One More For The Road

To make ends meet, Cowboy State Daily's Wendy Corr is now driving for Uber....

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

<title>One More For The Road: Monday, February 17, 2025 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

One More For The Road: Monday, February 17, 2025

 To make ends meet, Cowboy State Daily's Wendy Corr is now driving for Uber....

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

Renée Jean

Outdoors

Public Lands

A small team of volunteers will shoulder heavy packs and follow a string of pack mules into bear country this summer on a narrow trail that leads deep into Wyoming’s Shoshone National Forest. 

Their destination isn’t a scenic vista or a famous fishing hole. It's a weathered lodge built in 1890 that is slowly but surely falling apart. 

It was built on a steep hillside in the nation’s first federally protected forest by one Abraham Archibald Anderson.

The rugged mountain artist studio turned ranch house is where Anderson would begin a fight to save the wilderness from burning down around him.

That fight would take him to the nation’s Capitol and reshape America’s emerging national forest system, even as it laid a foundation for Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks.

HistoriCorps Regional Program Manager Michael Guillot is 

 to save Anderson’s 136-year-old historic cabin.

“He saw a lot of what was happening with unregulated forestry in the area and some of the development that he felt was accelerating without the right kind of guardrails,” Guillot told Cowboy State Daily about the impact of Anderson on public lands policy. “So, he became a big supporter and advocate for clarifying the role of our forest reserve. He’s considered one of the first.”

Anderson’s headquarters for the effort was the Palette Ranch cabin he built in 1890 to serve as his art studio in what is today known as the Shoshone National Forest, which was also the nation’s “first forest.”

That makes the cabin integral to the birth of America's conservation movement.

“These structures should be saved,” Guillot said. “But they are hard to do. They’re hard to get to, and they’re hard to coordinate. But we are uniquely positioned as an organization to take on these kinds of projects.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Palette Ranch"}]

Anderson didn’t come to Wyoming to begin a conservation movement — at all. 

He was born into a wealthy family in New Jersey in 1847, which allowed him to pursue his two main passions in life, hunting and painting. 

He discovered the territory that would become Wyoming on an 1883 hunting trip in between Paris and New York excursions, and he was struck by the spectacular hunting and the equally spectacular scenery. 

That prompted Anderson to buy a residence at the head of a valley near the Greybull River, a place he called Palette Ranch No. 1, as well as two additional ranches at lower elevations that he called Palette No. 2 and Palette No. 3. 

He built his mountain artist studio — the Anderson Lodge that HistoriCorps is working to save — in 1890, about 6 miles west of his main ranch headquarters.

One summer, he even brought along two female models for nude portraiture to this just-finished, rustic mountain retreat. 

That prompted local cowhands to name one of the adjoining creeks “Warhouse,” a polite version of what they thought was really going on in Anderson’s studio.

Warhouse Creek and Warhouse Trail still remain as colorful reminders of this history.

Anderson made many trips into the adjacent mountains for ranching, hunting, and painting. 

Through that, he witnessed the devastation that was being caused by unsupervised grazing and unregulated hunting and tourism. 

Forage was being deliberately destroyed and timber stands burned in clear-cut fashion to make herding easier, as well as develop new forage fields. 

The fires were destroying watersheds, as well as threatening his home and his ranch. 

That prompted Anderson to join national efforts advocating for real conservation of the resources in Yellowstone. He took a map to President Theodore Roosevelt to advocate that a new boundary be set for the Yellowstone Forest Reserve, as well as plead for better enforcement of existing rules.

Not long after that in 1902, Roosevelt not only enlarged and renamed the area the Yellowstone Forest Reserve, he also appointed Anderson as its special superintendent. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Anderson wasted no time in his new role. "}]

He immediately started surveying the 13,000-mile reserve boundary, accomplishing the work with a small crew in three months’ time. He created new districts with new supervisors whose mission was to tackle the problems caused by unregulated grazing as well as other issues. 

Anderson continued in his role until 1905, and served for a time as the game warden of Wyoming as well. 

He was among the first in the nation to manage public rangelands and timberlands. 

To assist the state in managing its big game herds, he established game refuges throughout the reserves — a legacy that lives on to this day.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Wilderness Designation Adds To Difficulty"}]

The work to save Anderson’s cabin will be grueling, Guillot said, and the logistics involved are complex, starting with just getting volunteers, tools, and materials to the site. 

Because it is a federally designated wilderness area, no mechanized tools or equipment are allowed. That means no chainsaws, nail guns, or anything like that.

The wilderness designation also means every hand tool and all materials must be carried in and out by human hands or pack mule for the entire 7.5-mile trail from the Jack Creek trailhead.  

This includes food and tents to sleep in, as well as all 3,000 pounds of materials and tools for the stabilization project itself. 

Once volunteers hike in, they’ll work five days straight at elevation in true bear country, filtering all their water from local sources and packing out every scrap of food and trash they bring in.

The remoteness of the location means forethought is a requirement of the job. There’s no running to Lowe’s if something was forgotten, and there are no easy exits for bad weather. 

Because of the difficulty of this project, HistoriCorps has capped the number of volunteers to no more than eight for safety’s sake. That means more work for fewer hands to jack up and crib the century-old cabin that was built onto a sliding hillside.

Because of the project’s many challenges, HistoriCorps’ Anderson Lodge project has earned its own designation. 

It’s known as a “HardCorps” project, meaning only volunteers who have high levels of skill in both carpentry and the wilderness should apply.

For volunteers like Leisa Grant, it’s the difficulty that is the draw. 

She’s part of a growing segment of travelers no longer content with just leaving no trace. They want to see the world and make a difference while doing it.

“I love the idea of being part of a small group of people who are dedicated to preserving history,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “We see a lot of places around that are long gone. And it’s neat to see in some ways, it’s like a skeleton where something died. But it’s never coming back.”

Grant has both wilderness and carpentry skills, which is what brought her to HistoriCorps first as a volunteer and now as an employee. Being able to use both skills to see the country and save history has been uniquely satisfying, she said.

“You’re working on stuff where you’re trying to emulate and make that structure exactly like it was when the first people put it up,” she said. “And I think our volunteers are absolutely in love with that idea. We have a strong core of regular volunteers who have become friends over time.

“It’s a special experience, whether you’re a volunteer or a field staff member, which is why I like to do both.”

The areas she’s gotten to see and explore are also places she would never have even known about but for HistoriCorps.

“They are beautiful, breathtaking, raw places,” she said. “Almost always on public lands like BLM and Forest Service. It’s just a neat opportunity to go somewhere that you never even knew existed.”

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<title>Inside The Mission To Save 136-Year-Old Anderson Lodge In Wyoming Bear Country | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Saving the 136-year-old Anderson Lodge deep in Wyoming’s Shoshone National Forest is not easy. As it's a wilderness area, no mechanized tools or equipment are allowed and everything must be carried in. There's no running to Lowe’s if something is forgotten

Inside The Mission To Save 136-Year-Old Anderson Lodge In Wyoming Bear Country

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Wyoming Life

There is no speed limit reduction sign for travelers approaching Hiland. 

The drivers along U.S. Highway 20-26 have little reason to tap their brakes from 70 mph as they bypass the weathered and struggling buildings that were a home, a combination store, bar, post office, and little motel four-room motel that a century ago started as a family business.

But Eva Gunn, who inherited those buildings from her mom in 2022, hopes to resurrect the once noted Bright Spot store and lounge, a slice of the past in what now goes for a ghost town.

“I hope to have it open this summer,” she said. “The same as it was before, the bar and the store.”

Her mother received the properties as back wages from the Bright Spot’s previous owners, who operated it less than a decade ago, she said.

Gunn does not own the red-wooded building to the west of the little parade of white structures she said once held a dance hall. 

Natrona County records show the Supreme Grand Lodge of AMORC, or Rosicrucians, based in San Jose, California, holds title to it — and with walls collapsing and roof shingles missing it will likely soon join the destiny of the Temple of Karnak that the group reveres.

If the walls of these buildings could talk, there would be stories about how a farmer gave up his dairy to create the business in the 1920s, about notable robberies in later decades, and a woman who made ham sandwiches and wrote racy stories for romance magazines, garnering her invitations to appear on the TV shows “To Tell The Truth” and “Phil Donahue.”

Before that Hiland was a stop on the Chicago & North Western Railway that served Wolton more than a mile northeast and housed a community linked to a sheep operation run by former President Gerald Ford’s grandfather, along with several other businesses that brought life into central Wyoming.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Population 10"}]

These days, the Wyoming Department of Transportation roadway sign announces Hiland’s population as 10. It is fairly accurate.

Gunn said a couple of additional people could possibly be tallied in the number. The residents, who include Gunn, live in mobile homes and houses about one-quarter mile east of the Bright Spot and south of the highway on North Hiland Road.

“I am from Casper, but I would rather be out there than in Casper for sure,” Gunn said. “Driving when I have to go to town is the only thing I don’t like.”

She said she shops in Casper rather than Riverton because it has more stores.

Also part of the community are Alfred Dunihoo, 74, his daughter, Mandy Dunihoo, 47, and Bill Miller, 69.

Alfred Dunihoo purchased his 6 acres from the late Bright Spot owner Bob Steelman 25 years ago. Steelman lived just down from him on Hiland Road and died in 2022. He operated the Bright Spot from 1974 to 2006.

Alfred Dunihoo said met Steelman while working on an oil rig that was in the area.

“We had a man camp sitting down there by the Bright Spot and that’s how I got to know Bob,” he said. “I talked to Bob and bought this place.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Planting Trees"}]

After buying the property he drilled a well and planted some 1,800 trees, including many blue spruce that Mandy Dunihoo waters regularly.

 The Dunihoos call life in Hiland peaceful and quiet, for the most part. 

Mandy Dunihoo said she joined her father about eight years ago after escaping a relationship that nearly cost her life.

“I moved to get away from all that,” she said. “I am not too good with towns. I’ve grown more here than I have anywhere.”

Mandy Dunihoo said she enjoys the pronghorn, deer and elk that come through and pointed to a pronghorn mother and baby on the edge of the property. She also goes into the surrounding region to hunt rocks.

A handful of years ago, during the strong winter in the region, there were challenges traveling to Casper or Riverton for supplies, but recent years have not posed any issues, she said.

There are also no issues with having enough water in the 70-foot well to water the trees. The water is “typical” Wyoming water with akaline rust, and they use it to shower, wash and sometimes drink. 

Miller, who also lives just down the road, said he has lived in Hiland for 30 years. Both he and Alfred Dunihoo remember more activity due to the Bright Spot. They said when Steelman and his wife, Carla, owned the Bright Spot people from Casper would drive out to the bar.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Musical Memories"}]

Steelman played guitar and sometimes would host music jam sessions, or he would lead his own band. 

“They’d have biker parties there,” Miller said. “They were good, I’ll guarantee you there was no fights, no nothing.”

They would typically roast a pig as part of the proceedings.

While the Bright Spot has had a few owners over the years in addition to Steelman, original owner Robert “Dad” Smith’s daughter Betty Evenson and her husband, Maurice, ran the business from the 1930s into the 1970s.

Those were years the Bright Spot was a bus stop on the highway, and truckers would drop in for a bite to eat.

As a young woman, Betty Evenson enjoyed writing and, in addition to serving the ham sandwiches and burgers, developed a side career writing articles such as “He Gave Me Melt-In-Your-Mouth Kisses” and “At 14, I Already Had A Past” for magazines such as Real Confessions and Daring Romances.

In addition to invitations to the aforementioned TV shows, the New York Times on Aug. 7, 1973, did a feature story on her writing and role running the Bright Spot.

“Most of her stories, punched out on an ancient typewriter in her apartment behind the restaurant counter, run between 3,500 to 5,000 words for which she might earn $400,” the paper reported. “Most of her ideas come from drivers such as Buster Harnden who has stopped his bus here for 34 years.”

Betty Evenson told the reporter the drivers would talk more openly with her because they were not in their hometown.

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

The Bright Spot was in the news a couple decades earlier when three gunmen barged into the store on a wintry Sunday night on Feb. 21, 1954, and made off with $200 in cash. The thieves ran out of the store as the bus from Casper to Billings pulled in at 9:07 p.m., the Casper Morning Star reported on Feb. 23, 1954.

The bus driver, the same Buster Harnden, and Maurice Evenson, with a .270 rifle, had the passengers disembark and pursued the culprits’ car with the bus.

“The bus chased the gunmen all the way to Powder River, 20 miles east of Hiland, but apparently missed the car along the road,” the newspaper reported. “Evenson called Sheriff (Louis) Cooper from Powder River and returned to Hiland in the bus.”

After Maurice Evenson died in April 1970, Betty Evenson continued to operate the Bright Spot alone until she was robbed by a masked man on April 22, 1974. The Casper Star-Tribune reported on April 24, 1974, that she had closed the store at 5:30 p.m. and a masked gunman kicked down the store’s door as she watched television in her apartment about 9:30 p.m.

The gunman forced her to open the safe and remove $300, including some postal money, then ripped the telephone from the wall and locked her into the bathroom. The postman found her the next morning and had to take hinges off the bathroom door to free her.

“Mrs. Evenson said this was the fourth holdup in 40 years that she and her late husband operated the Bright Spot,” the newspaper reported. “The last two holdups occurred in the past five months.”

Evenson sold the business and went on to write a book, “50 Years at the Bright Spot,” published in 1990, about her family’s business. It can still be ordered online.

In more recent years, the community was in the news in 2021 for a body found that was determined to be a homicide. Most recently was the highway crash involving a tanker truck that resulted in two fatalities on June 26.

However, Hiland residents emphasize the positives far outweigh the negatives as they enjoyed the afternoon sun on a recent day and watched the world go by.

“You don’t hear all the noises that you hear in town,” Mandy Dunihoo said. “We played counting the cars the last few days while they were stopping them for the highway (roadwork). We played counting the cars both ways to see how many cars would come through.”

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<title>Hiland, Wyoming, Is Not A Ghost Town — Just Ask The 10 People Living There | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Even without the Bright Spot country store and lounge, Hiland, Wyoming, isn't a ghost town — just ask the 10 people still living there in the middle of nowhere between Casper and Shoshoni. In fact, the woman who inherited the store hopes to reopen it.

Hiland, Wyoming, Is Not A Ghost Town — Just Ask The 10 People Living There

Daily Darwin

[{"type":"text","text":"Still the greatest July 4 video ever recorded....."}]

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<title>Daily Darwin: Sunday, July 5, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Still the greatest July 4 video ever recorded.....

Daily Darwin: Sunday, July 5, 2026

He was a “G-Man” who arrested the FBI’s most-wanted man in 1936 and later served as the special agent in charge in Detroit helping take down a Nazi spy ring and communicating with J. Edgar Hoover about Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford.

John Bugas would go on to be recruited by Henry Ford in 1944 and help oust the man Ford hired to be the corporation’s thug-like enforcer in what he later in life told a reporter was an encounter with an angry armed man.

“I didn’t know if whether I was going to get something between the shoulders or not,” he said.

Bugas retired as a vice president and consultant to the company in 1978.

But before any of that, Bugas was a Wamsutter ranch kid who played basketball for the University of Wyoming, starred on its stage in dramatic productions, and worked at Yellowstone National Park during his some of his collegiate summers. 

He also was noted for his stories about ranch life. Bugas spun a favorite tale to a Detroit Free Press reporter for a June 30, 1940, profile on him as he led the FBI office in the Motor City.

“When I was a kid, I never wore shoes or ate candy until I was 14," he told the reporter. "Finally, my dad told me he would get me some on his trip to town. So, 10 days later, I ran out a mile from the ranch house to meet him and he tossed me a couple of packages. 

"When he found me under the bed at the house, I had chewed halfway through one of the hob-nailed boots because I thought it was candy.”

Bugas was born in 1908 to Andrew and Helena Bugas in Rock Springs. A year later, the family moved to Wamsutter, where his father started a ranch and operated businesses, including a road construction company.

He attended the University of Wyoming’s preparatory high school graduating at 16 and obtained a scholarship to the university but because of his dad’s needs, took two years off before college to run a road construction crew.

Once in college, Bugas’ name appeared in the Casper Tribune-Herald on April 19, 1931, as a member of The University of Wyoming Players, a traveling theater troupe putting on a play, “The Poor Nut.”

On the university’s basketball team he was a forward. He also played baseball and ran track.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Park Ranger"}]

The school newspaper on April 20, 1933, wrote that Bugas was the law scholarship winner for 1933. He was in the Casper Tribune Herald’s July 27, 1933, edition as a Yellowstone Park ranger investigating a robbery that occurred where thieves took off with $1,000 from a store safe.

After graduation from the university’s law school, he passed the state’s bar exam, worked for a short time for a law firm and then joined the FBI.

Before his role leading the Detroit office in May 1938, he served in assignments in Los Angeles, Omaha, Washington, Alaska, and Birmingham, Alabama.

It was in Los Angeles that he made a name for himself when he and another agent interviewed a woman who said she knew where Thomas H. Robinson Jr. was living. Robinson topped the bureau’s “Most Wanted” list after the arrest of noted mobster Alvin Karpis in 1936. 

Robinson had evaded capture since the Oct. 10, 1934, national headline kidnapping of Alice Speed Stoll, a Louisville, Kentucky, socialite and wife of an oil executive.

Robinson, who had served time in an insane asylum, successfully made off with a $50,000 ransom after the kidnapping, though his wife and father were arrested in the plot.

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As a young agent in Los Angeles, Bugas met with a woman who contacted the FBI office and claimed to be Robinson’s lover and who wanted to turn him in. 

That led to Bugas and other agents going to Robinson’s home and taking him at gunpoint. 

“The arrest was made with the same speed and silence that has characterized more of the G-men raids,” The Los Angeles Daily News reported on May 12, 1936. “It was learned that Robinson was taken in Glendale around 8:30 p.m. and that the government chartered a transport plane at Grand Central Terminal shortly after 9 p.m.”

Robinson was sent to Louisville immediately.

A serialized story reprinted across the country by his lover and her description of her conversation with Bugas at a Los Angeles restaurant and the conduct of the FBI in the case put Bugas’ name on front pages across the nation.

Once in Detroit, Bugas was involved in several more high-profile cases. FBI files from the Bureau’s “The Vault” — that contains the documents released to the public — have several with Bugas as the author.

The FBI had an extensive file on aviator Charles Lindbergh during World War II as a Nazi sympathizer. 

Bugas sent J. Edgar Hoover a memo on Oct. 20, 1941, and a copy of a handwritten letter from Lindbergh to Henry Ford. In it Lindbergh deplored the “misinformation and propaganda that fills our press, our radio, and our motion picture theaters each day.”

The document blacked out the name of the person who provided the letter to Bugas.

“He gave me a photo static copy of a letter that Mr. Henry Ford, Sr. had received from Charles A. Lindbergh in which Lindbergh in the latter part mentions his sentiments in connection with the international policy of the United States Government,” Bugas wrote. “For your information, as of possible interest, I am transmitting herewith a photostatic copy of this letter.”

A memo from Bugas to a New York FBI official in June 1939 outlined the status of the city as it related to organized crime, the conduct of the Detroit Police Department, and part of the history of the Purple Gang in Detroit and how the gang was no longer functioning but two members had allegedly murdered another former member.

Another memo Bugas wrote on Oct. 13, 1942, related to Henry Ford. 

At that point in the U.S. due to the war, rationing of rubber and tires was in place. Bugas informed Hoover that an informant provided information that Ford told someone that he had enough tires to last his employees 18 years.

Bugas also led efforts to protect Detroit industries from espionage during the start of the war and in August 1943 announced the arrest of five persons, including a female spy dubbed “The Countess” who were all tied to Hitler’s regime.

But before the war was over, Bugas was recruited by Ford himself in 1944 to protect his grandchildren and other family members from kidnapping. Bugas initially worked in the office of Harry Bennett, the man hired by Ford years earlier to be a union buster and his personal fixer. 

Bennett was known to hire thugs, allegedly kept his pistol in his office, and in the 1940s had, because of his influence with the senior Ford, become a power at the automaker.

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When Henry Ford II convinced his family to be given the lead role at the automaker in 1945 after his return from the U.S. Navy in 1943 due to the death of his father, he wanted Bennett gone and Bugas to replace him. Bugas was given the assignment to tell Bennett the news.

Bugas retold the story of his encounter with Bennett in a newspaper series on Henry Ford II published in 1978. The San Antonio Express-News carried the account in its March 18, 1978, edition.

Bugas told the reporter that Bennett had taken himself and Henry Ford II for a ride around the River Rouge plant after Ford told Bennett he “ought to retire.” Ford then returned to his office.

“I’m sitting over to the right of Bennett and from the desk, the drawer, he pulls out a gun,” Bugas said. “He slams it down on on the desk … jumps up and comes over to where I am sitting.”

Bugas said that he had a snub-nosed pistol in his belt. He told the reporter Bennett had probably been drinking whiskey heavily the previous night. Bennett then accused him of being behind the plot to oust him.

“He cursed me and he was very, very threatening. And I figured, ‘Oh my God, something is going to happen,” Bugas said. “It didn’t. He finally backed over to his chair and sat down completely exhausted.”

Bugas said he sat down in a chair beside Bennett and tried to convince him that it would be in his best interest to leave the organization. He said after about 20 minutes of conversation, Bennett calmed down.

“I didn’t want to get beat up, number one. I didn’t want to get shot, number two, and I didn’t want to shoot anybody, number three,” Bugas said. “So, I got up and walked out of that … room, never knowing whether I was going to get something between the shoulders or not.”

Henry Ford II initially made Bugas his main negotiator with unions, and he was elevated to a vice president role. Before leaving the company in 1968, Bugas helped the company grow internationally and he had become a known and respected player in the auto world.

Bugas became a wealthy man at Ford and had purchased a working Wyoming ranch near Cody. There is a photo of him on his ranch with Henry Ford II and industrialist Max Fischer to join him experiencing the West.

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He used his wealth to benefit the University of Wyoming by giving the university stock valued at $823,449 during a 10-year period, the Casper Star-Tribune reported on Jan. 9, 1973. Bugas said his donations reflected his “great affection for and deep interest in the state of Wyoming and its people and in a real sense, my gratitude for what the university and the state have done for me and my family.”

After his Ford career, Bugas became a director for several companies, including Standard Oil of Indiana and One Williams Street Fund and Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb. He joined the Buffalo Bill Historical Center’s board in 1962 and was credited with raising funds to build the Plains Indian Museum.

Bugas died Dec. 2, 1982, in Ypsilanti, Michigan, of complications after heart bypass surgery. He and his first wife, Margaret Stowe McCarty, who died in 1972, had three daughters and a son. He was remarried in 1975 to Joan Murphy.

His obituary in the Casper Star-Tribune on Dec. 4, 1982, stated his cremated remains were to be brought back to Wyoming for burial.

Henry Ford II was quoted in several newspapers about the loss of his friend.

“John Bugas was one of my closest and dearest friends,” he said. “His death is a tremendous loss to me personally. I will miss him very much.”

FBI agent and Wamsutter 7 4 26

<title>Wyoming History: Remarkable Life Of Wamsutter's John Bugas — FBI Star, Busted Nazis | Cowboy State Daily</title>

John Bugas was a Wamsutter ranch kid who became an FBI agent and caught the nation's most-wanted man in 1936. Then, as the special agent in charge in Detroit, he took down a Nazi spy ring. He went on to protect the Henry Ford family from kidnappers.

Wyoming History: Remarkable Life Of Wamsutter's John Bugas — FBI Star, Busted Nazis

ALTA — Seeing the sun rise over Grand Teton and the lesser peaks in the national park definitely is a perk for those in Alta.

They live on the back side of the mountains photographed and inundated by summer tourists in Jackson Hole.

The 429-resident community sits in the Teton Valley along the road to Grand Targhee Resort ski area. There are no bumper-to-bumper traffic lines that back up as tourists vie for views of a bison in Grand Teton National Park or the mountain scenes around Jackson Hole.

“It’s always been interesting living in a part of Wyoming where you couldn’t get to any other part of Wyoming unless you drove through Idaho,” said Jim Wilson, a fourth-generation farmer on the north side of Teton Creek. “Unless you hike or ride horses over the mountain, which many of us have done, you have to drive through Idaho to get to us.”

That hike over the Tetons involves 21 miles and 4,000 feet of elevation from Teton Canyon to Jenny Lake in Jackson Hole. Make sure to bring bear spray.

As a resident of Teton County, Wilson, along with fellow residents Steve Green and Hunter Christensen, knows that to get his license plates or go to the county clerk’s office involves at least a 40-mile drive with 20 miles through Idaho before re-entering the state over Teton Pass. 

And shopping — well, you do what you need to do.

“I’ve always claimed Wyoming,” said Green, a fourth-generation farmer on a 160-acre homestead in Alta. “(But) the only thing we do in Wyoming is pay taxes and license vehicles.”

Green, 70, who grows barley and hay on his farm south of Teton Creek and a few other leased properties, understands that having a view of the Tetons in his backyard is something to appreciate. But it’s also all he has ever known.

He characterizes his community and view as “the better side of Idaho.”

Christensen, 36, senior vice president at Hughes Foundation based in Jackson, grew up in Alta and went to school in the little elementary building that still serves students off of Ski Hill Road and then spent his middle school and high school years in Driggs, Idaho.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Driving Teton Pass"}]

Unlike Green and Wilson, he drives Teton Pass most work days in his front-wheel drive Toyota Camry through all of its seasons, and characterizes the commute as just the way of life for many who live in Alta.

“It’s a beautiful drive every day,” he said. “You never go over that pass and think, ‘Oh, this is terrible.’”

Christensen said there are days when traffic backs up entering Jackson in the morning or leaving in the afternoons. Commuters plan for it. The winter weather in recent years has not been as heavy as when he was growing up, but there are days when he might have to work from home.

Christensen said he knows Alta residents who work in Wyoming and others who work in Idaho. But their identity, though a border community, remains rooted in Wyoming.

“Sometimes they call it ‘Wydaho',” he said. “We have a lot of wonderful neighbors in Idaho, a lot of good heritage and community with our neighbors across the border, and then we still get to be part of Wyoming.”

Residents of remote Alta, Wyoming, say they don't feel disconnected even though the only way to get to the rest of Wyoming (outside of riding a horse or hiking over the mountain) is a 20-mile drive through Idaho and over Teton Pass.

One More For The Road: Monday, February 17, 2025

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