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[{"type":"text","text":"Perhaps the most terrifying attack of all time...."}]

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

<title>Daily Smile: Friday, August 23, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Perhaps the most terrifying attack of all time....

Daily Smile: Friday, August 23, 2024

 Perhaps the most terrifying attack of all time....

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

Renée Jean

Wyoming Life

CHEYENNE — The most prominent words on the Kenefick green Union Pacific caboose FTSX 812, now being restored for the city's 15th Street Railcar Experience, are also the oddest.

“DO NOT HUMP,” they say, in all capital letters.

Train restoration expert Mike Pannell knew the phrase would raise some eyebrows. He even offered to paint it out.

“They decided to keep it,” Pannell said. 

That decision preserved the car’s historic integrity, which made Pannell happy. But he’s also quick to explain what those words actually mean.

“See how it’s lower in the middle there?” he said, pointing to the midsection of the caboose. “So, North Platte has a hump yard, which is a yard with a hump in the middle. They would push boxcars over the hump and let them roll free to guide them into different tracks without using locomotives.”

This caboose, loaded with boxy equipment slung low under its belly, was a bad candidate for that approach.

“You’d have grounded it in the middle,” Pannell said. “So you couldn’t have done that with them.”

The caboose is one of three railcars whose exteriors Pannell is restoring for the 15th Street Railcar experience, which is being installed starting Saturday.

The $5 million project is part of a massive downtown revitalization effort that seeks to not only celebrate Cheyenne’s deep railroad roots, but also create a destination that can attract visitors to West 15th Street.

New lighting, updated crosswalks, and streetscape elements, as well as better traffic flow for pedestrians and vehicles, are also part of the project, which was funded in part with a $618,400 Economic Development Administration grant and 6th Penny funds earmarked for downtown projects.

Not everyone has been sold on the railcar experience, however, and the project has stirred some debate. 

Questions have centered on whether railcars are the best use of limited downtown space and public tax dollars, as well as concerns about lost parking and the fate of long-running attractions such as the Cheyenne Gunslingers.

Roger Barnes, with the Gunslingers, told Cowboy State Daily on Friday the Gunslingers won’t move right away, but will eventually shift performances to the corner of Thomes and West 15th Street.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Strong Tourism Potential"}]

The seed for the 15th Street Railcar project was planted in 2021, when Visit Cheyenne developed a master plan for Laramie County. One of its pillars was creating a new visitor experience, especially around railroad history. 

Former Visit Cheyenne CEO Domenic Bravo, who is now Wyoming Office of Tourism Director, said the idea was simple but powerful.

“The idea was to bring actual rail cars onto 15th Street, so people can see them,” he said. “Because, they can’t really access the rail yard there that Union Pacific manages.”

Visit Cheyenne CEO Jim Walter said he believes the tourism opportunity is strong. 

Railfans are particularly dedicated tourists whose niche passions drive them to stay longer, travel farther, and invest heavily in localized experiences and memorabilia. 

National data from the Mandala Research Group and the U.S. Cultural & Heritage Tourism Marketing Council finds that heritage tourists like railfans tend to spend on average 60% more than other types of leisure travelers. 

Railfans often travel long distances to track down specific locomotives, such as Union Pacific’s Big Boy 4014, or to visit heritage railroad towns like Cheyenne to check out its museums. That Cheyenne has an operating Steam Shop is unique. 

The companions of railfans, who are not always train enthusiasts, tend to spread out to other opportunities like shopping, dining or other attractions.

Walter has seen firsthand just how much people love trains. 

“Every year, we get a large volume of visitors who come to Cheyenne for our railroad history,” he said. “They come for Depot Days and they come at all times of the year to visit the Depot Museum.”

Many times, Walter has found himself talking to visitors at the Depot who are asking him questions about Big Boy, the Steam Shop, and Cheyenne’s railroad history. Some of those are retired railroaders, chasing railroad history across the nation.

“The only reason Cheyenne is where it is, is because of our railroad history,” Walter said. “It wasn’t the most hospitable place to start a civilized settlement. But the railroad needing to cross Sherman Hill … set Cheyenne up to just have this really pivotal and cool role in railroad history.”

Inside Pannell’s Railcar Restoration Shop

Pannell, who is originally from the UK, is among those attracted to Cheyenne because of its railroad history. Now president of the High Plains Railroad Preservation Association, he’s well-known for his train-car restoration projects, which take place on a historic parcel that once housed the 565th Strategic Missile Squadron.

The silo is long enough to fit three train cars on one side and three on the other, with room to walk between. That’s made it the ideal train-restoration workshop for Pannell, who has multiple projects going.

The 15th Street cars have been challenging, he said, and have been a sprint ever since the project began in October.

All three cars were in bad shape when they arrived, Pannell said, after sitting in Union Pacific’s Cheyenne railyard for nearly two decades. They’d been battered by wind and were rusting in some places. Many had also been put to secondary uses at some point in their history, degrading their historic integrity.

“Every window on this entire car is brand new,” he said, pointing at the Pullman SP10041 car. “Brand-new frames and everything, because the original frames had been butchered. And they put plexiglass in and added metal around the insides.”

New, rubber roofs have been put on the Pullman cars, and every non-historic vent and hole stripped out.

The caboose was in the worst shape of the three and took the most time to restore. It had once been part of a train “demolition derby,” Pannell explained. It had been used to brake other trains by letting them slam into it.

“It really got hammered horribly,” he said. “It had been smashed in on both edges repeatedly. It was really quite bent. You couldn’t even get into the thing.”

It took Pannell’s welder hundreds of hours to pull out the smashed and bent steel to save the caboose. New ladders and steps, which were crafted to match the originals, were added, ends were rebuilt, and new sections placed. 

“We couldn’t paint it and leave it looking beaten up like it was,” Pannell said. 

Pannell used authentic colors for each car: Pullman green for SP113 and SP1004, and Kenefick green for the caboose. 

The latter has special meaning. The vivid turquoise green was the color scheme envisioned by John C. Kenefick, Union Pacific president from 1971 to 1986, to identify maintenance cars.

“People have said to us, ‘Why is it green',” Pannell said. “It’s a tribute to all the maintenance crews who never get any recognition.”

A recent visit by a retired maintenance crew chief has vindicated that decision, in Pannell’s mind.

“He came out here and got really emotional when he saw the car,” he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Coming Home Soon"}]

On Saturday, all three cars will finally come off their “Jenga” towers made of huge railroad ties. Wheels will go back under the cars for their journey to their new home in Cheyenne in the area between the Depot and Bent Avenue. 

Pannell expects the move to take at least three days to get each car carefully set in place on tracks that have been installed for the display.

For now, the cars will be largely exterior display pieces. The interiors were already stripped out when they arrived at Pannell’s operation. But Pannell is thinking about the future, and he’d like to see a hobby shop combined with a cafe or coffee shop catering to railroad enthusiasts.

But there would be challenges to that kind of dream, he added. The cars aren’t ADA compliant, and doing so would require cutting into them in ways that would destroy historic integrity.

Even display activity has value, Bravo said. 

“Every extra 15 minutes is holding a visitor in our state,” he said. “That turns into ‘Well, now let’s go to the restaurant for lunch or dinner,’ or ‘We need to stay an extra night so we can hit all the museums.’”

An extra 30 minutes or so in the downtown area translates to extra cups of coffee or soda, Walter added, and perhaps a sandwich as well.

Cheyenne Restored Train cars 20260624 143304 6 27 26

<title>Inside Cheyenne’s $5 Million Railcar Experience Taking Shape For 15th Street | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Installation began Saturday on Cheyenne’s new 15th Street Railcar Experience, a $5 million downtown project aimed at celebrating the city’s railroad roots. A Union Pacific caboose and two Pullman cars have been restored for the destination.

Inside Cheyenne’s $5 Million Railcar Experience Taking Shape For 15th Street

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Outdoors

Hunting

Many hunters would be happy shooting just one buck pronghorn big enough to make the Boone and Crockett Club record books. Larry Hicks of Baggs has bagged 16, including 14 from Wyoming.

The key was figuring out how to consistently and accurately “field judge” whether a buck is one for the books, he told Cowboy State Daily.

In other words, he had to tell by looking at pronghorn, commonly called antelope, through binoculars or spotting scopes, and then decided on sight which bucks had trophy-class horns.

“After 20 years of trying, I finally got to the point where I cracked the code” for spotting record book antelope, he said.

Hicks’ accomplishment is phenomenal, prominent outdoorsman Guy Eastman of Cody told Cowboy State Daily.

“He’s got everybody I know beat,” said Eastman, who represents the third generation of the famous outdoor multimedia family that launched Eastman's Hunting Journal, along with a television show and YouTube channel.

Hicks, who serves as a Republican Wyoming state senator, regards antelope as a Wyoming icon.

“We so under-value antelope,” he said. “We are tremendously blessed in Wyoming."

Antelope live in several Western and Southwestern states, but Wyoming has the most abundant populations. So, there’s plenty hunting opportunity here, Hicks said.

Moreover, antelope hunting is highly accessible. It doesn’t require the expensive gear, time and physical effort of backcountry elk hunting, he said.

“If you’ve got a two-wheel-drive pickup and a .30-06 with a four-power Weaver scope on it, you can go antelope hunting,” he said.

And while the absolutely huge monster bucks come from New Mexico and Arizona, the sheer number of antelope in Wyoming means there are more trophy-sized bucks by volume here, Eastman said.

“Statistically, Wyoming is the best place to kill a Boone and Crockett (B&C) record book antelope buck,” he said.

"If you remove New Mexico from the list, we have more B&C antelope bucks than all the other states combined,” Eastman said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"By The Numbers"}]

The B&C record books are considered the gold standard for fair-chase trophy hunting.

Animals are scored by inches. For antlered or horned game, scores are compiled from numerous length and circumference measurements taken at different spots on the horns or antler racks.

For antelope, that includes measurements of the horns’ overall length, plus circumference at four spots on each horn. 

Also taken into account is the size of the prong protruding from the front of each horn — for which the species is formally named.

Green score, gross score and net score are also terms to bear in mind.

Green score refers to initial measurements taken right after the animal is killed, and the horns might still contain some moisture. 

An official score can’t be taken until after a mandatory 90-day drying period, during which there might be some shrinkage.

The gross score is the compilation of all the measurements after the drying period. What really counts is the net score, which is calculated after deductions are made for any asymmetry in the horns.

B&C has awards record books, which are issued every few years, and then the all-time records book.

An antelope’s net score must be 80 inches to qualify for the awards records, and 82 inches for the all-time records.

Hicks’ trophy antelope so far include three awards record bucks and 13 all-time record bucks.

His largest buck so far scored 87 inches net, 88 inches gross. He shot it in Carbon County in 1999.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘The Golden Square’"}]

While antelope can be found just about anywhere in Wyoming, the best place to find B&C trophy bucks is in the “golden square” at the heart of the Red Desert country in Carbon, Sweetwater and Natrona counties, Hicks said.

It’s thought that about 90% of a buck’s horn growth takes place during their first three years. Bucks have to be roughly 5 years old before they start to hit true trophy sized, Hicks said.

The peak years for antelope in Wyoming were from about 2000 to 2008, he said. There were several mild winters during that period.

However, a harsh winter during the last year of that streak knocked the herd back, he said.

An absolutely brutal winter hit the heart of Wyoming’s antelope country in 2022-2023. That sent trophy buck numbers plummeting, Hicks said.

The herds are still in recovery mode, and although there aren’t as many bucks that are old enough yet to be huge, “they’re out there,” he said.

Eastman agreed that overall numbers are down. This past mild winter, however, with abundant food for antelope probably contributed to robust horn growth.

Buck antelope shed the black outer sheath of their horns in October and November, and they grow back over the winter, Eastman said.

“The numbers might be down, but I think the quality of the bigger bucks this fall is going to be nuts,” he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Mass Matters"}]

To the untrained eye, a buck’s trophy quality might be all about the length of the horns, Hicks said.

When it comes to judging horn length in the field, consider that the top of a buck’s ears is about 7 inches, he said.

So, a buck that has as much horn above the tips of his ears as below them might be entering trophy territory, Hicks said.

But those circumference measurements, or mass of the horns, it what really adds up, he said.

That can be devilishly difficult to judge in the field, Hicks added. A quarter-inch at each of the four circumference points on a buck’s horns can add an additional 2 inches to the score.

However, “trying to determine a quarter-inch difference through binoculars at 400 yards is extremely hard,” Hicks said.

“I tell novice hunters to look for a lot of black,” he said. Or in other words, signs of real mass in the horns. “Our antelope in Wyoming tend to have shorter antlers, and more mass."

As are as horn length in Wyoming goes, “16 inches is rare, 17 inches is really rare, and 18 inches is unheard of,” Hicks said.

Extremely mild winters with plentiful feed are what produces world-record setting monster antelope bucks in Arizona and New Mexico, Eastman said.

“There was a movement at one time to recognize them as their own subspecies, because they’re so ridiculously huge,” Eastman said. "Their horns will be 18, maybe 19 inches long, they’re just insane.”

The biggest antelope of all time came from the southwest and was in the neighborhood of 97 or 98 inches, Eastman said.

“As far as I know, no antelope has ever broken 100 inches, but they’ve come close,” he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Wyoming Antelope Are Tough"}]

Even so, Wyoming’s antelope have bigger bodies than their southwestern counterparts, Eastman said.

“Our bucks are big, horse-headed animals built for the winters," he said.

Wyoming antelope can survive conditions ranging from 50 degrees below zero in the winter, to over 100 degrees at the height of summer, he said.

“Pound-for-pound, they are the toughest animals in North America, in my opinion,” Eastman said.

Hicks said antelope are perhaps his favorite animals. Even when it’s not hunting season, he loves watching them.

“I invented distracted driving,” he said. “I’ve probably spotted 100 or more B&C trophy book-class Wyoming antelope bucks, just alongside the highways.”

Antelope meat gets a bad rap, but Hicks thinks that’s unfair.

The key is to “make a clean kill” and get the meat cooled off as soon as possible.

“If it’s a really hot day, I’ll get the meat off the bone and into a cooler right away,” he said.

When it’s handled correctly, antelope is some of the best wild game there is, Hicks said.

And he still hopes to add to his collection of record-book bucks.

“The good Lord willing, and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department still providing the opportunity, I’m going to hunt antelope until the day that I can’t walk out of the house,” he said.

Larry Hicks Antelope 4 6 27 26

<title>Wyoming Hunting: Larry Hicks Is King Of Trophy Antelope With 16 Record-Book Bucks | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Larry Hicks of Baggs has bagged 16 record-book trophy antelope bucks, including 14 in Wyoming. “After 20 years of trying, I finally got to the point where I cracked the code for spotting record book antelope," Hicks said.

Wyoming Hunting: Larry Hicks Is King Of Trophy Antelope With 16 Record-Book Bucks

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

Andrew Rossi

Around Wyoming

The Fry family lost their 14-year-old corgi Lola on May 16. She was wandering near her home along Wyoming Highway 50 south of Gillette when she disappeared without a trace.

Nearly a month later, Lola turned up in a Facebook Classified post in Wisconsin, more than 1,000 miles away.

“I got a call at 8:15 a.m. and just cried," Kimberly Fry told Cowboy State Daily. “By 10 a.m., my husband, dad, and a family friend were on the road and drove all night to get her from Wisconsin.”

Lola is frazzled and lost a little weight after her strange journey, but is doing fine otherwise. Fry’s children, 7 and 3, were overjoyed to have the family dog back home.

Nevertheless, Fry is still trying to parse out what happened. She believes her corgi was stolen and abandoned by the people who stole her, making their reunion a miracle.

“You try not to give up faith,” she said. “After a month of hell, it’s very surreal to have her back.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'My Newspaper Dog'"}]

 but she’s a bit of a handful in her old age. After all, she’s at least 98 years old in dog years.

“She’s deaf, her back leg shakes because of a partially torn ACL, and she’s on a sensitive dog food diet because of heart issues,” Fry said. “But she’s the sweetest thing ever.”

Fry called her corgi “my newspaper dog” because that’s how she 

 found her. It’s a reminder of just how old she is.

“Someone put an ad in the newspaper that they had puppies for $150,” she said. “We don’t really have newspapers anymore.”

Lola’s routine has been spending most of her time outdoors on the family ranch. Fry said she hangs out with the sheep, horses and chickens, and has been happy “doing her thing” for years.

Then, in her old age, Lola suddenly started to “see people,” as Fry put it.

“Two years ago, she decided she was lonely and walked a mile to visit the neighbors and their cats,” she said. “She’s just a friendly old dog.”

That’s why the Fry family wasn’t immediately concerned when Lola wasn’t home one night. It was the first night of an agonizing ordeal for the family.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Lola Lost"}]

On the morning of Saturday, May 16, Fry’s 

-year-old daughter was taking Lola to her kennel when the dog slipped out of her collar.

“It's common for ranch people to have their dogs' collars pretty loose,” Fry said. “She made it into the kennel but without her collar.”

With Lola in her kennel, the family went into town at 1 p.m. When they returned home at 2 p.m., Lola was gone – the kennel’s door hadn’t been fully shut.

Nobody panicked. They figured Lola was off visiting someone and would be back soon. It was only when it got dark that the family started getting worried.

“My husband looked a little that night, but there was no sign of her,” Fry said. “We figured she’d be back tomorrow. She never came back.”

By Monday, the Frys figured someone must have taken Lola to the pound. When they called that morning, Lola wasn’t there.

That’s when, according to Fry, “the real panic started.” She started posting about Lola in every Facebook group she could, asking for any sign of her missing corgi.

“On Tuesday, we searched with a lady who had a tracking dog,” Fry said. “We found that she had gone to the neighbors, and someone had seen her near the highway on Sunday.”

On Wednesday, they searched with another tracking dog, thermal scopes, and a drone. No sign of Lola.

Fry feared the worst, but the evidence didn’t add up. That was simultaneously hopeful and dreadful.

“If she had passed away, the tracking dogs would have smelt her,” she said. “We were set on (the explanation) that someone had picked her up.”

If so, they weren’t reaching out. Fry tearfully recalled the long wait for any information.

[{"type":"text","text":"“You never want to give up,” she said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'I Have Your Dog'"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"One week. Two weeks. Three weeks."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Still no sign of Lola."}]

Both of Fry’s children celebrated their birthdays without their corgi. Fry gave herself an emotional break from posting about Lola, but started again in mid-June.

[{"type":"text","text":"On June 14, Fry got a call. It was a woman from Wisconsin."}]

“She said, ‘I have your dog,’ and I just started bawling,” Fry said. “I asked if she was sure, because we had a couple of people reaching out trying to help, and she said, ‘Yes, I have your dog'.”

The Wisconsin woman had acquired Lola via Facebook Marketplace. Someone was trying to give Lola away, for free, to anyone who’d take her.

According to Fry, the woman who picked up Lola got some details from the people who had her. It was a young couple who apparently picked up Lola while moving from Wyoming to Wisconsin.

“They saw her on the side of the road and picked her up,” she said. “They just took her.”

The couple said they tried asking someone nearby if they knew who Lola belonged to before taking her. They claimed they weren’t aware she was missing and desperately wanted back.

The woman wasn’t aware Lola was missing either, but Fry said she had “the gut intuition” to check.

“She was going to pick Lola up because she wanted to be the free home, and was OK getting an old dog,” Fry said. “But she had a gut intuition to look into it, she searched Facebook and found us right away.”

Lola made it home at 7:30 a.m. June 19. She was tired, flustered, and had lost a little weight, but quickly settled in when she realized she was where she belonged.

“We’ve taken her to the vet, and everything’s good, all considering,” Fry said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Jumped And Dumped"}]

Lola’s back, but Fry is still trying to determine what happened to her dog. The circumstances have left her upset and angry.

The couple who picked up Lola claimed they had no idea anyone was looking for her. Fry doesn’t believe it.

“I had missing posters all over Facebook and at every veterinarian in the area,” she said. “I posted in the In Search of Missing Dog group on Facebook. I called the police and the sheriff’s department. I contacted every pound in the state.”

Assuming they didn’t know, their decision to give her away for free on Facebook Marketplace is, for Fry, telling.

“She has issues, and she was probably puking because she didn’t have her special dog food,” she said. “I feel like (the couple) decided she was more work than they wanted, and they put her up for free.”

Fry said if the couple had made a point of checking whether anyone in the Gillette area was missing a corgi, they could have easily found and contacted her, and gotten Lola back much sooner.

[{"type":"text","text":"Instead, they took the dog to Wisconsin and gave her away."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“I don’t believe they even tried to find me,” Fry said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Almost The 7%"}]

Getting Lola back was an emotional moment for Fry. The moment of full emotional catharsis is when Lola was reunited with her children.

“They were with their grandparents that week,” she said. “We kept it as a surprise for them.”

After a month of “sleepless nights,” Fry is resting easy now that Lola is finally home. She’s been reunited with her $150 newspaper dog thanks to a “For Free” post on Facebook.

“She’s old and has had a rough, rough month,” she said. “In the research that I've done, there is a 93% chance you'll get your dog back. I was almost in the 7%, and had it not been for this lady who had that intuition to look, I would have been in the 7%. It’s surreal.”

Lost corgi c1c90697 e551 4c84 a020 1a94283cfe13 6 27 26

When Gillette's Kimberly Fry got a phone call at 8:15 a.m. that someone had found their 14-year-old corgi in Wisconsin, she started crying. An hour later, her family was on the road and drove more than 1,000 miles straight to get their rescued dog.

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