The year was 1994 and Darin Westby was building a miniature Formula 1 car for a race in Detroit, Michigan.
As a graduating senior at the University of Wyoming College of Engineering, Darin needed a senior project.
Somehow he heard about a race put on by the major car manufacturers in Detroit where college students came to race cars they had designed, machined, and built entirely by themselves.
After five years of enduring the monotony of college textbooks, this sounded like the perfect senior project. Darin convinced a handful of other classmates to join him and they set out to build a race car.
Darin and his classmates defied the typical steel tube design and instead made a miniature replica of a Formula 1 race car with a motorcycle engine powering a carbon fiber shell.
He and his classmates spent the spring semester building a car. As you can imagine, there weren’t a lot of places to test their car around a track in Laramie in March.
When it came time for the race, the team of 20-somethings hauled it to Detroit in a horse trailer pulled by a Suburban.
Parking next to a line up of semi-trailers, the Wyoming boys piled out of the Suburban. More than a few heads turned from teams like MIT and Stanford when the team backed out a small version of the Formula 1 cars known as the fastest on the planet.
It also became quite clear that there weren’t any professors or industry experts giving them advice.
After a few laps around the track for testing, they took the car up to race speed. The engine blew as soon as they started taking the corners at those high speeds.
Darin and his team pushed the car back to the trailer and installed their one and only spare part, a second engine.
A few more fast turns and the second engine blew too. They pushed the car back to the trailer again, discussing what design error they must have made.
They weren’t too disappointed at the outcome as winning had never been the goal. Plus, they had lined that horse trailer with coolers of ice-cold beer just in case the racing part of the weekend came to an end.
To their surprise, waiting for them back at their trailer was the team from Virginia Tech.
These would-be competitors offered a deal: if they replaced the blown engine with one of their many spares, could they have the same amount of time to examine and learn from the Wyoming car?
The Wyoming team figured they had nothing to lose and nothing to hide. They watched as the Virginia Tech students descended on the car and replaced the engine in 20 minutes.
Their competitors-turned-friends then looked over every square inch of the car. Back in business, the Wyoming car finished the weekend of races in good style. Darin and his classmates had job offers from every major car manufacturer in Detroit.
Darin considered the offers, but he was married with one kid and another one on the way. Having grown up in Casper, Wyoming, Darin figured Detroit was no place to raise his family. He declined the offers and returned to Laramie happy for the experience.
And that is the Westby Way. Darin’s 30-year career that began when he got back to Laramie has been marked by those same themes of hard work, innovation, building coalitions, and family.
Today Darin serves as the director of the Wyoming Department of Transportation, an agency with nearly 2,000 employees and the charge to provide a safe and effective transportation system for the state.
Darin was only a few months into the new role when disaster struck on Teton Pass in June of 2024. Darin was put in the hot seat of finding a solution to reconnect Jackson, Wyoming to the bedroom communities of Victor and Driggs Idaho.
A landslide had taken out a road that was used by some 10,000 commuters and tourists daily. The alternative route added four hours of driving each day to those trying to reach their jobs, medical care, or a vacation destination.
Darin and his team were watching video footage of the landslide as it happened. In his words, “We knew it was sliding. The first slide had an angle of repose that would have made it possible to fix the road. And then it just calved and went straight down. We all looked at each other and said–excuse my language–’shit.’”
“We were all silent. And then I just looked at my guys and said, ‘You know what kind of crisis this is? One that engineers can fix. And you know what our engineers are really good at? Solving problems. Let the engineer flag fly and let’s get to work.”
Despite his engineering schooling and background, Darin knew his engineering skills weren’t needed for this crisis. So he went into project management and communication mode.
He talked with local, state, and federal teams and started to align resources, crews, and funding. He also made it a priority to keep people with fancy titles and no work boots out of Teton County.
“What they didn’t need up there was a circus,” said Darin. "So I stayed away and made the same request of others, including the governor and the U.S. Transportation Secretary. A single hour that crews weren’t making progress was a delay the citizens of those communities didn’t deserve.”
With local, state and even federal eyes on the project, Darin’s team got to work. “The four guys up there have 120 years of experience and they know that mountain better than anyone,” he said. “The stars aligned on finding materials, utilizing support from the Idaho Transportation Department, and working multiple crews around the clock.”
Darin spent his time ensuring communication was as robust and transparent as possible, and convincing Teton County leaders that a solution was weeks, not months, away. This saved them millions in potential housing options they were considering at the time.
True to his word, Darin didn’t visit the site until the day the road was opening back up less than four weeks later. While Darin is quick to credit his team for the success of the Teton Pass solution, there were more than a few signs of the Westby Way imprinted on the project.
When people make something hard look easy, it almost always means they have built the breadth and depth of experience that allows them to remain at ease in trying times.
From his early career in engineering to his time as the director of Wyoming State Parks and Cultural Resources, Darin has learned what it takes to manage people and projects. Part of building that capacity included overcoming a few bumps in the road.
In his early 20’s Darin had to petition an engineering board to even let him take the civil licensing test because his background didn’t meet their typical requirements.
He also speaks openly about a chapter where he lost his family due to the all consuming nature of working for a private design-build firm that took him all over the country working 120 hour work weeks. But through it all Darin learned to develop himself as a person and grow towards the person he wanted to become.
Darin left the private company to prioritize and reunite with his family. He took a job with State Parks and after a few years set his sights on becoming the director. Knowing he didn’t yet have the necessary skills, Darin used his involvement with Cheyenne Frontier Days to push through his discomfort with public speaking.
Darin volunteered for the lowest of speaking assignments his entire three years as General Chairman just to get the practice.
Darin became the Director of State Parks and Cultural Resources in 2016 and continued to hone his skills through programs like Leadership Wyoming.
Darin and his wife Misha sold their home and purchased a building on the West Edge of Cheyenne in February of 2020. Darin and Misha lived there for months with no running water as they began to formulate a plan to rehabilitate the building and revitalize the downtown area.
When Darin couldn’t find contractors for converting the building into a bar and brewery, he just started doing the work himself on nights and weekends. Westby Edge Brewing opened in June of 2023.
What does Darin have to say about his approach and trajectory? “Everything happens for a reason. My whole life points to this. I consider this move to WYDOT an opportunity to use the relationships I’ve built and hopefully help the state get better at understanding infrastructure. I want to see WYDOT firing on all levels. I’ve got a little gas left in my tank, and I plan on using it to benefit Wyoming for as long as I can.”
Keep an eye on what’s happening with critical transportation infrastructure in Wyoming over the next few years.
You can be sure it will show signs of ingenuity and hard work coupled with taking care of people and their families. That’s always been the Westby Way.
