Same Guys Dancing

[{"type":"text","text":"Daft Punk -- One More Time"}]

Mix Collage 09 Sep 2024 04 18 PM 910

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

<title>Tuesday Morning Dance Party: Daft Punk -- One More Time | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Daft Punk -- One More Time

Tuesday Morning Dance Party: Daft Punk -- One More Time

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Crime & Courts

A 37-year-old Casper man faces potential prison time for allegedly driving a Polaris UTV side-by-side while intoxicated and causing serious injury to a passenger who fell off while sitting in the back on a cooler.

Michael Ray Watts is charged with driving under the influence with serious bodily injury after the incident Saturday evening in Alcova. A preliminary hearing on the charge is set for Aug. 27.

An arrest affidavit states that the victim as of Sunday was still on life support and had significant head injuries. Attempts to obtain an updated condition report Wednesday were unsuccessful.

Court records show Natrona County Sheriff’s deputies responded to the area of 24000 Lakeshore Drive about 8 p.m. Saturday for a report of a vehicle accident. They found a male on the ground bleeding from the face and head with significant injuries.

As two deputies administered first aid, they lost the victim’s pulse and began CPR.

“Soon after the CPR was administered the male regained consciousness,” the affidavit states. “Deputies continued to render aid until Natrona County fire personnel arrived and took over care of the patient.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Accelerated On Incline"}]

During an interview with Watts, he shared with a deputy that they was driving a 2021 Polaris RZR 1000 turbo when the victim came off the RZR. During the interview, the deputy could see that Watts eyes were bloodshot and glossy and he smelled of alcohol, the affidavit states.

Watts initially told the deputy that he two beers and a shot but later admitted to drinking two shots, four beers, and four or five Ranch Water cocktails.

Watts said he and two men and two women had been drinking at Alcova Lakeside Marina and just before 8 p.m. left with Watts driving the RZR. The victim and two women were sitting in the back on a cooler.

“Watts advised that he drove under the speed limit on Lakeshore Drive. When Watts turned into a trailer park … he stepped on the gas to go up an incline on the road,” the affidavit states. “Watts heard one of the females advise that (the victim) fell off.”

Watts told the deputy he stopped and got out to check on the man. Deputies arrived shortly after the incident.

Watts said one of the females told him the man slid off as he accelerated, but he did not see the man fall off.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Failed Field-Sobriety Test"}]

A field-sobriety test showed Watts could not maintain his balance, could not walk heel-to-toe, or walk a straight line. He also could not follow a direction to turn, swayed while trying to balance on one leg, hopped to balance, used his arms to balance and put his foot down — failing several field-sobriety tests.

Watts agreed to a chemical breath test at the Natrona County Detention Center at 10:16 p.m., two hours after the incident. He blew a .16% blood alcohol content, well above the legal limit of 0.08%.

The driving under the influence with serious bodily injury charge carries a potential penalty of 10 years in prison and a fine of not less than $2,000 or more than $5,000 or both.

Watts is currently free on a $5,000 cash or surety bond.

Alcova michael watts 8 12 26

<title>Casper Man Charged With Driving UTV Drunk; Passenger On Life Support After Fall | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Casper man faces prison time after authorities say he drove a side-by-side while intoxicated and caused a passenger to fall off a cooler in the back. The passenger is on life-support after sustaining head injuries in the fall at Alcova Reservoir.

Casper Man Charged With Driving UTV Drunk; Passenger On Life Support After Fall

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's managing editor, Greg Johnson.

Greg Johnson

Courts

A Tinder date gone horribly wrong ended with a Newcastle man dead with a hollow-point round in his chest and a South Dakota man facing a second-degree murder charge — and vastly different stories from the couple who had just met for a hook-up.

The woman Drake Alexander Ingalls of Belle Fourche, South Dakota, had driven nearly 90 minutes to meet this past weekend told investigators that Ingalls “did not need to shoot that gun at all.”

Ingalls, however, says he shot the other man in defense of his Tinder date after the woman screamed for “help” several times, according to an affidavit of probable cause written by Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation Agent Zack Miller.

The shooting happened a little before 5 a.m. Sunday, and Ingalls had his initial court appearance Tuesday, where a Weston County Circuit Court judge gave him a $250,000 cash-only bond and set an Aug. 19 preliminary hearing.

By the time Newcastle police responded to the home of the victim, identified in court documents as Jason Greene, he was lying face-down on the floor and obviously dead, wrote Miller.

An officer “entered the trailer home and located the victim … lying face-down on the floor between the hallway and living room with a large pool of blood underneath his chest,” the affidavit says. “Officers and emergency medical personnel confirmed Greene was deceased.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"What She Said"}]

In separate interviews with the woman and Ingalls, both told investigators how they met on Tinder and had been talking for anywhere from a couple weeks (according to her) to a few months (according to him) before Ingalls drove to Newcastle on Saturday so they could meet up, the affidavit says.

They had a room at a local hotel and had been drinking for hours by the time the woman got a text from Greene calling her a “whore,” Miller wrote.

The woman then allegedly proceeded to claim Greene had mistreated her, but later told investigators that Greene had “never assaulted her and the two were not in any physical altercation,” the affidavit says.

Upset after getting the text, the woman asked Ingalls to take her to Greene’s place “so she could talk to him,” Miller wrote.

The woman “told Ingalls about the text message and that Greene had abused her in the past,” the affidavit says. “(She) told Ingalls that if he heard her yell for help to come and help her.”

Greene didn’t know they were coming to his residence, the document adds. Miller’s affidavit also doesn’t elaborate on how the woman and Greene knew each other.

The woman and Greene were in a “heated verbal argument” with her “yelling loudly,” which Ingalls reportedly heard, the affidavit says. So, he left his car outside the trailer and went to the woman.

The woman also told investigators that she didn’t actually see the shooting, “and adamantly stated Greene never assaulted her and the two were not in any physical altercation,” the affidavit says.

She continued to say that Ingalls “did not need to shoot that gun at all,” Miller wrote about her statement.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"What He Said"}]

That’s not how the confrontation went down, however, Ingalls said in his own interview with investigators, the affidavit says.

“Ingalls claimed he came around a shed and observed Greene struggling with (the woman) near the doorway threshold,” Miller wrote. “Ingalls described the struggle as Greene behind (the woman) and he had his arms hooked under her armpits and another hand on the back of her head or hair, and it appeared he was trying to pull (her) into his trailer.”

Ingalls said he tried to pull the door open, then pointed a handgun at Greene and demanded he let the woman go, according to his statement detailed in the affidavit.

“At which point, Ingalls said he fired his handgun,” Miller wrote. “Ingalls could only see Greene’s chest as (the woman) was in front of him and he believed he shot him right in the middle of the chest.”

That’s when Greene stumbled back into the trailer and fell onto the living room floor.

Ingalls had the gun because he had it in his car and grabbed it when he heard the woman yell for help, the affidavit says.

“Ingalls retrieved his 9 mm Glock 17 handgun from the center console of his car and chambered a hollow-point round into the handgun as he approached the side entrance of the trailer,” Miller wrote.

Ingalls and the woman then got back into his car and drove around the block before returning to the scene and the woman called 911.

If convicted of second-degree murder, Ingalls could get anywhere from 20 years ot life in prison, a fine of not more than $10,000, or both.

Newcastle highway sign Drake Alexander Ingalls 8 12 26

<title>Tinder Date Ends With Newcastle Man Shot Dead, S.D. Man Facing Murder Charge | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Tinder Date Ends With Newcastle Man Shot Dead, S.D. Man Facing Murder Charge

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

Andrew Rossi

Public Safety

This story was updated at 4:45 p.m. Wednesday.

A multi-vehicle accident between Cody and Yellowstone National Park involving multiple motorcycles on Wednesday morning resulted in one confirmed fatality and five serious injuries, the Wyoming Highway Patrol tells Cowboy State Daily.

WHP spokesman Aaron Brown said the multi-vehicle incident at Wapiti involved four motorcycles, a pickup truck, and a Wyoming Department of Transportation vehicle.

“What we know is we had one fatality,” Brown said. “One (victim) was LifeFlighted to a hospital in Billings, Montana, and the other three were taken to Cody Regional Health via ambulance. I don't know who was taken or transferred where, but they all had severe injuries."

Because the investigation into the accident is ongoing, Brown didn’t know what the contributing factors might have been. He could confirm that the driver of the WYDOT truck was not injured.

“The WYDOT vehicle looks to have been struck toward the end of the crash,” he said

WHIP will release the deceased victim’s name once next-of-kin is notified, Brown said.

As of 2:50 p.m., U.S. Highway 14/16/20 was cleared of debris and open to traffic in both directions.

At 9:38 a.m., WYDOT closed all lanes on the highway due to the crash. First responders were rushing to the scene, which an eyewitness says involved multiple people who appeared to be seriously injured.

According to exchanges on the Park County Public Safety-WyoLink radio scanner, first responders had received “a report of two fatalities.”

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Wapiti resident Jimmy Rush was heading toward Cody for work when he observed the scene of the incident. It happened sometime between 8 and 8:30 a.m. Wednesday near the Old Faithful RV Park, just outside Wapiti.

“When I passed by, it was still a very early stage of the accident,” he said. “There were no first responders on the scene. There were at least four to five motorcycles and debris everywhere. I counted at least three bodies that I could see lying on the ground, not moving, with more down in ditches."

Rush said the victims were being attended to “by all of the gracious people of Wyoming,” who immediately pulled over and jumped out of vehicles to help.

A Silver Ford pickup truck, either an F-250 or F-350, had been “ejected out into a field,” according to Rush. From what he could see, it appeared to have "impacted something.”

“I immediately called (Park County Dispatch) and said, ‘You guys got to send everybody. There’s multiple bodies and multiple injuries, and one ambulance ain't going to get it done.’”

As Rush continued into Cody, he saw five Park County Sheriff’s deputies, multiple fire trucks, a Wyoming Highway Patrol trooper, and two ambulances heading to the scene.

Rush took a photo of a WYDOT truck at the scene, which showed a damaged tailgate.

“It was the only picture I felt comfortable taking,” he said. “It was too grisly.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"What Happened?"}]

Rush could only piece together a rough scenario of events based on what he observed.

“From what I can tell, the WYDOT truck was starting to do some type of work,” he said. “There were cones set up, but I don't know if he was setting those cones up for some pending work that was about to happen, or if he had set those cones up because of the accident.

[{"type":"text","text":"“It’s really hard to tell, but it was severe.”"}]

This is a developing story and will be updated as more information is available.

Wapiti Crash 308 12 26

<title>UPDATE: Fatality Reported In Crash Involving Four Motorcycles, WYDOT Truck Near Cody | Cowboy State Daily</title>

An accident involving multiple motorcycles and a WYDOT truck has resulted in at least one fatality and serious injuries on U.S. Highway 14-16-20 near Cody. "I counted at least three bodies that I could see lying on the ground, not moving," one witness said.

UPDATE: Fatality Reported In Crash Involving Four Motorcycles, WYDOT Truck Near Cody

Wildlife

A bison carcass in Yellowstone National Park attracts the usual crowd of grizzlies, wolves, ravens, and tourists. One recently attracted a pack of bear management staff, who thoroughly dismembered it before carrying the pieces away.

Joseph “Jojo” Kaul, owner of Kaul of The Wild Yellowstone Tours, 

 in the Lamar Valley near Soda Butte Creek on Monday. The female bison, which died of natural causes, was around 220 yards from the road.

“It wasn’t really close, but with the proximity of fly fishermen and hikers, it presented a situation that was possibly chaotic,” Kaul told Cowboy State Daily. “They wanted to know how to speed up the process of this bison being consumed.”

Using three sharp kitchen knives, three men from Yellowstone’s bear management started “quartering” the carcass, according to Kaul.

“They cut off all four of her legs at the joint, and dragged them to four different areas, probably about 100 to 150 yards away from the main carcass,” he said. “Then, they opened up her belly and backside to expose more flesh and blood for the predators to smell.”

Within 30 minutes, the bison had been butchered, and the three bear management men were back at their vehicles.

Kaul described it as “the best-case scenario” under the circumstances, which he explained to the crowd of people watching it unfold.

“There were around 30 people there, and I explained that they were doing everything they could to allow us to enjoy this,” he said. “Instead of completely removing the carcass, they left it so the wildlife watchers and enthusiasts of the park could enjoy it.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Butchering Bison"}]

Carcass management is a critical component of managing Yellowstone's natural landscape. 

 are the go-to tools, but sometimes rangers have to get their hands dirty.

 is familiar with dismembering carcasses in Yellowstone. During his tenure as a Yellowstone ranger, he did it multiple times.

“Most people I worked with didn't like doing it, and I did, so I ended up doing a heck of a lot of it,” Henry told Cowboy State Daily. “I found the physiology and forensics interesting.”

. Every spring, he’d document every bison, elk, and other animals that died over the winter as they began to thaw out of the deep snow.

Usually, the carcasses were left for the grizzlies to devour as they emerged from hibernation. On occasion, Henry and his peers were asked to get hands-on and take carcasses apart.

One instance stands out: In December 1986, Henry single-handedly butchered a bison at Fishing Bridge Junction to an audience of television cameras and Yellowstone’s top staff.

“There was a grizzly bear, Bear 83, that refused to den that year,” he said. “She stayed around Lake Village late into the fall. She chased me when I was on my snowmobile once.”

After Grizzly 83 and her cub were captured and relocated, Henry was given a new assignment: shoot and dismember a bison and scatter the pieces across Pelican Bay.

“The powers that be sent me and another ranger out to shoot a bison,” he said. “We found and shot a bull near Indian Pond and dragged it back to Fishing Bridge.

By then, the grizzly relocation and bison butchering had become a national news story. Several news agencies traveled to Fishing Bridge to see it, as did “a lot of National Park Service big shots,” according to Henry.

“They came from Mammoth to be involved, but when it came time to cut up this bull bison, none of the so-called GS99s wanted to step forward and do the dismemberment. So, it all fell on me.”

Using nothing but his personal five-inch hunting knife, Henry cut up the entire bull. Because that part of the park was closed to traffic at the time, he did it right in the middle of the Fishing Bridge Junction while everyone watched.

After a lot of sweat and blood, Henry had butchered the bison into several smaller pieces. He boarded a helicopter to scatter them across Pelican Bay, so any active grizzlies would head that way rather than wander around Lake Village.

[{"type":"text","text":"“I don't think anything like that would happen nowadays,” Henry said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Fast Food"}]

Yellowstone personnel try to maintain a “hands off” approach inside the park, letting things play out naturally. On the occasions when they do have to take an active role, there’s usually a good reason.

According to Herny, carcass dismemberment is employed when dead animals are close to tourist hot spots but not easily accessible for the preferred methods of disposal.

“Whenever an animal died in a developed area or on the roadside, we'd have to move it away,” he said. “Sometimes, maintenance people would come out with heavy equipment, pick up the whole carcass with a front-end loader, put it on a truck, and we'd haul it away.”

Front-end loaders and winches are easier and faster, but sometimes they aren’t viable depending on the terrain and location of the carcass. That’s when you cut it up into manageable pieces that you could load onto a pickup truck with muscle power.”

Kaul said the terrain where the female bison died wasn’t ideal for the easier, faster options to be viable. Dismembering the carcass was the only option.

“She died along Soda Butte Creek and Lamar River,” he said of an area commonly known as "The Confluence." “Dragging it out and removing it would be a very, very hard process. It was treacherous for the three gentlemen to walk out there just to get to the carcass. Trying to haul away the 1,000-pound carcass with a pulley system from a winch would be even harder.”

The bear management personnel told Kaul that by dismembering the carcass and scattering the pieces, Yellowstone’s wildlife could utilize the immense resource while speeding up its consumption. That further reduces the risk to visitors.

Usually, carcasses are transported to one of the “secret spots” where they can be safely left to be consumed far from visitors.

“They have certain spots, out of the way of the public, where they like to dump carcasses,” Henry said. “They like to continue dumping carcasses in the same spots so that bears and other scavengers get used to finding meat there.”

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Henry wasn’t surprised to see Yellowstone rangers dismembering a carcass, but he was curious if they had any prior experience doing so.

“There aren’t many people (in the park) who are good at it anymore,” he said. “Most of today's rangers are more law enforcement–oriented, from urban and suburban backgrounds, than they were in my time. That's not being derogatory about anybody. It's just an observation.”

Kaul said the bear management staff he’s observed are “a well-oiled machine.” Their goal was to get in, get out, and move on as quickly as possible. ‘

“They're usually really efficient, working simultaneously, but it’s still a process,” he said. “Each of those legs weighed 100 to 150 pounds, so dragging those away wasn’t easy. For them.”

Henry enjoyed dismembering carcasses because it was akin to doing an in-field autopsy. By cutting into a dead animal, he could learn more about its life and death.

“I don't want to sound like I'm bragging, but I probably evaluated 1,500 or 2,000 winter kills in my career,” he said. “Cutting them up is a good way to analyze what it was exactly that killed them.”

He specifically mentioned the value of examining bone marrow, as the color of the marrow can reveal whether an animal died of malnutrition.

Kaul has seen multiple instances of on-site carcass dismemberment, which is why he took this opportunity to educate people on why it needed to happen.

“This is not ideal for the National Park Service,” he said. “If the bison was hit by a car and was close to the road, they might be more inclined to pull it. This bison died naturally in a difficult spot, and they wanted to let the wildlife consume it, so they created the best scenario. It’s better than having no access to it.”

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<title>Yellowstone Tourists Watch As Rangers Use Kitchen Knives To Dismember Bison | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A crowd gathered in Yellowstone's Lamar Valley on Monday as three rangers used kitchen knives to dismember a bison carcass. "They opened up her belly and backside to expose more flesh and blood for the predators to smell," one tour guide said.

Yellowstone Tourists Watch As Rangers Use Kitchen Knives To Dismember Bison

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

Renée Jean

Around Wyoming

Growing up, Texan James Neeley had never heard of mountain man Jim Baker, who was a frontier scout, trapper and early non-Native settler with ties to both Colorado and Wyoming when the West was young.

A sister’s genealogy search changed all that a couple decades ago. On Saturday, he was among a handful of Baker descendants who gathered for a photo commemorating the Little Snake River Museum’s work to preserve the cabin Baker built when he settled in present-day Savery in 1873.

Members of HistoriCorps and other volunteers in the Savery area spent last summer hand-hewing cottonwood logs to replace water-damaged logs at the cabin. The work is not finished, Little Snake River Museum Director Lela Emmons told Cowboy State Daily. 

Efforts are already underway to raise additional funds to keep the restoration going, and to source more of the huge cottonwood logs 

“There’s still another 10 or 12 logs we need to replace,” she said. “Getting those logs is the hardest part of the whole thing.”

Large cottonwood logs aren’t simply available at Home Depot or some other lumberyard.

“We have to find the right cottonwoods, get them milled,” she said. “And they’re so heavy, you can’t just lift them up. You have to hire a guy with a big backhoe or something who can lift them.”

It’s a fuel-intensive process, Emmons added, which means the logs must be sourced as near to the museum as possible.

Once they have the right logs, they’ll also need to bring HistoriCorps back to do the work, which will cost around $40,000 for another two-week stint.

Emmons said she hopes to identify grant funding to help with that.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Best Shot In The West"}]

Neeley drove from Texas with his wife, Sandra, just to learn more about his ancestor and see the cabin where Baker once lived.

“I would be a first cousin, three times removed,” Neeley told Cowboy State Daily. “So, there’s a lot of people here who know more about him than I do.”

The work done on the cabin, which is a rare surviving structure from the mountain man era, is “wonderful,” he said. 

“It’s an important part of history and, of course, if it deteriorates, nobody can enjoy it,” Neeley said. “So it’s really nice that they have done this. A lot of people, at least in our part of the world, are not familiar with Jim Baker. They’ve heard of Jim Bridger, people like that … but (Baker) was an important character, too.”

Kit Carson, in fact, has been quoted in newspaper articles of the time saying Baker was the “best shot in the West,” next to himself, of course. When Carson sent invitations to 18 mountain men for what would be their last trapping event together in 1851, Baker was on that list. 

Bridger, when he was looking for an elite scout to help him at Fort Phil Kearney, hired Baker. Baker was also one of the scouts for Gen. John Charles Fremont’s third expedition to explore and map the American West alongside Carson, and he was part of the 1841 Bartleson-Bidwell Party, among the earliest wagon parties bound for California.

Baker’s contemporaries certainly thought he was important. But unlike them, Baker was not interested in publicity, biographer Leighton Baker wrote in his book, “The Red-Headed Shoshoni.” 

Baker loved the mountains and hated the spotlight. So, when Ned Buntline suggested writing a biography about him, Baker flat out refused. 

He did not care if the world forgot who he was.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Too Many People"}]

In fact, when Denver became too populous for his tastes, he packed up and in 1873 moved to Savery, where he built a two-story cabin with a third-story tower as his home. The tower, dismantled in 1881, was so he could climb high and see far — just in case any of the American Indian tribes who disliked him decided to come to call. 

Baker is thought to be one of the first non-Native settlers in Denver. He was later honored with a stained-glass likeness at the state Capitol, and he became one of the first settlers of the Little Snake River Valley. 

The cabin itself has lived several lives. 

Baker first built it from massive cottonwood logs felled by himself and some of his children along the Little Snake River. They squared the timbers by hand with broad axes and not much else.

After Baker’s death in 1898, there was a tussle between Wyoming, Colorado, and Savery over who would keep the cabin. 

Wyoming won the first round of that battle, and Baker’s cabin was displayed in Frontier Park in Cheyenne for 60-some years starting in 1917. Then, one year, the cabin was disassembled and stored, never to return as a display at Frontier Park. 

Savery still wanted Baker’s cabin though, and was eventually successful in convincing the state to send it back home to the Little Snake River Valley in 1976.

When it arrived, it was like a giant pile of scattered Lincoln logs, with few numbers explaining how the cabin had been put together. 

Original photos of the cabin and miniature models of the logs were used to figure out just how to reassemble the cabin in its present location, a mile from where Baker had originally built it.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Fight Is On"}]

Three decades before Baker built his fortified cottonwood cabin near Savery, he’d already helped make the surrounding landscape part of Wyoming history.

In 1841, near the Little Snake River Valley, Baker was among trappers who survived the fight that gave Battle Mountain its name. 

The conflict also became associated with Battle Creek, Battle Pass, and Battle Highway — place names that still mark the country where Baker later chose to make his home.

The battle is one of the most stunning tales of the mountain man era.

That summer, Baker had been trapping in the Green River country. Bridger decided to send the young scout to warn French-Canadian trader Henry Fraeb, who was building a trading post somewhere near the confluence of Battle Creek and the Little Snake River, that large war parties of Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho were gathering in the region.

Bridger wanted Fraeb to abandon his exposed trading post and come back to Bridger’s camp along Henry’s Fork of the Green River, where he and his men would be much safer.

But Fraeb wasn’t keen to abandon his post. 

One day, while Baker and a few companions were hunting bison and cleaning their kills in the vicinity of Fraeb’s outpost, they saw huge puffs of dust suddenly appear over the southwest flank of the peak now known as Battle Mountain, which was then called Bastion Mountain. A large allied war party of Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Sioux — what Baker relative Chilly Rollingson calls the “Platte River Indians” —  then came riding down the southwest side of Battle Mountain. 

They were making a beeline for Fraeb’s trading post — exactly the scenario Bridger had feared.

Baker and his companions raced back to the outpost to help defend it and their lives. In the ensuing battle, Fraeb was among the first killed.

Baker, just 21 or so at the time, stepped up to take command, and his fellow scouts would later credit him with saving their lives. 

Baker, in an account decades later in a Denver newspaper, said the Indians numbered 700 or more. Other accounts have put the numbers anywhere from 200 to thousands. 

Baker told the newspaper he and the men hid behind stumps and positioned dead horses as breastworks to withstand what was about to happen.

With their manpower limited to about 24 scouts, and scarce quantities of ammunition, Baker told the men they had to make every shot count. That meant waiting until their attackers were close enough to ensure each bullet was going to hit someone or a horse. 

Baker and the men with him believed they were going to die. All they could do was make their own lives as costly as possible.

Baker’s strategy worked better than they could have imagined. Each time one of their fellow warriors fell, the Indians would stop their charge and draw back. Eventually, with only five horses left to fight over, the Indians decided to take their dead and wounded away and leave the trappers alone.

It was a stunning reversal of fate for the surviving trappers.

Carson, who told a Denver reporter he heard the story later from Indian points of view, said the warriors believed a supernatural force had turned the fight against them. They could not otherwise see how a battle where they held such overwhelming odds went so poorly.

Bastion Mountain was renamed Battle Mountain after the fight, and a different mountain was renamed Baker’s Peak.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Keeping History Alive"}]

In later times, some of Baker’s favorite trails, drawn out on his trapper maps, have become paved highways today. 

Long before he built his cabin in Savery, Jim Baker led two dozen men in an 1841 fight that gave Battle Mountain its name. Now his far-flung descendants and a tiny museum are fighting time, money and rotten logs to save the frontier scout’s last home.

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