Daily Smile

[{"type":"text","text":"Dog is unhappy until food is dipped into sauce...."}]

Smile 6 15 24

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

<title>Daily Smile: Saturday, June 15, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Dog is unhappy until food is dipped into sauce....

Daily Smile: Saturday, June 15, 2024

 Dog is unhappy until food is dipped into sauce....

One More For The Road

Bill Sniffin and Andrew Rossi suspend their feud to honor America's 250th and pull over for lunch....

One more for 7 5 26

<title>One More For The Road: Sunday, July 5, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

One More For The Road: Sunday, July 5, 2026

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Wyoming Life

ALTA — Seeing the sun rise over Grand Teton and the lesser peaks in the national park definitely is a perk for those in Alta.

They live on the back side of the mountains photographed and inundated by summer tourists in Jackson Hole.

The 429-resident community sits in the Teton Valley along the road to Grand Targhee Resort ski area. There are no bumper-to-bumper traffic lines that back up as tourists vie for views of a bison in Grand Teton National Park or the mountain scenes around Jackson Hole.

“It’s always been interesting living in a part of Wyoming where you couldn’t get to any other part of Wyoming unless you drove through Idaho,” said Jim Wilson, a fourth-generation farmer on the north side of Teton Creek. “Unless you hike or ride horses over the mountain, which many of us have done, you have to drive through Idaho to get to us.”

That hike over the Tetons involves 21 miles and 4,000 feet of elevation from Teton Canyon to Jenny Lake in Jackson Hole. Make sure to bring bear spray.

As a resident of Teton County, Wilson, along with fellow residents Steve Green and Hunter Christensen, knows that to get his license plates or go to the county clerk’s office involves at least a 40-mile drive with 20 miles through Idaho before re-entering the state over Teton Pass. 

And shopping — well, you do what you need to do.

“I’ve always claimed Wyoming,” said Green, a fourth-generation farmer on a 160-acre homestead in Alta. “(But) the only thing we do in Wyoming is pay taxes and license vehicles.”

Green, 70, who grows barley and hay on his farm south of Teton Creek and a few other leased properties, understands that having a view of the Tetons in his backyard is something to appreciate. But it’s also all he has ever known.

He characterizes his community and view as “the better side of Idaho.”

Christensen, 36, senior vice president at Hughes Foundation based in Jackson, grew up in Alta and went to school in the little elementary building that still serves students off of Ski Hill Road and then spent his middle school and high school years in Driggs, Idaho.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Driving Teton Pass"}]

Unlike Green and Wilson, he drives Teton Pass most work days in his front-wheel drive Toyota Camry through all of its seasons, and characterizes the commute as just the way of life for many who live in Alta.

“It’s a beautiful drive every day,” he said. “You never go over that pass and think, ‘Oh, this is terrible.’”

Christensen said there are days when traffic backs up entering Jackson in the morning or leaving in the afternoons. Commuters plan for it. The winter weather in recent years has not been as heavy as when he was growing up, but there are days when he might have to work from home.

Christensen said he knows Alta residents who work in Wyoming and others who work in Idaho. But their identity, though a border community, remains rooted in Wyoming.

“Sometimes they call it ‘Wydaho',” he said. “We have a lot of wonderful neighbors in Idaho, a lot of good heritage and community with our neighbors across the border, and then we still get to be part of Wyoming.”

Christensen, Wilson, and Green all agree that shopping for the vast majority of people who live in Alta takes place in Idaho. Driggs offers a well-stocked supermarket and gas stations as well as a few other services.

To find the box stores, such as Walmart or Costco, residents travel to Rexburg or Idaho Falls, rather than pay the “resort town” prices at stores in Jackson, Christensen said.

Green, who worked at a lumberyard in Driggs for several years in addition to farming, said he contracts with Great Western Malting in Blackfoot, Idaho, to sell his barley. Much of his hay is sold to livestock owners in the Teton Valley and some to horse ranches in Jackson.

The farm he works was homesteaded by his great-grandfather and he has a son who might take it over as a sideline when Green is done. Making money off the farm is more difficult than ever due to the costs of fertilizer and the taxes on his home and barns as part of Teton County, Wyoming.

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

“I suspect there is always some kind of benefit to living in Wyoming versus Idaho, or Idaho versus Wyoming,” Green said. “For years, our property taxes and stuff were quite a bit higher than Idaho. Now Idaho, about 10 years ago, caught up. They kind of figured out they could charge more money, just like they do here.”

Green said he sold his cow herd about 25 years ago, but in recent years has purchased a steer or two in the spring to fatten up the family freezers. Predators have not been a problem.

Wilson works on the family farm run by his brother. They have the 160-acre homestead and have leased several properties to farm 1,500 acres of alfalfa, grass hay, barley, and a heritage wheat that has unaltered seed genetics from the wheat planted in the 1800s.

“We sell the wheat online or at farmer’s markets,” he said. The barley is sold in Idaho and the hay in Jackson and Teton Valley.

Wilson said he's often asked if he resents people moving into the community from other areas of the country to enjoy the scenery, skiing, hiking, or just walking their dog up the canyon.

He tells them he’s enjoyed the valley and the view for his entire life and certainly is willing to share it.

“I would describe it as heaven,” he said. “What I do resent is if they come in and try to change it to be like where they came from.”

Christensen said the community has elk on the outskirts, an occasional moose wandering through, and many black bears in recent years. During the winter, the traffic on Ski Hill Road to Grand Targhee picks up on the weekends.

On a recent weekday, Grand Targhee was hosting a mountain bike gathering that had cars going up and down the mountain and past an off-duty 

 Teton County Sheriff’s patrol car parked at the end of a driveway as if waiting for speeders to exceed the 25 mph limit.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Deputies In Community"}]

Teton County Sheriff’s Office Operations Lt. Mark Priest said he has two deputies who live in Alta, and other deputies live in Idaho. They typically drive through the community as part of their shifts before heading over the pass to do law enforcement in the more populated Jackson Hole region and other parts of the county.

In addition to Alta, the department is responsible for covering the popular hiking destination in nearby Darby Canyon as well as other remote spots on the west side of the Tetons. Those require deputies to traverse the pass and drive Idaho roads before crossing back into Wyoming and the county to respond to any issues.

Priest said his department has strong relations with the Idaho counties. If needed they sometimes secure a scene or provide an initial response to an incident if his department can’t get there immediately.

“Recently we have asked them less and less because of the fact we have two guys living (in Alta) and then our guys in Idaho who are able to respond from home as well,” he said.

Wilson said residents receive good service from the county and even in the winter the roads will be plowed while Idaho communities experience closures due to snow.

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

All three of the Alta residents spoke of a community that looks out for one another and helps in time of need.

“The people who live here are by far salt-of-the-earth-good people that have a lot of love for their neighbors,” Christensen said. “That’s what makes living in Alta, for sure, and Wyoming in general, wonderful for me.”

Wilson said he recalled a time in the 1960s when an Idaho senator wanted to annex Alta.

A story in the Casper Morning Star on Feb. 13, 1965, stated that the senator had advocated that “many residents of Wyoming’s Teton Valley would like to be come Idahoans because the mountains cut their communication with Wyoming business centers.”

It apparently was more fancy than fact. Residents voted it down, the newspaper reported.

Wilson said there is no other place on Earth that he would rather be and made clear there is no identity crisis in the community. In the 1990s, Alta successfully lobbied to get its own ZIP code to distinguish it from the Driggs-based rural route that defined the community for years.

Now the Driggs Post Office serves two ZIP codes: 83422 for the Idaho side and 83414 on mail that carriers deliver across the state line.

“We have considered ourselves citizens of Wyoming since the day I was born, and my dad was born, and my grandpa was born and my great-grandpa homesteaded up there,” Wilson said.

Steve Green 1 7 4 26

<title>Alta, Wyoming: The Town Cut Off From The Rest Of The State By Idaho & Mountains | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Residents of remote Alta, Wyoming, say they don't feel disconnected even though the only way to get to the rest of Wyoming (outside of riding a horse or hiking over the mountain) is a 20-mile drive through Idaho and over Teton Pass.

Alta, Wyoming: The Town Cut Off From The Rest Of The State By Idaho & Mountains

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

Renée Jean

Around Wyoming

DUBOIS — It was a scene straight out of a Mad Max movie. Two tanks met like gargantuan beasts on a dusty field of battle tucked behind the National Museum of Military Vehicles on Friday. 

The tanks were heralded first by the echoing rat-a-tat-tat of machine guns over the hills of Dubois, thrilling a crowd of hundreds that gathered to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary by watching these rumbling 42-ton tanks show off. 

“Our thinking was this doesn’t have to just be solemn,” National Museum of Military Vehicles founder Dan Starks told Cowboy State Daily. “It can also be fun. And what’s more American than machine guns and tanks crushing cars?”

Starks didn’t get any disagreement from the huge crowds turning out for the daylong event devoted to America. More than 500 people showed up in the first hour, which offered two chances to see the tanks in action. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Starks couldn’t contain his grin."}]

“You see the crowd we’ve attracted with this kind of family fun,” he said. “So, because of that, the messages we’re delivering about the genius of our founding fathers is going to reach more ears, because we created a fun event, instead of just saying, ‘Hey, we’re going to be giving some lectures.'”

The star of the show was what Starks cheerfully calls the “Car Crusher.” It’s an 80-year-old M4 Sherman tank, which was the primary medium battle tank used by the United States and its Western allies during World War II. 

It’s a tank that’s practically purpose-built for exactly this kind of spectacle, Starks said.

“We call it the car crusher tank for two reasons,” he said. “One, it has steel tracks, and so those tracks are quite a bit less likely to be damaged driving over a car — driving over steel with the potential of sharp edges.”

In fact, the Sherman’s steel tracks is one of the reasons it can’t be used in the annual Fourth of July parade in Dubois, which features around 25 tanks and other military vehicles from the museum to celebrate Independence Day. 

“It would tear up the road,” Starks said. “But that’s exactly the kind of track to crush a car with. That particular tank also does not have fenders on the tracks, so there’s less that can get hung up from the car. 

"So it’s really a good configuration to just have the ridiculous fun of crushing your car with it.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Co-Starring The Leopard"}]

The M4’s co-star in this Mad Max approach to history was a 1981 German Leopard tank, one in a series of premier main battle tanks (MBTs) developed by Krauss-Maffei, now KNDS Deutschland GmbH & Co.

The original Leopard 1 MBTs revolutionized armored warfare in 1965, bringing superior mobility and a 105 mm gun to bear. Its successor, the Leopard 2, debuted in 1979 and is still one of the world’s most widely deployed advanced main battle tanks. 

Leopards weren’t designed to go head-to-head with other tanks, said Tom Hartman, who drove a tank on Friday. Theirs was more of a “scoot-and-shoot” strategy. 

“You’d see a target of opportunity, shoot it, and the second you shoot it, hit the reverse and speed away,” Hartman said. “Then you’d go another way and try to hit it from another angle.”

If the tank was spotted, it has a row of smoke grenades to deploy to put down instant cover in which to escape. 

“You’re supposed to be able to create a massive smoke screen a few hundred feet wide,” Hartman said. 

Canada was the first large purchaser of the vehicles, which are still in use by a number of countries, including Greece, Italy and Brazil. 

For a while, they were readily available for around $100,000. 

“Right now they cost anywhere between a quarter million dollars to $750,000,” Hartman said. “They made just a ton of these, I forget the exact figure, but a little country called Russia invaded its little neighbor friend called Ukraine, which doesn’t have a lot of Western tanks.”

Overnight, every available Leopard tank was suddenly headed to Ukraine.

From a distance, it looks like something of a feat when a tank rolls right over a car. 

People in the crowd cheered, kids squealed, and smartphones everywhere were rolling, getting video of cars being smashed flat.

For the tank crews, though, the real surprise was just how smooth the ride was.

“You can kind of feel it go like this,” Hartman said, demonstrating with his body leaning from one side to another. “But it’s not like one solid piece. You can feel it start to crush underneath you.”

That’s unlike the cinderblock wall, 2 feet high, that was part of the warmup obstacle course set up to demonstrate the tanks' capabilities before the cars were crushed. 

“It was really fun,” added Jared Radison, another driver. “But it’s honestly surprising how smooth it is. We came down pretty healthy, but other than that, going on these cars, you almost don’t feel it.”

For Casey Ladelle driving the M4 tank for the first time, he wasn’t sure how fast he should really go in the historical 80-year-old antique. 

“Like, how fast is too fast?” he wondered. “It’s an 80-year-old tank, and today was my first day hitting any obstacles with it.”

His first time rolling over the car, he hit it almost too slow. 

“The second time, I knew what was going to happen,” he added.

So he let the car have it, and it felt “really cool.”

All three drivers, however, were cognizant that the power the tanks gave them also meant awesome responsibility as well. 

“It’s a 42-ton machine that can go up to 45 mph,” Hartman said. “You do not want that going through anything out here, because you’re not going to feel it if you hit something.”

That had all three scanning the field, making sure they weren’t gong to run into each other or anything else. 

If the spectacle sounds one-of-a-kind, that’s not too far off. 

Starks and his crew can rattle off a short list of places on the planet where tanks might be smashing cars.

“There’s one in Bovington, England, which is probably the most famous one,” Hartman said. “There’s one in Canada, the Oshawa Tank Museum, which is a phenomenal museum.”

There are also a couple of high-end commercial “experiences” in Texas and Las Vegas.

“I mean, no museums, where their whole thing is like education, do this, like, ‘We’re going to crush your car,'” Hartman said.

At the for-profit tank experiences, the cost is typically $1,000 to $1,500 per person to crush a car. 

By contrast, spectators in Dubois got to watch the mayhem for $20, the price of regular admission, which also came with free rides and family-friendly demonstrations woven throughout the day.

For all the roar and spectacle, though, Starks is clear that the point of the event wasn’t just entertainment. 

He paired the fun with new exhibits as well as with a few lectures, including a reflective talk from Starks on what he called — to a round of applause and cheers — the “genius” of America's Founding Fathers.

Knocking down a bad government, Starks told the crowd that was enjoying hamburgers and sandwiches from the museum’s canteen, had been the easy part. 

The hard part is what came next — dreaming up a system that would be better than tyranny from a monarchy, or the equally bad: tyranny by a majority. 

“Just think about all the examples of genocide throughout history, modern and ancient history,” Starks said. “That’s majority rule. That’s the majority saying, ‘I’m going to wipe you out, you’re a minority.’ 

"Think of all the examples of, ‘My religion is such and such, and your religion isn’t, so I’m going to turn you into a fugitive.’” 

Majority rule sounds appealing on the surface, Starks said, but is really no better than tyranny by a minority. He said it overlooks the single most important premise of the U.S. Constitution, that all men are created equal.

The idea that all men are created equal was the “most radical, most compelling inspiration in all of history,” Starks said. 

There were no examples at the time of the kind of government the Founding Fathers wanted. 

It was something they had to invent themselves — a group of disparate men who had extremely different views on all sorts of issues, ranging from the role of the federal government to the issue of slavery. 

The differences between these 50-some men were at times so intense, friendships were destroyed, and the country itself all but torn apart, Starks said. 

What these men came up with, then, was not crafted in trust. They distrusted each other, and crafted America’s systems accordingly, he said. Some were in the majority, for now, others in the minority. But they recognized that could change, and realized they had to create a system that would protect the rights of each. 

“That’s where the genius of the Founding Fathers comes in,” Starks said. “They invented something that hadn’t existed before, and it’s called a constitutional republic.”

That republic is designed to put limits on majority rule, by separating the powers of the government into three branches, each one of which had powers that could check the other two, he said. They also added levers that could serve as emergency brakes — the filibuster, for example, and the electoral college. 

“You’ve got people saying, ‘Well the filibuster is anti-democratic,’” Starks said. “‘We should get rid of it. It should just be majority rule.’ No, we’re not majority rule. We’ve got checks against majority rule.”

Getting rid of the electoral college would be a similar mistake, Starks added. It would allow the states with the largest populations to determine national elections and make decisions without any deference at all to the minority.

“Yes, it is terribly frustrating and messy,” Starks said. “But it’s also ingenious. And it’s the best government anybody has ever devised and we’ve now gotten the benefit of it for 250 years.”

Tank crush car 7 4 26

<title>Dubois Military Museum Celebrates 250th By Crushing Cars With Tanks | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Military tanks spent an hour crushing cars Friday as an enthusiastic crowd cheered to celebrate America’s 250th at the National Museum of Military Vehicles in Dubois. “What’s more American than machine guns and tanks crushing cars?” owner Dan Starks said.

Dubois Military Museum Celebrates 250th By Crushing Cars With Tanks

You Still Here

[{"type":"text","text":"The power of teamwork...... "}]

You still here 7 4 26 no play

<title>You Still Here? Saturday, July 4, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The power of teamwork......

You Still Here? Saturday, July 4, 2026

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Wildlife

A northern Colorado rancher who lives near one of the state’s reintroduced wolf packs said she and her neighbors are becoming increasingly frustrated because when wolves aren’t threatening livestock, coyotes are.

Amanda Cerveny said she spotted and took video of a lone canine crossing her property near cattle.

She thought at first it could have been a small or young wolf, but also thought it might be a coyote.

Her latter suspicions were confirmed by biologist Doug Smith, who texted “100% coyote” to Cowboy State Daily after viewing Cerveny’s video.

Cerveny told Cowboy State Daily after seeing the first coyote she returned to her house to retrieve her rifle.

As in Wyoming, it’s legal to shoot coyotes on sight to protect livestock.

By the time she returned, the animal was gone.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘Two Knuckleheads’"}]

A short while later while walking down a lane on her property, “that’s when I saw these two knuckleheads attacking a calf," she said.

About 250 yards away, Cerveny saw two canines chasing and harassing one of her neighbor’s calves. She took video of that scene as well.

At the time, she was reasonably confident those two canines were coyotes.

But, as she noted, in Colorado, anything less than 100% certainty over whether the critter is a coyote or a wolf can be good reason to hold your fire.

"At 250 yards, how can I be absolutely certain whether it’s a coyote, or an uncollared wolf pup, or yearling?” she said.

Smith, who led the wolf program in Yellowstone National Park for nearly three decades, told Cowboy State Daily this year’s wolf pups wouldn’t leave the immediate area of the den this early in the year.

Pups don’t usually start venturing out until September or October, he said.

However, “come winter or fall,” it might be difficult to discern a coyote from a wolf pup at a great distance, he added.

Cerveny said her hesitancy to open fire on the canines she saw harassing the neighbor’s calves, even at a time when she could be reasonably sure they were coyotes, is indicative of the quandary she said she and her neighbors face.

Wolves remain protected in Colorado, and killing one, even by accident, could result in thousands of dollars in fines, Cerveny said.

It is legal for Colorado ranchers to shoot wolves if they catch them “directly in the act” of attacking cattle, she said.

But in most cases, the burden of proof is so high, ranchers might hesitate. And in her case, she said, it caused her to not even shoot at coyotes.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘More Aggressive’"}]

Cerveny said that as far as she knows, her neighbor’s calf wasn’t seriously. Even so, she worries coyotes getting away with attacking a calf might embolden them to keep doing so.

Cerveny said that she, her husband and others in the area think that coyotes might be getting "more aggressive."

She said she showed the video of the coyotes attacking the calf to her husband.

“He said, ‘in 30 years of doing this (ranching) I’ve never seen anything like that',” she said.

There have always been instances of coyotes darting in to attack a sick or wounded calf, or “going after the afterbirth” during calving season, she said.

But nobody in the area seems to recall many instances of coyotes, which are usually opportunistic hunters, going directly after healthy livestock.

Smith said coyotes generally favor small prey, such as rodents. They do tend to “hunt in pairs” and will on rare occasions go after something bigger, such as sheep or a calf, he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Are Wolves To Blame?"}]

Cerveny said she and her neighbors wonder if coyotes are more aggressively going after cattle “because of competition from wolves” for other prey.

Smith said that almost certainly isn’t the case.

“Coyotes do what coyotes do, and wolves do what wolves do," he said. "They’ve lived alongside each other for hundreds of thousands of years. One doesn’t force the other to do anything.” 

Smith added that wolves returning to an area where they’ve been absent for a while, such as Colorado, doesn’t change that dynamic.

“Pull them (wolves) away for a few decades, and that’s not really going to change coyote psyche and behavior,” Smith said. “It’s the ghost of evolution past."

Wolves are thought to have wandered into Colorado from Wyoming and formed a pack in about 2020.

The state also began reintroducing wolves in December 2023.

Smith said elk might leave an area this time of year to move to higher elevations, and leave both coyotes and wolves in the low country.

But as he sees it, both canine species can get by without elk.

Outside of rarely taking an calf, coyotes don’t rely on elk as a prey source, he said. And wolves’ dependence upon elk might also be greatly overestimated.

Wolves are actually lousy elk hunters, Smith said, succeeding only about 5% to 15% of the time they set out to kill elk.

When elk leave an area, it’s probably not because wolves scared them, Smith said.

“Elk stay where they want to stay because of food,” he said. “They aren’t hype-afraid of wolves, because if they encounter a wolf they’re likely to live.”

Coyotes and wolves 7 3 26

<title>Rancher Says Wolves Making Colorado Coyotes More Aggressive With Livestock | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Ranchers in northern Colorado wonder if the growing wolf population is causing coyotes to be more aggressive toward livestock. "In 30 years of doing this, I’ve never seen anything like that," a rancher said about two coyotes attacking healthy livestock.

Rancher Says Wolves Making Colorado Coyotes More Aggressive With Livestock

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Crime & Courts

Courts

A Florida woman who owned a behavioral health clinic in Cheyenne has been ordered to pay back more than $870,000 to Wyoming Medicaid for bilking the federal agency with fraudulent claims.

Federal prosecutors say her daughter helped carry out the scheme by assisting with billing and falsifying service documentation while working for the clinic.

Tera Marie Campbell, 47, of Maitland, Florida, owned The Olive Branch LLC, a behavioral health clinic that provided autism services in Cheyenne and Minot, North Dakota, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Wyoming said Thursday in a statement announcing the women’s sentences for conspiracy to commit health care fraud.

Campbell used the business to submit fraudulent Medicaid claims over several years, including claims for services provided by employees who lacked required certifications, claims that were upcoded to higher-paying services and bills for appointments that never occurred, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

A Florida woman who ran a Cheyenne behavioral health clinic, and her daughter, have been ordered to pay back more than $870,000 they stole from Wyoming Medicaid. They funneled fraudulent claims through the clinic for years, say federal prosecutors.

Daily Smile: Saturday, June 15, 2024

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