One More For The Road

[{"type":"text","text":"The crash is understandable. The post really did jump out at him....."}]

One more for 9 21 24

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

<title>One More For The Road: Saturday, September 21, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The crash is understandable. The post really did jump out at him.....

One More For The Road: Saturday, September 21, 2024

 The crash is understandable. The post really did jump out at him.....

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

Renée Jean

Energy

Jeffrey City is best known for uranium and near abandonment after the yellowcake market crashed in the 1980s. 

But things are looking up for the near-ghost town in the central desert region of Fremont County. 

And that’s not because of Wyoming’s renewed uranium rush or Visionary Metals’ new nickel project nearby. 

Jeffrey City, which has about 60 residents after boasting around 4,000 during its uranium heyday, could be poised for a brand-new industry thanks to a Canadian geologist named Jean-Pierre Jutras, who said he’s on the verge of finding significant new sources of both ornamental and gem-quality jade.

“Wyoming jade is legendary in the circles of jade carvers,” Jutras told Cowboy State Daily. “Production has been curtailed for a long time, and everything’s been looked at quite a bit and picked over, but when I looked at Wyoming as a geologist, what struck me was that there was barely any information at all on the geology.”

Jutras’ company, Jade Leader, is taking a similar tack to that of 

, which is using new geological knowledge and new technology to uncover deeper veins of gold in the South Pass area and other Wyoming locations.

“We just decided to take a hard look and see if the sources of a lot of the surface material that was collected from the '30s all the way to the '70s could be identified and if we could understand if there was any significant potential for renewed production.”

At one time, Wyoming had so much jade laying around on the surface people could walk around and pluck it straight from the sagebrush.

That supported roughly 868 tons of jade production from the 1930s to the 1970s. There was even a company devoted to jewelry production that was sending 18 tons of materials into the world annually, to Taiwan, New Zealand, Europe, and Far Eastern countries.

But as the easy jade became rarer and rarer, the state could no longer support the scale anymore. 

Wyoming’s decline happened about the same time as the Canadian jade industry was starting to rise.

How A Canadian Became A ‘Jade-aholic’

Growing up in Canada, Jutras was interested in rocks and geology from a young age. A career as a geologist only seemed logical. 

In the 1980s, he was gifted some jade from a mine he was allowed to visit, which honed his interest in this semiprecious stone formed by intense environmental conditions found deep underground. 

“I took that home and I’ve been cutting and carving jade and other gemstones ever since then, alongside my geological career,” he said. “So I kind of became a jade-aholic very quickly, very early.”

It wasn’t until he was invited to a jade-carving competition in China, though, that he realized just how interesting — and valuable — jade is.

“To me, jade was like the little souvenirs and tourist shop pieces,” he said. “Once in a while there’s a historical piece that’s really nice. So I went to this festival not knowing what to expect.”

When he arrived at the Zi Gang Bei Festival in Suzhou, he witnessed a spectacle unlike any he’d never seen.

There were 550 competing jade carvers who had brought more than 1,100 pieces for judging. 

During the three-day event, more than 90,000 visitors streamed in to admire the pieces entered in the competition, as well as to buy jade. 

“I was so impressed, first, because of the quality of the carvings that were there, valued in the millions of dollars per piece,” Jutras said. “And we saw jades of all qualities. We saw carvings from Guatemala, New Zealand, Germany, Canada, the U.S., and, of course, China. And I looked at all of this and went, ‘I’m missing something here. How did I not know about this?’”

Jutras had planned to stay for just a week, but decided instead to stay longer and keep exploring this vast new world of jade, visiting all the carving towns and all of the major markets.

“In one of the towns I visited, called Shifosi, they said they had 125,000 carvers, just in that one town alone,” he said. “It was incredible, and essentially all of the businesses in China that sell jade go there because that’s the big manufacturing center. And I mean, it was display after display, buildings the size of airplane hangars, with 2,000, 3,000 vendors in them.”

It was during this time that he learned the jade the Chinese most prized came from Wyoming. It was also the jade that had disproportionately earned gold medals during the festival.

“It’s received extremely well at the highest level, in a culture highly sophisticated in the jade arts,” Jutras said.

The Chinese have been obsessed with jade for generations.

Emperors made entire suits of jade to wear on their journey to the afterlife.

“We’re talking about 7,000 little tiles of jade all connected together with gold wires that they would clothe the dead with,” Jutras said. “So they could go into the afterlife protected with jade.”

These jade tiles were often said to be too precious to steal, he added. That’s because only nobles were allowed to own it.

“They opened up a tomb and it had a sarcophagus of jade,” Jutras said. “And the thieves had gone in and stolen everything else, including the gold wire that was connecting the jade plates. But they left the jade because you just couldn’t fence jade if you weren’t a noble.”

While most jades worldwide consist of recrystallization of a previous rock, Wyoming’s jade appears to have crystalized at greater depths within the earth, resulting in a much purer, more predictable material that takes one of the best polishes found in nephrite jade worldwide. 

That is why it’s so highly prized by the Chinese.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Finding New Jade Sources"}]

Jutras returned from his Chinese trip after a month with a mission in mind.

Conventional wisdom had it that Wyoming jade had petered out in the 1970s, but geological knowledge had evolved since that determination was made, as had the technology for finding precious gems, minerals and metals. 

“What you have to unravel is why jade was in a particular location in the first place,” he said. “Where did it come from? So you could go to a place where people have picked all the surface stuff and see if there’s a source somewhere beneath it.”

Instead of chasing more famous, rock-hounding spots like Bull Canyon, Jutras instead sought bedrock targets, which he believes could be the original sources of all that loose jade once picked up by the bucketful. These are targets he believes can support a small, but steady, jade industry over the long haul.

The work, which began in 2018, has cost Jade Leader roughly $337,000, and has included six phases of field work north of Jeffrey City, including trenching, mapping, and scientific studies. 

Results of that work have been published in the Journal of Gemology, which is the British Gemological Society’s association publication. The peer-reviewed article outlines two distinct types of jade found by Jade Leader. 

There’s the smoother, more homogenous material that’s suitable for jewelry, which he refers to as gem jade. Then there’s a rougher, more mottled stone called ornamental jade.

Once, ornamental jade was only suitable for carving little souvenirs to sell in tourist shops, but Jutras said the time is right for a new use. 

“LED technology is improving all the time,” he said. “Cutting technologies are improving all the time.”

That now allows this type of jade to be cut into thin, translucent slices that can be backlit to stunning result.

“We see a space here where the ornamental jades can be an addition to the luxury stone market,” Jutras said.

To test the theory, Jade Leader has taken a small quantity of its ornamental jade to create a few test installations and see if this idea can find footing in the luxury architecture space. 

They’ve also sold a $50,000 batch of Wyoming’s rough jade into experimental projects where designers are testing how the stone looks in thin backlit panels.

Jutras’ vision for Jeffrey City will depend on finding demand for niche, high-end architectural and carving jade. 

For now, the project is in the early days. It’s backed by promising field work and it’s economically feasible, Jutras said, because his targets are small and have a small environmental footprint, one that does not require use of anything hazardous.

“We’re talking about 1 to 2 acres essentially, to harvest the material,” he said. “And then all we do is just jackhammer the rock and extract whatever jade is contained within it, and then put the debris back into the excavation for reclamation. There’s no need to build up any kind of large infrastructure at all.”

There’s also no need for large amounts of water to process the stone, nor any crushing, tailings or mechanical separation required. 

“It’s all done by hand,” he said. “And there’s no need for processing the material outside of just polishing a side of the pieces, so it shows us the inside texture, color and translucency of the stone.”

For now, Jeffrey City is still an open question. But if the market for architectural jade proves out, the windswept outpost might find itself a new niche in the jade world. 

Its second act might not be written in uranium at all, but translucent green instead. 

Jeffrey city jade inset 7 5 26

<title>Jeffrey City’s Second Act: From Near Uranium Ghost Town To Jade Comeback | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Known for uranium and then near-abandonment, Jeffrey City is getting a second look from a Canadian geologist who says new science — and evolving markets — could turn Wyoming’s deposits of jade into a new industry for the tiny almost-ghost town.

Jeffrey City’s Second Act: From Near Uranium Ghost Town To Jade Comeback

Employee kate meadows cropped

Kate Meadows

Business & Tourism

Business

[{"type":"text","text":"Trey Scharp received the phone call of a lifetime on his birthday."}]

It was December 2025, and the owners of the historic Flat Creek Ranch northeast of Jackson, Joe Albright and Marcia Kunstel, were calling with an unexpected question.

Would Trey and his wife, Shelby, like to own the ranch they had managed for more than two decades?

Albright and Kunstel, longtime journalists whose careers were built on documenting history, weren’t offering to sell the ranch.

[{"type":"text","text":"They wanted to give it away."}]

“It was truly an amazing birthday phone call,” Shelby Scharp told Cowboy State Daily.

Seven months later, the Scharps are settling into their first season not just as managers but as owners of a 140-acre guest ranch tucked beneath the iconic Sleeping Indian in the Gros Ventre Mountains. 

In a valley where ranches routinely sell for tens of millions of dollars and development pressure never lets up, Albright and Kunstel chose a different path.

"We didn't want it to fall in the hands of someone who would destroy the land, the wildlife or the buildings," Kunstel told Cowboy State Daily. "It deserves to be maintained."

The couple explained their motivation in a newspaper advertisement announcing the transfer: “Why are we doing all this? To keep our 103-year-old Ranch from falling into the wake of Jackson’s rush to develop mega-mansions and hulking hotels.”

As part of the gift, the Scharps agreed not to sell the ranch for at least 10 years and pledged to preserve its historic cabins, off-grid infrastructure and operation as a guest ranch.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"More Than Real Estate"}]

For Albright and Kunstel, both retired foreign correspondents, the decision was about conservation as much as succession.

"We felt that giving this land to people with the talents and background that Trey and Shelby have was the best way to keep this ranch going for another 100 years," Albright told Cowboy State Daily.

The couple spent 27 years restoring and preserving the ranch after buying it back from the Jackson Hole Land Trust in 1998. By then, many of the 1920s-era cabins had fallen into disrepair.

An extensive restoration project returned the historic buildings to life while modernizing the ranch behind the scenes. Today it operates entirely off solar power with a custom-designed water system. The property was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2001 and reopened as a guest ranch that same year.

Its history stretches back even further. A timeline on the ranch’s website is full of gems – characters and moments that have cemented the ranch’s place in time.

[{"type":"text","text":"“There are a million stories within the big story,” Shelby said."}]

In the summer of 1900, cowboy Enoch “Cal” Carrington camped on the land for a few days while working as a cook on a hunting expedition. Carrington returned the following summer, staked his claim and built a small cabin.

In 1917, Cal met Eleanor “Cissy” Patterson – Albright’s great aunt – at the Bar BC Ranch, where Patterson was staying as a guest. Carrington was the head hunting guide.

Carrington obtained a patent for a homestead in 1922 and sold the property to Patterson a year later, for $5,000. Patterson was an heiress to the Chicago Tribune.

Later, her niece and Albright’s mother, Josephine Patteron, would own the property.

In 1928, Cissy Patterson hired a man named Farney Cole to be caretaker. Cole famously beat a black bear to death with a waterlogged aspen limb in 1944. He had been using the limb to break up a beaver dam on the property when the bear, which had two cubs with her, attacked him.

Cissy longed to host Saturday night dances in the lodge at the ranch, and she made that dream come true in 1929, when she had a grand piano shipped to the ranch from Chicago. The instrument was hauled up the primitive bumpy road on an ox cart. It is still in use today.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Jackson Gambling Scene"}]

For a few weeks, Flat Creek Ranch was party to a thriving gambling scene in Jackson in the 1950s, As gambling raids swept through Jackson, hotel staff drove their guests out to the ranch, where a casino room was set up.

In 1986, Josephine Albright donated Flat Creek Ranch to the Jackson Hole Land Trust to guarantee the land’s permanent protection. She ensured that her heirs would have the first option to buy back the ranch at an appraised price upon her death.

Albright and Kunstel had not intended to buy the ranch in 1998, but they fell in love with Jackson and were ready to retire from longtime journalism careers.

The 1920s-era cabins remained on the land but were in desperate need of maintenance and restoration.

Contractor Porgy McClelland headed an ambitious restoration project that lasted four years. Cabins were moved and some were taken apart and put back on new foundations.

During the process, McClelland found old newspapers stuffed between logs for chinking.

, “He opened up one and found a box score for a baseball game in which Babe Ruth hit two home runs. It disintegrated into dust before he could share it too widely.” -

When the ranch was turning 100, Shelby suggested Albright and Kunstel write a book chronicling the history of the ranch.

“They jumped in with both feet and did this incredible coffee table book,” Shelby said.

 during the writing of the book, Flat Creek Ranch: Cissy and Cal Launch a Rip-Roaring Jackson Hole Saga. Newspapers on the platform date to 1911 for the city of Jackson. They also searched land records that told traces of stories.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"An Unexpected Opportunity"}]

The Scharps’ connection to Albright and Kunstel happened unexpectedly, in the early 2000s. The Scharps were managing a fly fishing lodge in Patagonia, Chile, when guests Joan and Huntley Baldwin mentioned friends in Jackson who were looking for ranch managers.

When Trey heard the name "Flat Creek Ranch," he wasn't immediately interested.

[{"type":"text","text":"Growing up in Jackson, he remembered it as a neglected property."}]

He told his wife, “I don’t think we can make a go out of it with an old ranch that is falling apart.”

The Scharps used the satellite internet they were only supposed to use to email their boss in Santiago to do a Google search of Flat Creek Ranch.

“The page loaded so slowly,” Shelby said. “The first five minutes were just pictures of a blue sky.”

[{"type":"text","text":"But when the entire page finally loaded, Trey was stunned."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“We realized the ranch had been completely refurbished,” he said."}]

Later, the Scharps would walk to a phone booth in the middle of nowhere, at a crossroads in rural Chile where busses sometimes stopped. Chickens pecked at their feet as they picked up the phone and called Albright and Kunstel.

[{"type":"text","text":"“I think we had the job two weeks later,” Trey said. "}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Carrying The Legacy Forward"}]

Within their almost 23-year-stint of the ranch’s bigger story, Trey said he can’t think of one memory that trumps all the others; there are too many.

“But there was that bald eagle,” he said. “We watched it take a Canada goose out of the lake.”

Learning that Kunstel and Albright wanted to give them the ranch was a total shock, Shelby told Cowboy State Daily.

During that December phone call, Shelby was nervous at the outset. She said she immediately wondered how she and her husband could afford to take on such an astounding piece of Teton County.

“And then I looked over at Trey and saw how grateful he was and thought, 'I need to be more like that',” she said.

The Scharps have agreed to own and preserve the ranch for the next 10 years. Its future is open-ended after that. They could decide to hold onto it, sell it or transfer it to a younger generation of the Albright family.

“We understood what Joe and Marcia wanted their guests to feel while they’re here,” Shelby said. “We never diverged from that.”

Now that the ranch is entirely in their hands, Trey said they will continue to improve the infrastructure, to keep the 100-plus-year-old cabins looking as good as they did in 2004, when he and Shebly saw the property together for the first time.

Being owners and managers is “the epitome of ‘same same but different',” Shelby said.

The daily grind hasn’t changed. But now, when she walks across a beloved bridge on the property in the early mornings, the reality sinks in: “It’s quiet and it’s like, ‘Oh, this is ours',” Shelby said.

“We’re not luxury. We’re authentic,” Trey said. “It’s authenticity here.”

He added that in the gift is a powerful message about land stewardship: “Not everything is for sale.”

Flat Creek Ranch sign 7 5 26

<title>Jackson Couple Gives Historic Flat Creek Ranch To Longtime Caretakers To Save It | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Instead of selling the century-old 140-acre Flat Creek Ranch for millions, a Jackson couple gave the property to its longtime managers. "We didn't want it to fall in the hands of someone who would destroy the land, the wildlife or the buildings," they said.

Jackson Couple Gives Historic Flat Creek Ranch To Longtime Caretakers To Save It

Outdoors

Public Lands

A small team of volunteers will shoulder heavy packs and follow a string of pack mules into bear country this summer on a narrow trail that leads deep into Wyoming’s Shoshone National Forest. 

Their destination isn’t a scenic vista or a famous fishing hole. It's a weathered lodge built in 1890 that is slowly but surely falling apart. 

It was built on a steep hillside in the nation’s first federally protected forest by one Abraham Archibald Anderson.

The rugged mountain artist studio turned ranch house is where Anderson would begin a fight to save the wilderness from burning down around him.

That fight would take him to the nation’s Capitol and reshape America’s emerging national forest system, even as it laid a foundation for Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks.

HistoriCorps Regional Program Manager Michael Guillot is 

 to save Anderson’s 136-year-old historic cabin.

“He saw a lot of what was happening with unregulated forestry in the area and some of the development that he felt was accelerating without the right kind of guardrails,” Guillot told Cowboy State Daily about the impact of Anderson on public lands policy. “So, he became a big supporter and advocate for clarifying the role of our forest reserve. He’s considered one of the first.”

Anderson’s headquarters for the effort was the Palette Ranch cabin he built in 1890 to serve as his art studio in what is today known as the Shoshone National Forest, which was also the nation’s “first forest.”

That makes the cabin integral to the birth of America's conservation movement.

“These structures should be saved,” Guillot said. “But they are hard to do. They’re hard to get to, and they’re hard to coordinate. But we are uniquely positioned as an organization to take on these kinds of projects.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Palette Ranch"}]

Anderson didn’t come to Wyoming to begin a conservation movement — at all. 

He was born into a wealthy family in New Jersey in 1847, which allowed him to pursue his two main passions in life, hunting and painting. 

He discovered the territory that would become Wyoming on an 1883 hunting trip in between Paris and New York excursions, and he was struck by the spectacular hunting and the equally spectacular scenery. 

That prompted Anderson to buy a residence at the head of a valley near the Greybull River, a place he called Palette Ranch No. 1, as well as two additional ranches at lower elevations that he called Palette No. 2 and Palette No. 3. 

He built his mountain artist studio — the Anderson Lodge that HistoriCorps is working to save — in 1890, about 6 miles west of his main ranch headquarters.

One summer, he even brought along two female models for nude portraiture to this just-finished, rustic mountain retreat. 

That prompted local cowhands to name one of the adjoining creeks “Warhouse,” a polite version of what they thought was really going on in Anderson’s studio.

Warhouse Creek and Warhouse Trail still remain as colorful reminders of this history.

Anderson made many trips into the adjacent mountains for ranching, hunting, and painting. 

Through that, he witnessed the devastation that was being caused by unsupervised grazing and unregulated hunting and tourism. 

Forage was being deliberately destroyed and timber stands burned in clear-cut fashion to make herding easier, as well as develop new forage fields. 

The fires were destroying watersheds, as well as threatening his home and his ranch. 

That prompted Anderson to join national efforts advocating for real conservation of the resources in Yellowstone. He took a map to President Theodore Roosevelt to advocate that a new boundary be set for the Yellowstone Forest Reserve, as well as plead for better enforcement of existing rules.

Not long after that in 1902, Roosevelt not only enlarged and renamed the area the Yellowstone Forest Reserve, he also appointed Anderson as its special superintendent. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Anderson wasted no time in his new role. "}]

He immediately started surveying the 13,000-mile reserve boundary, accomplishing the work with a small crew in three months’ time. He created new districts with new supervisors whose mission was to tackle the problems caused by unregulated grazing as well as other issues. 

Anderson continued in his role until 1905, and served for a time as the game warden of Wyoming as well. 

He was among the first in the nation to manage public rangelands and timberlands. 

To assist the state in managing its big game herds, he established game refuges throughout the reserves — a legacy that lives on to this day.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Wilderness Designation Adds To Difficulty"}]

The work to save Anderson’s cabin will be grueling, Guillot said, and the logistics involved are complex, starting with just getting volunteers, tools, and materials to the site. 

Because it is a federally designated wilderness area, no mechanized tools or equipment are allowed. That means no chainsaws, nail guns, or anything like that.

The wilderness designation also means every hand tool and all materials must be carried in and out by human hands or pack mule for the entire 7.5-mile trail from the Jack Creek trailhead.  

This includes food and tents to sleep in, as well as all 3,000 pounds of materials and tools for the stabilization project itself. 

Once volunteers hike in, they’ll work five days straight at elevation in true bear country, filtering all their water from local sources and packing out every scrap of food and trash they bring in.

The remoteness of the location means forethought is a requirement of the job. There’s no running to Lowe’s if something was forgotten, and there are no easy exits for bad weather. 

Because of the difficulty of this project, HistoriCorps has capped the number of volunteers to no more than eight for safety’s sake. That means more work for fewer hands to jack up and crib the century-old cabin that was built onto a sliding hillside.

Because of the project’s many challenges, HistoriCorps’ Anderson Lodge project has earned its own designation. 

It’s known as a “HardCorps” project, meaning only volunteers who have high levels of skill in both carpentry and the wilderness should apply.

For volunteers like Leisa Grant, it’s the difficulty that is the draw. 

She’s part of a growing segment of travelers no longer content with just leaving no trace. They want to see the world and make a difference while doing it.

“I love the idea of being part of a small group of people who are dedicated to preserving history,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “We see a lot of places around that are long gone. And it’s neat to see in some ways, it’s like a skeleton where something died. But it’s never coming back.”

Grant has both wilderness and carpentry skills, which is what brought her to HistoriCorps first as a volunteer and now as an employee. Being able to use both skills to see the country and save history has been uniquely satisfying, she said.

“You’re working on stuff where you’re trying to emulate and make that structure exactly like it was when the first people put it up,” she said. “And I think our volunteers are absolutely in love with that idea. We have a strong core of regular volunteers who have become friends over time.

“It’s a special experience, whether you’re a volunteer or a field staff member, which is why I like to do both.”

The areas she’s gotten to see and explore are also places she would never have even known about but for HistoriCorps.

“They are beautiful, breathtaking, raw places,” she said. “Almost always on public lands like BLM and Forest Service. It’s just a neat opportunity to go somewhere that you never even knew existed.”

Anderson cabin Alliance for Historic Wyoming 7 5 26

<title>Inside The Mission To Save 136-Year-Old Anderson Lodge In Wyoming Bear Country | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Saving the 136-year-old Anderson Lodge deep in Wyoming’s Shoshone National Forest is not easy. As it's a wilderness area, no mechanized tools or equipment are allowed and everything must be carried in. There's no running to Lowe’s if something is forgotten

Inside The Mission To Save 136-Year-Old Anderson Lodge In Wyoming Bear Country

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Wyoming Life

There is no speed limit reduction sign for travelers approaching Hiland. 

The drivers along U.S. Highway 20-26 have little reason to tap their brakes from 70 mph as they bypass the weathered and struggling buildings that were a home, a combination store, bar, post office, and little motel four-room motel that a century ago started as a family business.

But Eva Gunn, who inherited those buildings from her mom in 2022, hopes to resurrect the once noted Bright Spot store and lounge, a slice of the past in what now goes for a ghost town.

“I hope to have it open this summer,” she said. “The same as it was before, the bar and the store.”

Her mother received the properties as back wages from the Bright Spot’s previous owners, who operated it less than a decade ago, she said.

Gunn does not own the red-wooded building to the west of the little parade of white structures she said once held a dance hall. 

Even without the Bright Spot country store and lounge, Hiland, Wyoming, isn't a ghost town — just ask the 10 people still living there in the middle of nowhere between Casper and Shoshoni. In fact, the woman who inherited the store hopes to reopen it.

One More For The Road: Saturday, September 21, 2024

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