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<title>Governor Mark Gordon's State Of The Union | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Gov. Mark Gordon is addressing the Wyoming Legislature via Wyoming PBS

Governor Mark Gordon's State Of The Union

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

Renée Jean

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

Fifty years ago, the cameras rolled on “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” beneath the soaring columns of Devils Tower.

Locals are still talking about the summer when Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi vision transformed their corner of Wyoming into a cinematic landmark.

It all started in May 1976 after a quiet handshake between a young, then-unknown Spielberg and Crook County rancher Jesse Thomas Driskill. It would go on to completely reshape tourism in northeast Wyoming, though no one knew it at the time.

For the movie’s legions of fans, this anniversary will mark the making of a cult classic, which was released in 1977 by Columbia Pictures more than a year after filming its defining scenes of making first contact in Wyoming. 

For people who live and work in the shadow of Devils Tower, this 50th anniversary marks the moment just before everything changed.

Thanks to the film, Devils Tower went from a curious landmark as the nation’s first national monument to a bucket-list stop for movie lovers — and believers in extraterrestrial life — from around the world.

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

When Spielberg first showed up, though, the land around the monument’s boundary was just another hay meadow.

Since then, visitation has continued to grow. 

Devils Tower hosts upward of 100,000 visitors per month in the peak months of July and August. It has seen as many as 509,000 visitors in a single summer. 

The influx supports tens of millions in visitor spending in the surrounding communities, according to National Park Service and Wyoming Office of Tourism.

"'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' didn’t just film in Wyoming, it left a legacy behind," said Domenic Bravo, executive director of the Wyoming Office of Tourism. "Decades later, people still chase that feeling: the mystery, the landscape, the sense that something bigger exists around Devils Tower. That’s the power of cinema."

Crook County rancher Ogden Driskill, who is also a state senator, was a junior in high school at the time his family and Spielberg struck their bargain.

“They took the hay meadows at the entrance to Devils Tower and turned them into the decontamination base and the main base where the movie would be filmed,” Driskill told Cowboy State Daily. “And he swore us to secrecy at the time. 

"He was determined that the world didn’t know about Devils Tower, and he wanted to keep it that way until the film happened.”

The Driskill family agreed to keep the secret, though they were sure Spielberg was wrong about all that. Surely everyone already knew about Devils Tower.

When the film finally came out in 1977, though, Spielberg’s instincts proved to be right on the money; it was a box office smash hit,

The first sight of the tower in the movie was mind-blowing for audiences, many of whom couldn’t fathom that such an unusual geologic feature existed in America. They had to go see it for themselves.

“That basically doubled tourism visitors,” Driskill said. “The movie really elevated Devils Tower to the next level. We are truly a nationally known destination at this point.”

Dreyfuss Vs. John Wayne And Mashed Potatoes

While Driskill watched his family’s hayfield turn into both a “Decontamination Unit” and the film’s headquarters, Barbara Wilson-Sowerwine was watching Hollywood drift in and out of her parents’ country store a few miles down the road.

No one had any idea that the movie was going to be a blockbuster. 

Financial writer William Flanagan, in fact, predicted the movie would be a flop. Spielberg and George Lucas, meanwhile, decided to hedge their bets after visiting each other’s sets. 

Each was so convinced the other’s movie would do the best at the box office they pledged to share 2.5% of their movies' profits with each other.

Close Encounters star Richard Dreyfuss was just a nice guy, Wilson-Sowerwine recalled, at the time the biggest “non-star” star she’d ever met.

“Dreyfuss just liked hanging out,” she recalled.

That’s what he was doing one night when a group of regulars came in for their usual broasted chicken dinner at the little restaurant where Wilson-Sowerwine worked.

He was standing by the counter when talk turned to the movie that was being filmed nearby, prompting one rancher to snort and say, “Well, it’d be one thing if they had some real actors like John Wayne,” Wilson-Sowerwine recalled.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Dreyfuss didn’t miss the comedic beat. "}]

“He’s a character actor and he’s famous,” Wilson-Sowerwine said. “So I think he just thought it was funny. His reaction was like, ‘Well, I’m no John Wayne.’”

The funny story and the transformation of the hay meadow into a movie set, complete with a government “decontamination unit,” are the things Wilson-Sowerwine will never forget.

She’ll also never forget the mashed potatoes scene, when Roy Neary, played by Dreyfuss, uses a fork to shape his fluffy spuds into a miniature Devils Tower in front of his confused family.

Then he starts weeping and says one of the movie’s most classic lines.

“This means something,” he says, insistent despite their wild, wide-eyed looks. “This is important.”

Mashed potatoes have never been the same for her since, Wilson-Sowerwine said.

“I can’t look at a pile of mashed potatoes without wanting to make a tower,” she said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Campground Inspiration"}]

Back when Spielberg’s crew rolled into town, there wasn’t much of a campground at all. Not like there is today.

There was an A-frame, Wilson-Sowerwine said. And there was the small country restaurant and a scattering of other campsites.

The movie crew slapped a “Decontamination Camp” sign over the front of the A-frame right away, then built out from there until they had the full-blown ground zero for alien invasion that’s so familiar in the movie. 

It was amazing to see that come to life, Wilson-Sowerwine said.

Then, almost as quickly as they’d blown into Wyoming, the movie crew was gone, leaving behind a hayfield that was, to a farmer and rancher, a real mess.

Instead of simply reclaiming the hay field, the Driskills decided to use the cleanup money they’d been given to 

, an idea that came from Ogden's mother, Ellen.

It turned out to be an incredibly smart move, Driskill said. One that’s been helping to sustain the family’s ranch land ever since.

In fact, the film has helped sustain many businesses in the community.

“It was incredibly game-changing,” Driskill said. “At the time the movie was filmed, the A-frame down there had maybe a couple of people working at it. Devils Tower Trading Post had a postmaster and a couple of people. The business on top of the hill wasn’t there yet.”

That was the extent of Devils Tower tourism before Spielberg’s movie came out. After, as visitors started showing up to see the tower, the community realized they had just struck tourism gold.

“We all ganged up together and the state invested lots to promote Devils Tower,” Driskill said. “So now those businesses employ more than 100 people, and I don’t know what the tax revenue is, but it would scare you. The gross income off of all those businesses is in the double-digit millions at this point.”

Driskill is among the first to grouse about bumper-to-bumper traffic from July to early September, but he knows it’s been good for the area. It’s a better economic avenue, in his opinion, than seeing ranchland and wildlife habitat fragmented by random subdivisions.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Cowboys And Aliens"}]

Today, Devils Tower has become a pilgrimage for movie buffs who want to stand where Roy Neary’s mashed-potato vision finally made sense. 

Once they get there, they’re greeted with a blend of “Cowboys and Aliens” kitsch that’s popped up all over the Devils Tower area, including at the Driskills’ campground at the tower’s base.

“People ask about that all the time,” campground manager Andrea Wood told Cowboy State Daily. “And we tell them, ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ was filmed here, and that’s why we have aliens everywhere.”

This summer, there’s a mural going up on the pool house that fuses the theme of ranch hands and flying saucers. The swimming pool, meanwhile, is shaped like a cowboy boot, to honor the family’s cattle-trail roots.

Some new, life-size aluminum alien figurines have just been purchased for the golf course, which has nine holes devoted to the family’s ranching history, and nine for the campground’s Close Encounters story.

Driskill tracked the figurines down in Texas, buying up what he said will be that store’s last.

Tariffs and aluminum prices have made the statues much more expensive and harder to come by, so Driskill bought out the store’s remaining stock.

Heads turned all the way back home to Wyoming, Driskill said, and people tried to buy the aliens right off the trailer, but they were not for sale.

Wood said she is planning events to mark the 50th anniversary of the movie’s release next year, but will likely aim for September rather than the filming months of May, when the campground is already quite busy. 

She’s also more likely to target the release date of the movie, rather than its filming.

There will likely be souvenirs, to mark the occasion, including T-shirts, ball caps, stickers and more.

“I know part of what we’re going to do is the 3K race, the CE3K,” she said. That’s shorthand for Close Encounters of the Third Kind. “That will require people to have a costume related to the film, and every 1K they’ll have to stop and do a movie-related activity.”

As dusk settles in over the Driskill family’s KOA campground and the stars come out, the film that inspired the campground and changed tourism in northeastern Wyoming flickers to life again every summer night.

The Driskill family has been showing "Close Encounters" every night of the summer for the last 40 or so years, and has no plans to ever stop.

“It’s the longest-running movie in a single location ever,” Driskill said. “We still show it every night.”

It’s a tradition that brings people back year after year, Wood added.

Some nights, the audience is two and other nights 200.

“There are tons of groups dedicated to 'Close Encounters' with people from all over the world,” she said. “People come to stay with us because it’s the filming location — and because we show that film every night.”

Wood, who has watched the movie more times than she can count, never gets tired of it.

“It’s such an interesting film from a humanitarian standpoint,” she said. “If you really think about, what that story is telling us about humans and other-worldly beings, and what our connection to them may or may not be — it’s just such an interesting concept. 

"Spielberg was a genius in developing characters and plot lines that really make you think about things.”

Wood has been told by people inside Hollywood that Spielberg’s film still commands a lot of respect, not just for its emotional depth, but for the new ground covered by its cutting-edge special effects and soundstage work.

“When we went to California and listened to him talk about the movie, it was clear how much it shaped his career,” Driskill added.

Close Encounters came right after “Jaws,” when Spielberg needed to prove his success was no fluke, and right before “E.T. the Extra Terrestrial."

Driskill said he’d love to meet Spielberg again someday to tell him how much Close Encounters has meant to his family and to Wyoming.

It’s a story he and his family love to tell, about how a mysterious rock, a handshake deal, and a strange, little sci-fi movie quietly rewrote the destiny of an entire corner of the Cowboy State.

“On multiple levels, that film changed many things,” Wood said. “People come here from all over the world because of it.”

They come to sit under the stars and wonder as they watch Spielberg’s mothership rise up again in a film that’s stood the test of time, night after summer night.

Contact Renee Jean at renee@cowboystatedaily.com

Close encounters devils tower 5 31 26

<title>50 Years Later, Sci-Fi Fans Still Find Their ‘Close Encounters’ At Devils Tower | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Fifty years ago, the cameras rolled on “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” at Devils Tower after a handshake between a then-unknown Steven Spielberg and rancher Jesse Thomas Driskill. It would go on to completely reshape tourism in northeast Wyoming.

50 Years Later, Sci-Fi Fans Still Find Their ‘Close Encounters’ At Devils Tower

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.

Hundreds of people flocked to the event, eager to see the inside of a space everyone was familiar with, but few had seen in years. 

They paid $1 each for the thrill, Davis recalled. And the curiosity that unlocked would prove instrumental in building community support for saving it.

The spook fest helped show Davis the power of the community’s enthusiasm, but he quickly realized that $1 tickets weren’t going to do much in the grand scheme of saving a building that needed millions of dollars of work.

So the community came up with a concept they called the Renewal Ball, an annual June fundraiser that became a legend of its own. 

In its prime, it drew 300 people to an event that cleared upward of $100,000 in a single night. That funding became crucial local match money for grants. 

“Governors would come to it, and senators and representatives,” Davis said. “And that’s how we built consensus to put money into that project.”

Keeping The Beating Heart Of A Railroad Town Alive

Progress has come in phases, Davis said. First, a common roof to stop water damage, and then windows to finish weatherproofing.

Then the machine shop, roughly 20,000 square feet of space, that was turned into something Evanston didn’t have yet — a convention center, complete with radiant floor heating and towering windows. 

With sun pouring through the glass and warmth radiating from beneath the floor, it feelslike an atrium and an oasis from winter, Davis said.

Conferences, weddings, funerals, statewide gatherings (like for the Lincoln Highway Association) began filling up its calendar. 

Every meeting brought more supporters and more ammunition to use in persuading skeptics that the building was worth saving.

Today the roundhouse hosts dozens of events every year, ranging from weddings to statewide meetings and conferences.

By the time Davis retired from city service in 2014, investments into the roundhouse restoration was around $28 million by his estimate, with roughly 40% from grants and private fundraising. 

Davis, who was this year’s winner of the Mary Humstone Lifetime Achievement Award from the Alliance for Historic Wyoming, continues to bring people to the roundhouse for the very first time. 

He said it never gets old watching their shock and awe when they first enter this building, which once housed the Goliath engines of America’s railroad era.

Today, the semicircle of stalls still curve around the turntable. The machine shop is still warm like a sunroom in winter. And events now spill out into big, open spaces between restored doors and brick walls decorated with photos that tell the history of the space. 

The fight for continued investment and thoughtful use of this unique space will never be over, Davis said. Future challenges remain — including questions about long-term funding and community support. 

But for now, Evanston is home to one of roughly a dozen fully intact roundhouses left in the nation. 

That means it’s not just the beating heart of a railroad town’s story. It’s among the last intact reminders of how the great American West was built.

Evanston Roundhouse Visit Evanston 5 31 26

<title>Evanston Has Spent Decades, And $28M, Restoring Its Historic Railroad Roundhouse | Cowboy State Daily</title>

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. 

Evanston Has Spent Decades, And $28M, Restoring Its Historic Railroad Roundhouse

Zakary Sonntag

Rusty Rawson was good at asking for trouble. He wasn’t good at asking for help. That started to change one night in a desert wash on the outskirts of Las Vegas.

He was out of work, hooked on meth, and surviving by the reflexes of a gang life he thought he’d left behind.

He slept in a makeshift fort of rods and tarp. He boiled water for hygiene over an open flame and washed his clothes in a splash pad at the public park. 

To sustain his addiction, he beat up pedestrians and robbed them for cash.

Through it all, he wasn’t alone. His 11-year-old son, Sterling, was there with him.

Rusty knew if they were caught by police the state would take his son. It was the outcome he feared most, and it began to feel inevitable. Then one night a thought dropped into his head.

in our little hut we built in the desert, and out of nowhere I heard something tell me, 'Ask your son what to do. He’s got the answer,'” Rusty said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘Go Back To Casper'"}]

It wasn’t in his nature to take direction, but the thought wouldn’t go away. 

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. The answer brought them back to Casper and toward a life that seemed out of reach.

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