It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming, for Friday, December 27th. I’m Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom.
--
Frustration is growing for Wyoming postal customers, who are seeing packages bounce around the map in what looks like a giant game of postal pingpong.
Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean spoke to postal customers who were anxiously awaiting packages, but tracking their mail on the postal service website was nearly head-spinning.
“A fellow from Pavillion ordered a package. It went out of Denver, back to Denver, out of Denver, then it went on a pretty circuitous route, you know, from Cheyenne to Casper to Baggs to Rawlins, back to Casper, out to Riverton and finally to Pavillion. The shipping label for that was made on November 30. He didn't get his package until December the ninth… There's another lady that sent me hers, and hers went from Denver to Cheyenne back to Grand Junction Colorado, back to Cheyenne, back to Grand Junction. So, I mean, it's really, it's like a ping pong ball.”
Cowboy State Daily has specifically requested an explanation on why packages are taking such circuitous routes to arrive at their destinations, but an answer had not been received by press time.
Read the full story HERE.
–
A high-speed Christmas Day joyride that covered more than 100 miles ended abruptly when the 16-year-old juvenile offender who allegedly stole his mother’s car while on furlough from jail crashed into a tree.
Cowboy State Daily’s Greg Johnson reports that the teen wasn’t hurt and was taken into custody Wednesday afternoon by a Wheatland Police Department officer, but not before attempts to elude multiple law enforcement agencies from Cheyenne to Wheatland.
“It seems letting a juvenile offender out on a furlough for the holidays didn't really pay off too well for officials in Cheyenne, because he got home and… allegedly, stole his mother's car and led police on a long along high speed chase over 100 miles up by 25 up past north of Wheatland, and then up onto some county roads and some other highways all around that Platte County area… he avoided some spike strips, but eventually they they got him cornered and he hit a tree. Was okay… But everyone involved… all said that it was very fortunate that it happened on a holiday… because there was so little traffic on the road that it lessened the danger to other people out on the road.”
What the teen was in the juvenile detention center for wasn’t available, nor are the charges he faces in relation to the alleged stolen car and pursuit.
Read the full story HERE.
–
A complete free-for-all is being declared on smaller lake trout and burbot in Flaming Gorge reservoir, exciting fishermen who have watched populations of the reservoir’s prized fish decline.
An infiltration of small lake trout has been a chronic problem, because they keep eating Flaming Gorge’s prized kokanee salmon. Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports that two fishing contests will take place in early 2025 aimed at pulling gobs of small lake trout and burbot out of Flaming Gorge.
“Flaming Gorge, is known as one of the very few destination places in the lower 48 where you can go fish for Kokanee Salmon… outside of Alaska, there's very few places where you can go to catch these fish… if a lake trout is 2028 inches or smaller, you can catch and keep as many as you want to, because they're not trying to completely wipe them out. They're just trying to get their numbers whittled way down… from what I've heard, both lake trout and burbot are really good eating fish. They both make really good table fare, smoked, baked, however you want them. So make room in your freezer and head to Flaming Gorge.”
Game and Fish estimates there are about 130,000 smaller lake trout on the Wyoming side of Flaming Gorge.
Read the full story HERE.
–
Is there anything more quintessentially Wyoming than a Christmas Eve cattle drive? The Laramie County Sheriff’s Department doesn’t think so, and was happy to help with one.
Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that when a local ranch needed to move 400 cattle, the Laramie County Sheriff’s Office led the herd and brought up the rear to ensure a safe and successful move.
“They got in their patrol cars, not their horses, although some of the deputies said, after the fact, they would have showed up in horses and they escorted the cattle to greener pastures. Literally, they needed more grass, so the Laramie County Sheriff's Office provided their deputies to help with this move, and that's quintessentially Wyoming a Christmas Eve cattle drive. And as everyone said, they not only appreciate the effort, but that's just, that's what we do in Wyoming.”
While the move to the winter pasture took about three hours total, only about an hour was on the road, he said, adding that how fast — or slow — the cows move is totally up to them.
Read the full story HERE.
–
Wyoming businesses are facing a deadline to fill out a tiny little form that could cause them a big headache if it’s not filed by Jan. 13.
The form is part of the 2021 Corporate Transparency Act, or CTA, a law aimed at thwarting money laundering by requiring small businesses to disclose their owners. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that Secretary of State Chuck Gray is urging the Wyoming Attorney General to step in and seek an injunction against the CTA in the Cowboy State, citing a need to protect Wyoming citizens and uphold its sovereignty.
“The Secretary of the Treasury has extended the deadline from January 1 to January 13, so there is a little time for businesses to find out about this and recover after the holidays. But I think a lot of people might have missed this because it happened while we were all kind of having a good time and drinking too much eggnog… Secretary of State Chuck Gray is calling on the Wyoming Attorney General to step in and seek an injunction.”
Advocates of the CTA have said the reports are needed to crack down on those using LLCs and corporate trusts to create a veil of corporate secrecy that hides financial misdeeds like tax fraud, money laundering, financing for terrorism, and other questionable activities.
Gray, however, has said the law is overly broad and is not the right way to tackle these problems.
Read the full story HERE.
–
In 2024, Idaho’s population surpassed 2 million for the first time. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the state's population increased by over 30,000 residents from the previous year.
This growth rate of 1.5% places Idaho as the seventh-fastest pace in the nation, continuing a long-running trend of population expansion that replaced dairy farms around the Boise suburb of Meridian with subdivisions. For Cowboy State Daily’s David Madison, who lived in Boise for several years, the changes have been coming on for years.
“It really does show that Idaho is where most folks are moving when they move to the inner Mountain West. They're just past 2 million. Montana is around 1.1 million, and Wyoming is around 600,000… I interviewed a food science professional who commutes out of Meridian all the way to Caldwell… he thought that was a sign of the times that with the coming newcomers from California, they've brought In and Out Burger with them, and the fact that he never goes there because it's so crowded is another indicator of how busy Idaho is becoming with new new arrivals, uh, moving in around Boise.”
Conversely, as the least populated state, Wyoming does not have an In-N-Out Burger, which is just one way the Cowboy State stands in stark contrast to neighboring Idaho and every other surrounding state. Wyoming's population has grown by just 4500 since 2014, when it stood at 583,159.
Read the full story HERE.
–
In the first two weeks of the winter season in Yellowstone National Park, two Xanterra snow coaches slipped off the same section of road near Mammoth Hot Springs this week.
Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that that section of road was particularly treacherous after several freeze-thaw cycles over the last week. While the National Park Service regularly grooms the Mammoth-Norris road to ensure it’s safe for over-snow travel, Yellowstone’s ever-changing landscape is tricky.
“The roads have to be groomed to maintain that level of vehicle traffic, and sometimes you just encounter ice where you don't expect it, and even while the snow coaches themselves are safe and they're checked regularly to ensure that their tires are inflated to the right pressure, those massive tires that they need to go over the snow, sometimes these things happen… and all the more reason why people can't take their personal vehicles into the park, because if this can happen to the professional vehicles, the well maintained ones that are specifically designed for this sort of thing, what's your Subaru going to do?”
Neither incident was severe enough to stop the regular flow of traffic between Mammoth and Old Faithful. Dozens of snow coaches drove through the same slick spot without incident, and drivers throughout the park were cautioned to drive slower and more cautiously in that area.
Read the full story HERE.
–
There’s nothing like a jackpot pushing past $1 billion to make people start feeling luck. That’s the frenzy the national Powerball and Mega Millions lotto games generate when their jackpots roll over the $1 billion threshold.
It’s happening now at convenience stores and truck stops across Wyoming as momentum builds toward Friday’s Mega Millions drawing with an estimated jackpot of $1.15 billion. Cowboy State Daily’s Greg Johnson spoke to store clerks around the state about the numbers of tickets being sold leading up to the big draw.
“Clerks at stores around Wyoming, from Rock Springs to Lusk to Cheyenne all told me that, yes, ticket sales have really picked up… They expect Friday, that it's really going to pick up, and there'll probably be lines as people try to be that lucky, one in 302 million who has a chance of winning… If you take the lump sum, the cash value of this one and $1.15 billion is 512 million… and then they take 24% on top of that. So it's only like 389 million is what you would get.”
And for those who say people in Wyoming are never lucky enough to win big money in the national lotto drawings, at least one person may disagree. In Tuesday's Mega Millions drawing, one person who bought a ticket in Wyoming was one of four $1 million winners, along with tickets sold in Missouri, California and Pennsylvania.
Read the full story HERE.
--
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! Thanks for tuning in - I’m Wendy Corr, for Cowboy State Daily.
