Daily Smile

[{"type":"text","text":"Someone help him please....."}]

Smile 10 1 24

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

<title>Daily Smile: Tuesday, October 1, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Someone help him please.....

Daily Smile: Tuesday, October 1, 2024

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Law Enforcement

For three days, rafts, jet skis, a jet boat, drones and search dogs have combed the Snake River below a popular cliff-jumping spot near Alpine, all with one goal: bring Tory J. Raether home.

The 55-year-old Charlotte, North Carolina, man disappeared Saturday night after leaping into the river at Jump Rock, about a quarter-mile east of the Sheep Gulch Boat Ramp. 

Authorities say he was not wearing a life jacket when the swift current pulled him under. Despite desperate attempts by others in his group to save him, he vanished into the water.

Now, as Star Valley Search & Rescue continues what authorities acknowledge has become a recovery mission, Raether's family and closest friends have gathered in Wyoming, hoping against hope that searchers can give them the one thing they still desperately want — the chance to bring him home.

"The goal is to find their family member and return him to them, so they can have closure," Lincoln County Sheriff M. Shane Johnson told Cowboy State Daily. "That's what we'll continue to work for." 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Searching Every Day"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"On Tuesday, specially trained search dogs joined the effort."}]

Johnson said Star Valley Search & Rescue remains the lead agency, assisted by the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office and the U.S. Forest Service. Searchers continue working the river daily, looking for any sign of Raether. 

[{"type":"text","text":"The river itself presents constant challenges."}]

"The water is a little bit low, and it's moving swiftly," Johnson said, adding that wearing a life jacket "certainly increases your chance of survival if something does go wrong." 

Changing river conditions create underwater hazards that make recovery efforts difficult.

Johnson said eddies, submerged obstructions and fluctuating water levels mean certain areas become more likely places where a victim could become caught. Search & Rescue volunteers know the river well and focus on those locations while continuing to search the surrounding area. 

"As time goes by, the likelihood of having a positive outcome certainly goes down," Johnson said. "We certainly feel like it's a recovery at this point." 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Family And Friends Waiting"}]

While professional rescuers continue searching the river, Raether's loved ones have made their own journey west.

Among those joining them is Brad Johnson, Raether's best friend of 35 years.

Johnson said he learned what had happened when Raether's wife texted him Sunday evening.

"I went out there with him last year in August," Johnson said. "We rafted that very same river." 

[{"type":"text","text":"He said Wyoming was one of Raether's favorite places."}]

"He loved Jackson Hole," Johnson said. "It's one of his favorite spots in the country." 

Raether had traveled west to spend time with family. One of his daughters lives in the Jackson area, and he, his wife and another daughter had come to visit her. 

Johnson said he and another lifelong friend from Wisconsin are traveling to Wyoming to help search alongside Raether's daughter's boyfriend, who works as a rafting guide in Jackson.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"We're going to help ... as much as we can to search,\" Johnson said. "}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'Like A Brother'"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"For Johnson, the search is about much more than recovering a missing man."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"It's about finding someone he considered family."}]

"Tory wasn't just a friend to me — he was like a brother," Johnson said. "We were friends for 35 years, and I talked to him almost every day."

Johnson described Raether as someone whose personality drew people in almost instantly.

"He was one of those rare people who made life brighter simply by walking into a room," he said. "I've never known anyone who could make people laugh the way Tory could. Within minutes of meeting him, people felt like they had known him for years."

He said Raether built a successful career as an investment professional but never allowed money to define him.

"Whether he had a dollar or a million dollars, he was exactly the same person," Johnson said. "Success never changed him."

Instead, he devoted his time to mentoring others, volunteering through Kiwanis and Rotary, helping friends build businesses and looking for ways to lift up those around him.

[{"type":"text","text":"More than anything, Johnson said, Raether loved his family."}]

"His wife and his three children were the center of his world, and he spoke about them with tremendous pride and love," he said.

"He's hard to capture in one word," he said, holding back tears. "I'm not kidding. He's the most special person you've ever met." 

Later, he added, "You can't capture Tory in one sentence. It's impossible." 

Tory Raether right Jean Raether left

<title>Search For North Carolina Man Who Disappeared On Snake River Now A Recovery Mission | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The family of a North Carolina man who disappeared after jumping into the Snake River on Saturday shared photos of the 55-year-old just hours before he was swept away. The mission has been changed from a search and rescue mission into a recovery mission.

Search For North Carolina Man Who Disappeared On Snake River Now A Recovery Mission

Mac Watson

Daily Video News

It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Tuesday, July 7th.  I’m Mac Watson

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

A man blew the fingers off his hand and injured four other people outside a Gillette bar around midnight Saturday. Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore reports that the man has made a public apology.

“Just before midnight, Matthew Raymond Lynch headed outside to the Other Side Bar and Grill. He made it as far as the entrance, the outside part, when he decided to light a firecracker. Lynch said that when he tried to light the firework, it blew up immediately. He also said that he lost all of the fingers on his right hand. He said he had partial blindness and a loss of hearing. He was taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital and then airlifted to Billings.”

The bar was hosting a Fourth of July fundraiser concert and the music ended, patrons were beginning to head home. That’s when Lynch lit a firework which exploded outside the entrance, blowing all the fingers off his hand and injuring four other people. He apologized on social media.

After decades of chasing diversification, Wyoming is finally landing on data centers. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that the boom is forcing the state to confront a familiar boom-and-bust tension.

“Talking with Tyler Lindholm. He's a Crook County rancher, former state legislator, and he works for American Prosperity. And so he kind of sees both ends of the spectrum, right? He wants to see the opportunity come with data centers, but the questions about water and power use are absolutely fair. Talking with Senator Kail Case, he wonders ‘Does this represent an overbuild?’ Analysts are estimating upwards of 3000 facilities on top of an existing 4000 but those 3000 new facilities, they aren't anywhere near the size of the old ones. They are gargantuan, they are exponentially bigger, and so is it over building?” 

Now that data centers are finally racing toward the state’s wide-open prairies and cheap power, the rush is forcing a choice. How much growth is Wyoming willing to accept, and at what cost to power bills, water supplies, and its wide-open spaces? 

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

Wyoming's most famous diesel “delete" mechanic Troy Lake, who was pardoned by Trump after a prison stint, advocated for the president to pardon at least six more. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports on Friday, Trump pardoned those six, plus three others.

“What Troy Lake has done is actually looked for people that are like him, and he's building a coalition, the Diesel Freedom Coalition. The Diesel Freedom Coalition has been working on the science and the policy and the pardon lobby side, so they're pushing for pardons for people they feel are good candidates. They are also, Troy Lake especially, and his son TJ, you're trying to build the science to show better means of reducing emissions without putting people out of business and sending them into limp mode on the interstate, and they're also talking to lawmakers about those better ways forward.”

Besides pardon-related advocacy, Lake said his group is working to provide sound emissions evidence and mechanical strategies to policymakers, to persuade them to pivot toward emissions regulations that don’t crush small-time trucking businesses and other fleets.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"},{"type":"italic"}],"text":"–"}]

A Casper man accused of holding a toddler “like a shield” in front of him during an armed standoff said Monday he intends to change his plea. Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck reports that police say that Brayden Randolph “told officers he had a gun and officers had guns and challenged officers to get him.”

“The call to police said that there had been a gunshot fired, and after they got there, he appeared at a door at one point, had a toddler in his arm and a gun in his belt with his hand on the gun, challenging police to come get him, so that standoff ended with the child being rescued by police, and then breaking through a door, arresting him, and he since then has been out of court on $7,000 bond, was in court today at what's called a ‘docket appearance’ and his attorney said he's going to change his plea.”

Charges against Randolph include reckless endangerment, child endangerment, being a minor in possession of alcohol and interference with a peace officer. 

I’ll have more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.

Cowboy State Daily News continues now….

After spending about $200,000 in goat grazing for flood mitigation since 2025, the town of Rock Springs is putting an end to it for now. Cowboy State Daily’s Kate Meadows reports that one council member said residents say it’s too expensive.

“The goats provided an efficient way to mitigate this risk, so you're not having to bring in all this heavy equipment or have you know manpower down there in the really thick, thick vegetation, the goats just did it all. The problem, or the controversy with it, is that it came at what people thought was a pretty high price tag. So, it went from $50,000 the first go around, to $58K the second go around, to $92K the third go around.”

According to Mayor Max Mickelson, during the latest grazing session, which began April 1st and ended June 30th, the goats removed roughly 35 tons of vegetation.

Conservationist Rich Guenzel understands why many people, including Wyoming Game and Fish, wrongly call one of the state's signature animals “antelope.” But Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports that it bugs Guenzel so much, he’s started a “pronghorn swear jar” and makes people pay $1.

“It irritates him when they get their called antelope, because this is that same discussion as buffalo or bison, you know that sort of thing, moose or elk. Well, you know what is what the animal is actually called? Because just, as an aside, in Europe,  some people call what we call moose, they call an elk. According to the research he's looked into, especially with the latest technology, genetic mapping, they've been able to determine that the nearest, the only very distant living relative of the pronghorn is, and a lot of people will be surprised by this, actually giraffes.”

Guenzel tells Cowboy State Daily that all the money he collects from his swear jar goes to pronghorn conservation groups.

It’s been fourteen months after a man was found shot in the head in an abandoned truck on the Wind River Indian Reservation. But, Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports prosecutors have no ongoing, public murder case in the December 2024 death of Riverton man Rex Lofts, even though Jose A. Gonzales was arrested.

“Gonzales was charged in Fremont County on the state level in last October, and he is the only one that the prosecutor had jurisdiction over the other suspects, the way Fremont County Chief Deputy Attorney Tim Hancock put it to me. The Feds have jurisdiction over those other suspects. Well, this all is alleged to have happened in the same remote place on the reservation. So, what that says to me is okay, probably Gonzalez is not a tribal member, and the others are, because the feds take jurisdiction for tribal members implicated in crimes on the reservation, whereas your local elected prosecutor would handle crimes just involving non-tribal members.”

The 72-year-old Lofts died of what the autopsy report called a homicide with two gunshots in his head around Dec. 2, 2024. According to the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation, his body 

Everyone has a dream. A Powell man has built a "Dumb And Dumber" Mutt Cutts van replica with his best friend. Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore reports that so far, the two haven’t been able to recreate one of the more memorable scenes from the 1994 film starring Jeff Daniels and Jim Carrey. 

“20-year-old Parker Williams wanted to make a YouTube video that would gain attention from his peers, and so he decided to draw inspiration from one of his favorite movies, Dumb and Dumber, and recreate the Mutt Cuts van. Williams, with the help of his friend Seth Siebert, found an old van and decided to fix it up. It took him about three or four days. A lot of people want to stop and take pictures with him. He said he has not been pulled over yet, but he is looking forward to that. One of the movie's most iconic scenes is when Lloyd and Harry are pulled over by a trooper who thinks that they're drinking alcohol, and Lloyd hands him a bottle of his own urine.”

Williams tells Cowboy State Daily that building the van was more complicated than he expected. He and his buddy spent hours wiring custom headlights and blinkers so it could legally travel Wyoming roads.

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

And that’s today’s news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on 

 - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our 

 channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app.  Thanks for watching - I’m Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.

News image 7 7 26

<title>Cowboy State Daily Video Newscast: Tuesday, July 7, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Tuesday's headlines include:
* Gillette Man Loses Fingers To Fireworks
* Wyoming At Critical Crossroads With Data Centers 
* Wyoming Diesel Mechanic Gets More Pardons From Trump

Cowboy State Daily Video Newscast: Tuesday, July 7, 2026

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's general assignment reporter, Clair McFarland.

Clair McFarland

Government & Politics

Politics

After Wyoming’s most famous diesel delete mechanic Troy Lake 

 Nov. 7 from President Donald Trump, he started advocating for other mechanics who, like him, were hit with prison time, fines or both for tampering with diesel emissions systems.

[{"type":"text","text":"Trump pardoned nine more diesel delete mechanics Friday."}]

 before he was pardoned, had advocated for six of those:

Ryan and Wade LaLone, Tim Clancy, Matt Geouge, Mac Spurlock, and Joshua Davis.

Wyoming-based lobbyist Jeff Daugherty and Colorado-based attorney Stewart Cables, who work with Lake and his fledgling group Diesel Freedom Coalition, had represented five of those six (not Davis).

“Sometimes it makes you think, are we really making any traction? Are we really going anywhere? Because government moves at a snail pace,” Lake reflected in his Monday interview.

[{"type":"text","text":"Then came Friday, and the news of pardons. "}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“And all of a sudden, it’s there,” the Cheyenne man said.  "}]

Lake said U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, is another key advocate. Sullivan had taken up Spurlock’s case and written a March 12 letter to the president urging a pardon.

The other three delete mechanics pardoned Friday were: Jonathan Achtemeyer, Aaron Rudolf, and Barry Pierce.

“It’s a small community,” said Daugherty of the diesel mechanic world. “A lot of these folks know each other.”

Daugherty and Cables, who work together, both told Cowboy State Daily they search specifically for small-business techs with non-notable or zero criminal history who have been convicted of Clean Air Act violations under an interpretation that they call invalid.

The Biden administration invoked a statute long used to prosecute people for tampering with big stationary emissions monitoring systems – such as on a chemical plant – to charge people who’d tweaked or reprogrammed trucks’ computers instead.

The Trump administration withdrew from that interpretation earlier this year, and told the U.S. Department of Justice to stop charging delete mechanics criminally. Civil penalties may still apply.

[{"type":"text","text":"Geouge always loved diesel pickup trucks."}]

He told Cowboy State Daily he started tinkering with diesel engines because his first vehicle was a Ford with a six-liter Power Stroke engine. He learned to tune it at age 17, which would have been in about 2004.

[{"type":"text","text":"He was hooked."}]

In June 2007, at age 20, he started his own repair business, Spartan Diesel Technologies, in Hendersonville, North Carolina.

One year later, manufacturers started adding diesel particulate filters to the stock engines.  

Expensive, recurring repair jobs limped into Geouge’s business, he recalled.

“Small business owners, farmers, emergency service people, hot shot haulers that had these trucks – these were failing left and right,” said Geouge. “They were defective from the moment they rolled off the assembly line.”

Geoge helped by installing alternative software – a process called “tuning.”

Back then, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency didn’t pursue criminal charges against delete and tune mechanics who worked around emissions systems.

Emissions systems grew more complex and expansive. Trucks kept breaking down, Geouge said. Looking back, he said, the timing was “both great and terrible.”

He got into diesel work because it was fun. But problems from what he called volatile and problematic emissions systems found him.  

“It wasn’t where I expected the business to go. But it went there out of necessity,” Geouge said.

In 2013 the EPA filed a civil case against him, which continued for about a year and a half.

[{"type":"text","text":"“That was incredibly expensive,” said Geouge."}]

 A notice of violation hit him in 2015. Spartan Diesel shut down in 2017.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office of North Carolina charged Geouge in 2021 with two felonies: conspiracy to violate the Clean Air Act, and another charge of tax evasion.

Geouge maintains he did not commit tax evasion. He and Cables both cast that charge as a leverage move by prosecutors to get him to plead guilty.

“That was great evidence of weaponization,” Cables said. “I think the U.S. Attorneys will use whatever leverage they can to bully people into taking a plea deal.”

Cables said the “tax evasion” comprised past-due IRS obligations – normally something that would prompt a repayment plan or civil penalty.

[{"type":"text","text":"Geouge said it was fallout from his business going broke."}]

“They also threatened to charge his fiancée with felonies for aiding and abetting and tax evasion to get Matt to plead guilty to the felonies,” said Cables.

[{"type":"text","text":"Geouge did plead guilty, in early 2022."}]

He was sentenced to one year and one day in prison. He was also fined about $2.5 million, he said Monday.

One month before his June 2022 sentencing hearing, Geouge’s and his fiancée, Caroline, learned that she was pregnant, Geouge recalled.

He checked into prison at USP Lee, Virginia, July 28, and prepared to miss his baby’s birth.

But at the end of August 2022, Geouge’s body went into diabetic ketoacidosis and he was hospitalized in intensive care for eight days, he said.

After the medical incident he returned to prison and learned there how to use insulin. He was 35.

Geouge was released to home confinement on Dec. 13, 2022. Forty-three days later, his son was born.

[{"type":"text","text":"The fallout from being a convicted felon brought surprises."}]

Geouge went to start a new business with a colleague once he was out of prison, and found banks were hesitant to work with him. Unable to possess firearms, he also lost his gun-building business, which he had run out of Spartan Diesel while the shop still lived.

Ryan LaLone had a similar experience, he told Cowboy State Daily in his own interview Monday.

He lives in northern Michigan. Hunting affinity runs in his blood, he said.

“And I think I’ve voted in every election since I’ve been able to vote. I’m proud to be an American; I want to vote,” said LaLone.

He said he walked into a bank with an 810 credit score after his conviction, hoping to buy a camper.

[{"type":"text","text":"“And they were like, well, but you’ve got a felony,” LaLone said."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Geouge’s shop wasn’t raided."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Ryan LaLone’s was, on Nov. 2, 2018, he said."}]

“Probably 30 agents, I mean, guns blazing, riot gear, I mean you’d have thought we were cooking meth in there. It was unreal,” LaLone said.

That got his small hometown of Gaylord, Michigan, stirring, he recalled. The reputational hit hurt his shop, Diesel Freak, as did the criminal case, he said.

LaLone started his shop in 2007 in Gaylord – a small, conservative-leaning town. His brother Wade came to work for him in 2012, LaLone said.  

Ryan said his goal was “just keep the trucks running. We didn’t blow smoke. We weren’t into this crazy stuff you see on the internet.” He said the Michigan Department of Transportation hired him one spring to repair striper trucks for the short work season.

But the criminal case didn’t start until after Trump’s first administration ended.

That’s a similar account to Lake. His wife, Holly, told Cowboy State Daily in an interview last year that the investigators essentially vanished after federal agents raided their shop – which was then in northern Colorado – in late 2018.

Pressure from the federal prosecutor’s office mounted in the autumn of 2022 and LaLone was formally charged April 26, 2023, with one count of conspiring to violate the Clean Air Act and two counts of violating it – all felonies.

LaLone said his attorney told him Vice President Kamala Harris had made such violations a priority, and that it was futile to fight. He took a plea deal as soon as his charge surfaced publicly.

LaLone didn’t do time in prison. He said he was offered the choice between prison or a hefty fine and took the fine: $750,000 for his business and $7,500 for him.

[{"type":"text","text":"Voided Warranty Tuning"}]

Achtemeier learned how to tune a vehicle, meaning reprogram its on-board diagnostic system, remotely.

He told Cowboy State Daily that he started reconfiguring diesel systems to ignore emissions flags because some of the emissions sensors and parts shot to eight times their normal price during COVID, or became unavailable. Tractors stalled in the field during harvest time, he said. 

Through his shop Voided Warranty Tuning he gained a national following as an expert engine tuner and the nickname “diesel engine software god,” says a prosecutor’s Feb. 7, 2025, filing urging a judge to give him a harsher sentence, in part because of his sophistication in the trade.

In late 2025, Achtemeier spent four months in federal prison in Manchester, Kentucky, and was fined $25,000.

It could have been worse. His original charges called for up to 31 years in prison and potentially millions in fines.

He shuttered his diesel shop Voided Warranty Tuning years before his criminal prosecution started. He’d taken to driving a truck instead.

Achtemeier was still on supervised release until Friday, when he got news of his pardon. He cared for his horses, and cleaned out their stalls, in an unprecedented heat wave Friday afternoon, he told Cowboy State Daily. Then he collapsed onto the couch, sat with his dogs, and nodded off.

[{"type":"text","text":"The phone rang."}]

“I almost didn’t answer it. I thought it was spam,” said Achtemeier.

It was the White House. Achtemeier struggled to rationalize what the person was saying.

“It’s still kind of surreal, you know?” he said Monday. He said he never expected to be pardoned, adding, “I’m just some small-town guy.”

Like LaLone, Geouge and Lake, Achtemeier described his lost gun and civic rights as dear to him. He lives in New Jersey, but explains his rural environment as, “We’re in a big farm area. ‘Friday The 13th’ New Jersey not ‘Sopranos’ New Jersey.”

He’s from the West Coast, and was charged in the federal U.S. District Court for western Washington in March 2024.

While on probation he couldn’t leave the state, which makes it “hard to do oversized trucking.”

Achtemeier said he had filed his pardon request paperwork for himself. He said he’s unaware of anyone advocating for him but grateful if someone did.

Still, Achtemeier said he was inspired by Lake – whom he and others cast as a celebrity of the diesel tech world.

Without Lake and another mechanic and activist, Kory Willis, “I don’t think this would have happened,” said Achtemeier.

“Troy put a spotlight on how bad these (prosecutions) were,” he said. “I’m just thankful for Trump seeing this, and thankful for anybody that directly or indirectly made this happen.”

Each of the mechanics who spoke with Cowboy State Daily on Monday said they understand the air cleanliness objective. But the manufacturers’ emissions systems, which cripple small businesses, are a heartless way to chase it, they said.

“It’s not an either/or situation,” said Geouge. “Automotive technology has gotten to the point where the electronic controls are so accurate, you can have a clean-running truck without these excessive, unreliable, and expensive components bolted all over it.”

Cables echoed the mechanics’ gratitude, saying, “We are very thankful that the Trump administration is taking an interest in our cases and we are very thankful to President Trump for granting these pardons.”

The president, said Cables, “is rightfully spending his time and attention on these domestic issues, like the emissions weaponization cases.”

Troy Lake and Trump 7 6 26

<title>Wyoming's Famous Diesel Mechanic Gets Presidential Pardons For Others | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Wyoming's most famous diesel “delete" mechanic Troy Lake, who was pardoned by Trump after a prison stint, advocated for the president to pardon at least six more. On Friday, Trump pardoned those six, plus three others.

Wyoming's Famous Diesel Mechanic Gets Presidential Pardons For Others

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

Renée Jean

Energy

Economic developers have spent decades trying to diversify Wyoming’s economy away from the volatile boom-and-bust cycles of its coal, oil and gas industries. Tech infrastructure — data centers — seemed like the answer, and is something the state’s been pursuing for the last 20-plus years. 

Now that data centers are finally racing toward the state’s wide-open prairies and cheap power, however, the rush is forcing a choice. How much growth is Wyoming will to accept, and at what cost to power bills, water supplies, and its wide-open spaces? 

Wyoming wants high-paying jobs and more housing so it has a future for its children. It loses 70% of its youths by the time they’re 30, according to state officials. 

But, at the same time, it also wants quiet prairie, low power bills, and tight control over scarce water supplies. Each new data center is a tug on all those resources.

To longtime Cheyenne attorney and Councilman Larry Wolfe, this tension is actually nothing new. Wyoming has long been a place where its residents understand that boom almost always precedes bust and broken promises. Many have thus learned to be skeptical of promises and promise makers. 

In fact, the bigger the promise is, the higher the skepticism goes.

“This is exactly the discussion that went on all over the state as we’ve seen all of our energy booms and busts that we’ve endured,” Wolfe told Cowboy State Daily in a previous interview. “And I think people are a bit schizophrenic about this, because they live in Wyoming for a reason.”

Sometimes those reasons are fairly simple. It falls somewhere between knowing your neighbors and having a short drive to get away from them all to a place where the night sky is clean and clear and the Milky Way can be seen.

Holding onto that is about preserving a quality of life that has not only drawn people to the state but kept them here. And it’s about making sure the price paid for such treasure doesn’t come too cheaply. 

“This is just another long cycle of that over the years,” Wolfe said. “It’s just the way Wyoming is. We’ve always had this sense that we want to maintain the Wyoming that we have. But we also realize that it’s not sustainable without all of these things coming in, making these huge investments, and putting our people to work, and then building the housing that will, in fact, accommodate that.”

For Wolfe, data centers are just the latest boom-time bargain, promising investment and jobs while testing how much Wyoming is willing to change. 

Today’s push-pull on data centers has an element of deja vu for economic developers, too. 

Wyoming Business Alliance President Renny MacKay agreed with Wolfe that the conversation is really nothing new. The best illustration of that is found in former Gov. Dave Freudenthal’s book, “Wyoming: The Paradox of Plenty."

“He explains it well,” MacKay told Cowboy State Daily. “The tension between that and diving into when the coal industry came to Wyoming. There was a lot of concern about that.”

That happened around the same time as the cattle bust of the 1980s, MacKay said, and has led to an iconic bumper sticker often referenced in Wyoming.

“Dear God give me one more boom,” the bumper sticker goes. “And I promise not to piss it all away next time.”

The old Wyoming bumper sticker reads, “Dear God give me one more boom and I promise not to piss it all away next time.” Data centers may just be that next boom. So, how far to go in courting prosperity without losing the things that make Wyoming, Wyoming?

Daily Smile: Tuesday, October 1, 2024

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