the Bright Spot’s previous owners, who operated it less than a decade ago, she said.

Gunn does not own the red-wooded building to the west of the little parade of white structures she said once held a dance hall. 

Natrona County records show the Supreme Grand Lodge of AMORC, or Rosicrucians, based in San Jose, California, holds title to it — and with walls collapsing and roof shingles missing it will likely soon join the destiny of the Temple of Karnak that the group reveres.

If the walls of these buildings could talk, there would be stories about how a farmer gave up his dairy to create the business in the 1920s, about notable robberies in later decades, and a woman who made ham sandwiches and wrote racy stories for romance magazines, garnering her invitations to appear on the TV shows “To Tell The Truth” and “Phil Donahue.”

Before that Hiland was a stop on the Chicago & North Western Railway that served Wolton more than a mile northeast and housed a community linked to a sheep operation run by former President Gerald Ford’s grandfather, along with several other businesses that brought life into central Wyoming.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Population 10"}]

These days, the Wyoming Department of Transportation roadway sign announces Hiland’s population as 10. It is fairly accurate.

Gunn said a couple of additional people could possibly be tallied in the number. The residents, who include Gunn, live in mobile homes and houses about one-quarter mile east of the Bright Spot and south of the highway on North Hiland Road.

“I am from Casper, but I would rather be out there than in Casper for sure,” Gunn said. “Driving when I have to go to town is the only thing I don’t like.”

She said she shops in Casper rather than Riverton because it has more stores.

Also part of the community are Alfred Dunihoo, 74, his daughter, Mandy Dunihoo, 47, and Bill Miller, 69.

Alfred Dunihoo purchased his 6 acres from the late Bright Spot owner Bob Steelman 25 years ago. Steelman lived just down from him on Hiland Road and died in 2022. He operated the Bright Spot from 1974 to 2006.

Alfred Dunihoo said met Steelman while working on an oil rig that was in the area.

“We had a man camp sitting down there by the Bright Spot and that’s how I got to know Bob,” he said. “I talked to Bob and bought this place.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Planting Trees"}]

After buying the property he drilled a well and planted some 1,800 trees, including many blue spruce that Mandy Dunihoo waters regularly.

 The Dunihoos call life in Hiland peaceful and quiet, for the most part. 

Mandy Dunihoo said she joined her father about eight years ago after escaping a relationship that nearly cost her life.

“I moved to get away from all that,” she said. “I am not too good with towns. I’ve grown more here than I have anywhere.”

Mandy Dunihoo said she enjoys the pronghorn, deer and elk that come through and pointed to a pronghorn mother and baby on the edge of the property. She also goes into the surrounding region to hunt rocks.

A handful of years ago, during the strong winter in the region, there were challenges traveling to Casper or Riverton for supplies, but recent years have not posed any issues, she said.

There are also no issues with having enough water in the 70-foot well to water the trees. The water is “typical” Wyoming water with akaline rust, and they use it to shower, wash and sometimes drink. 

Miller, who also lives just down the road, said he has lived in Hiland for 30 years. Both he and Alfred Dunihoo remember more activity due to the Bright Spot. They said when Steelman and his wife, Carla, owned the Bright Spot people from Casper would drive out to the bar.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Musical Memories"}]

Steelman played guitar and sometimes would host music jam sessions, or he would lead his own band. 

“They’d have biker parties there,” Miller said. “They were good, I’ll guarantee you there was no fights, no nothing.”

They would typically roast a pig as part of the proceedings.

While the Bright Spot has had a few owners over the years in addition to Steelman, original owner Robert “Dad” Smith’s daughter Betty Evenson and her husband, Maurice, ran the business from the 1930s into the 1970s.

Those were years the Bright Spot was a bus stop on the highway, and truckers would drop in for a bite to eat.

As a young woman, Betty Evenson enjoyed writing and, in addition to serving the ham sandwiches and burgers, developed a side career writing articles such as “He Gave Me Melt-In-Your-Mouth Kisses” and “At 14, I Already Had A Past” for magazines such as Real Confessions and Daring Romances.

In addition to invitations to the aforementioned TV shows, the New York Times on Aug. 7, 1973, did a feature story on her writing and role running the Bright Spot.

“Most of her stories, punched out on an ancient typewriter in her apartment behind the restaurant counter, run between 3,500 to 5,000 words for which she might earn $400,” the paper reported. “Most of her ideas come from drivers such as Buster Harnden who has stopped his bus here for 34 years.”

Betty Evenson told the reporter the drivers would talk more openly with her because they were not in their hometown.

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

The Bright Spot was in the news a couple decades earlier when three gunmen barged into the store on a wintry Sunday night on Feb. 21, 1954, and made off with $200 in cash. The thieves ran out of the store as the bus from Casper to Billings pulled in at 9:07 p.m., the Casper Morning Star reported on Feb. 23, 1954.

The bus driver, the same Buster Harnden, and Maurice Evenson, with a .270 rifle, had the passengers disembark and pursued the culprits’ car with the bus.

“The bus chased the gunmen all the way to Powder River, 20 miles east of Hiland, but apparently missed the car along the road,” the newspaper reported. “Evenson called Sheriff (Louis) Cooper from Powder River and returned to Hiland in the bus.”

After Maurice Evenson died in April 1970, Betty Evenson continued to operate the Bright Spot alone until she was robbed by a masked man on April 22, 1974. The Casper Star-Tribune reported on April 24, 1974, that she had closed the store at 5:30 p.m. and a masked gunman kicked down the store’s door as she watched television in her apartment about 9:30 p.m.

The gunman forced her to open the safe and remove $300, including some postal money, then ripped the telephone from the wall and locked her into the bathroom. The postman found her the next morning and had to take hinges off the bathroom door to free her.

“Mrs. Evenson said this was the fourth holdup in 40 years that she and her late husband operated the Bright Spot,” the newspaper reported. “The last two holdups occurred in the past five months.”

Evenson sold the business and went on to write a book, “50 Years at the Bright Spot,” published in 1990, about her family’s business. It can still be ordered online.

In more recent years, the community was in the news in 2021 for a body found that was determined to be a homicide. Most recently was the highway crash involving a tanker truck that resulted in two fatalities on June 26.

However, Hiland residents emphasize the positives far outweigh the negatives as they enjoyed the afternoon sun on a recent day and watched the world go by.

“You don’t hear all the noises that you hear in town,” Mandy Dunihoo said. “We played counting the cars the last few days while they were stopping them for the highway (roadwork). We played counting the cars both ways to see how many cars would come through.”

Hiland green Sign and people 7 5 26

<title>Hiland, Wyoming, Is Not A Ghost Town — Just Ask The 10 People Living There | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Even without the Bright Spot country store and lounge, Hiland, Wyoming, isn't a ghost town — just ask the 10 people still living there in the middle of nowhere between Casper and Shoshoni. In fact, the woman who inherited the store hopes to reopen it.

Hiland, Wyoming, Is Not A Ghost Town — Just Ask The 10 People Living There

He was a “G-Man” who arrested the FBI’s most-wanted man in 1936 and later served as the special agent in charge in Detroit helping take down a Nazi spy ring and communicating with J. Edgar Hoover about Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford.

John Bugas would go on to be recruited by Henry Ford in 1944 and help oust the man Ford hired to be the corporation’s thug-like enforcer in what he later in life told a reporter was an encounter with an angry armed man.

“I didn’t know if whether I was going to get something between the shoulders or not,” he said.

Bugas retired as a vice president and consultant to the company in 1978.

But before any of that, Bugas was a Wamsutter ranch kid who played basketball for the University of Wyoming, starred on its stage in dramatic productions, and worked at Yellowstone National Park during his some of his collegiate summers. 

He also was noted for his stories about ranch life. Bugas spun a favorite tale to a Detroit Free Press reporter for a June 30, 1940, profile on him as he led the FBI office in the Motor City.

“When I was a kid, I never wore shoes or ate candy until I was 14," he told the reporter. "Finally, my dad told me he would get me some on his trip to town. So, 10 days later, I ran out a mile from the ranch house to meet him and he tossed me a couple of packages. 

"When he found me under the bed at the house, I had chewed halfway through one of the hob-nailed boots because I thought it was candy.”

Bugas was born in 1908 to Andrew and Helena Bugas in Rock Springs. A year later, the family moved to Wamsutter, where his father started a ranch and operated businesses, including a road construction company.

He attended the University of Wyoming’s preparatory high school graduating at 16 and obtained a scholarship to the university but because of his dad’s needs, took two years off before college to run a road construction crew.

Once in college, Bugas’ name appeared in the Casper Tribune-Herald on April 19, 1931, as a member of The University of Wyoming Players, a traveling theater troupe putting on a play, “The Poor Nut.”

On the university’s basketball team he was a forward. He also played baseball and ran track.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Park Ranger"}]

John Bugas was a Wamsutter ranch kid who became an FBI agent and caught the nation's most-wanted man in 1936. Then, as the special agent in charge in Detroit, he took down a Nazi spy ring. He went on to protect the Henry Ford family from kidnappers.

Saturday Morning Dance Party: Earth, Wind & Fire -- Let's Groove

In case you missed it

CSD Staff

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Saturday Morning Dance Party: Earth, Wind & Fire -- Let's Groove

In case you missed it

Authors

CSD Staff

Writer

More in Same Guys Dancing

Saturday Morning Dance Party: February 28, 2026

Wednesday Morning Dance Party: July 23, 2025

Saturday Morning Dance Party: Dierks Bentley -- 5-1-5-0

Friday Morning Dance Party: Cream -- White Room

Most read