One More For The Road

[{"type":"text","text":"These so-called \"new\" options in cars have been around for 50 years...."}]

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

<title>One More For The Road: Sunday, May 26, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

These so-called "new" options in cars have been around for 50 years....

One More For The Road: Sunday, May 26, 2024

 These so-called "new" options in cars have been around for 50 years....

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Jackie Dorothy.

Jackie Dorothy

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

John “Josh” Deane was 16 years old when he left his home in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, for the Wild West in 1872, lured there by the adventures he had read about in the 10-cent novels of his day. 

Instead of the excitement he dreamed of, the teenager found life a struggle just to survive.

Deane eventually took a job for $75 a month driving freight, a profession known as "bull whacking." 

By 1876, Deane was 20 years old and landed an opportunity that he considered an advancement in life. 

He was hired as a government dispatch carrier at the princely sum of $125 a month. 

In 1928, Deane told his story to a biographer about he carried one especially important dispatch, related in his own words in the book “The Mayor of Meeteetse.” 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Rumors Of A Fight"}]

Deane had arrived at Fort Brown in the middle of June 1876 and was told by Col. Julius Mason to remain a few days. 

Mason had just arrived himself from Fort Riley, Kansas, and was concerned because there were rumors of a fight with the Indians in the Rosebud country. 

“A little later, he decided to send me to the camp of Custer and Reno and told me to select an Indian to accompany me,” Deane said. “I picked Niogen Doget, a Shoshone, and we started out on the morning of June 24, with our saddle horses and one pack horse.”

The two men had orders to reach their destination as quickly as possible, so they traveled fast and light. 

Crossing Cottonwood Creek, they made our way up the slope of the Owl Creek Range. 

On the summit of the mountains, Deane described pausing to look down for the first time into the Big Horn Basin which would one day be his future home. 

“From my point of vantage, I could see the Big Horn River and could trace its course for many miles, by the line of cottonwood timber along its banks,” Deane said. “Not a human being, nor a sign of human habitation, was visible in all the valley.”

As Deane and Niogen Doget took in the view, they were unaware of the danger that Custer, Reno and the others would be facing the next day along the Little Bighorn River.

Deane said that the Pryor Mountains were dimly visible, and the Big Horn Range, with snow-capped Cloud’s Peak, rising in its midst, was easily discerned. 

Only a few miles beyond the smooth northern slope of the range on which they stood, the men could see the peculiar, brick-red, conical hills of the hot springs region, in which the town of Thermopolis would later spring up. 

They descended the northern slope of the mountains, passing close to the spot where Col. Torrey’s Embar Ranch would soon to be situated, the same ranch that Butch Cassidy and others of the Hole-in-the-Wall gang would be working on in the 1890s. 

He forged unnamed creeks and swam rivers in his haste to reach the camps. 

As the two men traveled with the dispatch from Fort Brown on June 25 and 26, they were completely unaware that the Battle of the Little Bighorn, known as the Battle of the Greasy Grass by the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho tribes, was being fought. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Reno Sick in Tent"}]

On June 27, Deane said that he and Niogen Doget reached the head of what is now called Reno Creek. 

They followed down a long bench, hunting the camp of Custer and Reno. 

“As we drew near the camp, which was on the bank of the Little Big Horn River, I could see dead horses and other traces of a fight,” Deane said years later in 1928. “Sergeant Ned Bowling, whose widow is still living in Lander, Wyoming, greeted me and pointed out Reno’s tent.”

Deane said he hurried over to the tent but was surprised when Reno’s orderly would not let him inside. 

Deane was told that Reno was ill and unable to receive dispatches. 

“I was sent to the second in command to whom I handed over the small locked pouch, used by the government for secret messages, and the sealed envelope containing the key,” Deane said. “As he tore open the envelope, I remarked that I would look around a little and return later.”

Deane was ordered instead to wait while the officer prepared dispatches about the battle to send back to Fort Brown. Deane was then told to start back with the messages at once. 

“My curiosity was now thoroughly aroused, as well as some resentment,” Deane said. “When a man has just covered 170 miles, in two days, it must be a very urgent matter which sends him back over the same route, without at least, one night’s rest for himself and his horse.”

Deane could see that “serious things had been happening.” 

He described how the faces of the officers were grim and haggard; there were dead horses and bandaged men, and Reno was evidently seriously wounded. 

He pulled his friend Bowling to one side while waiting for the dispatches and asked what had happened. 

Bowling told Deane that Custer and Reno had quarreled at Rosebud, and Custer, impetuous and hot-headed, had taken a small group and gone ahead to attack the Indians, without waiting for Reno’s support. 

Deane learned that Custer and his men had ridden forth upon a rolling ridge and were going so fast that the ammunition wagon and Gatling gun could not keep up. Indians, outnumbering his forces 10-1, were in ambush in the timber along the Little Big Horn River, which paralleled the ridge. 

Bowling said that Indians had pushed upon Custer’s little group, taking them by surprise, cutting them off from the retreat and from their ammunition, and had them at their mercy. 

The soldiers had put up a brave resistance, but when their ammunition was gone, they were helpless and were slaughtered without quarter by the furious Sioux.

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

Deane said that Reno, coming along later in the day, had a skirmish with the Indians, in which he lost a great number of men. 

The rest of the soldiers were so exhausted that no attempt had as yet been made to bury the dead from the Custer massacre. 

“As a matter of fact, except for a thin layer of soil thrown over the bodies where they lay, they were left untouched for many months and then buried in one huge pit, above which stands the Custer monument bearing their names,” Deane said.

According to Deane’s account, small stones were set up at the spot where each man fell, and where he lay before each soldier was given a permanent resting place. 

Custer, alone of the victims of that day’s slaughter, is not buried on the field, Deane said. His body was removed to the East.

“Orders or no orders, I could not go back to Fort Brown without a glimpse of that battlefield,” Deane said. 

When his dispatches were ready; instead of starting back, Bowling and Deane slipped away to the spot, only a short distance from the camp, where the soldiers lay dead. 

“As we approached the scene of the massacre, we saw a horse quietly grazing on the hill side, apparently the sole survivor of the recent battle,” Deane said. “He had a bullet wound in his neck, but was not seriously hurt, and as I happen to know, died many years later, of old age.”

The scene that Deane observed before him was one that remained with him for the rest of his life. 

He described how men and horses were lying where they had fallen, scattered singly or in groups of twos or threes, on both slopes of the ridge and on its summit. 

“Most of the bodies were fairly close together, but occasionally we noticed small groups or individuals at some distance from the rest,” Deane said. “Piles of empty shells could be seen everywhere.”

As Deane walked among the battlefield, he said that none of the soldiers appeared to have more than two or three cartridges left. 

The whole field, as indicated by the positions of the dead, was about a square mile. 

He said that the bodies of the men were all on this unsheltered ridge, where sagebrush was the only vegetation, but dead horses were scattered through the timber close to the river. 

There were no dead Indians to be seen, though they must have lost at least as many men as the whites. 

They had evidently paused long enough after the fight to gather up their own dead, as well as to take the scalps of a good many of their victims. 

“We came upon General Custer lying across the neck of his horse, a pistol in his hand,” Deane said. “The Indians must have respected his rank for he still wore his scalp. 

“I remember noting that he had yellow hair, a fact which I have since had to dispute with several people who have insisted that Custer was dark.”

The scene Deane described decades after the fact matched that of Captain Frederick Benteen, battalion leader of Companies D, H and K who walked the battlefield on the same day. 

“The only approach to a line was where five or six horses found at equal distances,” Benteen reported. “Ahead of those horses there were five or six men at about the same distances, showing that the horses were killed and the riders jumped off and were all heading to get where General Custer was.”

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

After walking the battlefield, Deane and Niogen Doget reached Fort Brown late in the evening of the second day. Deane went immediately to Mason and handed him the envelope and dispatch pouch.

“Huh! Hell of a note! Did you hear the details?” Mason said after reading the dispatch. 

Deane repeated to him what Bowling had told me of the cause of the affair and described the battlefield as he had seen it. 

Mason appeared disturbed but made no further comment, except to wonder if the news had been dispatched to other quarters. 

Deane told him that dispatch carriers had been sent to Helena. 

“I should have reached my destination, however, before they did theirs,” Deane said. “There was no telegraph line at Fort Brown so we were unable to pass the news along before it had reached the world through other channels.”

Robert Hall, the telegraph operator at Fort Stambaugh, about 50 miles south of Fort Brown, had the distinction of first wiring the news to the headquarters department at Omaha. 

General Crook at Fort Rosebud had dispatched Shoshone Indian runners to Fort Stambaugh, as soon as he heard of the catastrophe. 

Stambaugh had a telegraph line, but there was a break in the wire, just then, which had not yet been located. 

The commanding officer had relays of horses sent out along the telegraph route and gave Hall the dispatches with instructions to ride along the route until he found the break in the wire. 

He found it at a point about 50 miles from the Fort, and from there he sent his news to Omaha.

“Nothing more that was exciting or worthy of special notice occurred during my career as a government dispatch carrier,” Deane said. “I made only the usual routine trips from one fort to another.”

A year later, Deane had not saved much of his money and had grown weary of the monotony of the long, lonely rides over the hills. He quit the job of delivering messages for the military and headed to Green River.

Eventually, Deane returned to the Big Horn Basin during a more peaceful era and settled in Meeteetse where he was appointed mayor. 

There, he lived his last years as an old timer of the region and became famous for his barbecues.

Custers last stand Getty Images 514887526 5 30 26

<title>Wyoming History: The Courier Who Carried First Dispatch From Custer’s Last Stand | Cowboy State Daily</title>

John “Josh” Deane came West looking for adventure — and got more than he bargained for when he took a job as a military dispatch rider. It was 150 years ago that he found himself carrying the first message about Custer’s last stand to Wyoming’s Fort Brown.  

Wyoming History: The Courier Who Carried First Dispatch From Custer’s Last Stand

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

Renée Jean

Business & Tourism

Business

CHEYENNE — In some ways, it was the ultimate Mother’s Day gift, even though the gift didn’t necessarily happen on that exact date. 

In 2019, Shareen Brendle’s mother was showing early signs of dementia.

“So I bought Bouquets Unlimited from her, because it was her only out for retirement,” Brendle told Cowboy State Daily. “And then she passed away in 2022.”

Four short years later, Brendle’s independent florist shop faces a tough reality. Her Mother’s Day sales were down 10% this year, even as she heard of a nearby store giving away free bouquets for the holiday as an in-store promotion.

It felt like a sign of the times to Brendle. She’s been helping her mom at the family’s legacy shop for 38 years, and she’s watched independent florist shops dwindle all along the way.

In 1992, there were 27,000 florist storefronts in America. By 2012, that number had dropped by almost half to 14,000. Today, they number 11,750. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Soon that will be 11,749. "}]

That’s because Brendle has made the difficult decision to close her mother’s store in June — one more independent florist succumbing to e-commerce and big-box price undercutting amid ever-tighter margins from rising fuel and other overhead costs.

“I’m broken-hearted about it,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “But think about the hundreds of chain stores that buy in bulk. They have hundreds of stores, so they can get better deals than small stores.”

Oftentimes, Brendle has even seen retail prices at big-box stores and supermarkets that are lower than her wholesale prices.  

“I just can’t do it anymore,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “It’s just become tougher and tougher, and we’ve had to get tighter and tighter.”

Bouquets Unlimited has been part of Cheyenne’s business landscape for 44 years. Brendle’s mother opened the shop, and for decades the store has been as much about family and community as it has flowers.

“We really balanced each other out,” Brendle said, chuckling a little bit. “It was the yin and the yang. I got to see my mom every day. A lot of people don’t have that novelty. We worked together side by side.”

Her mom was the public face for the business — active in the Chamber, Kiwanis, and other local groups — while Brendle handled the less glamorous side of ownership. She did the hiring, the firing, the purchasing, and paying the bills.

“I did all the things that owners don’t want to do,” she said. 

But she also made beautiful arrangements, winning a national floral design contest with Florist Magazine in 1998. On a trip to Hawaii, a stranger even recognized her win.

“It was like my 10 seconds of fame,” Brendle said. “He’s like, ‘Hey, you’re the one who won that design contest.’ And he goes, ‘I love your work.’ My mom was so proud.”

Even though the man was not a celebrity or someone she knew, it was a neat experience that someone from so far away had recognized her work. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Shifting Shopper Habits"}]

For Brendle, the trend isn’t about people falling out of love with flowers. Demand for flowers has remained strong nationally, and she sees that locally as well.

The problem for small mom-and-pop stores like hers is how many people have shifted to online buying strategies, hoping to save a buck or two on bouquets.

Nationwide, marketshare for florist shops has shrunk about 1% year over year, dropping to about $7.9 billion, according to IBISWorld’s Florists in the US Industry Analysis. 

Meanwhile, digital rivals — online marketplaces, floral apps and the big national brands like 1-800-Flowers that live on the web — have grown roughly 9.1% annually. 

On top of that, flowers are regularly available in convenience stores and supermarkets, stacked in mass-merchandiser coolers or supermarket endcaps. 

They’re available through same-day delivery apps that promise sushi with a side of laundry detergent or anything else consumers desire.

Lowe’s giving away flower bouquets for Mother’s Day, a holiday that had typically been a top sales event for her store, felt like the last straw.

“They can take that hit because of all the things they sell,” Brendle said. “So guys will be like, ‘Oh sweet, now I don’t have to go to a flower shop.’ So that cuts us out. It’s just little things like that.”

The fact that such bouquets aren’t custom-designed and won’t last for very long doesn’t seem to matter to customers anymore, Brendle added. They’re cheap, they’re convenient, and for many people, that’s become “good enough.”

Behind those cheap, grocery-store bouquets is a global supply chain that only works on volume. 

The premade bunches now crowding U.S. supermarkets start in places like Colombia and Ecuador where labor is cheap.

Flowers are cut, sorted and assembled into ready-to-sell bouquets, then flown into U.S. hubs, moving through highly automated distribution centers, so they can be delivered in bulk to retail chains.

Because these bouquets arrive premade, retailers don’t need to staff a full floral department with trained designers. They can sell professionally arranged designs at much cheaper prices than a small florist shop like Bouquets Unlimited, which is sourcing high-quality flowers from all over the world — tulips from Holland, lilies from Canada, and hothouse beauties of all kinds from California, Idaho, Florida, Hawaii and more.

Brendle confronts the structural disadvantages in her industry every time she orders flowers from her Denver wholesaler. Her shop, even though it might order 5,000 roses every Valentine’s Day, is still a very small customer compared to the big chains who are buying tens of thousands.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Order Gatherers 'Racket'"}]

Brendle is also frustrated by so-called “order gatherers.” These are national call-center companies and websites that buy up florist-related domain names and search terms, and then impersonate local flower shops online.

“They’re not florists,” she said. “You’ve heard of Ava’s Flowers, From You Flowers, Ruth’s Roses … you look up a florist in whatever city and you’re always going to find them first because they own 99.9% of the domains, and it says they’re local and they deliver.”

But what actually happens when a customer places an order with them is much different than what a customer might imagine. 

“They charge the customer at least $20 for a fee, then turn around and give it to a florist in that city,” Brendle said. “The florist gets half the money they charge the customer, and then the customer gets mad because they’re like, ‘I paid $100 and that is not a $100 bouquet.’”

When Brendle looks up the order, she can see the order she got was actually for a $40 bouquet.

“It’s a racket,” she said. “They promise the customer is going to get something that looks exactly like the picture they see online, and 90% of those pictures are photoshopped. 

"There’s no way we could get a stem to go in that position in a vase like that. It’s utterly impossible. So it’s false promises straight across the board with these call centers.”

Despite all the headwinds, Bouquets Unlimited has never lacked for talented, loyal employees.

Many of her staff have been with her for decades, including one employee who has been working alongside Brendle for the last 30 years.

“I’ve got another employee who’s been here for like 25 years, one for 16, one for eight,” she said. “It’s just been a wonderful place to work.”

Having customers come in and tell her that theirs was “the best flower shop” has meant the world to Brendle over the years. 

It’s been a memorable ride, one that she feels has made the community better. When people can’t say it in words, they come to her store and she helps them say it with flowers.

She recalls customers moved to tears when they saw their wedding or funeral flowers for the first time, as well as the women who threw expensive bouquets into the trash immediately upon receiving them, because they were still mad about something.

Flower shops, she said, see the best and the very worst of people’s lives.

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

As June approaches, Brendle is focusing on gratitude for her staff, her longtime customers, and for the many stolen years working alongside her mother. 

“I’m so grateful for all of our customers and their patronage,” she said. “I’m just sad we’re letting them down. Actually, we’re not letting them down. The economy is letting them down.”

Brendle doesn’t plan to be idle with her time once the shop closes, however. She’s going to be helping her husband with his business, selling innovative exercise equipment to hospitals, therapy clinics, and home gyms. 

No matter what comes next, a big part of her life will always be measured by the stems and petals of corsages and casket sprays, birthday bouquets and apology flowers from a small Cheyenne shop that was part of shaping and celebrating a community in ways she’ll never forget.

Shareen Brendle florist 2026 bouquets unlimited 4002 5 30 26

<title>Cheyenne Florist To Close After 44 Years, Can't Compete With Online Giant Flower Stores | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Cheyenne’s Bouquets Unlimited is closing its doors after 44 years because they can't compete with the online giants. In 1992, there were 27,000 florist storefronts in America. Today, they number 11,750.  “I’m broken-hearted about it,” the owner said.

Cheyenne Florist To Close After 44 Years, Can't Compete With Online Giant Flower Stores

Julie Mankin

Sports

Halle Crozier isn’t able to throw a saddle on her horse, or even climb on without help. She also doesn’t have the strength to ride faster than a lope.

But the cheers for her will be deafening from fans lining the fence at this coming week’s Wyoming High School State Finals Rodeo watching the sophomore compete.

They understand her performance is not about points or paychecks. Every run is a victory for a girl healing her own heart despite a decade of physical impairment.

Like most Wyoming kids raised with ranching or rodeo roots, Halle was on horseback as a toddler.

Even in preschool she had big dreams. She wanted to compete at the National Finals Rodeo and win gold buckles someday.

“I remember my first rodeo, and I was on top of the world in my own little head,” recalled Halle. “Eventually one day, it was all gone.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Vaccines Destroyed Her Body"}]

Vaccines required by a preschool when Crozier was 5 years old set off an adverse reaction that damaged her nerves.

That was in 2015, when her parents J.R. and Jonee (Phillips) Crozier, along with her older brother Heston, lived in Casper.

[{"type":"text","text":"Within a month, the little girl was no longer talking or eating."}]

“She was gray in color,” said Jonee. “She lost half her body weight and just basically stopped living.”

They immediately took her to Children’s Hospital Colorado in Denver, where doctors were stumped by her condition.

On the assumption Halle had a strange virus or bacterial infection, she was put on antibiotics. When that didn’t work, they tried stronger prescriptions.

She was ultimately on high-powered antibiotics for about six months with no improvement.

Within a few months, Halle was also experiencing muscle loss and weakness.

Next, the family tried a children’s hospital in Salt Lake City, where they were told Halle had muscular dystrophy.

“I said, ‘muscular dystrophy progresses slowly; it doesn’t show up all at once!’” recalled Jonee. “It didn’t make sense.”

They went to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where more doctors said she had muscular dystrophy and would likely end up in a wheelchair by the time she was 12.

“I just knew that wasn’t it,” said Jonee. “She didn’t check any particular box, so they’d push us out the door, not knowing how to help us.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Halle’s Choice"}]

By 2016, the Croziers were looking outside Western medicine for answers when a Utah newspaper published a story about a bedridden boy with similar symptoms who’d been able to go back to school after treatment by a wholistic doctor in Mexico.

[{"type":"text","text":"The Croziers booked a trip to Tijuana."}]

“Doctors there said the vaccines had damaged her nerve endings, which could no longer communicate with her muscles,” Jonee said. “And the antibiotics had totally wrecked her guts.”

They visited every six weeks, ultimately spending about two years detoxifying her little body.

Halle’s health improved tremendously, Jonee said. But nerve damage heals very, very slowly.

Traditional medical doctors had told the family it couldn’t be treated or healed.

[{"type":"text","text":"“I wasn’t going to settle for that,” said Jonee."}]

With detoxification, replenishment and a clean diet, Halle had improved enough by about age 8 that her ability to show emotion came back.

[{"type":"text","text":"That’s when the frustration hit, she said."}]

“It kind of felt like no way out,” Halle told Cowboy State Daily. “My family helped me a lot with that by giving me a choice — I could choose to not get better, or choose to be positive and work hard to get better.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘She Is Not A Victim’"}]

The family always retained hope. Jonee is convinced that healing is 90% mindset, believing it will happen.

“I told her teachers when she was young that she’s not a victim,” said Jonee. “I told them they could modify things to help her, but that she’s not ever a victim.”

When she began high school, with her slow movements and poor balance, Halle often tripped and fell in the hallways.

The highly intelligent teen is now homeschooled and taking college-credit classes as a sophomore.

She stayed on track academically despite trips far and wide to receive intravenous nutrient replenishment and myriad therapies, including brain stimulation and electronic muscle stimulation.

Over the years, Halle has also spent two months at a time annually in Denver for daily hyperbaric oxygen treatments.

And last year, they saw tremendous results from umbilical stem cell treatments.

“She slowly gained back so much of what she lost,” said Jonee. “She had been like a little zombie.

“She didn’t communicate or eat. She’s 100% back in that regard. She’s much stronger than when she was 13. It’s amazing.”

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

While “any vaccine can cause side effects,” according to U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, serious injury is rare.

Still, an autoimmune response called Guillain-Barré syndrome has been reported post-vaccine whereby the immune system mistakenly attacks nerve fibers, causing muscle weakness that can lead to paralysis.

The Croziers, when asked about the safety of vaccinations, respond with a ranching analogy.

“Every spring, a rancher can vaccinate 1,000 calves, and may have one calf die and another get very sick and never recover,” said Jonee. “I think it’s the same with humans.”

Instead of wallowing in why it happened or what if it hadn’t, the family (which moved to Buffalo) decided to put their energy into getting Halle better.

And for Halle, throughout all the weekslong cross-country trips to doctors and time-consuming therapies, there were horses.

“She continued to ride,” said Jonee. “But after 10 minutes, she’d be too exhausted to stay in the saddle. That lasted about five years. She was just so weak.”

Halle Crozier of Buffalo is inspiring Wyoming’s high school rodeo community as she fights to recover from a vaccine reaction that destroyed her body. “I could choose to not get better, or choose to be positive and work hard to get better,” she said.

One More For The Road: Sunday, May 26, 2024

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