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Michael P. Ramirez

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

<title>Daily Cartoon: Wednesday, December 25, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Daily Cartoon: Wednesday, December 25, 2024

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

Clair McFarland

Politics

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"GREEN RIVER--Yes, Libertarians organize. "}]

They did so Sunday, in a state party convention at the Eagles hall in Green River. The demeanor was relaxed, the attendees were few. 

But the indie-brand IPAs sat untouched and the punch-up jokes fell silent when Shawn Johnson, who sought and later unanimously won the party’s nomination for U.S. House, delivered a speech that left attendees electrified. 

“The Democrats promise to manage your own life for you and your own good. The Republicans promise smaller government, and when they have the power, they grow it,” said Johnson. “The American people are left with the bill, the debt. With fewer choices, fewer freedoms, less trust in the system.” 

He cast this moment as historic, as a moment in which faith in the two-party system is crumbling, leaving only frustration for the “political establishment,” but opportunity for a revival of the Founding Fathers’ policy ethics. 

“We’re told that freedom is dangerous, speech must be dangerous, and privacy is outdated. We’re told economic choices belong to the bureaucrats and corporations,” Johnson said. “We’re told our rights are conditional. They’re rights to be restricted, granted, rationed - and suspended whenever the power decides they need to be suspended.

“But rights do not come from politicians or government agencies. They don’t come from the president. They belong to the individual,” he said. “They’re rights from being, inherently, human. And it’s the duty of the government to protect them, not to ration them.” 

Johnson urged Americans to heed what he called modern warning signs of encroaching fascism and authoritarianism: a growing demand for censorship, expanding surveillance, and “political leaders who increasingly view dissent as a threat” instead of a cornerstone of this nation’s system of governance. 

“We see government agencies exercising powers never imagined by our founding fathers,” Johnson said. “Authoritarianism does not announce itself. It arrives piece by piece: one emergency at a time. One exception at a time. One expansion of power at a time.”

Authoritarianism grows, Johnson continued, when people are told to trade their “liberty for security, freedom for convenience, and individual rights for political promises.”

Johnson cast the American governmental power as centralizing in an unprecedented volume. He said it falls to each generation to decide whether to tolerate that. 

And he launched a stark policy stance of his own. 

“The answer is not a stronger ruler. It’s not a more powerful bureaucracy. It’s not putting people in charge of the machinery,” said Johnson. “The answer is dismantling that machinery. Because the problem isn’t necessarily who holds the power. The problem is how much power exists to be held.” 

Johnson isn’t messing around, he indicated. 

While the Libertarian Party hasn’t been a major party in Wyoming since 2014-2015, it’s maintained a quiet influence. 

Former state Rep. Marshall Burt, L-Green River, held a seat in the House for one term from 2021-22. 

Riverton-based Libertarian candidate Bethany Baldes has run two close races for House District 55. She lost to two different Republican opponents, by a mere 53 votes in 2018 and 32 votes in 2020. 

Johnson told the convention delegates it’s time to get serious. 

While the Wyoming Legislature is around 93% Republican, multiple members have evident Libertarian streaks - such as Sens. Bob Ide (Casper), Evie Brennan (Cheyenne) and Cale Case (Lander), and Rep. Daniel Singh (Cheyenne). 

Democratic legislators in Wyoming often break Libertarian on issues as well - as a means to stave off Republican social policy overtures. 

“Now is not the time for the Libertarian Party to think small,” he said. “We’re often seen as a protest vote. Someone who can throw a wrench in the system. I think it’s the time to win.” 

He said Wyoming’s rugged, courageous, hardworking, independent cultural temperament makes the state the perfect planting ground for a liberty revival. 

“Wyoming doesn’t wait for Washington (DC) to get permission. We didn’t build our destiny on government programs. We built it on grit. On courage. On self-reliance,” he said. “And the people who settled this land did not ask bureaucrats how to live. They weathered blizzards, droughts, isolation and uncertainty.”

He added: “They endured. Because they believed in something more powerful than just comfort. They believed in freedom - and that spirit still lives here.” 

On Nov. 3 Johnson will face Lisa Kinney or Elena Del Reel - whichever wins the Democratic nomination in the U.S. House race, as well as whoever wins the 10-way contest for the Republican nomination. 

The GOP contenders are state Senate President Bo Biteman, Teton County philanthropist Steve Friess, former Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow, Secretary of State Chuck Gray, Casper-based veteran Kevin Christensen, David Giralt, Casper businessman Reid Rasner, former legislator Keith Goodenough, Moran rancher Frank Chapman, and Richard Dodson. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Who Is Johnson?"}]

Johnson, formerly of Casper and now of Thermopolis was an Army combat medic for 21 years and was deployed to Iraq in 2003-2004. He served as a Natrona County Sheriff’s jail deputy for 13 years, and a Casper city councilman for two terms including one year as vice-mayor in 2019.

Then he went to law school and earned his J.D. He’s been a practicing attorney in Wyoming in the areas of family law and criminal defense for two years. 

He ran for state House in 2020 and for Natrona County Commission in 2022. 

On Sunday, no one challenged Johnson for the party nomination, but the vote system offered a vote for “no one” as an option. Meaning, the delegates could have chosen not to have a nominee rather than nominate Johnson. 

“We’ve got a legitimate candidate this time,” Richard Brubaker, a major-office Libertarian candidate of numerous past election cycles, told Cowboy State Daily after the meeting.

Brubaker told the convention he’s not running for office this year. His ballot presence has in the past kept the party above the required vote minimum for minor party status. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Other Votes"}]

The convention delegates also nominated three state House candidates to run under the Libertarian Party banner. Those are: 

Ryan Shollenberger for Cheyenne-based House District 11, which incumbent Republican Rep. Jacob Wasserburger is vacating in January;

Carrie Satterwhite for Cody-based House District 50 - which incumbent Republican Rep. Rachel Rodriguez-Williams is leaving to run for Secretary of State;

and Joe Porambo for Midwest-area House District 58 - currently held by the Republican Rep. Bill Allemand. 

While the highly decisive Republican and Democratic primary election falls on Aug. 18, the general election - where the Libertarians can test their electoral favor - is set for Nov. 3. 

The party also elected Shollenberger to its executive board, and the board in turn reelected prior chair Zachary Padilla to serve as chair once again. 

Rather than adjourn, the party recessed at the end of Sunday’s convention. The convention will reconvene for its second half June 17 at 6 p.m.

Until then, the Libertarian Party has an open call for its convention delegates to nominate political candidates to run on its ticket. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Statehouse"}]

Shollenberger has a very busy campaign season ahead. 

He’s slated to face whoever wins the two-way GOP primary race between Dan McIntosh and Paul Wing, along with Democratic contender Britney Tennant. 

He told the convention he’s a longtime Libertarian originally from South Florida. He joined the Air Force in 2009, spent 12 years as an active-duty weather forecaster, traveled the world and was deployed twice: to Afghanistan and Colombia. 

He joined the Air Force Reserve for one year about five years ago, then joined the Wyoming National Guard, where he serves in Lander as a field artillery officer. 

He is a substitute teacher in the Cheyenne-based Laramie County School District No. 1, and he became a wildland firefighter as of last year. 

He promised, if elected, to uphold individual rights, pursue school choice-friendly policies, protect and expand the free market, seek health care freedom, reduce unnecessary regulation and put “trust back into the hands of the people.”

Porambo also delivered a speech, via virtual link.

He ran without success for House District 58 in 2016 and 2020 against then-Rep. Pat Sweeney, R-Casper.

Allemand holds that seat now, and has a primary challenger in Bar Nunn Mayor Peter Boyer.

Porambo criticized both of them, casting Allemand as a bully and Boyer as tone deaf to the people. 

Porambo also derided the Legislature’s repeated increases in government spending. The Legislature increased spending yet again this year, he noted. 

Shawn johnson 5 31 26

<title>Libertarians Nominate Combat Medic, Attorney Shawn Johnson To Run For U.S. House | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Shawn Johnson won the Libertarian Party’s nomination for Wyoming’s U.S. House seat Sunday, after giving a speech that electrified attendees. "We’ve got a legitimate candidate this time,” said longtime leader of the Libertarian Party Richard Brubaker.

Libertarians Nominate Combat Medic, Attorney Shawn Johnson To Run For U.S. House

Employee kate meadows cropped

Kate Meadows

Wyoming Life

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.

[{"type":"text","text":"Meanwhile, the subdivision remains largely frozen in time."}]

A chain link fences surrounds the sink hole. The concrete is cracked and pale with weeds growing up in the cracks. Uncut grass is brown and long.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Why Wyoming Is Different"}]

The Hideaway Hills disaster highlights a major difference between South Dakota and Wyoming when it comes to abandoned mine reclamation.

Wyoming participates in the federal Abandoned Mine Land program, an initiative designed to protect public health, safety and the environment by identifying, reclaiming and restoring lands and waters degraded by historic mining practices.

The program is funded by fees collected from every kind of coal that is produced, according to Keith Guille, outreach manager for the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality. 

Wyoming, a coal-producing state, maintains a state-administered Abandoned Mine Land program through its Department of Environmental Quality.  

Because South Dakota is not a coal-producing state, it does not administer such a program, according to the South Dakota Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

Guille said Wyoming’s abandoned mine reclamation work is funded through fees collected from current coal production.

“Obviously it’s about public health and safety,” Guille said. “That’s why we do abandoned mines.”

Wyoming’s AML division routinely performs underground reclamation work by grouting abandoned mine tunnels with concrete slurry to stabilize the ground above them.

Some of those abandoned mines lie hundreds of feet beneath existing communities, Guille said.

Rock Springs is one example where underground mine reclamation has continued for years. Similar abandoned mine concerns also exist beneath parts of Gillette and the Hanna area, Guille said.

Because abandoned mines predate 1977, before modern mining regulations existed, maps are often incomplete or inaccurate, making underground reclamation especially difficult.

“It’s a moving target when you talk about underground abandoned mines,” Guille said. “It’s a long work in progress.”

Wyoming residents also have access to the Wyoming Mine Subsidence Insurance Program, which allows homeowners to purchase insurance coverage against ground collapse caused by abandoned underground mines.

South Dakota has no comparable state-administered abandoned mine land program because the federal AML system is funded through coal production fees, and South Dakota is not a coal-producing state.

For Hideaway Hills residents, that distinction has become painfully clear.

Six years after the sinkhole opened, many are still waiting to learn whether anyone will ultimately be held responsible for the ground beneath their homes giving way.

Sinkhole 4 5 31 26

<title>Six Years Later, Black Hills Sinkhole Victims Still Waiting For Relief | Cowboy State Daily</title>

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.

Six Years Later, Black Hills Sinkhole Victims Still Waiting For Relief

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

Renée Jean

Around Wyoming

EVANSTON — One of the first times Jim Davis walked into the city’s historic Roundhouse and Railyards decades ago, it was like a scene from a movie. 

There was the crumbling railroad roundhouse, with its broken windows and pigeon feathers floating on the air, spinning as his footsteps stirred little puffs of dirt.

The rusted tracks disappeared into darkness. The roof was leaking, and the smell of that decay was everywhere. 

But there were rays of sunlight shining down into that darkness, and he had the sudden sense that all was not lost here. 

This was something special, something worth saving. 

Saving Evanston’s roundhouse has taken $28 million in private money and grants, as well as decades of volunteer time and effort, Davis said. 

But that’s given Evanston something few communities in America have — a completely functioning, fully intact roundhouse that he believes could be a tourism powerhouse, if Evanston ever decides to lean into promoting it. 

Everyone he has ever taken to see the building, without fail, has the same reaction, Davis told Cowboy State Daily. 

“Every single time I open the doors and walk into the roundhouse …. the first words out of their mouth are, ‘Oh my God,’” Davis said. “Their reaction was it was so phenomenal to see that space the way we were able to fix it up.”

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

The walls are lined with huge banks of wood-framed windows to provide natural light. It has a two-level terraced roof, and the face of the terrace is covered with windows to provide additional natural light. 

Davis likes to go up to the mezzanine level, where there’s a small kitchen area and space for parties.

“It’s just a beautiful space,” he said. “And I really enjoy taking people up there. It’s really well-thought of and the architects were so good to work with.”

Keeping it a roundhouse, Davis believes, is key to its intrigue. 

To think that inside that cavernous, multistory space lit by sunlight still that huge train cars were driven inside on tracks and then rotated by the gigantic round wheel inside to one of 28 stalls is awe-inspiring. 

All the historical photos, meanwhile, help tell a timeless legend of how America was built.

A Roundhouse Corridor That Built Southern Wyoming

Once upon a time, there were dozens of roundhouses like Evanston’s in towns across Wyoming and the West, Davis said. 

They were positioned all along the tracks, about every 100 miles. That’s about how long trains could go in the beginning without having to stop to refuel and repair. 

Over time, they became more and more efficient and roundhouses began to close. Evanston’s was slated for closure in 1926, putting at least 100 people out of work.

“We were the first roundhouse in the state to close,” Davis said. “Engines had become more efficient and they could run from Green River to Ogden without stopping in Evanston.”

It seemed unfortunate at the time, but it set off a series of events that would ultimately help save the facility.

“The city leaders thought we need those jobs now,” Davis said. “So they got on a train to Omaha, which is the headquarters, and begged them to keep the buildings open.”

Union Pacific ultimately did listen, and reopened the roundhouse and rail yard the following year as a reclamation plant, which added 200 jobs to the former 100, making for a total of 300.

“That saved those buildings,” Davis said. “They fixed all kinds of equipment for Union Pacific.”

Other roundhouses in Wyoming shut down: Laramie, Rock Springs, Rawlins, and even Cheyenne.

But Evanston’s, as a reclamation facility, kept going until 1971, after which Union Tank leased the facility from Union Pacific, and then Union Pacific quit-claimed the 21-acre property — depot, roundhouse, machine shop, yard, and related buildings — to Evanston in 1973.

For decades after that, almost nothing was done to maintain it. 

Windows broke and stayed that way. Boards were put up to block most of the rain, but roofs leaked and kept on leaking. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"First Came The Depot"}]

Saving the roundhouse from decades of neglect wasn’t a straightforward process.

What came first was actually saving an entirely different structure, the depot.

Davis had been hired as executive director of Evanston’s Urban Renewal Agency in 1987, charged with revitalizing the town’s central business district. That included not just Evanston’s great historic downtown, but Depot Square as well.

The space, he found, was structurally sound, even if plaster was falling off the walls and years of neglect were etched upon all of its dust-covered surfaces.

What to do about it, how to preserve it, weren’t part of his expertise.

“I had a business degree in general business administration from Arizona State,” Davis said with a chuckle. “I worked in the corporate world until 1984 when I came back to Evanston.”

A chance encounter helped him with that problem. Soon after joining a national economic development board, he found himself standing in the lunch line beside an architect whose family was from Evanston.

The friendship was instant. Better still, Davis’ new friend knew exactly how to proceed with preserving the depot: assuming Davis could overcome his two biggest hurdles — community buy-in and money.

“There were a lot of naysayers,” Davis said.

Not too far in, though, Evanston was gripped by an oil and gas boom that brought big corporate players to town like Amoco and Chevron.

A planner was hired to help the city, who put together a plan for downtown.

“It wasn’t real specific,” Davis said. “But there was one paragraph, about three sentences long, about how the roundhouse could be a key element in diversifying and revitalizing our downtown.”

There was a vision, Davis realized, that could win people over, starting with the Depot.

Fixing the Depot took years, Davis said, but when it was finished, he’d built a core group of people who believed in historic preservation in Evanston. 

“That gave us the springboard to do the roundhouse,” Davis said. “When we finished the depot, we said, ‘Let’s look at the historic value of all those buildings.' And a citizen’s group was formed that wanted to save them because they saw the historic value, the uniqueness of them. 

"There aren’t many roundhouses left in the country, and, in Wyoming, Evanston had the only one still standing. Cheyenne has one section of a roundhouse, but Evanston has the full semicircle, still standing the way it was built in 1912.”

Megan Stanfill, executive director of the Alliance for Historic Wyoming, confirmed the rarity. 

Of roughly 3,000 roundhouses built in America, only 200 survive. Of those, perhaps a dozen are fully intact like the one in Evanston. 

That makes Evanston’s roundhouse a significant piece of history on a national scale.

“It’s one of the most intact roundhouses along the Union Pacific railroad,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “This one still has the working mechanisms in it as well, so it’s a very intact, contextual example of a roundhouse in Wyoming.”

Davis and the citizen’s group decided to start by defining the complex not just as a cluster of old buildings, but as the physical heart of a much larger American story. 

Davis secured a Brownfields Grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to test for contaminants and ensure the project wasn’t a hopeless Superfund site. 

That found asbestos and lead, tough and expensive to remediate, but not impossible.

Around the same time, they landed a grant to re-roof the machine shop.

“That was the first major maintenance that had been done there for years,” Davis said. “That was probably in 1998.”

One year later, Union Tank decided to leave the dilapidated roundhouse to build a new, better site. 

Now the question wasn’t just if Evanston’s Roundhouse and Railyards could be saved, it was how anyone could possibly afford to do it.

Fortunately, Davis was about to meet another person who would become instrumental to the story of saving the roundhouse.

“I had heard of this organization called the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Denver,” Davis said. “And so Bonnie and I went to Denver every six months to market our retail gift store.”

In 1999, after Union Tank had left the roundhouse, Davis made an appointment to talk to someone there about options for saving the roundhouse. 

“I met this lady by the name of Mary Humstone,” Davis said. “And so I told her what we were trying to do. They didn’t have money to do it, but they knew how to do historic preservation.”

Humstone recognized how unique the story in southwestern Wyoming was to American history.

“Our populations in southern Wyoming all came to be due to the railroad,” Davis said. “Because the railroad came through in 1868, and lo and behold, every 100 miles, they needed a roundhouse.”

Wyoming towns grew up around these roundhouses, creating a line of cities that still exist today, from Evanston in the West, to Cheyenne in the East, with Green River, Rock Springs, Rawlins, and Laramie in between.

In all of those communities, the same magic happened. Engines would pull in, turn on great circular turntables for maintenance, then head back out onto the High Plains.

Working with Humstone and others, Davis held forums in Evanston for all of the communities along southern Wyoming’s railroad corridor, bringing representatives from all the roundhouse communities together. 

Out of that meeting, a new organization was formed called Tracks Across Wyoming, devoted to highlighting the state’s shared heritage of railroads, migration routes, and early highways across the state. 

That made the roundhouse more than just a local project. It was the flagship in a statewide vision.

In the midst of that, Davis was tapped by then Gov. Dave Freudenthal to join the Wyoming Business Council (WBC). At the same time, Evanston’s roundhouse made the list for a $3 million grant to tackle restoring Section One of the roundhouse — a portion that today hosts citywide meetings, conventions, and celebrations. 

The WBC grant joined a growing list of support that was pouring in to saving the roundhouse: federal grants, state money, and countless local donations, all braided together by relentless advocacy and careful planning.

More important than just money, though, was getting community buy-in, Davis realized, a point that was driven home by a Halloween spook house put on to raise a little money for the project.

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

Daily Cartoon: Wednesday, December 25, 2024

Michael P. Ramirez

Cartoonist

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Daily Cartoon: Wednesday, December 25, 2024

Authors

Michael P. Ramirez

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