You Still Here

[{"type":"text","text":"A day in the life of boomers when they were young....."}]

Bonus vid 2 1 19 25

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

<title>Bonus Video 2: Sunday, January 19, 2025 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A day in the life of boomers when they were young.....

Bonus Video 2: Sunday, January 19, 2025

 A day in the life of boomers when they were young.....

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

Renée Jean

Wyoming Life

Note: Gold Rush Days was held on July 11 - 12, 2026

On a hot July afternoon, the boom of an anvil blast rolls through South Pass City like distant thunder. The windows rattle, the chests shake, and a nervous border collie scrambles for cover under the knees of a kind stranger from Ireland, who has stumbled on this scene completely by accident.

Tom Murphy was just looking for a cooler spot in Wyoming to be than the 103 degrees forecast elsewhere. 

South Pass won at 87 degrees, and soon it had won his heart as well. He was loving what he saw. A place where history does not sit quietly behind glass. It explodes, it snorts, and it clanks, too. 

Sometimes, it even bolts — which almost happened when one gentleman’s hat blew under Randy Melton’s period-correct stagecoach, which was being pulled by four jet-black mules.

“Whoa up!” Melton said firmly, pulling back on the reins, urging the mules to stand still so the hat could be retrieved untrammeled. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"The mules weren’t having it, though. "}]

The owner of the wayward hat had to wait for the stagecoach to leave the area before he could retrieve his hat.

Fortunately, it was only slightly battered and dusty for the escapade. It was back in place before the clatter of mule hooves on hardpan had quite faded away. 

The people on the streets returned to their chatter, and Murphy marveled at the full-on sensory experience that chance had lured him to. He’d had no idea when he set out that he was about to visit one of the West’s best-preserved Gold Rush towns. 

A young woman named Elizabeth Isenhart was soon floating across the dusty street toward Murphy and the stagecoach area, wearing a satiny green ballgown and hoop skirt that rippled in the breeze. 

It was as if she’d stepped from a daguerreotype into the 21st century right before his eyes.

History was alive on the streets of South Pass City, a place of gold dust and dreams — though never enough gold to satisfy all those fevered dreams. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"History That You Can See And Touch"}]

Isenhart more typically avoids standing out, but South Pass City’s Gold Rush Days is an exception to the rule. It’s the one day of the year where she takes out her cloak of history and time travels to another era.

In a crowd full of cavalry uniforms and calico, her satiny mint green ball gown made her an instant celebrity.

Children asked if she was a princess. Strangers complimented her dress and asked for selfies. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Isenhart, normally shy, eagerly complied."}]

The dress was a graduation gift from her mother to a high schooler obsessed with history. 

“I have always wanted an old-fashioned, hoop skirt — poofy dress,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “So that was her graduation present to me, making me one of those.”

Isenhart learned to love history in South Pass City as a fourth-grade girl. The first time her mother brought her, there was gold-panning by the riverside.

“She didn’t want to stop doing that,” her mother recalled with a chuckle. 

But there was so much more to do and see in South Pass City. 

“They had all this stuff going on,” she said. “Everyone’s dressed up. There were demonstrations.”

And there were exhibits, lots of exhibits, which started an endless stream of questions for her mother to answer.

“I’d be like, ‘Mom, why is this? Why is that?’ And she just explained to me how things were different back then.”

Teeny, tiny beds, for example, that two people would share. And stoves that sat so low to the floor, they were barely up to her waist. 

“It’s different than history class,” she said. “It’s being there, looking at it, and then having her say, ‘Yeah, this is how it all works. This is how it was.’”

In South Pass City, the “old days” aren’t some phrase in a textbook. They’re something Isenhart and other children like her could see and smell and touch.

She has loved history ever since, and South Pass City in particular.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"South Pass And The Story Of Our Nation"}]

People were coming to the South Pass region long before gold was discovered because it was a major western migration route.

“This is the convergence of the Rocky Mountains, the Continental Divide,” North Platte Bridge Company Commander Nick Salicky told Cowboy State Daily. “This is the one place where you can cross through without going over the mountains.”

Salicky brought a company of 24 reenactors to South Pass for Gold Rush Days, to help escort supply wagons and civilians, as well as help chase would-be robbers out of town — all roles that the military would have played when South Pass City was young.

Long before the cannon booms and stagecoaches of Gold Rush Days, thousands of emigrants crossed this same ground on the Oregon, Mormon and California trails. They were chasing dreams and hoping for fortune in a new land as they passed through its wide gentle gap — never realizing a literal fortune in gold lay under their feet.

When that gold was finally discovered, it may have been little more than a flash in the pan, but it still helped spur the new territory’s economy. It was also part of what helped bring people to Wyoming, to eventually create a state. 

“This is our story as a nation,” Salicky said. “You can’t put a price tag on this land. You can’t put a price tag on the stories of the people, these visitors walking around, learning how to do things the traditional way. 

“In a world where everything’s for sale, you’ve gotta have a place where that’s not the case. And historical places like this are significant for that right there.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Almost Wyoming’s Capital City"}]

South Pass City popped up nearly overnight in the summer of 1867, after a group of prospectors out of Fort Bridger located a massive, rich vein of gold-bearing quartz along the Willow Creek — not far from where visitors pan for gold today. They called it the Cariso lode, though early records spelled it different ways — Carisso or Carissa. Some say it was named for a miner’s sweetheart, but no one knows for sure now.

The air here might have been thin, the winters brutal, and food scarce. And the risk of conflict with Shoshone and Arapaho people was real. But nothing was going to stop thousands of men and women from surging into the area. By 1868, South Pass City stretched for a mile, with more than 300 buildings and nearly 3,000 people. 

It was barely contained chaos. Hotels, boarding houses, and saloons crowded together along the same kinds of dusty streets visitors walk today, and a simple pound of flour might cost more than a single day’s wages.

Just imagine the celebrations in this town, once considered for territorial capital, each time a rich pocket of gold was found. The overflow of cash and celebration washed through every South Pass saloon.

People had placed a bet on their future in South Pass City, and every gold strike seemed to prove them right. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"But the glory days wouldn’t last long."}]

By the early 1870s, deeper workings at the Carissa had hit hard rock, groundwater, and more chemically complex ore. 

Veins pinched out, capital grew skittish, and people began to drift away to other opportunities. 

By 1884, South Pass had lost its status as the county’s seat to Lander and fell into what some locals have called a “long sleep” — a slow fade from gold capital to near ghost town.

A few families stayed, scratching out a living on small placer claims or on nearby ranches. Others, like the Sherlock family, became the town’s quiet stewards, running a hotel, store, and post office for decades.

They were protective of South Pass and its old buildings. They’re why so many of them survived as long as they did.

But South Pass was slowly but surely coming apart. By the time Wyoming bought the core of the town in 1966 as a 75th anniversary present for the state’s citizens, its buildings were “leaning with the wind,” as South Pass City piano man John Mionczynski puts it. 

Instead of building a Wild West theme park, preservationists opted for authenticity as they preserved and restored the town. 

Wallpaper in the Sherlock Hotel was recreated from surviving fragments, for example. The blacksmith shop was restocked with tools that matched old photographs.

Today, the 1890s Dance Hall serves as an information center with introductory videos and exhibits, but it still looks just like the log community hall it once was. 

The Smith-Sherlock Co. Store, built in 1896 of logs salvaged from the 1870 Episcopal Church again functions as a general store, with a tiny post office tucked inside. 

Across the street from it, the South Pass Hotel and Restaurant, opened in 1868 and later run by the widowed mother of five, Janet Sherlock, shows what frontier hospitality at 8,000 feet looked like.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Lessons Of The Past For The Future"}]

All of that could make South pass feel like a static museum. But events like Gold Rush Days makes sure that the history lives.

Back behind the saloon, where Mionczynski is playing tune after 1800s tune, cannon man Tom Broadbent is loading black powder into a 5/8-scale Civil War-era gun he built himself. 

Throughout the day, he brings in re-enactors and other volunteers to fire off a round, teaching them how a crew of five would have done it in days gone by, so that they could fire three rounds every minute.

After that, the cannon had to rest, otherwise it gets too hot to load with more black powder. 

“The boom,” Broadbent says, is what he loves most. “When you get that percussion, it just goes and hits your body. It never gets old. Never gets old.”

Down by Willow Creek, it is standing room only in the creek as old-timers teach the art of gold panning. On the hill above them, canvas tents belonging to Salicky’s North Platte Bridge Company ripple in the wind — Sibley tents, A-frames, cavalry lines and cook flies, where they have spent the night as if they are truly the cavalry of old.

Most of the 24 reenactors are teenagers, who are sleeping shoulder-to-shoulder on bedrolls, eating chicken noodle soup with biscuits, and enjoying the time of their lives, drilling with each other, running children’s games of old, and helping stage Pony Express rides and robberies.

The youths had to research every stitch on their clothing and every tool they have with them, to ensure authenticity in every aspect.

“History, especially in our generation is starting to go away,” Libby Salicky told Cowboy State Daily. She and her friends, Emi and Helen, and her younger sister Lily glide from camp to saloon in their long skirts, playing frontier school teachers, dying theatrically in staged robberies, and singing old-fashioned songs in the saloon.

And then there are wild cards like Elizabeth, who arrived in a green dress to walk the streets of South Pass City with all the bearing of an 1800s princess.

For many visitors that day, she was the moment everything clicked. She was their bridge between past, present, and a future selfie they would always remember. 

She walked a street where Esther Hobart Morris, Wyoming’s first judge, once walked alongside other characters of the 1870s gold rush like Jane Sherlock, Calamity Jane, William H. Bright, and more.

“Once a year I get to wear my hoop skirt,” she said with a giggle. “Gold Rush Days is the day to go and visit. It’s like the best.”

As the day drifts by, another cannon blast rolls across the city, echoing off the hills and through the wooden buildings.

People in the stream stand shoulder to shoulder, swirling sediment and hope together in a quest for gold that’s as old as the city itself. 

Sometimes, it’s hard to tell just where the past ends and the present begins at South Pass City. Look the right way and it might actually be 1870 once again.

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<title>Gold Dust, Hoop Skirts And Cannon Booms: Gold Rush Days In South Pass City, Wyoming | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Once a roaring gold capital, South Pass City, Wyoming, comes to life for one summer weekend every year for Gold Rush Days. There's cannon fire, gold panning, and guests who look the part in one of the West’s best-preserved Gold Rush towns. 

Gold Dust, Hoop Skirts And Cannon Booms: Gold Rush Days In South Pass City, Wyoming

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Outdoors

Hunting

An outbreak of canine distemper and other setbacks has left northwest Wyoming’s wolf population at a 20-year low, so the quota for the upcoming wolf hunting seasons is less than half of last year’s.

As of Jan. 1, there were 132 wolves in the wolf management area in northwest Wyoming, state Game and Fish Department biologist Ken Mills told the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission, during the commission’s meeting Tuesday in Sheridan.

The Game and Fish Department’s objective is for 160 wolves in that area, said Mills, a large carnivore biologist and wolf management specialist.

The department recommended setting the wolf mortality quota for the 2026 hunting season at 20, less than half of the 2025 44-wolf quota.

The mortality quota designates the number of wolves that can die, by any cause, before the hunt is shut down. 

If the mortality quota is met before the end date of the hunting season in that area, the hunting season is still shut down, regardless of how many hunters are left holding unfilled tags.

Hunters killed 31 wolves in 2025, falling short of the 44-wolf quota, Mills said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"What About 1090F?"}]

Fans of Yellowstone National Park’s famous Wolf 1090F said her pack is denning in one of the hunt areas.

Some asked the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission to carve out an exception to the proposed 2026 season regulations and suspend hunting in that area.

The commission voted unanimously to accept the wolf hunting seasons as proposed by the Game and Fish Department. Those include a quota of four wolves total in Hunt Areas 1 and 2 (Clarks Fork, North Fork).

Wolf 1090’s pack, the Mollie’s pack, is now denning on the Shoshone National Forest in Hunt Area 1.

The wolf hunt season there is set to run from Sept. 15 to Dec. 31.

In January, Wolf 1090F reached the age of 11 years, 9 months, making her the 

At that time, she surpassed the age of the legendary 907F, who died at roughly 11 years, 8 months old on Christmas Day in 2024 a few days after a fight with members of a rival wolf pack.

Just prior to the commission voting on the wolf seasons, Lisa Robertson of Wyoming Untrapped and Marke Cooke of Wolves of the Rockies called in to the meeting via Zoom to object.

Given the decline in the wolf population, Wyoming Untrapped and other wolf advocates would like to see wolf hunting suspended for two years, Robertson said.

Or, at least hunting should be suspended this year in Hunt Area 1 to protect Wolf 1090F and the rest of the Mollie’s pack, she said.

That would preserve an “internationally-recognized and highly-studied wolf pack,” she said.

Cooke also emphasized that the Mollie’s pack is prized by wolf researchers.

“Once they are gone, decades of irreplaceable knowledge are gone with them,” he told the commission.

Sparing the Mollie’s pack from being hunted could also bolster Wyoming’s image, Cooke said, adding that, "Wyoming is getting pretty beat up lately on some wildlife issues."

There have recently been high-profile cases of alleged wildlife abuse in Wyoming. 

Those include Daniel resident Cody Roberts capturing, tormenting and killing a wolf in February 2024. Also, a Unita County rancher allegedly videotaping two others 

Commissioner John Masterson noted that the Mollie’s pack is popular and frequently watched and photographed.

“From a pure management, scientific standpoint, is there anything substantially unique about that pack?” he asked the commission.

Mills responded that from the department’s perspective, “a breeding pair is a breeding pair, a pack is a pack” in terms of monitoring and managing wolves.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Numbers Down"}]

Wolves in Wyoming fall under three classifications, depending upon where they are in the state.

Inside Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, they remain protected and may not be hunted.

In areas immediately adjacent to the park — in the Game and Fish wolf management zone — they may be shot by licensed hunters only during set seasons and within mortality quota limits.

Outside of the management zone, which is about 85% of Wyoming, wolves are classified as a predatory animal and may be killed at any time, with no limits or hunting tag required.

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Wyoming is “committed” to maintain a population of 100 wolves, including 10 breeding pairs, inside the management zone, Mills said.

A breeding pair is male and female wolf that successfully raise at least two pups through the end of December.

Game and Fish wolf objectives include a “buffer” above the federal commitment, Mills said.

The department’s objective is for 160 wolves and 13 or 14 breeding pairs inside the wolf management zone, he said.

At the beginning of the year, there were 132 wolves in 22 packs, including 10 breeding pairs, Mills said.

The decline in wolf numbers might be largely due to an outbreak of canine distemper, which started in the fall of 2025 and has been especially hard on wolf pups, Mills said.

Wolf populations tend to recover quickly, he added.

For the wolf population stabilize at 160 by the end of 2026, as many as 63 could die of all causes, he said.

Of those, 35 could be “human-caused” wolf deaths by year’s end, Mills said.

Allowing for 15 wolves to be killed for such things as attacking livestock, that leaves a hunters’ quota of 20 across the entire wolf management zone, he said.

Howling wolves 7 14 26

<title>Wyoming Game And Fish Commission Cuts Wolf Hunt Quotas By More Than Half | Cowboy State Daily</title>

With northwest Wyoming’s wolf population at a 20-year low, the state Game and Fish Commission on Tuesday cut the wolf hunt limits by more than half. Some advocates said that’s not enough, arguing to suspend hunting wolves altogether.

Wyoming Game And Fish Commission Cuts Wolf Hunt Quotas By More Than Half

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Crime & Courts

Courts

A summer camp drive through Cody took a disturbing turn when, investigators say, a group of children allegedly found themselves looking out the windows of their van at a man driving alongside them without pants and pleasuring himself while making eye contact with those in the van.

Court records show that rather than let him disappear into traffic, two camp counselors followed the vehicle through Cody, photographed its license plate and called law enforcement.

Cody police officers say they quickly realized the registered owner was someone they already knew.

Andrew Crawford, a Cody resident born in 1988 and a registered sex offender, has been charged with felony indecent liberties with a minor and several public indecency misdemeanors spanning multiple years. 

who was convicted of public indecency in April 2023 after he repeatedly exposed himself to female baristas at Cody coffee kiosks during the fall of 2022.

Those incidents continued for weeks before one barista responded by dumping scalding 170-degree water into Crawford's lap after he exposed himself. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"6 Juveniles "}]

Park County dispatch got the report about Crawford's more recent allegations at about 4:34 p.m. on Friday, court records show.

One of the camp counselors told investigators that he and another counselor were traveling through Cody with six juveniles when a blue Chevrolet Impala pulled alongside their van.

The counselor reported that the driver had removed his pants and was masturbating while looking through the van's windows. He told deputies all six campers and both counselors witnessed the alleged conduct.

Dispatch identified the vehicle as being registered to Crawford, whom the investigating officer wrote he recognized from prior law enforcement contacts involving similar allegations.

Court records show he was accused of exposing himself to two girls and their mother in a Cody Walmart parking lot in 2011 — this while under investigation for allegedly possessing child pornography while serving in the U.S. Air Force in 2009. 

He was sentenced in 2012 to 72 months in federal prison followed by a lifetime of supervised release.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Witnesses Identified Crawford"}]

Investigators presented the counselors with a six-photo lineup, according to an affidavit of probable cause filed in the case.

Before the officer had finished explaining the identification process, a counselor said he already knew who the suspect was and immediately identified Crawford's photograph. 

He told investigators he recognized him by his bald head, facial hair and face shape, saying the only difference was that the driver had been wearing glasses.

The other counselor also identified Crawford as the man he said he made eye contact with during the incident, says the affidavit.

The following morning, investigators reviewed the counselors' written statements. 

"Both witness statements corroborate the emotional distress and shock of the juvenile campers after they all witnessed the same exposed genitalia and masturbating motions with his hand on his penis," says the affidavit. 

Investigators also confirmed with camp's operations director that the van's windows were not tinted and that passengers inside were clearly visible from outside.

Because Crawford has prior military and Wyoming convictions involving public indecency and sex offender registration violations, the investigating officer asked prosecutors to expedite an arrest warrant, he wrote. 

[{"type":"text","text":"Deputies arrested Crawford later that afternoon without incident."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Court Proceedings"}]

Crawford made his initial appearance in Park County Circuit Court on Monday, where a judge set his bond at $100,000 cash only.

[{"type":"text","text":"If released, Crawford must remain in Park County as a condition of bond."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"A preliminary hearing is scheduled for July 22 in Cody."}]

Andrew Crawford Cody sign 7 14 26

<title>Repeat Cody Sex Offender Accused Of Pleasuring Himself Next To Van Of Camp Kids | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A registered Cody sex offender is accused of exposing and masturbating alongside a van of camp kids while making direct eye contact with those in the van. He’s the same man convicted in 2023 for repeatedly exposing himself to female coffee baristas.

Repeat Cody Sex Offender Accused Of Pleasuring Himself Next To Van Of Camp Kids

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's managing editor, Greg Johnson.

Greg Johnson

Despite a Wheatland police officer running out of gas during a harrowing chase of up to 112 mph through two towns, the driver of a white BMW failed his second attempt to elude law enforcement.

Taron Hunziker-Ford, 27, had already eluded Colorado State Troopers prior to driving north on Interstate 25 to Wheatland on Sunday, Wheatland Police Department Officer Jesse Walton says in an affidavit filed Monday in Platte County Circuit Court.

Walton wrote that Wyoming officials had been alerted to watch out for Hunziker-Ford, who was wanted on “multiple felony warrants out of Colorado.”

When he saw the white BMW with no back bumper and a temporary Colorado registration tag driving north on I-25 at about 7:09 p.m. Sunday “traveling at excessive rates of speed,” Walton says in his affidavit the pursuit was on.

At one point, Hunziker-Ford attempted to get off the interstate at exit 87, “but the exit is too sharp and his speeds were too fast,” the affidavit says. “He pulled out of the turn and continued northbound.”

By that time, Walton wrote that he was driving more than 100 mph and having trouble keeping up with the BMW.

When Hunziker-Ford got to highway 26, he took it east toward Guernsey, and Walton followed, the affidavit says.

[{"type":"text","text":"From there, the BMW led police on a dangerous 26-mile ride to Guernsey."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Ran Out Of Gas"}]

“I could see the vehicle still ahead of me and what appeared to be passing other vehicles on the right shoulder — and my speed was at 111 mph shortly there (when) the BMW turned southbound on Highway 320 and continued back south toward Wheatland,” Walton wrote.

While topping 112 mph, the officer reports that he was having a hard time trying to catch this vehicle.

In the meantime, the BMW also failed to stop for other law enforcement in pursuit and set up in its path, the affidavit says.

When Hunziker-Ford got back into Wheatland, Walton hit another obstacle in the chase.

“At about this time I reached Oak Street and my vehicle ran out of fuel and I lost site (sic) of the vehicle,” he wrote.

Walton was not out of the chase for long, as Wheatland Police Chief Bradley Otte picked him up and they continued after the BMW, as was a Wyoming Highway Patrol trooper and Guernsey police.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘Gave Us A Shoulder Shrug’"}]

With the BMW ahead of Walton and the police chief, and other officers in front of the fleeing vehicle, “we tried to attempt to make a stop on him,” the affidavit says.

That’s when Hunziker-Ford “stopped at the stop sign there at 317 and looked at us, gave us a shoulder shrug, and continued eastbound,” Walton wrote.

By then, the end was near for Hunziker-Ford because Guernsey police officers had set up spike strips in his path ahead, which he ran over.

“(The chief) and I continued to follow the vehicle for another 3 to 4 miles when he finally was unable to keep the vehicle on the road and he drove it off the south side of 27 into the ditch, through the fence, spun out about 75 yards into the field,” the affidavit says.

Law enforcement was right behind and approached the BMW with their weapons drawn, but “the driver did not respond to any commands,” the affidavit says.

Hunziker-Ford appeared incoherent and was unresponsive, so was pulled from the BMW and handcuffed.

After being evaluated at a hospital in Torrington, Hunziker-Ford was booked into the Platte County Jail on suspicion of fleeing or attempting to elude police and reckless driving.

Both are misdemeanor charges, punishable by up to six months in jail and fines of up to $750.

He was arraigned Monday and remains in the Platte County jail on a $3,000 cash bond, according to court records.

Despite a Wheatland police officer running out of gas during a chase of up to 112 mph through two towns Sunday, the driver of a white BMW failed to elude law enforcement. The driver also at one point looked at pursuing officers and shrugged.

Bonus Video 2: Sunday, January 19, 2025

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