Same Guys Dancing

[{"type":"text","text":"Britney Spears -- Baby One More Time"}]

Mix Collage 23 Aug 2024 04 28 PM 6786

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

<title>Saturday Morning Dance Party: Britney Spears -- Baby One More Time | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Britney Spears -- Baby One More Time

Saturday Morning Dance Party: Britney Spears -- Baby One More Time

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Jackie Dorothy.

Jackie Dorothy

Wildlife

Summer is Wyoming’s season for turning over rocks, poking into holes and walking with a perpetual hunch looking for snakes.

Herpalogists, the zoologists who study amphibians and reptiles, are out scouring the landscape and herping, the term used when they are actively flipping rocks and searching stream beds to find Wyoming's elusive snakes in their native habitats.

Sometimes those finds can be unexpected. The fork-tongued reptiles appear on a trail when least expected. 

Recently, a foot-long “nightcrawler” suddenly moved like a snake and slithered into the rocks, its tail disappearing into the shadows. Rather than a shapeshifter, this was an elusive rubber boa, Wyoming’s tiny constrictor snake that can look like a giant worm at first glance.

These rarely seen creatures are more common in the Cowboy State than most people realize.

“I personally don't feel that any of our snakes in Wyoming are terribly rare,” said Matt Rasmussen, vice president of the 

. “However, a lot of them are very rarely encountered because they spend most of their lives either underground or under rocks.”

Rasmussen said most of the secretive snakes in Wyoming only come out at night or when conditions are right — typically warmer, humid times. The rubber boa, for instance, showed up on a day when it had rained and then the temperatures spiked hot.

Rasmussen helped found the new Herpetological Society two years ago to teach others to herp. He said it’s possible to learn more about our state by flipping rocks and seeing what is beneath.

“That's the great thing with Wyoming,” Rasmussen said. “There is so little known about the herpetofauna — the frogs, lizards, snakes, turtles, etcetera — that live here, and so little known about their distribution.”

He said Wyoming is known for “large charismatic megafauna” such as bison, elk, moose and deer rather than the harder to find animals. As a result, no widespread surveying has been done on smaller non-game species. Wyoming Game and Fish has even asked for community members to help by reporting  rarely seen reptiles and amphibians.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Elusive, Not Rare"}]

While most people think of the more common bullsnake or venomous rattlesnake when discussing reptiles, Rasmussen said Wyoming is home to many harmless snakes.

According to Rasmussen, a few snakes, such as the colorful pale milk snake and rubber boa, could be considered rare in Wyoming. However, he believes they are just harder to find and most people are not aware of them unless they stumble across them.

“There’s the plains black-headed snake, which we really don't know much about their distribution in Wyoming,” Rasmussen said. “They're just not studied and have a limited habitat.”

This tan snake with a black head is small and feeds primarily on centipedes and ant eggs. Rasmussen cautions that when found, rather than kill the strange looking snakes that are harmless, report finding them to Wyoming Game and Fish and leave them in their habitat.

In this way, Rasmussen said, herping can be fun. He encourages people to get into the action.

“There are some other really small fossorial snakes like smooth green snakes, which live along creeks in the mountains and eat caterpillars and spiders,” Rasmussen said. “Then there's the Black Hills red-bellied snake, which is a very small snake that eats slugs, worms and snails primarily.”

People are often surprised that Wyoming is home to such a large variety of snakes. He especially likes to show off a milk snake, which is harmless and eats lizards and even baby rattlesnakes.

“It is a beautiful, almost tropical-looking animal that lives right here,” Rasmussen said. “They are just rarely encountered.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A New Snake & Frog Society"}]

Rasmussen said the new society is trying to educate the community about these fascinating creatures in the Cowboy State that don't get much attention, such as the skink, a short-legged lizard. 

“We're a group of herpetological enthusiasts who would like to spread the word, educate and do outreach about these animals,” he said.

This outreach includes presentations with live animals, field trips and a conference in November. Wyoming’s reptiles and amphibians remain a mystery, Rasmussen encourages reporting sightings on the app 

“Even if you don't know what it is, post a picture because there are tens of thousands of experts who will identify that animal,” Rasmussen said. “That's really important, especially for our herpetofauna in the state.”

He also pointed out that some Wyoming snakes are on the protected list, including the midget faded rattlesnake. They made the list, according to Rasmussen, because people were capturing them and they became popular in among owners who like to keep small venomous snakes as pets.

Rasmussen said awareness is the best protection for Wyoming’s elusive reptiles and he is excited to prove to residents that we don’t have rare snakes, only secretive ones.

Snakes of Wyoming 6 27 26

<title>Many Of Wyoming’s Seldom-Seen Snakes Aren’t That Rare, They Just Like To Hide | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Wyoming's bright orange pale milk snake, rubber boa and plains black-headed snake are elusive, but not as rare as most people think — they just like to hide. Most of the state's secretive snakes only come out at night or when conditions are right.

Many Of Wyoming’s Seldom-Seen Snakes Aren’t That Rare, They Just Like To Hide

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

Renée Jean

Business & Tourism

The first time Farmstead Cider went after old apples in Jackson Hole, it was just for the flavor. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"It soon became about the bears. "}]

Every fall as apples drop and ferment in the backyards and ghost orchards of Jackson Hole, grizzlies and black bears do what comes naturally. They follow their noses straight into trouble — calorie-rich fruits that taste oh-so-good when you’re a bear desperate to fatten up for winter. 

The first harvest, though, was all about the homesick wives, Farmstead Cider’s co-owner Orion Bellorado said. They had grown up on the East Coast, where apple harvests are a big deal. 

“We started harvesting the apples in our neighborhood off of peoples’ trees that were kind of derelict,” he said. “And they were tiny, so we pressed a bunch of juice and made some cider out of it.”

The party was great and word soon got around. 

“Someone from the county found out about it and said, ‘Hey, you should really put in for this community grant to start a business,” Bellorado recalled. “‘Because we’ve really been having issues with bears.’”

That was in 2016, and the business has been going ever since, bottling 5,000 to 7,000 gallons of native-yeast cider a year and selling it across Wyoming as well as other states such as Washington and Montana. 

In the process of climbing into backyards and abandoned orchards, Bellorado stumbled onto a bigger realization. Wyoming is curiously — if quietly — rich in apples across the state.

“They are everywhere,” he said. “I mean, Lander was called Apple Town before it was called Lander. It’s full on part of this interesting tidbit of our culture and our history that’s really been left behind.”

That history is being rediscovered thanks to a project called the Wyoming Apple Project. Through it, researchers have been cataloguing a hidden network of heritage and volunteer trees that have somehow survived a century or so of drought and neglect. Researchers say these hardy survivors might point the way to a new kind of apple economy in one of the harshest fruit-growing climates in America.

You wouldn’t know it from today’s landscape of hay bales and cattle, but Wyoming was once thick with apples. Homesteaders brought apple seeds to plant in their new homes, carving out orchards that were just as essential as a root cellar to their survival.

Apples meant sauce, butter, cider, vinegar and livestock feed. They were essential calories, but also comfort — the kind that could be stored up through a long, hard winter.

By the early 1900s, experimental orchards and private growers had tested at least 218 named apple cultivars across Wyoming, including 11 that were Wyoming-bred. 

Among the most ambitious of the early apple pioneers was an experimental fruit farm in Lander, which trialed 175 different cultivars under superintendent John Steinbrecht, who also developed 10 of the 11 Wyoming-bred cultivars. 

Not far away from Steinbrecht was Lander orchardist Ed Young, who planted a prodigious 3,000-some apple trees in 1882 — an act of faith in a place better known for blizzards than fruit blossoms.

At the time, Wyoming was held up as a national example of what’s possible on the frontier. 

“A lot of those early settlers, such as Ed Young, and their success in growing apples was used in news articles back east, to bring hope to people thinking about moving West,” University of Wyoming graduate and plant physiologist Jonathan Magby told Cowboy State Daily. “It helped show them that you can successfully inhabit this remote location of the United States.”

Wyoming’s apples at that time came from everywhere — Minnesota, Wisconsin, New York, Canada and even Russia. Several nurseries were involved in seeing which varieties could stand up to Wyoming’s brutal mix of cold, drought and wind, including 

At one point, at least 70 out-of-state nurseries and 20 in-state nurseries across 11 Wyoming cities were selling apple stock to Wyoming growers.

Then, slowly, the state forgot about its apples.

Wyoming’s agricultural identity shifted solidly toward cattle and general row crops. Many orchards were abandoned. Irrigation ditches shifted. Families moved away or sold off land.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Winters kept coming. "}]

And the apple trees that had been left behind continued growing. They became part of an unintended Darwinist experiment — one where only the fittest would survive. 

What’s left of the apple trees that once dotted Wyoming are now the toughest of the tough. Trees too full of Wyoming grit to give up and die.

Among the most interesting is a gnarled apple tree in Lander. Its limbs curl up to the sun like an insect on its back, and its trunk is so hollowed out, one wouldn’t be surprised to find a hobbit — or some other creature of legend — sleeping inside.

Somehow, though, this ancient tree is still alive, still leafing out, still stubbornly insisting on producing apples, despite a century or so in a place that routinely tries to freeze them to death.

Wyoming is not a state known for hardy trees. It is, after all, among the coldest and driest of states in the Lower 48. And apple trees aren’t known for being especially long-lived, either. Most never see a 100th birthday.

That makes this particular apple tree special. It’s passed a 100-year stress test, one where Wyoming wind and drought are separating the true pioneers from the pretenders.

To Magby, the Lander tree is far more than a curiosity. It’s a symbol of what Wyoming apples once were, as well as what they could be again. 

These survivors could help develop ever more hardy Wyoming stock, making apples a potential new and viable agricultural commodity. Because of that, the tree’s tissue was pulled and grafted onto new stock, so it can keep growing for another 100 years.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Like A CSI Detective"}]

Magby has been searching out all the old heritage apple trees of Wyoming using DNA finger-printing techniques more often associated with crime shows like CSI. 

So far he’s sampled 510 trees at 91 locations in 19 cities, from Lander and Sheridan to Buffalo and Casper, to figure out which trees match known cultivars and which might be lost or forgotten varieties. So far he’s found more than 150 unique genetic fingerprints that don’t match anything in old reference collections. 

Some of those varieties show up in multiple towns, suggesting they are long-lost cultivars that no longer exist anywhere else. hey are a living link to an era when Wyoming was serious apple country.

Two varieties that keep showing up, meanwhile, are Wealthy and Haralson, both bred in Minnesota. They are roughly one-third of all the identified surviving trees in his data set.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"More Than Charming History"}]

Magby doesn’t see Wyoming apples as a charming historical footnote. He believes these survivors are pointing the way to a viable agricultural commodity for the state, one that could lead to more products that are made in Wyoming, such as Farmstead Cider in Jackson Hole. Making products in Wyoming — referred to as value-added products — is a better bang for the buck. It keeps most of the economic value chain in-state.

Apple cider production makes a lot of sense in Wyoming, alongside the growing microbrewery scene, Magby said. People also just enjoy fresh produce that’s been grown in Wyoming, whether that’s an apple or other fruits.

“We take pride in anything that’s been produced in Wyoming,” Magby said. “So I’d love to see someone take a strong stance of producing and backing development of cultivars and revamping testing of grape and pear varieties and other small fruits, just to provide that diversity, not just in fresh food products, but also diversity of economies.”

Bellorado is already living that future at Farmstead Cider, thanks to bear-safety grants that helped launch a business to haul apples out of backyards and ghost orchards. 

Now, instead of attracting trouble, those apples are a useful and delicious product in a growing business. It’s more joy to the human world, all from abandoned, pioneer apple trees.

Apples Ian Mc Gregor co owner of Farmstead Cider Courtesy Photo 6 27 26

<title>Wyoming’s Ghost Apple Orchard Trees Have Been Rediscovered And Are Producing | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Wyoming was once thick with apples. In fact, it was a top apple producer. Now those forgotten apple trees are being rediscovered by small cider houses. "They're everywhere," said one cider house owner. "Lander was called Apple Town before Lander."

Wyoming’s Ghost Apple Orchard Trees Have Been Rediscovered And Are Producing

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

Jen kocher

Jen Kocher

Law Enforcement

Authorities are working to unravel the mysterious deaths of a man and woman who were found in Laramie County earlier this year within three months of one another in unrelated incidents.

The first, a woman thought to be between 30 and 50 years old, was struck by a vehicle and killed on the side of Interstate 25 outside Cheyenne in late April.

The second is an unknown man found near a commercial building on South Greeley Avenue earlier this month.

Both deaths are under investigation, pending autopsy results from the Laramie County Coroner’s Office.

The fatalities were not publicly announced by authorities, but instead entered into the National Unidentified Persons System — known as NamUs — which is the country’s only centralized database for tracking missing and unidentified persons.

Although anyone with an account can enter missing people into the database, only law enforcement and those with coroners' offices can add unidentified people.

For both, distinctive tattoos could help investigators track down who they are.

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

Two NamUs entries for Wyoming in one week are unusual, say two amateur Cheyenne-based genealogists who run a pro bono company focused on reporting missing and unidentified people.

“It definitely caught our attention,” said Ashley Kroner, who along with her twin sister, Megan McWilliams, are cofounders of Genetics Uncovered.

As usual, they made posters for both John and Jane Doe, with photos of identifying tattoos added by the coroner’s office and shared on their 

Facebook page with more than 9,000 followers

The posts reached hundreds of people, potentially including members of the John Doe’s family, who contacted Kroner and stated they recognized the tattoos.

Kroner shared their information with Laramie County Coroner Rebecca Reid, who is responsible for making the identification, per state statute.

As of Thursday, John Doe was still listed in NamUs.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Mysterious Circumstances"}]

Little is known about the individuals and the circumstances under which they died.

Jane Doe was struck and killed by a vehicle at the mile marker 11 exit, potentially near the on ramp, between 8 and 9 p.m. on April 20, according to Aaron Brown, public information officer for the Wyoming Highway Patrol.

Brown said troopers rendered aid to no avail, and the woman succumbed to her injuries on the scene.

Her death remains under investigation, Brown said. He declined to share any additional details, citing an active investigation, though he added no charges are pending.

The victim is described as Caucasian with shoulder-length blonde, strawberry hair and unknown eye color. She was about 5-feet-7 and weighed 136 pounds.

She had a distinct tattoo on her right hip: A cloud with three zigzag lines beneath it, a sun emerging from the cloud’s left side and a star above the sun, and two clusters of triangles running along the far left of the lines.

Along with her clothing, a black and white duffle bag was found near her body, according to the NamUs entry.

Also citing an active investigation, Reid likewise could not provide any additional information.

John Doe was found dead June 6 at the 800 block of South Greeley Highway in Cheyenne, slumped in a kneeling position alongside a commercial building, with no cellphone or other identification.

His death remains under investigation, according to Chance Walkama, chief deputy of operations for the Laramie County Sheriff’s Office.

Walkama said his office is awaiting autopsy and toxicology results from Reid’s office. No foul play is currently suspected, but the cause and manner of death have not yet been determined.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Giving Them A Name"}]

McWilliams and Kroner said they were pleased their efforts might have helped lead to the identification of the John Doe and also credited Reid for entering both Does into the national database, where the public – and family members – can see them.  

why they started Genetics Uncovered in 2021

 with the mission of locating missing people and putting names to Jane and John Does.

Both sisters have decades of experience in genealogy. McWilliams, whose husband Scott oversees the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation’s crime lab, taught a two-day class in forensic genetic genealogy for DCI agents and assisted the agency with a 1995 cold case in Carbon County.

McWilliams was also just accepted into an investigative genetic genealogy program starting this fall. Kroner, meanwhile, holds down a full-time job while pouring whatever hours remain into tracking down unidentified people and pushing law enforcement and coroners to enter them into NamUs.

Together, the sisters spend long stretches combing through ancestry records, burial registries such as Find A Grave, and newspaper archives, assembling family trees in hopes of giving the unidentified a name.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Success Stories"}]

This is part of their nationwide initiative, “Not Forgotten,” to track down unidentified people and get them entered into NamUs.

Once in the database, not only can law enforcement cross-check for missing people, but it also allows family members to provide DNA for possible identification should remains be found.

Without this database, there’s no central repository for law enforcement and families to find these individuals, many of whom have been reported missing.

They admit it’s an ambitious undertaking, but they have since recruited six volunteers to help tackle the vast territory, which they’ve broken down into geographic areas.

Between the eight of them, they have most of the country covered, but they still need volunteers in two areas: California, which is its own region, and a southern stretch comprising Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas.

[{"type":"text","text":"The work is paying off, they say."}]

To date, they’ve worked with law-enforcement agencies and coroner offices around the country to enter 35 new Does into NamUs.

Of those, at least one has been identified. In January 2026, authorities in Washington state positively identified the remains of a former mayor, Clarence Edwin Asher, 

who drowned while crabbing in an Oregon bay in 2006

The twins successfully added into the database in March 2025, making that identification possible.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Many More"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"There are hundreds more still to be located in Wyoming and beyond.  "}]

More than 15,000 unidentified individuals are listed the NamUs database, Kroner said, but she believes that number is much higher.

Along with the two latest entries, Wyoming has nine unidentified people listed in NamUs dating to 1977, including two of the sisters’ personal favorites, whom they’ve affectionately dubbed 

“Motel Mike” and “Pine Bluffs Pete.”

“Mike” died of an overdose in a Cheyenne motel in April 1977.  “Pete,” a transient, was hit by a train while attempting to cross tracks in 1996.

Both men remain unidentified, but at least they’ve since been listed in the database, McWilliams said.

Twin genealogists are working to identify a John and Jane Doe found two months apart in Cheyenne earlier this year. “They don’t have a voice,” the sisters said, “but their distinctive tattoos could help investigators track down who they are.”

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