Daily Smile

[{"type":"text","text":"Puppy gets so excited when he eats that he handstands......"}]

Smile 7 19 24

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

<title>Daily Smile: Friday, July 19, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Puppy gets so excited when he eats that he handstands......

Daily Smile: Friday, July 19, 2024

 Puppy gets so excited when he eats that he handstands......

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's general assignment reporter, Clair McFarland.

Clair McFarland

Government & Politics

A federal judge declined Thursday to make Wyoming and Nebraska irrigation districts open a competitive bid for the sake of a drilling company that missed out on the chance to bid a $100 million job on the Goshen County tunnel project.

But the judge also ruled that Drill Tech Drilling & Shoring Inc. 

, at this phase, in claiming that the Wyoming-based Goshen County Irrigation and Nebraska-based Gering-Fort Laramie Irrigation Districts violated their states’ public-records laws by not giving information the company had requested.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Lock In"}]

Drill Tech Drilling & Shoring Inc. filed a federal lawsuit against both districts in May.

The lawsuit asked U.S. District Court Judge Scott Skavdahl, of Wyoming, to intervene in what Drill Tech called an unlawful bidding process that cut it out of the opportunity to win a job on the massive tunnel repair.

One of the two 119-year-old tunnels suffered a catastrophic failure in 2019. The other is reportedly in dire need of a rebuild.

The districts assigned Atkinson Construction LLC as construction manager at-risk (CMAR) over the project, which means Atkinson can oversee and work with subcontractors, court documents say.

Drill Tech alleged that for the $100 million drill project it had sought to perform, the irrigation districts should have held — and didn’t hold — a competitive bidding process. The districts gave the job instead to their CMAR, Atkinson, court documents say.

[{"type":"text","text":"In his Thursday order, Skavdahl countered. "}]

He said the laws of both Wyoming and Nebraska appear to support the CMAR’s authority to self-perform this kind of work. Drill Tech has not shown substantially that it has a right to enter a competitive bidding process for this project, he added.

Skavdahl wrote that requiring the districts to pause or backtrack their work and hold that bidding process could harm the agricultural community by stalling the long-awaited repairs even longer — and he declined to do that.

The public has an interest in government entities abiding by the open bidding process, wrote Skavdahl.

“On the other hand, the Irrigation Districts are right that ensuring irrigation water to the thousands of acres of farmland served by the tunnels is also in the public interest,” he added. “In light of Drill Tech’s failures (to show it deserves court intervention) as well as the serious risks to the farmers and public from another tunnel collapse following any delay in this construction project, the preliminary injunction requested by Drill Tech is more contrary to the public interest than in support of it.”

Drill Tech had waited several months to sue, though it had reportedly learned it had been cut out of the job last summer, Skavdahl noted.

He declined to let that delay kill the case altogether, but he factored the delay into his decision not to order the open bid.

The judge’s order doesn’t end the case. It just denies Drill Tech’s request to have Skavdahl intervene in this early phase.

Skavdahl gave his early conjectures that Drill Tech isn’t likely to win on the bidding question, only for the purposes of declining to compel the districts to change course immediately.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Might Win That One"}]

Drill Tech had also accused both irrigation districts of violating their states’ open meeting laws and assigning the job in secret.

[{"type":"text","text":"Skavdahl said the company looks unlikely to win that challenge as well."}]

But, the judge wrote, Drill tech appears likely to win two of its claims: that the Wyoming irrigation district and the Nebraska one both violated their states’ public-records laws by not giving Drill Tech information it had requested.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Background"}]

The complaint says the two districts contracted Atkinson to be the construction manager at risk and provide oversight for the Fort Laramie Canal Tunnel 1 and 2 rehabilitation project.

That project is expected to benefit more than 100,000 acres of farmland across eastern Wyoming and western Nebraska.

 that the U.S. Department of Interior has chosen to use $100 million of its $889 million One Big Beautiful Bill appropriation on the tunnel project.

The tunnel collapsed July 17, 2019, cutting off irrigation water to the region and flooding fields. The infrastructure was more than a century old.

Temporary repairs restored most of the system’s capacity in time for the 2021 season, but it still needs long-term solutions. Repairs to Tunnel 2 also are in the works so that it doesn’t suffer the same catastrophic failure.

During the bidding process, Drill Tech’s complaint alleges, the two irrigation districts confirmed Atkinson would have to comply with Wyoming and Nebraska laws, and that it may be able to self-perform the construction work in the project, but would competitively bid that work.

But 18 months after Atkinson became the project manager, the districts “fundamentally changed the (manager’s) agreement to allow Atkinson to self-perform all the construction work for the Project under the guise of a contract amendment,” the complaint alleges.

This transformed the contract into a standard prime contract for the massive project “with no competition for the construction work,” says Drill Tech’s complaint. 

The project manager no longer had to open competition to the public bidding process, it adds.

Drill Tech Drilling and other interested parties were cut out of the process, the complaint says.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Asking For Documents"}]

Drill Tech didn’t ask to become the project manager because it wanted to work on the tunnel rehabilitation work packages instead, the complaint says, adding that Drill Tech has experience with the method that project requires.

On July 25, 2025, Drill Tech sent a letter to the two districts, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and one of the project designers, HDR Inc., to raise concerns that Atkinson was no longer required to bid projects competitively and in public.

Drill Tech noted in that letter that it had been monitoring the project for two years, waiting for the bid advertisement.

Nearly a month later, the Goshen County Irrigation District’s attorney acknowledged the district had received the letter and thanked Drill Tech for its “continued interest in the Project,” court documents say.

That December, Drill Tech submitted public-records requests to both districts under the public-records laws of each state, the complaint says, asking for all post-award modifications and amendments regarding the project manager’s agreement, and for a copy of the procurement plan.

The Nebraska-based district never responded to that request, the complaint says. The Wyoming-based district reportedly responded two months later, Feb. 10, 2026.

Goshen District’s public records yield was “heavily redacted,” says Drill Tech’s complaint. The district claimed those redactions were justified as trade secrets, privileged information, confidential commercial, financial, geographical or geophysical data.

The complaint disputes that. It shows a side-by-side comparison of the same page of the scope of the project manager’s services.

The page that was publicly released in the request for proposal, and the page Drill Tech received in its public records request, are vastly different, with the latter about 75% or more redacted.

“Reactions such as these were pervasive” throughout the agreement, the complaint says.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Transparency"}]

Copies of the changes to that agreement also had “pervasive redactions,” it adds.

Still, says the document, Drill Tech learned that the agreement was amended before Drill Tech’s July 25, 2025, letter requesting information about whether public bids were still required.

The complaint says the district knew the agreement had already been changed to edge out competitive bidding, but didn’t tell Drill Tech that when the company asked.

The complaint also says the district didn’t provide notice of an important public meeting.

By Feb. 20, 2025, the Goshen district board voiced concerns about HDR’s original maximum price estimate of $87 million swelling to more than $120 million, the complaint relates from the meeting minutes.

HDR proposed a confidential guaranteed maximum price proposal and non-disclosure agreements so there would be “no worry about (Atkinson) getting underbid,” the document alleges.

There was, the complaint says, no documented vote for Atkinson to self-perform the task they were discussing without publicly bidding the work packages, but the district did vote to approve changing the design plan.

It’s “entirely” unclear what role the Nebraska-based district played here because it didn’t respond to Drill Tech’s public records requests, the complaint alleges.

The document says that on July 8, 2025, the Goshen district and Atkinson signed an amendment to change the agreement, so that the latter was no longer required to advertise bids or publicly open them.

In the July 17, 2025, meeting minutes, “Atkinson was already apparently working with a vendor for the digger shield, but there was no indication that Atkinson has publicly bid or competitively awarded the subcontract for the digger shield.”

Irrigation Tunnel Gary Stone Nebraska Extension 5 4 26

<title>Judge Says $100M Goshen Tunnel Project Won’t Stop For Company That Couldn't Bid | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A federal judge declined Thursday to pause the $100 million Goshen Tunnel project for a company that missed out on a chance to bid on the work. He also ruled the company has a valid case against two irrigation districts in charge of the tunnel.

Judge Says $100M Goshen Tunnel Project Won’t Stop For Company That Couldn't Bid

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Crime & Courts

Courts

The Haitian truck driver convicted of killing one Rawlins EMT and severely injuring another in a catastrophic Interstate 80 crash more than three years ago is asking the Wyoming Supreme Court to overturn his convictions, claiming prosecutors failed to prove the one thing jurors had to find beyond a reasonable doubt: that he acted recklessly.

Saviol Saint Jean, who was convicted last September after a weeklong jury trial in Sweetwater County, filed his opening appeal brief Tuesday.

Rather than claiming juror misconduct or errors by the trial judge, Saint Jean's attorneys contend the evidence itself wasn't enough to support guilty verdicts for aggravated homicide by vehicle and aggravated assault and battery. 

The case stems from the predawn hours of Dec. 21, 2022, when Saint Jean's semitrailer slammed into a parked ambulance that had responded to an earlier crash on Interstate 80 near Green River.

 and seriously injured ambulance driver 

Earlier this year, District Court Judge Suzannah Robinson 

Saint Jean to serve 12-14 years in prison, saying Harris' death was "preventable" while acknowledging Saint Jean had shown genuine remorse. 

During sentencing, Saint Jean apologized through an interpreter, telling Harris' family he wished he could "turn back time" and had never intended to hurt anyone.

[{"type":"text","text":"Now he is asking the state's highest court to erase those convictions."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Reasonable Doubt?"}]

The appeal focuses almost entirely on one legal question: whether prosecutors proved Saint Jean acted recklessly.

Under Wyoming law, prosecutors had to convince jurors that Saint Jean consciously disregarded a substantial and unjustifiable risk — not simply that he made a mistake or caused a terrible crash. 

"The state failed to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Mr. Saint Jean acted recklessly," Assistant Appellate Counsel Brittany Thorpe wrote.

Instead, Thorpe argues, the evidence showed Saint Jean "misperceived the risk and defaulted to his training, which told him to slow down and change lanes."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'Like The Las Vegas Strip'"}]

Jurors heard dramatically different explanations during 

Sweetwater County Attorney Daniel Erramouspe argued the crash scene was impossible to miss.

"It was lit up like the Las Vegas Strip," he told jurors during closing arguments, pointing to emergency lights, flashing hazards and other truck drivers who had safely navigated the area before Saint Jean arrived.

Erramouspe argued Saint Jean tried to "thread the needle" between disabled vehicles instead of slowing enough to safely negotiate the scene, calling that decision reckless.

The prosecution also emphasized that another commercial driver encountered the same wreck moments earlier but successfully avoided it.

Saint Jean's trial attorney, Joseph Hampton, painted a very different picture.

He argued Interstate 80 had become an extraordinarily dangerous maze after an initial collision between another semitruck and a pickup hauling a trailer blocked both lanes of travel with wreckage and debris.

The interstate, Hampton argued repeatedly, should have been closed before Saint Jean ever arrived.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'Imperfect Decisions'"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Those same arguments now form the backbone of Saint Jean's appeal."}]

According to this week’s appeal, the initial crash blocked the right lane with one semi while trailer debris clogged the left lane. Another commercial truck stopped on the left shoulder after narrowly avoiding the wreckage, leaving little room for approaching traffic.

The appeal adds that no one had deployed emergency triangles, flares or warning cones before Saint Jean reached the scene. Instead, the brief argues, flashing emergency lights were the primary warning to approaching drivers. 

Attorneys also point to trial testimony that investigators could not determine the ambulance's exact location before it was struck.

"There was very little evidence" showing exactly where the ambulance had been parked, the appeal notes, citing Wyoming Highway Patrol testimony. 

[{"type":"text","text":"The defense says Saint Jean wasn't ignoring danger."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Instead, the appeal argues he responded exactly as he had been trained."}]

Testimony highlighted throughout the filing says Saint Jean reduced his speed by at least 20 mph, changed lanes away from emergency lights and began braking after realizing the ambulance was actually occupying the lane he had entered. 

Commercial driving instructors testified during trial that slowing down and moving away from emergency vehicles is nationally accepted CDL training.

The appeal also points to defense experts who testified Saint Jean likely misjudged the ambulance's location because of glare from emergency lights, darkness and the unusually complex geometry of the crash scene.

One defense expert testified that drivers often recognize hazards but still make imperfect decisions when confronted with sudden emergencies.

According to the appeal, Saint Jean wasn't distracted by a cellphone, wasn't listening to the radio, and wasn't fatigued. His attorneys also note he had only been driving commercial trucks for a few months and had traveled that stretch of Interstate 80 only a handful of times. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Comparing Cases"}]

Saint Jean's conduct doesn't resemble other Wyoming aggravated vehicular homicide cases that have survived Supreme Court review. 

Thorpe contrasts Saint Jean's case with previous decisions involving drivers who inhaled intoxicants before driving, knowingly drove while dangerously fatigued or sped recklessly through traffic while ignoring obvious hazards.

Instead, the appeal relies heavily on a 2020 Wyoming Supreme Court decision overturning another aggravated vehicular homicide conviction because prosecutors failed to prove the driver consciously disregarded fatigue before a fatal crash.

Like that case, Thorpe argues, Saint Jean may have made a tragic mistake, but prosecutors never proved he consciously ignored a known risk. 

The Wyoming Attorney General's Office will now file a response defending the convictions before the Wyoming Supreme Court considers the appeal.

The justices could affirm the convictions, reverse them outright or order additional proceedings in district court.

For the Supreme Court, the question is whether the evidence presented to jurors was legally sufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Saint Jean acted recklessly.

Crash scene Rawlins EM Ts 2 9 11 25

<title>Haitian Trucker Who Plowed Into Rawlins EMTs Wants His Conviction Overturned | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The Haitian truck driver who killed one Rawlins EMT and severely injured another in a catastrophic I-80 crash more than three years ago is asking the Wyoming Supreme Court to overturn his convictions. He claims prosecutors never proved he was “reckless."

Haitian Trucker Who Plowed Into Rawlins EMTs Wants His Conviction Overturned

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

Renée Jean

Energy

When Wyoming oilman Howard Cooper finally got word he could drill two 2.5-mile-long horizontal wells in the Powder River Basin, it wasn’t just a triumph of geology. It was a marathon for the key federal lease that made his wells economic. 

Those two leases were but thin slices of the 2.5-mile-long lateral that made up each horizontal well, cutting across the line, but might as well have been the Great Wall of China as far as Cooper was concerned.

Cooper, who owns Three Crown Petroleum, told Cowboy State Daily he can permit and drill a typical oil well on private minerals in about five weeks in Wyoming, at least on paper. That’s two weeks for state permits, one week to build a pad and move in a drilling rig, and two weeks to drill. 

But when federal leases are involved, timelines can stretch dramatically, particularly if litigation and additional environmental reviews are triggered. 

That makes any well with a federal lease a gamble with million-dollar stakes.

Cooper’s two-well program is a case study in how even the tiniest sliver of federal land can hang up a drilling project, tying up capital while the operator misses out on economic opportunities vital to keeping smaller companies afloat. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Lease That Sat For Years"}]

The story starts long before Cooper, with a federal lease that sat in limbo for years. 

The lease was originally issued to Anschutz as part of a series of federal sales between 2015 and 2020 across several western states, including Wyoming, which accounted for 1,232 of the 1,323 leases sold during that time. 

The leases were challenged by conservationists, who said the environmental analysis of water usage, sage-grouse protections and greenhouse gas emissions were inadequate.

A judge agreed, ordering a 200-page supplemental environmental review to redo aquifer and sage-grouse analysis for the sales, which also included some areas in Nevada, Utah and Montana.

Bureau of Land Management spokesmen said at the time that such reviews have been required under the National Environmental Policy Act in similar cases to ensure impacts are fully considered before development moves forward.

To create a viable oil and gas well, Cooper needed to add Anschutz’s disputed lease to existing leases he already held in the area. He had already put together enough leases for a 1.75-mile and a 1.25-mile well, but for the project to be economic, Cooper said he needed each well to have a lateral of at least 2.5 miles.

“That essentially doubles your reserves,” he said. “But doesn’t add that much more to the cost.”

So Cooper signed an agreement to purchase Anschutz’s lease, despite the ongoing legal and regulatory uncertainty tied to it, on Nov. 4, 2025. 

They were the last two puzzle pieces he needed for a viable project. 

From then until now, when he’s finally received the go-ahead to drill, it’s been eight months. 

Taken together, though, that thin slice of federal minerals — from its original lease sale years ago to final permitting today — carries a timeline of roughly seven years. 

That piece was essential, however, to extending Cooper’s wells to 2.5 miles, making the overall project economic.

During that time, Cooper estimates he committed in excess of $1 million across the two Powder River wells — money he had to pay up front 

 while also keeping his business afloat. 

Putting a well together involves is an exercise in a bit of business gymastics, with a dash of mathematics and puzzle making thrown in.

Cooper sited his well pad just outside of the sage-grouse corridor Wyoming has established, saving him an additional $375,000 per well by not having to purchase sage-grouse credits. 

Cooper also bundled two other wells in nearby Johnson County into his Powder River project to further lower the cost of drilling. So, even though the Johnson County wells didn’t have the same federal complications, they couldn’t move forward either until the entire package was ready to go.

“By signing a four-well drilling program, we save a considerable amount of money,” Cooper said. “So we went down this road of one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight months of our capital is tied up. 

“It’s a lot of capital tied up. We know the oil is there, if they would just let us drill and produce it.”

Meanwhile, the market shifted substantially. 

“If we could have drilled these wells three months ago, we would have had three months of oil at $100 a barrel,” he said. “Now we’ve lost 30% of value. It’s gone from $100 a barrel to $70.”

Cooper estimates that, taken together, the four wells would have produced around 300,000 barrels of oil during that three-month period of $100 oil. He bases that figure on production from nearby offset wells, which have already extracted roughly 100,000 barrels each.

“We’re still going to get a return on our investment,” Cooper said. “But we’d have gotten a much better return … if we could have drilled these wells three months ago.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Reform Push Underway"}]

Getting his permits required more than waiting. 

“We worked with Gov. Mark Gordon’s office, Western (Energy) Alliance, both U.S. senators and House representatives,” he said. “We had to work with everybody to get this stuff, which should not be necessary. Why should I spend all that time when, if I drill on private minerals, I don’t have to do any of that. It takes a lot of my time, which I prefer to be focusing on putting together additional drilling deals, as opposed to spending a lot of time with all these different entities to try to get our permits issued.”

Industry leaders say Cooper’s experience is increasingly common. Wyoming Petroleum Association’s Ryan McConnaughey told Cowboy State Daily litigation has become common where federal leasing i involved, often due to the checkerboard nature of mineral leases in most western states. 

“I believe under President Biden’s administration was the first time that every lease sale was challenged,” he said.

While conservation groups have argued those challenges are necessary to ensure federal agencies fully comply with environmental law and account for cumulative impacts, McConnaughey said lawsuits are often filed late in the process, at the 11th hour, as a way to increase financial pressure on operators. 

“This isn’t really about making sure that the federal government is doing their due diligence,” McConnaughey 

said. “It’s become a concerted effort to stop oil and gas drilling on federal lands.”

Environmental reviews conducted for permits in many cases are now taking nearly a decade to complete, he said, which makes the flood of 11th-hour lawsuits even more troubling.

“Delays have become a hallmark of drilling on federal land,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “And that’s one of the reasons we have been advocating for reform.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Building At SPEED"}]

McConnaughey supports legislation from Wyoming’s congressional delegation called the Let America Build Act and the SPEED Act, which sets deadlines for legal challenges and allows states to take larger roles in administering the permitting process. 

McConnaughey said the change would improve efficiency without removing federal requirements. Critics, however, have raised concerns that tighter deadlines could limit legal oversight.

“It should be about making sure that the federal government is following the law,” McConnaughey said. “If that’s the case, those challenges need to take place immediately.”

Taking over regulatory oversight doesn’t reduce or eliminate any existing restrictions, he added. It just means state agencies are helping eliminate a bureaucratic chokepoint.

“That way the work is being done by local people who understand the industry, understand what is required, and could really speed up the process,” McConnaughey said. “I think that would be a game-changer for the industry here in Wyoming.”

Looking over the history of the new wells he’s about to drill, Cooper sees a sharp contrast between federal and state processes. 

“It’s absolutely insane,” he said. “We are moving pretty fast now, but this is one of those things where … it would be really helpful going forward if the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Energy are focusing on streamlining the permitting process with the federal government. I would like to see it more in line with the way the state of Wyoming moves forward. fter you acquire the lease, then you approach the state of Wyoming and file for your permits. If you own the lease 100%, then it takes basically a two-week period from the time you apply for your permits to when they’re issued.

"After that, a rig moves onto the location, a well pad is built, and you’re “good to go.

“Then you just drill the well and tie your well to an existing oil line and an existing gas line, and you sell your product into the existing oil and gas lines and that’s how it works. It’s very efficient, and that’s what the federal government should strive for, because then it would generate a lot more revenue for the federal government.”

Three Crown Petroleum Campbell County 7 3 26 JPG

<title>Wyoming Company Missed Out On $100 Oil With 7-Year Wait To Drill On Federal Land | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Wyoming oilman says it missed out on $100-a-barrel oil during a seven-year fight to get the OK to drill on federal land in the Powder River Basin. "We would have had three months of oil at $100 a barrel,” the owner said. “Now we’ve lost 30% of value."

Wyoming Company Missed Out On $100 Oil With 7-Year Wait To Drill On Federal Land

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

Wyoming Life

Entertainment

The 250th birthday of the United States is being celebrated in communities across Wyoming, which means plenty of pyrotechnics in many — but not all — cities and towns.

Fireworks displays are planned in many of Wyoming’s largest communities on July 4, although many annual displays have already been canceled because of dry conditions.

Many shows in eastern Wyoming have been called off because of extreme fire danger, although their other Independence Day events are going forward. Personal fireworks have been banned in several communities or are only permitted during certain times. It’s best to check your local regulations to see if they’re allowed in your town.

Here’s a list of the biggest fireworks displays in Wyoming, along with the times and locations for the best celebrations and viewing locations. Unless otherwise noted, all the shows will be held on the evening of July 4.

If we’ve missed a Wyoming show, please email us at 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Alpine"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Location: American Legion Ball Field"}]

What Else: After a full day of vendors and activities at Marge Grover Park, the annual parade starts heading down Highway 89 at 7 p.m.

Lincoln County is staging a scavenger hunt where participants can win a commemorative Lincoln County America 250 Challenge Coin, along with other commemorative coins from Alpine and other communities.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Big Piney"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Time: After Dark"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Location: Marbleton Hill"}]

What Else: The day starts with a pancake breakfast and Chuckwagon Chug in the Big Piney Rec parking lot at 7 a.m., followed by the 10 a.m. parade, and a post-parade barbecue at the Sublette County Fairgrounds. Residents can enjoy a cornhole tournament and street dance at the EnCana Picnic Shelter from 1-6 p.m.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Casper"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Time:  Around 10 p.m."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Location: Ford Wyoming Center"}]

What Else: The gates at the Ford Wyoming Center will open at 6 p.m. Families are encouraged to bring picnics and camp chairs, but the live music, vendors, and on-site activities will not be present this year.

Dozens of Wyoming communities will celebrate America’s 250th anniversary with bombastic fireworks displays, while others have been canceled because of extreme fire danger. Here's where Wyomingites can — and can't — see fireworks this Independence Day.

Daily Smile: Friday, July 19, 2024

In case you missed it

More in Daily Smile

Daily Smile: Friday, July 3, 2026

Daily Smile: Thursday, July 2, 2026

Daily Smile: Wednesday, July 1, 2026

Daily Smile: Tuesday, June 30, 2026

Most read