The Elk Fire that began with a lightning strike southeast of Dayton and blew up overnight last Sunday has continued to blow up since. The fire was last estimated to be around 73,000 acres on Sunday.
Cowboy State Daily’s Greg Johnson spoke to some of those who had evacuated or been told to be ready to leave their homes. They said there’s a feeling of helplessness and fear at having to watch the flames and smoke advance without being able to do anything.
“It's just a dangerous, unpredictable situation for the folks there. The whole town of Dayton is on Set Status, which means the next status is go, you know, it's, you know, go and get out… a lifelong resident of Dayton, explained how he learned that Dayton had been put on Set Status. They sent out a notice at 3am on Saturday. Woke people up. He went outside and he said the whole mountain was just glowing orange. It was very surreal.”
But Johnson said there are some signs of hope.
“WYDOT posted a photo Sunday morning that one of their staffers got from an area overlooking the fire, and it showed a single farmhouse is totally, totally safe. All around it is black… the firefighters did a good job protecting that home.”
Read the full story HERE.
The Elk Fire is raging on the mountains that inspire Ian Munsick’s Wyoming brand of music, and his own family’s ranch is among the many that now sit in harm’s way.
For Munsick, the Elk Fire that has grown to more than 62,000 acres and is threatening to consume the towns of Dayton and Parkman is deeply personal. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean spoke to the country music star, who has started a relief fund to help his friends and neighbors.
“This is kind of his childhood on fire, and that's why he started the GoFundMe, which I just checked, and it is at 92,000 so far. So, you know, he kicked it off with 15,000 from himself, 15,000 from his wife, Caroline, but so now it is tripled from the initial donation.”
This is not the first time Munsick has seen fire coming for Dayton and his family’s ranch. About 20 years ago he said he remembers packing up everything in the horse trailer. The fire didn’t end up making it all the way to the Munsick family’s ranch, but it did burn parts of Dayton then. The Elk Fire has burned through the scars of that 1996 blaze, and is still zero percent contained.
Read the full story HERE.
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15 inmates incarcerated at the Wyoming Honor Conservation Camp in Newcastle, one of the state's two minimum security prisons, have been allowed outside their prison walls this summer to help fight some of Wyoming’s out-of-control wildfires.
The Wyoming Smokebusters are a joint operation between the Wyoming State Forestry Division and the Wyoming Department of Corrections. Cowboy State Daily’s Jen Kocher spoke to members of the crew who have been putting in long hours of hard work this summer.
“The people who joined the team are extremely happy to be there. You know, they see it as a great opportunity to get out of the prison and really to give back to their community. And it's grueling work, you know, when they're not on fires that are out, thinning trees and doing a number of forestry forestry projects.”
The program dates back to 1964. Inmates approved to become Smokebusters have to pass a strict multi-disciplinary team process, which means they can’t have been charged for murder or other violent crimes or have a history of absconding.
Read the full story HERE.
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A remote and rugged piece of federal land in the Laramie Range mountains is a paradise for hunters, and the U.S. Forest Service should keep it.
That’s what critics of a pending land exchange told Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz, referencing nearly 1300 acres in the Green Mountain area near Laramie Peak in Albany County that is proposed to be swapped for 804 acres in two parcels owned by a private investment company based in Denver.
“The way the guy described it was, it's basically wilderness without being officially designated Wilderness…. you know, you better eat your Wheaties before you hike in there. But if you do, there's some great elk hunting potential, bighorn sheep hunting back there, and they hate to see that loss to the public in exchange for this land that's maybe a little bit lower down, a little bit more easily accessible, which, of course, means it's more easy, can more easily become crowded.”
A notice of decision from the Forest Service, expected to be in favor of the exchange, might be issued this month or in November. That won’t make the deal final, but it will signal that the agency intends to move forward with the exchange.
Read the full story HERE.
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Wyoming’s wild turkey season opened Sept. 1, but only for archery. The Wyoming Game and Fish Department doesn’t offer a tag for tenderizing a turkey with a car windshield.
One family found that out the hard way last week while driving U.S. Highway 14 from Powell to Cody. They told Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi the turkey decided to lift off and fly across the highway right as the family’s Chevy Suburban zoomed by.
“A grown male turkey can weigh up to 22 pounds, so these are hefty animals, and going 70 miles per hour down the road… can be potentially fatal, because, you know, if a turkey's hefty enough and you're going fast enough that it gets through, that's nothing to scoff at.”
Fortunately, they were able to navigate back to Cody, despite their shattered windshield, which cost $350 to replace - that comes out to a steep $17.50 per pound of tenderized turkey.
Read the full story HERE.
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Pumpkin guts spewed across the Washakie County Fairgrounds with wet, echoing thuds and squeals of joy at Saturday’s 2024 Wyoming State Pumpkin Weigh-Off and Oktoberfest.
After crowning this year’s state giant pumpkin champions, the huge squashes were hoisted 175 feet into the air and dropped, exploding spectacularly - which was captured on video by Cowboy State Daily videographer Reilly Strand.
“I think the estimate was just over 2000 people showed up, which is pretty spectacular, because I think there's only, you know, just under 5000 people that live there. So that was impressive. And the biggest pumpkin of the day belonged to Lovell’s Chad Kurtenbach, 1254 pounds, which was mind blowing… I think everyone had a blast, and we did document it on video, and that video is up on the website now, and I think it really portrays the emotions from the day.”
You can see Reilly’s full video at Cowboy State Daily dot com.
Read the full story HERE.
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Nate Woodruff may not have been born in Wyoming, but he shares some of the save values, Western attitude and a passion for good whiskey with his Cowboy State neighbors.
Woodruff, who now lives in Pinedale, told Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck that he’s turned that love of whiskey into the greatest job ever — tasting and reviewing the spirit for his online following.
“He started in New Jersey on the east coast. But he said one day he was just hiking in the woods, and he had, he had already had some been doing some whiskey reviews, but he put a bottle on a on a rock in the middle of a stream, took a photo of it, did a review of the whiskey, posted on an Instagram, and it just blew up. And he said he found his niche, and so he's been doing that for several years, and is doing very well. In fact, he's going to start a podcast in the coming year, and just has had all kinds of opportunities, traveling overseas to Scotland, distilleries and other places around the world to promote whiskey.”
As someone who has been to all the lower 48 states already on adventures, traveled internationally, and carried a lot of bottles onto many mountain tops, Woodruff says he appreciates how fortunate he is.
Read the full story HERE.
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It’s October - a time to relay stories of haunted places and tales of mystery from around the Cowboy State.
Cowboy State Daily’s Jackie Dorothy brings us a tale of a lost treasure, a mysterious skeleton and cries from deep within the earth, which haunted a Fremont County family more than 80 years ago on their homestead near Badwater Creek.
“We have newspaper accounts dating back to October 8, 1940 when this family on Badwater dug up not only a ring, which they lost, but they also found a skeleton, and like any teenager, their son stuck that under their bed and kept it in the house for maybe just a short while, but what soon followed was that this newly dug cellar where they discovered the skeleton, it started giving the family a little bit of creeps, because they would hear every time they went down there earthly moans and earthly creepy sighs.”
Read the full story HERE.
Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean had a first-hand experience with ghosts at the historic Sheridan Inn, when she dined at the Open Range Grill last week.
Because she’s not one to eat and run, particularly after a great dining experience, Renee was leisurely looking through some news articles on her cell phone when she caught a kind of whirling motion out of the corner of her eye.
“It was like something moving, and I heard a sound, and then the waitress is walking over to me, and she's picking up a glass that is rolled right by my table… I'm realizing that something has happened with the glass that really shouldn't have happened… this woman is telling how she saw the glass just scoot on the table and kind of twirl end over end after it fell off the table… the table was perfectly flat. There was no jiggle at all. There was no one walking around that area. It was dry. You know, it's and it's a wooden table too. So it's not like it's a completely, necessarily smooth table. You can see the ridges from the wood. So I, I can't explain it.”
Unusual events like this happen quite frequently at Open Range, according to the General Manager, and not just upstairs in the restaurant. There’s a basement, too, where lights sometimes turn themselves on and off and doors sometimes close themselves.
Read the full story HERE.
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