It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming, for Monday, August 5th. I’m Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - brought to you by the Wyoming State Fair! Beginning August 13th in Douglas, the Wyoming State Fair has something for everyone. For more info visit WY-STATE-FAIR dot com
The family homestead of Wyoming’s Congresswoman, Harriet Hageman, was destroyed by an uncontained wildfire in rough terrain littered with huge granite boulders and tinder fueled with juniper pinions woodland and sagebrush.
The rustic cabin-like structure with plastered walls was built into the side of a hill near McGinnis Pass, Wyoming - an area that was devastated last week by the Haystack Fire, which joined with the Pleasant Valley Fire to create one big inferno now known as the Pleasant Valley Fire, according to Cowboy State Daily’s Pat Maio.
“She had some really fond memories of it … her parents bought it back in ‘62 and they had 35 bucks in their savings account, no TV, no anything… But that house is now gone, it went up in flames.”
The exact time of day that the Hageman homestead went up in flames isn’t known.
However, it is likely that it happened sometime Wednesday afternoon after the Haystack Fire and Pleasant Valley fires combined.
Read the full story HERE.
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The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally is commemorating 84 years of raucous celebrations, and Cowboy State Daily’s Justin George is right in the thick of it.
From reunions of old friends, to Harley competitions, to a Catholic Mass blessing the bikes, Justin is seeing the annual gathering with fresh eyes.
“Well, this was my first time ever at the Sturgis rally. And it was eye opening… in the daytime, when you go to Sturgis, a very small town of 7,200 that swells to over 500,000 people. In the daytime, you'll see the older folks, and these days, many of them are walking around with canes and you know, they're mainly there. They've they're veterans who've gone for years and years, and are meeting with friends… then at night is when I feel like the population flips over. And it's much much younger. There's just crowds. The crowds are just enormous… And you know, I've never seen this many motorcycles. There's like a rumble, a rumble through the entire region that doesn't stop.”
And more than just tradition, the rally brings a huge economic boost. It’s estimated that the event generates more than $784 million to the economy of South Dakota.
Read Justin’s stories HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.
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Wyoming is about 1,000 miles away from the U.S. southern border with Mexico here.
Despite that physical distance, America’s border crisis is an immigration nightmare for all states - and a group of Wyoming legislators got an up-close-and-personal look at the border Thursday and Friday. Cowboy State Daily’s Leo Wolfson went along.
“One of the most astonishing things for me, was when all of a sudden we saw some people emerge from the shadows. And voila, there were some people illegally crossing into America, right there before our eyes, at the wall that was built by former President Donald Trump. The kind of the irony of the situation is that the wall, there's a big gap, an eight mile gap in the wall in Yuma, Arizona. And these people literally just walked around the wall to the gap, to get into the country where Border Patrol are required to document them and process them, but then kind of send them on their way to a future court date that they might not have for years.”
Immigration has become one of the key issues of the 2024 presidential election, with Republicans pointing out how the number of illegal migrants entering through the southern border skyrocketed after Biden took office.
Read the full story HERE.
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It was several years ago when novelist Lee Child, the creator of the hugely popular Jack Reacher novels, threw the towel in on New York City’s hectic urban life, and , along with his wife and daughter, moved to Tie Siding, Wyoming, in southeastern Albany County.
But then came a proposal from Spanish wind developers Repsol, who want to build a $500 million wind farm project with more than 100 turbines in the Laramie Plains in the valley below his home. Child - whose real name is Jim Grant - told energy reporter Pat Maio that he bought the property, in part, to get away from civilization.
“He's very opposed to the project, because of basically what it's going to do to the countryside there… He's an interesting person who's just looking for solitude in the Laramie plains and arrived back in ‘16. And all of a sudden, you know, this wind farm developer wants to construct it in his basically his front yard, you know, where he looks down over the mountain.”
Child said that he is worried about the disruption that construction will cause when it finally begins. Repsol executives have vowed that they are preparing to begin work on the project next spring.
Read the full story HERE.
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Amanda Wylie is a city girl, born and raised in Queens, New York City, but even after a terrifying close encounter with a grizzly she still feels the call of the wild.
Wylie told outdoors reporter Mark Heinz that when she started hiking the Continental Divide Trail in June, she knew that a grizzly encounter was practically inevitable. On July 4, about 75 miles into her journey, the inevitable happened.
“She…had literally like an arm's length encounter with a grizzly bear, which you know, scared the snot out of her, but she said she did what she was supposed to do. She stayed calm, back to wear a tucked in a calm voice, didn't make eye contact with the grizzly or tried to intimidate it. Anyway, it ended well… she says she's bound and determined she's coming back.”
Her experience with the first grizzly affirmed that she wants to keep hiking alone — unless she can find a fellow hiker who she knows can keep their cool around a bear, the way she did.
Read the full story HERE.
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In the 1800s and into the 1930s, there was no such thing as trash pick-up in the American West - so people either had to dig a trash pit in their yard or use that nearby deep hole that they had already dug — the family outhouse.
Cowboy State Daily’s Jackie Dorothy spoke to Warren Borton, who grew up on the Wind River Indian Reservation. Borton has an unusual hobby - he spends his free time hunting down old outhouses and searching for buried treasure.
“We're talking bottles, we're talking rings, he's found pistols and guns and he's actually found tokens and money. You never know what you're gonna dig up. But what he is after is the rare bottles, the Sheridan, the Thermopolis bottles, all of these different things is what he is digging up.”
Borton is quick to point out that these treasure troves have been out of use for a long time, so it is dirt he is sifting through and not fresh compost. It’s long been sanitized by nature.
Read the full story HERE.
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The adopted adult son of a Colorado man whose dead body was wrapped in a tarp and dumped at the Mirror Lake Recreation Area in Albany County in early July has been charged with this father’s murder.
19-year-old Jaymz Jordan Bitner is accused of second-degree murder, tampering with a deceased human body and solicitation to commit tampering with a deceased human body, according to Cowboy State Daily’s Jen Kocher.
“The adopted son, who was 19 years old, allegedly shot his dad, after his dad had asked him to move out for whatever reasons. And this happened eight months ago. So it's not clear whether he dropped the body off at Mirror Lake eight months ago, or if the body was closer to home and he recently dropped it off.”
The discovery of Bitner’s body over the Fourth of July weekend shut down the popular Snowy Range picnic and fishing site near the base of Medicine Bow Peak for two days as law enforcement investigated the scene.
Read the full story HERE.
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In order for Pacificorp to build its new gigantic Rocky Mountain Power substation near Medicine Bow, specialized equipment needs to be hauled in.
And according to energy reporter Pat Maio, it takes specialized equipment to haul the specialized equipment into place. PacifiCorp is using giant 1.5 million-pound trailers to haul 700,000 pound transformers to a new substation near Medicine Bow.
“These transformers that they're installing up at the substation, there's like seven of them at the moment in various stages of movement from the Port of Houston, up to Medicine Bow … and then from Laramie they're being transported by this special hauling company, where they literally move these transformers 90 miles over variety of roads up to the substation, which is like way out in the middle of nowhere north of Medicine Bow.”
The new station will serve Wyoming wind farms generating more than 2,000 megawatts of power.
Read the full story HERE.
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Even while chastising federal government officials for delaying a decision on whether grizzlies should be delisted, Wyoming and Montana’s governors are hailing a relocation of bears as a sign that it’s time to delist.
Outdoors reporter Mark Heinz says two grizzlies captured in a remote area of northwest Montana were released in Wyoming this week, part of a cooperative program between the states to boost genetic exchange between two distinct grizzly populations.
“This program of translocating Grizzlies from the northern Continental Divide population in Montana, to the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, which is centered in Wyoming, kind of start moving bears from one to the other to get that genetic diversity that everyone says is so important.”
Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon and Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte said in a joint statement Friday that moving the bears is important step toward getting grizzlies delisted.
Read the full story HERE.
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A Texas biotechnology and genetic engineering company is using cutting-edge science to de-extinct the dodo and the Tasmanian tiger.
Now Colossal Biosciences wants to use research on wooly mammoths to help build better bison on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming, according to Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi.
“What Colossal hopes to do is use genetic information from bison from centuries past, reintroduce that into the living population, and increase their biodiversity in the future. And it sounds like Jurassic Park science fiction, but it's more attainable than a lot of people will realize, because earlier this year, Colossal announced a vaccine for a disease in elephants that's fatal to them. And they've been developing that for several years through their wooly mammoth resurrection research.”
Colossal's real-world mission to use genetic research to prevent and seemingly defy extinction has drawn several comparisons to the fictional Jurassic Park. However, Colossal aspires to augment living ecosystems rather than fill a theme park.
Read the full story HERE.
And that’s today’s news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel.
I’m Wendy Corr, for Cowboy State Daily.
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Radio Stations
The following radio stations are airing Cowboy State Daily Radio on weekday mornings, afternoons and evenings.
KYDT 103.1 FM – Sundance
KBFS 1450 AM — Sundance
KYCN 1340 AM / 92.7 FM — Wheatland
KZEW 101.7 FM — Wheatland
KANT 104.1 FM — Guernsey
KZQL 105.5 FM — Casper
KMXW 92.5 FM — Casper
KJAX 93.5 FM — Jackson
KROE 930 AM / 103.9 FM — Sheridan
KWYO 1410 AM / 106.9 FM — Sheridan
KYOY 92.3 FM Hillsdale-Cheyenne / 106.9 FM Cheyenne
KRAE 1480 AM — Cheyenne
KDLY 97.5 FM — Lander
KOVE 1330 AM — Lander
KZMQ 100.3/102.3 FM — Cody, Powell, Medicine Wheel, Greybull, Basin, Meeteetse
KKLX 96.1 FM — Worland, Thermopolis, Ten Sleep, Greybull
KCGL 104.1 FM — Cody, Powell, Basin, Lovell, Clark, Red Lodge, MT
KTAG 97.9 FM — Cody, Powell, Basin
KCWB 92.1 FM — Cody, Powell, Basin
KVGL 105.7 FM — Worland, Thermopolis, Basin, Ten Sleep
KODI 1400 AM / 96.7 FM — Cody, Powell, Lovell, Basin, Clark, Red Lodge
KWOR 1340 AM / 104.7 FM — Worland, Thermopolis, Ten Sleep
KREO 93.5 FM — Sweetwater and Sublette Counties
KERM 98.3 FM — Goshen County
Check with individual radio stations for airtime of the newscasts.
