It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming, for Tuesday, September 17th. I’m Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - brought to you by ServeWyoming - Wyoming's center for volunteerism and AmeriCorps service for the last 30 years! For volunteer opportunities, visit ServeWyoming dot org"
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After a video of crumbling asphalt and a hole in the right eastbound lane of Interstate 80 over the Greeley Highway went viral Monday morning, it took only about an hour for a Wyoming Department of Transportation crew to start repairing it.
Although a hole in the deck of one of the busiest interstates in the nation may seem alarming, a member of the WYDOT work crew told Cowboy State Daily’s Greg Johnson that the agency makes repairs like this one all the time.
“At the scene, one of the the WYDOT workers there told me that… it's not a safety risk. There's a lot of rebar in there, and that they would have it patched up pretty quick… However, I talked to some truckers over at the Flying J who who watched the video, but also said that, you know, they they believe there are safety issues on the on the highways, and don't think that they're really that safe. And they were surprised to see, to see the sky through that hole in that in that video.”
The WYDOT employee said the structural integrity of the overpass wasn’t compromised and that the highway would be as good, or better, than before with the epoxy fix.
Read the full story HERE.
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Wyoming was included in a string of threats made against secretaries of states across the country Monday, prompting the evacuation of a state office building next to the Capitol.
Cowboy State Daily’s Leo Wolfson reports that the building was evacuated after a letter containing a white powder was found in Secretary of State Chuck Gray’s Office.
“This caused the evacuation of the entire Herschler Building East which contains the Secretary of State's office, the State Auditor's Office, the Treasurer's Office and the Department of Revenue. There was about 100 to 110 employees milling about the outside of the building on Monday, waiting for when they'd be allowed to re enter the building, even a few hours after. The employees were still not allowed to resume the normal activities, but were allowed to get back their laptops and then work from a different building.”
Election workers in several battleground states have reported receiving almost daily threats about their management of the presidential election. Gray also received a threatening voicemail earlier this summer.
Read the full story HERE.
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Hundreds of mule deer are killed along a 25-mile stretch of U.S. Highway 26, roughly centered around Dubois, so a coalition of state agencies and tribal and private groups has pegged it for Wyoming’s next major wildlife crossing project.
Now Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports that enough private donations have been raised for the project to snag a federal grant to finish the wildlife crossing, scheduled to begin construction in 2027.
“The highway intersects a really major migration route for mule deer. This is mule deer that are moving in and out of the Grand Teton… but it's not just mule deer, there's also bighorn sheep and elk and other animals that need to get across the highway there. So very high priority… they needed to raise a certain amount of… $2.7 million of private funds in order to qualify to apply for grants to get toward the ultimate balance of somewhere around $27 or $28 million for this entire project.”
The proposed crossing project will involve a series of underpasses and overpasses for wildlife to use, along with fencing to funnel the animals toward safe passages.
Read the full story HERE.
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An Idaho-based bungee-jumping company organized a few fun sessions this past weekend — on a bridge where one of Wyoming’s most infamous crimes unfolded more than a half century before.
A Friday Facebook post by Over The Edge Inc., features photographs of the group’s most recent jump from Fremont Canyon Bridge, which was the scene of a tragic 1973 crime in which one sister was thrown from the bridge and killed, and the other brutally assaulted, later taking her own life in the same manner as her sister.
Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland spoke to Wyoming author Ron Franscell, who chronicled the heinous crime in his book, ““The Darkest Night.”
“The way Ron has described it to me in this interview and prior ones, is this is the kind of crime that parents in Casper cite when they're warning their kids to stay away from strangers or ‘watch out after dark, you know, one time these two girls,’ and so on, and so the he calls it the crime that took away Casper’s innocence.”
Franscell said he’s reluctant to criticize the out-of-state company, because it probably didn’t know the significance of the place when planning the jump.
Read the full story HERE.
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Thousands of oil and gas wells in the Powder River Basin have landed in legal limbo following a decision by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., that an environmental analysis by the Converse County Oil and Gas Project was flawed.
The judge stopped short of completely revoking the Bureau of Land Management’s Trump-era approval of the 1.5 million-acre, 5,000-well project in Converse County.
But Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that the Judge’s decision will put any new permits for the area on hold.
“They estimated that this was going to generate billions of dollars over the 10 year period. It's 5000 wells, it's 8000 jobs. So it's really, it's a big economic coin here that's kind of in limbo right now… the Wyoming officials are calling it a clerical error. I don't know that the BLM necessarily agrees with that. They won't comment on litigation. I did ask them how many permits are now on hold as a result of this. They still haven't gone back to me on that.”
While the ruling won’t affect existing drilling permits, Gov. Mark Gordon told Cowboy State Daily it’s still disappointing.
Read the full story HERE.
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What’s in a name? That’s the question Northwest College in Powell has considered for years as the 78-year-old community college looks at rebranding itself.
One of the items on the agenda for the October meeting of the Board of Trustees is the latest effort to rebrand the institution as Yellowstone College. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi spoke to a marketing expert who says that the idea has merit, but would be an expensive gamble.
“There's a reason why businesses in the Yellowstone Area call themselves Yellowstone blank, because people associate that name with not just the National Park, but the West and Western identity and adventure. So there's a potential windfall in there. The question is, which is a question that can't be easily answered, is whether the cost of rebranding Northwest College, the Yellowstone College, is worth that investment, because it could be a potential windfall. It could make no difference whatsoever. But speaking purely on terms of the word Yellowstone as a marketing and business move, it's potential gold.”
This wouldn’t be the first rebrand in Northwest College’s history. The community college started as the University of Wyoming Northwest Center when it opened in 1946, then transitioned to Northwest Community College when UW ended its support. It has been simply Northwest College since 1989.
Read the full story HERE.
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After former President Donald Trump was saved from a second assassination attempt Sunday, some - like Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis - are frustrated with what is starting to become a recurring theme of the 2024 presidential election build-up.
Cowboy State Daily’s Leo Wolfson reports that Sunday's incident raises more questions about Trump's protection.
“For especially Cynthia Lummis was far too close and far too much of a reoccurring theme that's becoming a major part of the 2024 presidential election. She said that elections should be free and fair in this country, and that we shouldn't have to be worrying about assassination attempts and efforts to stifle speech, or even worse.”
The New York Times reported that Trump’s friends and aides described him as shocked at the attempt on his life, but also said he was already cracking jokes about it later in the day Sunday.
Read the full story HERE.
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A Sheridan man accused of pouring lighter fluid on a sleeping couple in bed reportedly told police he did so to scare them so they would shoot him in the back.
Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that 61-year-old Stefan Gunter was charged with aggravated assault in June, but a judge had paused his case for a weeks-long mental evaluation.
“The man in bed said that the woman in bed with him was his girlfriend, said they both woke to lighter fluid being dribbled on them by Gunter, and then Gunter allegedly started swinging a baseball bat, and a machete at them simultaneously. So that's the man's account. Gunter said that it was, in fact, his girlfriend, that they were going to get married that, yes, he did pour lighter lighter fluid on them to intimidate, scare them, because that's a technique he learned from what he worked for a collections agency, reportedly.”
Gunter’s case was paused in July so that the court could be sure he had the mental competency to participate in his own defense. The court declared him sane enough to be prosecuted.
Read the full story HERE.
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Estes Park, Colorado, is a town of roughly 6,000 full-time residents. It’s situated just outside Rocky Mountain National Park, which is perhaps Colorado’s version of Yellowstone National Park.
The elk also love it there and the people love the elk. Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz visited the northern Colorado town over the weekend, and was instantly impressed by the huge herd of elk that wanders in and seems to take over Estes Park each fall.
“As soon as it got on toward afternoon and the sun started to set and started to cool off, every darn little opening in town had a bull with his harem of cows, and people were going nuts. People love it, you know, people would gather around. And I saw a couple instances where people got uncomfortably close. In fact, I made a boo boo. I was focused on some people who were focusing on elk. And then I turned around and there was a cow not 10 yards away from me. I didn't hear her coming, and she came across. I'm like, well, now I'm the idiot that's way too close to the elk.”
For the most part, though, Heinz says the town is peaceful and the elk don’t seem to mind the gaggles of humans admiring them.
Read the full story HERE.
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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.
