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Jake Nichols

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It's the Cowboy State Daily Morning Show With Jake. Weekday mornings 6 - 10 a.m.

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

<title>Morning Show with Jake - Thursday, October 3, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Jake in the 307. Weekday mornings 6 - 10 a.m.

Morning Show with Jake - Thursday, October 3, 2024

 It's the Cowboy State Daily Morning Show With Jake. Weekday mornings 6 - 10 a.m.

Coy Knobel

Don Day Weather

Chance of afternoon rain in parts of Wyoming on Monday, otherwise mostly sunny. Partly cloudy overnight with a chance of rain. Highs from the low 60s to near 80. Lows from the low 30s to low 50s.

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Sunny today with a high near 80 and wind gusts as high as 21 mph. Partly cloudy overnight with a low near 49.

Sunny today with a high near 76 and wind gusts as high as 25 mph. Partly cloudy overnight with a low near 45 and wind gusts as high as 23 mph.

 Increasing clouds and breezy today with a high near 76 and wind gusts as high as 29 mph. Gradually becoming mostly clear overnight with a low near 43 and wind gusts as high as 26 mph.

 Slight chance of rain after noon, otherwise mostly sunny today with a high near 68 and mostly clear overnight with a low near 37.

  Becoming mostly cloudy today with a high near 73 and wind gusts as high as 20 mph. Partly cloudy overnight with a low near 41.

Mostly sunny and breezy today with a high near 67 and wind gusts as high as 31 mph. Partly cloudy and breezy overnight with a low near 41 and wind gusts as high as 30 mph.

Slight chance of rain, increasing clouds today with a high near 65 and wind gusts as high as 20 mph. Partly cloudy overnight with a low near 32 and wind gusts as high as 20 mph.

 Slight chance of rain after 5 p.m., otherwise mostly sunny today with a high near 68 and mostly clear overnight with a low near 36.

  Mostly sunny today with a high near 68 and wind gusts as high as 22 mph. Increasing clouds overnight with a low near 36 and wind gusts as high as 22 mph.

 Chance of rain mainly after 5 p.m., otherwise sunny and breezy today with a high near 63 and wind gusts as high as 25 mph. Mostly clear overnight with a low near 36 and wind gusts as high as 23 mph.

  Chance of rain mainly after 4 p.m., otherwise mostly sunny today with a high near 68 and wind gusts as high as 20 mph. Mostly clear overnight with a slight chance of rain before 11 p.m. and a low near 35.

Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park

:  Areas of fog before 9 a.m., sunny today with a high near 59 and wind gusts as high as 21 mph. Mostly clear overnight with a slight chance of rain before 8 p.m., a low near 30 and wind gusts as high as 20 mph.

Patchy fog before 7 a.m., otherwise sunny today with a high near 78 and partly cloudy overnight with a low near 47.

:  Patchy fog before 7 a.m., slight chance of rain after noon, increasing clouds today with a high near 72 and wind gusts as high as 22 mph. Partly cloudy overnight with a low near 45 and wind gusts as high as 20 mph.

  Patchy fog before 7 a.m., slight chance of rain after 1 p.m., otherwise sunny today with a high near 73 and partly cloudy overnight with a slight chance of rain before 8 p.m., a low near 43 and wind gusts as high as 22 mph.

  Mostly sunny today with a high near 73 and wind gusts as high as 22 mph. Partly cloudy overnight with a slight chance of rain before midnight and a low near 47.

  Slight chance of rain after 3 p.m., otherwise sunny today with a high near 73 and partly cloudy overnight with a slight chance of rain before 9 p.m. and a low near 39.

:  Slight chance of rain after 3 p.m., otherwise mostly sunny today with a high near 71 and partly cloudy overnight with a slight chance of rain before 9 p.m. and a low near 40.

Slight chance of rain after noon, otherwise gradually becoming sunny today with a high near 76 and wind gusts as high as 24 mph. Breezy, gradually becoming mostly clear overnight with a chance of rain, a low near 46 and wind gusts as high as 29 mph.

  Chance of rain after noon, otherwise mostly sunny today with a high near 74 and wind gusts as high as 26 mph. Increasing clouds overnight with a chance of rain, a low near 52 and wind gusts as high as 30 mph.

:  Chance of rain after noon, otherwise becoming sunny today with a high near 71 and wind gusts as high as 18 mph. Partly cloudy overnight with a chance of rain, a low near 50 and wind gusts as high as 25 mph.

  Chance of rain after 3 p.m., otherwise mostly sunny today with a high near 79 and partly cloudy overnight with a chance of rain before 9 p.m. and a low near 54.

  Chance of rain mainly after noon, otherwise mostly sunny today with a high near 75 and partly cloudy overnight with a low near 54.

  Sunny today with a high near 76 and wind gusts as high as 25 mph. Gradually becoming mostly clear overnight with a chance of rain, a low near 45 and wind gusts as high as 28 mph.

  Slight chance of rain after 3 p.m., otherwise mostly sunny today with a high near 75 and partly cloudy overnight with a chance of rain before 9 p.m., areas of fog after midnight and a low near 50.

  Slight chance of rain after noon, otherwise mostly sunny today with a high near 70 and wind gusts as high as 25 mph. Partly cloudy overnight a low near 45 and wind gusts as high as 25 mph.

  Slight chance of rain after 3 p.m., otherwise mostly sunny today with a high near 78 and mostly cloudy overnight with a chance of rain before 9 p.m., patchy fog after 3 a.m. and a low near 50.

  Sunny today with a high near 75 and wind gusts as high as 30 mph. Partly cloudy overnight with a low near 45 and wind gusts as high as 25 mph.

  Mostly sunny today with a high near 73 and mostly clear overnight with a low near 44.

  Sunny today with a high near 78 and mostly clear overnight with a low near 42.

Daycap no play 6 1 26

<title>Don Day's Wyoming Weather Forecast: Monday, June 1, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Don Day's Wyoming Weather Forecast: Monday, June 1, 2026

You Still Here

[{"type":"text","text":"How many basketballs does it take to stop a bullet?"}]

Shooting 6 1 26

<title>Today In Shooting: Monday, June 1, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

How many basketballs does it take to stop a bullet?

Today In Shooting: Monday, June 1, 2026

Mac Watson

Daily Video News

It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Monday, June 1st,  I’m Mac Watson

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In a setback to the Wyoming Republican Party’s long mission to gain independence from state law, a Uinta County judge Friday upheld multiple Wyoming election laws, dismissing the state Party’s claims that its rights trump them. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that Uinta County District Court Judge James Kaste’s Friday ruling gives a concrete, but appealable, answer.

“What we had was a hot springs county Republican party spat that exploded into a much bigger debate about whether the Wyoming Republican Party and its counterparts are private groups that have associational rights that trump the restrictions that state law places on them, and at least for this struggle, which pertains to some county membership and voting criteria, and the involvement of this basically the state party's arbitration committee, the judge said,  ‘No, the party's associational rights aren't that burden. The state does have a legitimate electoral public interest in keeping these processes orderly, and the laws are constitutional.’”

If it so chooses, the party can appeal to the Wyoming Supreme Court challenging the judge’s decision.

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Trucker Riaz Ahmad Noori is now facing homicide charges, accused of triggering a 26-vehicle crash in the Green River Tunnel in 2025 that killed three people. Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore reports that an affidavit says “human error was the primary factor contributing to these crashes.”

“Investigators say that Noori was going over the speed limit when he ran into the back of a pickup, setting off a multi-vehicle collision and pile up. He was going about 10 miles per hour over the illuminated posted speed limit. Despite snowy conditions, there was also ice on the road. So he's also facing litigation from a lawsuit that was filed in September, saying that he was driving recklessly and caused the fatal crash.”

The Feb. 14, 2025, initial crash ballooned into a 26-vehicle catastrophe that filled the westbound Interstate 80 tunnel near Green River with fire, explosions, and thick, black smoke.

Living homeless in a Las Vegas wash, hooked on meth, and surviving by the reflexes of his past gang life, Rusty Rawson turned to his adolescent son for guidance. Cowboy State Daily’s Zak Sonntag reports that the answer brought them back to Casper and a path toward recovery.

“So they've been back in Casper 18 months, and they're going through the rescue missions discipleship program, and that has been a big change for Rusty specifically. But just having a bed to sleep in, a place to get a hot meal, and a community has provided the stability that they need to start thinking about the future again. And for Sterling, who is now 14-years old, the improvements are just monumental. I mean, here's a kid who didn't finish sixth grade, didn't attend a single day in seventh grade, and then he comes back, jumps into the end of eighth grade, and here he is graduating his freshman year from Kelly Walsh High School this week with a 3.8 GPA, and that's just because he has the support of this community.”

For the last 18 months, Rusty and Sterling have been staying in beds at the Mission, where Rusty has joined its Discipleship Program, and getting back to being a truck driver.

Halle Crozier of Buffalo is inspiring Wyoming’s high school rodeo community as she fights to recover from a vaccine reaction that destroyed her body. Cowboy State Daily’s Julie Mankin reports that Halle says she could’ve chosen to not get better, or choose to be positive and work hard to get better.

“Rodeo is something that has allowed Halle to heal, and it makes her feel alive, and honestly, she has the heart of a cowgirl, it's been in her blood her entire life. Halley's grit and determination is so inspiring, and fans have gone so nuts to watch her, that the Wyoming High School Rodeo Association changed their rules after decades to allow this timed event star to partner with her as his second partner. It's usually only one partner, but they love Hallie and what she's done for the culture of rodeo.”

Despite limitations with lifting her arms and lingering balance and coordination problems, things are looking up for Halle. The 16-year-old got her driver’s license last year. 

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

Cowboy State Daily News continues now….

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Despite a series of bizarre, controversial, and sometimes outrageous campaign videos, Wyoming politicos say Reid Rasner’s campaign for U.S. House is not a parody. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that state Rep. John Bear says, “Why would somebody spend this much money on a joke?” 

“You find commenters piling up in an ever-increasing mountain, asking, is this a parody? Is this satire? Because some of the videos are zany. I talked to people from both ends of the political spectrum in Wyoming, serving in offices or that have run statewide campaigns, and they said no. No one's going to spend $1.3 million ish, on a joke, and so, which is, you know, as of April 1, that's about the size of the Raisner campaign. His spokesman said that they reach people through social media, but they do also take hard policy stances and forward-thinking positions. I also spoke to one drama coach, Michael Stadile, out of Casper. He coached drama for 45 years. He said, ‘If this is satire, this man gets an A.’”

Rasner was among the earliest to declare for what’s now a 10-person GOP primary contest for the House seat, which incumbent Rep. Harriet Hageman is vacating to run for U.S. Senate.

A century after Union Pacific stopped using it, decades of work has saved and restored Evanston’s historic Roundhouse and Railyards. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that $28 million has been spent so far but it’s one of the rare roundhouses in the U.S. that’s still completely operational.

“It's all part of the vision of a guy named Jim Davis. He was hired as the urban renewal manager, worked for the city for many, many years. His charge was to revital. He happened to meet and befriend an architect along the way, and that guy knew how to do historic preservation, and so you know by teaming up with people in the community they were able to forge a path forward to save the depot.  That became a springboard for the larger project, the Round House; he built a core of people who could see the value in saving these old buildings, which there aren't many of them left in the country.”

 is a 63,000-square-foot, 96-foot-deep curved brick-and-mortar behemoth built around a post-and-beam interior.

FBI files from 1933 reveal that $90,000 in ransom loot from a Machine Gun Kelly kidnapping scheme ended up buried somewhere around Cheyenne. Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck reports about $25,000 is still unaccounted for.

“According to FBI documents I found in a newspaper article at the time, the money supposedly they turned out the money to the FBI, but there's only of their take, there was $75,000 apparently in that suitcase, and the FBI accounted for like 38,000, but so there's like $25,000 that has never been recovered, whether that’s remained in Cheyenne, was it taken to the West Coast. We don’t know for sure.”

FBI documents from the time are not clear about whether all of that money was removed or recovered; however, the ground somewhere around the Wyoming Capitol in those months played a part in one of that decade’s notorious gangster sagas.

New research published by the Geological Society of America has revealed that Devils Tower is actually constantly moving. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that an international team of geologists determined that it's perpetually and ever-so-slightly swaying, twisting, and turning in the wind.

“Now, the thing is, you'd never know that, because the amount of movement is less than a micro meter, that's 1,000,000th of a meter, so it's not happening on a scale that humans can see. They put two sensors at the base of the tower and one sensor at the top of the tower, and then they had the climb up, put the sensor up, then climb up the next day to collect it and analyze that data, and what they found were the signatures of vibrations that have a definite movement to them.”

Devils Tower is a giant, eroded plug of volcanic rock. It was an intrusive body of magma that cooled under the surface and was gradually exposed by millions of years of erosion.

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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 

 - 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 v2 6 1 26

<title>Cowboy State Daily Video Newscast: Monday, June 1, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Monday's headlines include:
* Trucker Charged In Green River Inferno
* Rodeo Healing Wyoming Teen After Vax Reax
* Homeless Casper Father & Son Saved Each Other

Cowboy State Daily Video Newscast: Monday, June 1, 2026

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Jackie Dorothy.

Jackie Dorothy

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

In the early 1960s, the stress of being an advertising executive in New York was taking a toll on Paul Newman’s health. 

Calling himself Paul Newman “The Original” — he’s not the Oscar-winning actor — he was on a fishing holiday in Wyoming when he told his wife Georgina (Gina) that instead of dying on the streets of New York, he was going to buy the old Carpenter Hotel in Atlantic City as their new home.

Gina wasn’t ready to give up her career and friends in the East, according to her former employee Lynn Kinter. 

Twenty years younger than Paul, Gina loved her job as executive editor of Living for Young Homemakers, a popular ladies magazine based in New York City. 

“As she described it, Gina sat in a bar in Lander for three days drinking double vodkas and asking herself, 'New York or Paul? New York or Paul?'" Kinter wrote years later for the Atlantic City Historical Society in its book  

“Atlantic City Wyoming, Voices from a Powerful Place.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Ultimately, Gina chose her husband."}]

Then for more than 30 years, their restaurant Miner’s Delight put Atlantic City on the national map with its gourmet meals, colorful proprietors and guests who came from miles around just for dinner.

It was upscale French cuisine in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming with deep Old West roots.

“One patron said it was the only place where she was willing to wear heels through cow manure to get in,” Marjane Ambler, president of the Atlantic City Historical Society, told Cowboy State Daily. 

The Carpenter Hotel Becomes Miner’s Delight

Paul and Gina had taken a fishing vacation to Wyoming in the spring of 1958, and that was when they met brother and sister Jim and Ellen Carpenter of Atlantic City. 

Paul would go fishing on the Sweetwater River with Jim while a friendship developed between Gina and Ellen. 

During the next several years the Newmans made regular trips to Atlantic City and were grieved when Ellen died in 1961.

When Ellen’s family put the 16-room Carpenter Hotel up for sale, Paul became determined it would be theirs. In 1963, the couple bought the hotel, intending to make it their private residence.

Ambler said that by 1965, they had renovated the hotel and made the pantry into a bar. Ellen had an aversion to alcohol so in deference to her, the Newmans named their new business Miner’s Delight, another name for the nearby ghost town of Hamilton City. 

According to Bob Tipton in the Atlantic Historical Society's book, he met the Newmans as a teenage employee and was impressed by their culinary skills. 

Gina wanted to expand her cooking talents and had talked Paul into taking a six-week cooking course that led to an additional four-week course in France. 

Paul attended Paris’ most famous cooking school, Le Cordon Bleu, where he took a six-week sauce course. 

To further their skills, in 1966 the couple left Atlantic City to work at the Silver King Restaurant in Park City, Utah. They learned to cook steak and lobster and opened the Miner’s Delight for dinner on June 10, 1967. 

Paul and Gina served just two guests on their grand opening night. 

“Their menu was not the normal fare for your typical Wyoming eating establishment as they served meals like crepes stuffed with crabmeat, French onion soup, coq au vin, and a parfait for dessert and coffee,” Tipton wrote.

The serving season for Miner’s Delight started the first weekend in May and was finished by early fall. 

The Newmans served dinner four or five days a week, Wednesday or Thursday through Sunday, depending on their reservations and their own schedules. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Elegance In Atlantic City"}]

Paul and Gina hosted 20 to 40 guests each night they were open and regulars knew better than to request salt and pepper or, worse yet, ketchup. 

Everything was perfectly seasoned and there was no reason to mess with this perfection, according to Gina.  

In the 1970s, Karyn Aarthun Ervin was a repeat guest for four years who would drive up the winding road with her husband and friends to the remote mining town for a night of luxury. 

She said Paul’s gin and tonics were unmatched and he only carried top-shelf liquor. 

“Gina and Paul really introduced us to elegant dining,” Ervin said. “I tasted pate for the first time — delicious — and have been trying for about 50 years to duplicate their Cuban Black Bean Soup.”

Magnus “Max” Helmers of Sweden told Cowboy State Daily that eating at the Miner’s Delight was an experience of a lifetime.

“Sitting in that room in a restaurant in a ghost town in Wyoming and being served these great meals was just unreal,” Helmers said. “Gina had class and she know how to carry herself. You were only allowed to photograph her from one side, just like Clark Gable.”

Cowboy State Daily’s columnist Bill Sniffin was a young journalist when he would take his wife, Nancy, to Miner’s Delight for special occasions. 

He said that a meal would cost an average of $50 or more for a couple, unheard of when a large steak could be purchased for $16. 

“It was pricey, but it was worth it,” Sniffin said. “You'd make that 30-mile drive up the mountain up South Pass and it was a real tradition for everybody all over Wyoming and all over the region.”

Bob Tipton wrote that Gina was often quoted saying, “If it were left up to Wyoming men, they would only eat steak.” 

The Newmans claimed their women customers drove their success as their menus were designed to please women. Once the men got a taste they became hooked.

There were a few exceptions. Atlantic City resident Craig Newman, no relation to the Newmans, recalled taking a date to the Miner’s Delight as a young man. He had made reservations and saved for their special night out. 

Craig was shocked when instead of steak, he was served chicken and cold potato soup. 

“She gave it a fancy name and said it was supposed to be cold,” Craig said. “She was quite fussy.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Go-To Place"}]

Bob Tipton's brother, Harry Tipton Jr., wrote in the Atlantic City book that he was given a front-row seat to the clientele the Newmans served after being hired for a job in 1975. 

Before the summer ended, Harry had served drinks to Gov. Ed Herschler, U.S. Sen. Cliff Hansen, Congressman Teno Roncalio, State Sen. Robert Peck, State Rep. Harry Tipton (his father) and soon-to-be U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson. 

“They all liked to have big fun,” Harry wrote. “I learned much while bartending at the Miner’s Delight, much of which I am sure my mother would have preferred I did not.”

Harry said that he was shocked when Paul told him that they had repeat customers who would fly down from as far away as Alaska just to eat at the Miner’s Delight. 

Most of these customers would then fly home after dinner. 

Part of the allure was that Paul was well-known in his social circles and knew how to entertain.

“Paul was always dressed up and would make a big show of making drinks,” Sniffin said.  “Paul and Gina were both very elegant and made you feel like a million bucks.”

Everyone was given the red-carpet treatment at Miner’s Delight regardless of their social status. 

Sally Webster, a nurse, and Dave Slovisky who was working for NOLS were married on October 9, 1976. They reserved the Miner’s Delight for their dinner and were treated to a night to remember.

“I didn't know the Newmans’ but Paul was quite effusive,” Webster said. “He greeted us like we were old family members, and he was dressed up with an ascot.” 

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

When Paul died in 1986, Gina upheld a pact they had made to be cremated and not embalmed. 

Since the local funeral home would not transport a body to the crematorium in Cheyenne without embalming it, Gina put Paul in the trunk of their car and drove to Cheyenne, sobbing and cursing during the 285-mile drive. 

She was stopped for speeding on the way home but only given a warning when she told the officer her husband was in the urn beside her. 

Paul’s obituary later appeared in The New York Times with a long list of his accomplishments. 

Gina ran Miner’s Delight for a number of years after Paul’s death with the help of her employees. 

Krista Guthridge wrote that Gina would always encourage her not to just talk about what she was going to do, but to do it.

In 1997, Gina fell, broke her hip and covered herself in the barroom’s plush rugs until friends found her three days later, her pooch snuggled at her side. 

After this, Gina moved to the Showboat Assisted Living facility in Lander and died the following year at the age of 78. 

The Miner’s Delight has since been closed, but the legacy of Paul and Gina Newman live on in Atlantic City and in the hearts of all who experienced their gourmet food in remote Wyoming. 

Miners Delight 8 Miners Delight 5 30 26

<title>For Upscale French Cuisine, ‘Miner’s Delight’ in Atlantic City, Wyoming, Was Tops | Cowboy State Daily</title>

For 30 years, the Miner's Delight restaurant in remote Atlantic City, Wyoming, was the place to go in the Cowboy State. Started by an advertising executive from New York, the upscale French cuisine attracted diners from hundreds of miles away.

For Upscale French Cuisine, ‘Miner’s Delight’ in Atlantic City, Wyoming, Was Tops

Employee kate meadows cropped

Kate Meadows

BLACK HAWK, S.D. — Six years after a massive sinkhole opened in a residential neighborhood in the South Dakota Black Hills about 55 miles from the Wyoming border, homeowners are still living in financial limbo.

The 85-foot-deep sinkhole — and roughly 100 feet wide and 650 feet long — revealed a sprawling abandoned underground gypsum mine beneath the Hideaway Hills subdivision near Black Hawk, South Dakota.

In the years since, dozens of homes have sat abandoned and deteriorating while property owners wait for answers, compensation and accountability.

Their homes are essentially worthless. Many families are still making mortgage payments on houses they can’t safely live in while a lawsuit over who bears responsibility inches through the court system.

A pending South Dakota Supreme Court decision could determine whether affected residents have any path forward financially.

“We do not yet have an opinion from the Supreme Court,” said Kathy Barrow, an attorney with national law firm Fox Rothschild, who represents the homeowners in the case.

“There is no timeline, unfortunately,” she added. “It could be six months, next year sometime.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"What Lies Beneath Hideaway Hills"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"The disaster traces back decades."}]

For more than 50 years, gypsum mining operations carved a network of underground tunnels beneath the area. ‘

In the mid-1980s, the state of South Dakota bought land there for gypsum mining activities connected to a nearby cement plant.

The state later reclaimed roughly 16 acres of mined land and reseeded it for rangeland use before selling the property to a developer in 1994. The land was eventually sold again to other developers, who built the Hideaway Hills subdivision in the early 2000s.

[{"type":"text","text":"Residents began moving into the neighborhood around 2005."}]

Just a few years later, homeowners started noticing cracks in foundations and shifting ground.

[{"type":"text","text":"Then in April 2020, the earth gave way."}]

The sinkhole opened near where resident Albert Reitz had been mowing his lawn.

Authorities initially evacuated residents from 13 homes because of concerns about ground instability.

Subsequent testing revealed the problem was far more extensive than initially believed.

Studies later determined all 153 homes in the subdivision were uninhabitable because of underground instability tied to the abandoned mine workings.

A study led by geological engineering professor Mohammad Sadeghi of Montana Technological University found additional underground tunnels beneath the subdivision and warned of continuing geologic risk. 

Researchers also raised concerns that mine workings could extend beneath Interstate 90.

[{"type":"text","text":"Meanwhile, property values collapsed."}]

“The ground is continuing to deteriorate,” Barrow told Cowboy State Daily.

She said the instability reaches far deeper than anything tied to subdivision construction.

“What the developers did was not the cause,” Barrow said. “The ground instability goes deeper than any ground the developers would have touched.”

In 2024, Hideaway Hills homeowners filed a class-action lawsuit against the state of South Dakota seeking more than $60 million in damages.

The lawsuit argues the state bears responsibility because of its mining activities and because homeowners were never informed about the risks lurking underground.

Barrow argued the land was originally intended for pasture use — not residential development — and said residents had no warning about the underground dangers.

[{"type":"text","text":"The state disputes those claims."}]

South Dakota argues it is not liable because it did not conduct underground mining operations at the site and says the mine collapse would have happened regardless of the state’s activities.

South Dakota Circuit Court Judge Eric Stawn ruled in favor of the state in September 2024, finding the state immune from tort liability claims.

Barrow argues the case was never framed as a tort claim in the first place.

A year after the circuit court ruling, victims asked the South Dakota Supreme Court to hold the state accountable. That decision is pending.

Six years after a massive 85-foot-deep sinkhole opened in a residential neighborhood in the Black Hills, homeowners live in financial limbo. Dozens of homes have sat abandoned and deteriorating while property owners wait for answers, compensation and accountability.

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Morning Show with Jake - Thursday, October 3, 2024

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