It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming, for Monday, October 14th. I’m Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - brought to you by the Cowboy State Daily Morning Show with Jake! From 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. Monday through Friday, Cowboy State Daily’s Jake Nichols brings to life the latest news, weather, sports and in-depth conversations that matter to you.
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Like a column of soldiers, the now-87,00-acre Elk Fire continues its methodical — and at times seemingly relentless — march southeast following the eastern face of the Bighorn Mountains in northern Wyoming.
Cowboy State Daily’s Greg Johnson has been following this story. He says that it’s feeling a little bit like Groundhog Day - every day, the fire keeps growing.
“When you look at the official fire maps compared to a week to two weeks ago, there's I put them side by side, and the one from October 3 shows the Elk fire is pretty much just a big ball there, around west of Parkman and Dayton, and since then, it is just been really active, pushing across the face down southeast… some of those acres are land that they're burning on purpose to take some of the fuels away from the fire to create, they're setting up a fire line… That line is the Red Grade road… it's like their Gandalf moment of the fire there. They stand there, and it's their saying ‘You shall not pass this road’ for the fire. ”
Read the full story HERE.
As of this weekend, 937 firefighters and support personnel are assigned to the Elk Fire. In order to manage - including feeding and housing - nearly a thousand people, a portion of the Padlock Ranch in Dayton has been turned into its own small town, complete with a Main Street.
Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean visited the makeshift town whose sole function is to support the Elk Fire firefighters.
“They've got everything there, you know that you would expect all the administrative functions that go with this camp are on Main Street, and they call it the overhead. And then there's a camp associated with that on the interior, with tents where these people sleep.”
Additionally, fire officials have set up what’s called a Spike Camp at Antelope Butte. about 12 miles west of the Elk Fire. The spike camp is a spinoff from the main command center camp in Dayton, which gives the crews better logistics to tackle the Burgess Junction area.
Read the full story HERE.
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With one last week of balmy weather forecast for Wyoming, the father of a hiker who vanished last month near Yellowstone National Park’s tallest peak is organizing experienced mountaineers and hikers to conduct a widescale search in rugged, harrowing terrain.
22-year-old Austin King summitted Eagle Peak on Sept. 17th. He left a note in the registry describing the blinding weather he endured to get there. King’s father shared a copy of the note with Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland.
“He talked about taking the wrong way, wrong way up, and having to cross multiple cliffs and the weather and poor visibility… with that and the voicemails that he he left, and he made a few phone calls from the summit, they realized that he got there like 6pm. He was disoriented, he was very cold, and he was already turned around. So that tells everyone, I think, okay, maybe the logical way down this mountain isn't where we should be searching… he said it was the thickest fog he had ever seen in his life.”
Superintendent Cam Sholly asked for another “extensive aerial search for Sunday, as well as the deployment of several ground teams to search more areas of the mountain that were under snow weeks ago.
Read the full story HERE.
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Wyoming Vietnam Veterans found the atmosphere and attitudes of people much different during a recent Rocky Mountain Honor Flight than their initial welcome home more than 50 years ago.
Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck spoke to the soldiers whose homecoming in the early 1970s was met with protesters and outright hostility. They said their recent Honor Flight experience was very emotional.
“One of them was telling me about when he arrived in Los Angeles from Vietnam, how they were parked away from the terminal and they were escorted in, but still, there were protesters there, spitting and yelling out, you know, all these things against the vets coming back. So the veterans I talked to were very appreciative of people at the airport in Denver and in Baltimore, where they landed, applauding, thanking them for their service.”
Veterans from both Colorado and Wyoming were flown from Denver to Baltimore on Thursday, Oct. 3rd. They visited the memorial walls and went to Arlington National Cemetery.
Read the full story HERE.
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Three times, early pioneers of Wyoming have been said to have seen an ancient ship of death, a fully crewed vessel that came like the mist down the Platte River.
Cowboy State Daily’s Jackie Dorothy has been intrigued by this story of a ghost ship for years. She researched the apparition, and found three separate accounts of a full-rigged sailing vessel under full sail, each time bringing a vision of death.
“It was the coolest thing to find out that there was these ships spotted on the flat River, of all things, and they're describing them as ancient shipping vessels… And as I explored this story, I found a Bermuda Triangle connection. And I mean, how cool is that? So you definitely need to read the story. It's fascinating. It was three sightings of this ship. Who knows when it'll show up again? If it ever does.”
Read the full story HERE.
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Two Ocean Creek, located high in the mountains along Two Ocean Pass, is one of Wyoming’s lesser-known geological wonders. The 3-mile-long creek is positioned so that its water will eventually flow into either the Atlantic or Pacific oceans.
Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that Two Ocean Creek is one of the most significant waterways in North America.
“In 1803 Thomas Jefferson tasked Lewis and Clark with finding a contiguous and then commercial water route that connects the different ends of the continent. They never did find that… two decades later, though, that water route was discovered. It was never going to be commercial, I mean, because it's too far removed and it's too small, but this is a contiguous water route that connects the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean.”
There is a “path” to Two Ocean Pass, but a round-trip hike requires a 40-mile trek along the Atlantic-Pacific Trail and an extra quarter-mile to reach the Parting of the Waters. None but the most intrepid hikers and riders will get to say they’ve seen the stream that feeds two oceans.
Read the full story HERE.
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Three horses — a mare, her foal and another mare that’s pregnant — are safe and sound for now at an animal rescue center east of Cheyenne.
But the center’s director told outdoors reporter Mark Heinz that she wonders if perhaps their previous owners were forced to put them up for sale because of the massive wildfires that burned through ranches and rangelands in northern Wyoming and southern Montana this summer.
“She's trying to find more information, maybe if she can get in touch with her previous owners and let their owners know that the horses are okay, because she has a feeling that, especially that not the fires that are going right on right now, but you remember the earlier ones that really ripped through all the range land. She says that could have displaced a lot of horses and a lot of people with the loss of the forage and hay, might have been able to just, might have been forced to just ditch their horses and take them to these sale yards.”
Hundreds of thousands of acres of Wyoming private and public ranchland has been scorched, scattering — and in some cases killing — livestock and other farm animals.
Read the full story HERE.
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Dale Warner was 14 when he took two handguns into Sage Valley Junior High School in Gillette, having voiced threats of shooting six students and three administrators. But even today, he can’t explain why he made those threats.
Cowboy State Daily’s Jen Kocher went to visit Warner at the Wyoming Honor Conservation Camp, a minimum-security prison about 3 miles outside Newcastle where Warner has spent the last two years. He told her he’s grateful to be incarcerated at the Newcastle facility, after spending 2 years in a maximum security facility in Virginia, because there are no prisons in Wyoming that could house juveniles.
“He, you know, six years later, couldn't explain why he did what he did, only that he was so sorry for scaring the people, and he talked. In depth about how he thinks about what they wake up with every day, and how that impacts them. He feels that he is deserving of the punishment he's serving now, and is just kind of optimistic for the opportunity one day to get out of prison and do good.”
According to the Wyoming Department of Corrections, Warner will be eligible for parole in October 2026.
Read the full story HERE.
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It’s almost winter time. And for drivers, that means thinking about switching out those summer tires for wheels that work well on snow-covered roads. But when do we do that? And do we even need to?
The answer, for those of us living in Wyoming, isn’t simple, according to automotive contributor Aaron Turpin.
“The issue with Wyoming is our state is very varied. So here in Cheyenne, snow tires can go on much later, a month or more, because we don't tend to see regular snowfall… versus the parts of the state that have that are more mountainous and have more weather patterns coming through… here in Cheyenne, all weather tires are probably fine. You'll have a couple of weeks out of the whole winter, where you probably cannot drive… Four Season tires have a little more winter to them than do all weather tires. So I would recommend those, that's what we have on our family car. Those will get you better traction more of the time, because winter driving isn't about how fast you can get there, it's how fast you can stop.”
Turpin recommends making sure that you have the right emergency supplies in your vehicle during the winter months, no matter what kinds of tires you’re driving on.
Read the full story HERE.
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And that’s today’s news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel! And don’t forget to drop in on the Cowboy State Daily morning show with Jake Nichols, Monday through Friday from 6 to 10 a.m.! Thanks for tuning in - I’m Wendy Corr, for Cowboy State Daily.
