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

<title>Today In Relationships: Saturday, March 8, 2025 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Today In Relationships: Saturday, March 8, 2025

 How to have an effective conversation about your relationship.....

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

Outdoors

A man was seriously injured Friday evening after being thrown 8 feet into the air by an angry bull bison in Yellowstone National Park.

Mike MacLeod, a professional photographer from Bozeman, Montana, said the incident happened at the Bridge Bay Campground, south of Fishing Bridge.

MacLeod said the man was walking with his grandson when the agitated bison made them the targets of its aggression.

“I was just trying to get some dramatic footage of that bison having a fit,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “It’s changed my idea of what to expect from these guys at this time of year, because I would not have predicted that happening.”

The National Park Service has not released any information on the incident.

[{"type":"text","text":"Bull In A China Shop"}]

MacLeod was camping in at the Bridge Bay Campground when his wife pointed out the bull bison entering the area. He grabbed his camera and started shooting from a safe distance.

“He started walking through the campground,” MacLeod said. “He was coming up to this group of kids, who were taking pictures on their cellphones from a good distance away, and then the buffalo charged these kids.”

When the bison charged, the kids safely scattered. But the bison wasn’t done yet.

[{"type":"text","text":"That’s when McLeod started filming."}]

“I used to be a combat photographer in the Army,” he said. “I could see this thing coming.”

MacLeod said the bison kept running through the campground, while people occupants yelled and screamed at each other to alert one another to the threat. After a while, the bison found a patch of dirt to wallow in.

[{"type":"text","text":"Then, the victim appeared. He had no idea what was about to happen."}]

“They weren't even in that camping loop,” McLeod said. “They were walking along the road, quite a ways away from the bison, and it started running at them.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Closed The Distance, Up And Over"}]

The victim and his grandson were at what even the National Park Service would say was a safe distance, at least 100 yards, from the bison. They stopped for some pictures while the bison lay down and seemed to have calmed down.

“He was sitting in the dust, like bison do, with his head out towards the road,” MacLeod said. “When the bison started to get up, the grandfather's like, ‘OK, time to leave,’ and they moved off behind these trees.”

Then, a white pickup appeared. For whatever reason, that set the bison off again.

“The bison was charging the truck,” MacLeod said. “The guy in the truck saw that happening, and he just kept going. The bison (then went) to where these two were hiding in the trees.”

After expending some of its energy on a sapling, the bison tore into the trees and chased the victim and his grandson.

While the grandson escaped, his grandfather wasn’t so fortunate. The bison chased him around the trees while he tried to escape.

[{"type":"text","text":"Then, according to MacLeod, the victim got flipped."}]

“The bison hooked him with his left horn on his hip and tossed him in the air,” he said. “He made a perfect flip and landed on his side. The bison was at least 6 feet tall, and (the victim) was several feet above him.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Observer To Rescuer"}]

When the older man hit the ground, the bison stopped but didn’t run away. It stood over the man he’d just tossed, shaking his head in an obvious display of agitation.

[{"type":"text","text":"That’s when MacLeod decided he had to do something."}]

“I had to get the bison's attention,” he said. “I was really afraid he was going to gore the guy on the ground, so I stopped videotaping and ran at the bison, yelled loud, and was trying to be as big and intimidating as possible.”

Following MacLeod’s lead, a few other observers did the same and darted toward the bison. That was enough to send it running.

[{"type":"text","text":"“He really took off when he left,” MacLeod said."}]

When the bison was gone, everyone rushed toward the victim. He was in a lot of pain, particularly in his hips and the leg he landed on, but MacLeod and others couldn’t see any external injuries.

“One guy held his hand,” MacLeod said. “Another guy pulled security on the outside to make sure that bison didn't come back. A gal in a car was on the phone with 911, and another gal did a blood sweep, but we couldn’t find any blood.”

Yellowstone EMS quickly arrived and took over. MacLeod has been in touch with the victim’s grandson, who told him that his grandfather “has some pretty significant injuries and is not out of the woods yet.”

“He was really worried and wanted to see the video to make sure that it wasn't his fault,” MacLeod said. “You can tell in the video it's not his fault. You can tell from the very beginning.”

This is Yellowstone’s second human-bison incident in 2026. 

 when a 12-year-old was injured near Mud Volcano, north of Fishing Bridge.

What stuck out to MacLeod in the Friday incident was that nobody was at fault for what happened at Bridge Bay Campground. People do “stupid things” in Yellowstone all the time, but this wasn’t one of those cases.

“I didn't see anybody getting close,” he said. “People were yelling, ‘Careful, there’s a bison coming through,’ and they kept their distance. They were very respectful.”

In this incident, the bull bison was the instigator. MacLeod said it was extremely evident that the bison entered Bridge Bay with a chip on its humped shoulder.

“You can tell he was agitated, pissed off, and charging anything and everything,” he said.

The biological explanation for what happened is the annual bison rut, which runs from June to September. During that time, bull bison surge with energy and aggression as they compete for dominance and females.

MacLeod doesn’t blame anyone, especially not the victim or his grandson, for what happened.

“They were just out for an evening walk, just happened to turn around the corner, and there’s a bison,” he said.

In MacLeod’s opinion, this bull bison was looking for a fight and, for reasons known only to itself, chose those two as the targets of its aggression.

“I’ve been around bison for a while, but this was really weird,” he said. “Why did it pick those two? There were so many people around, and most of them were closer to and behind the bison. It was really weird.”

Closeup of bison launch 7 11 26

<title>Tourist Seriously Injured After Yellowstone Bison Launches Man 8 Feet In The Air | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A tourist was seriously injured Friday evening after being thrown 8 feet into the air by a bull bison in Yellowstone National Park. Professional photographer Mike Macleod filmed the incident and said the bison was "angry, agitated and charging anything and everything."

Tourist Seriously Injured After Yellowstone Bison Launches Man 8 Feet In The Air

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Around Wyoming

On a recent afternoon, the Old Government Bridge 20 miles southwest of Casper stood as a landmark on the North Platte River for fishermen floating underneath.

But if those nuts, bolts and steel beams could speak, they would tell stories about the bootlegger arrested in the 1930s and teen runaways rescued on a bitter winter day in the 1940s.

Beyond decades of use that witnessed Model A Fords and little Chevy trucks to Buick Roadmasters and semis crossing its 300-foot span, the bridge resurfaced in national headlines tied to the abduction and murder of a young Montana woman.

“Lawmen recover body of woman,” The Billings Gazette reported on April 3, 1988. “The body was about a half-mile downstream from the old government bridge … evidence found on the bridge indicates that an incident took place there that may relate to the body.”

Today the bridge, accessible just south of Wyoming Highway 220 off Country Road 404, continues to serve as a place where cattle can cross above the swift North Platte. 

Spokespersons for Natrona County Road & Bridge, the Wyoming Department of Transportation, the Bureau of Land Management as well as the Bureau of Reclamation, all say they don’t own the bridge.

WYDOT spokesperson Jeff Goetz said his records show that in 1961 the then State Highway Department initiated efforts to abandon the structure and realign the highway.

“By September of that year we were working on the new route where the highway is now,” he said. “That involved the Bureau of Land Management and local landowners to get right-of-way. And then it was determined at that time that the bridge was used to move cattle.”

The department then decided to vacate the bridge but leave it standing for landowners to move their herds. Goetz said in 1967 it was officially vacated and turned over to “Miles Land and the BLM.”

A spokesperson for the BLM in Denver said the agency does not own the bridge but does administer the land.

Attempts to reach a Miles Land & Livestock Co. found online and based in Casper were not successful by publication time.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Cottonseed Cake Stolen"}]

an Alcova rancher and former Natrona County commissioner, told the Casper Daily Tribune that his son been involved in an accident on the government bridge. He told the paper his son was driving a truck filled with bags of cottonseed cake and that an oncoming truck from a Sheridan brewing company collided with Miles on the bridge.

“In rounding a curve on the bridge approach, the Sheridan truck swerved past the center of the road,” the rancher reported.

While he was stranded overnight, thieves stole seven bags of cottonseed cake, Miles reported.

The bridge’s foundations trace back to 1923, when heavy rains sent water surging down the North Platte, taking out the previously sturdy wooden 1905 bridge upstream. That bridge was built to access the Pathfinder Dam area and allow for the wagons of material and men to complete its construction.

Within weeks, the State Highway Department had bids out for a replacement structure that would carry traffic between Casper, Alcova, Rawlins and beyond.

“Construction of a new steel bridge across the Platte River on the Alcova Road will be started immediately,” the Casper Daily Tribune reported on Aug. 9, 1923. “On a bid of $48,341 the contract was awarded by the state highway department to the Missouri Valley Bridge company. Natrona County is to pay $22,500, the state is taking care of the balance.”

Bridge plans called for two expansion trusses, two abutments and one pier. Its roadway was designed to be 18 feet wide.

During work on the bridge in 1924, a young Nebraska man named Alex Brown, who had just started his job the same day, fell into the river and was swept away on Saturday, May 11. His body would not be recovered until June 22. 

The current carried the body into Casper, where it was found lodged against bridge pylons.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"The bridge opened later that year."}]

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

The old government bridge site also seemed to be a popular place for bootleggers to ply their trade. In March 1924, Natrona County Sheriff’s deputies took a motorboat up the river to the bridge site and arrested a bootlegger named C. W. Wambaugh, who was running a still in a cabin nearby.

In 1927, law officers found a still house just east of the bridge that had 35 gallons of whiskey. They followed wagon tracks and found a 5-gallon and three 10-gallon kegs hidden among the sagebrush, the Casper Herald reported on Feb. 17, 1927.

In 1945, on a bitterly cold March 4, two teens, Charles Adamson, 19, and Patricia Wilson, 14, were found in a “precarious condition” by a passerby headed to Rawlins. He noticed them foundering in the snow near the bridge, and stopped to pick them up.

The boy had taken off his shoes and put them on the girl, who fainted in the car. The man drove them to a Casper hospital, where they were admitted.

The Casper Daily Tribune reported the pair had told their parents they were married. The girl’s mother threatened to have the marriage annulled, which might have triggered their efforts to start walking to Rawlins.

The bridge was designed to cross the North Platte at its narrowest location. Engineers put it at an angle to the highway, requiring cars to navigate a 45-degree turn from the highway to the bridge. 

The small cars and slow speeds in the 1920s and early 1930s posed few issues. But as more modern, bigger and faster machines came off assembly lines, drivers unfamiliar with the bridge sometimes crashed or worse.

A May 20, 1948, photo on the front page of the Casper Tribune-Herald showed the body of a 23-year-old Rawlins woman lying on the bridge outside her passenger car’s door. The photo cutline stated the vehicle swerved out of control, struck an abutment, and took her life. Her husband and a passenger were hospitalized.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Christmas Day Crash"}]

On Christmas Day 1955, a William Orchard, 19, of Baggs, was another fatality after his car hit the bridge.

Four days later the Casper Star-Tribune editorialized that Orchard was a Casper College student on his way home and that his body and car were found sprawled across the highway by a motorist after some time. The writer acknowledged that speed and fatigue were likely a factor in his death but also called for construction of a new bridge.

“Government bridge is a relic of horse-and-wagon-road building,” the editorial stated. “It is too narrow for assuredly safe passing under the best of circumstances. Its sharp approaches are potential death traps to anyone unfamiliar with the route and to others in whom familiarity breeds contempt.”

The newspaper called for attention to bridge safety and the possibility of a new bridge.

In 1962, the State Highway Department awarded a Casper contractor the job to replace the old bridge after his $163,000 price was the low bid.

The Casper Star-Tribune on May 20, 1962, reported that the new bridge would be built just downstream of the steel structure and was expected to be completed that November.

“The new bridge will be located a short distance downstream from the old structure and will result in eliminating two kinks in the approaches to the old bridge,” the newspaper reported. “These kinks have been blamed for many highway accidents in past years.”

The old bridge for several years became a quick glance from motorists speeding past over the highway bridge to the north and a landmark for river guides to mention.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'Lil Miss' Murder"}]

Then, in 1988, the old government bridge resurfaced in headlines after an 18-year-old girl named Lisa Marie Kimmel of Billings, Montana, was reported missing along with her black 1988 Honda CRX Si with personalized plates that read “Lil Miss.” She had been traveling from her work in Denver to Billings and was due in Cody to pick up her boyfriend.

A Douglas police officer stopped her for speeding around 9 p.m. March 25. She wasn't seen again until her body was recovered from the North Platte about one-half mile downstream from the old government bridge on April 2 by two fishermen.

Natrona County Sheriff Ron Ketchum told the Casper Star-Tribune for its April 19, 1988, edition that Kimmel’s blood was found on the bridge and that he believed that is where she was thrown into the river.

The county coroner reported she had been stabbed to death. Later information stated that she had been sexually assaulted and struck in the head.

The case went unsolved until 2002, when police linked federal prisoner Dale Wayne Eaton’s DNA to the crime and recovered the Honda from Eaton’s property in Moneta. He was extradited in 2003 from a prison in Colorado. Eaton was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to death.

That sentence was vacated by a federal judge in 2014 and converted to a life sentence in Wyoming’s Department of Corrections, where Eaton remains. 

Also in 2014, a Casper area member of Geocaching, a type of treasure hunt experience that includes a hidden container with a logbook, made the bridge a geocache site for players to search for and sign the book.

 the founder named it the “Lil Miss Memorial Cache.”

The person wrote that it was meant to “serve as a memorial for Lisa Marie Kimmel whose young life was taken away.”

Old Government Bridge Bridge 1 7 11 26

<title>Ghost Bridge: Nobody Claims Ownership Of Abandoned 122-Year-Old Bridge Over North Platte | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The Old Government Bridge spanning the North Platte 20 miles southwest of Casper is rusting, mostly abandoned and nobody claims ownership of it. But if those nuts, bolts and steel beams could speak, they would tell stories about bootleggers and murder.

Ghost Bridge: Nobody Claims Ownership Of Abandoned 122-Year-Old Bridge Over North Platte

A one-of-a-kind dinosaur footprint site near Newcastle was vandalized by someone who would have gotten permission to do what they did — if they had asked.

Kristen Stauffer of the “Paleo Park” Zerbst Ranch discovered the vandalism this week. Someone poured a large amount of blue silicone into one of the many dinosaur tracks exposed on a 67-million-year-old slab of rock on the Zerbst Ranch.

“I was shell-shocked,” Stauffer told Cowboy State Daily. “Nobody was authorized to be out there. Whoever did it was trespassing.”

Setting aside the enormous scientific value of the fossil, Stauffer was “heartbroken” by the blatant disregard for her family’s history. The Zerbst Trackway was found by her father, Leonard, and has enormous personal significance to her and her family.

“These tracks are part of our family's story,” she said. “We have spent years protecting them because we believed people would love them as much as we do. We opened our gates because we wanted to share something truly rare, not because we wanted pieces of it taken away.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Not The First Time"}]

The Zerbst Trackway is one of the most extraordinary fossils of its type. It contains trace fossils from multiple dinosaurs and other animals that lived in Wyoming during the Late Cretaceous period.

Identified trace fossils include the footprints of the ostrich-like Struthiomimus, the tail swish of a crocodile, and one of the few known footprints from Tyrannosaurus.

The crown jewels of the Zerbst Trackway are the footprints of Saurexallopus zerbsti, a large bird-like caenagnathid or “oviraptor,” named in honor of the Zerbst family.

The vandalized footprint was left by a large hadrosaur. Stauffer had an idea why somebody might find it interesting.

“It definitely has impressions of the pads of the dinosaur’s foot, along with a toe drag,” she said. “All of the molding materials were around that print, and someone had poured blue molding material into it.”

Molding and casting are processes used to make replicas of fossils, preferably without damaging the original.

Whoever was responsible for the failed mold was covertly trying to get a copy of the hadrosaur footprint. Their intent was to leave the original there and make off with a replica, even if they had to trespass to get it.

They were also presumably hoping to find a way to reproduce and profit from a rare dinosaur fossil without sharing the proceeds with the Zerbst Family.

[{"type":"text","text":"That’s theft. "}]

Stauffer was, at least, relieved they didn’t try to chisel the footprint out of the rock. It would be extremely difficult to do, but that hasn’t stopped people.

“When we realized the Saurexallopus tracks were from two dinosaurs walking side by side, someone came and tried to take one of them out of the foot-thick rock,” she said. “They destroyed it. It was one of the only ones in the world, and they destroyed it.”

Stauffer isn’t sure who tried to make a mold of the hadrosaur track or when they attempted to do it. She said she believes it had to have been within the last month.

What’s truly baffling to Stauffer is that she wouldn’t be opposed to someone wanting to make a mold of the unique dinosaur footprint. If they’d asked, she probably would have said yes.

“If they had come to me and said they had a crazy idea to do a mold of it, I would have wanted to do it,” she said. “I like stuff like that. Let's do it together. Let’s make this work. But they decided to go the shady way.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Stealing Statues"}]

The 7,000-acre Zerbst Ranch has been in the family for five generations. Charles Zerbst homesteaded there in the 1890s, and it’s been their home ever since.

Stauffer has spent the last year working on a rebrand of “Paleo Park” to honor her family’s legacy while utilizing their ranch to its fullest potential.

“We're trying to diversify so dinosaurs aren’t the sole part of our ranch,” she said, “We’ve had different folks wanting to come out to do yoga and bird-watching retreats, and there’s a lot of interest coming in.”

That’s why the timing of this vandalism is especially discouraging. For Stauffer, it feels like a violation of trust after decades of readily welcoming people from all walks of life to enjoy her family’s legacy.

“It’s the audacity of doing something like that,” she said. “It’s like sneaking into somebody’s yard to make a copy of a statue you really liked. I would never in my life think that I could go into someone's private place to do something like this.”

The good news is that the rare hadrosaur footprint doesn’t seem to be permanently damaged, Stauffer said. She had already removed most of the blue silicone that had been abandoned there.

“If they had done a better job, I probably wouldn't even know that someone took molds of the tracks,” she said.

Leonard Zerbst eagerly invited people to enjoy his ranch and its treasures. Stauffer knows her father would be proud of how the family has kept his legacy alive by bringing school groups and excavation teams from across the country to have a life-changing moment.

[{"type":"text","text":"That makes this brazen act all the more upsetting."}]

“If you ever stood beside those tracks and felt that moment of wonder, we're asking people to understand what was lost here,” she said. “Trust was lost. A little bit of hope was lost. And a place we loved sharing with complete strangers suddenly doesn't feel as safe anymore.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Changed Before You Leave"}]

The Zerbsts have been doing two-hour tours of their ranch, including a visit to the Zerbst Trackway, for years. After discovering trespassing, vandalism, and attempted theft, Stauffer decided to close the trackway indefinitely and is questioning whether they should continue offering tours.

“The old saying is true: one bad apple really can ruin it for everyone,” she said. “We’re still going to ponder what to do, but we’re going to start implementing things to protect the tracks. They’re too precious.”

Meanwhile, the ranch is still open to curious minds with genuine intentions.

The Zerbst Ranch has produced some of the best Late Cretaceous dinosaur fossils ever found. Those include one of the best-preserved Triceratops specimens ever, complete with large patches of skin, and two Edmontosaurus mummies from the newly discovered “mummy zone.”

“We want to go out and let others go out to do more prospecting,” Stauffer said. “The idea that there's another mummy out there somewhere, looking for some air, is exciting.”

Stauffer’s greatest delight is facilitating someone’s first experience with the prehistoric past, coupled with the legacy of her family’s Wyoming ranch. She described the exhilaration she felt when she helped a group of college kids from California find their first fossil, a stingray tooth.

“It's funny to sit back and watch the ranch do its magic to them,” she said. “Seeing that look on a kid's face when they find their first tooth or a fragment of a bone is what makes me happy.”

Despite the breach of trust, the ranch will remain open to people willing to explore with integrity. According to Stauffer, that’s exactly “where Mom and Dad really wanted (the ranch) to go.”

“I always (tell visitors) that the ranch will change your life before you leave,” she said. “You might not know it, you might not realize it, but it will change in a slight way before you leave. And then they’ll say something and realize that the ranch changed them.  

[{"type":"text","text":"\"That’s what we want to keep and preserve as best we can.”"}]

Dinosaur site vandalized IMG 8213 7 11 26

<title>Newcastle Family 'Shell-Shocked' By Vandalism Of Rare Dinosaur Footprints | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A trespasser trying illegally to make a copy of rare dinosaur footprints on the "Paleo Park" Zerbst Ranch near Newcastle ended up vandalizing the site. “I was shell-shocked. “We have spent years protecting them,” said the owner.

Newcastle Family 'Shell-Shocked' By Vandalism Of Rare Dinosaur Footprints

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

Renée Jean

Wyoming Life

CHEYENNE — In 2022, Jessica Boyd put in an offer for an older home right on the edge of what she could afford on her hospital job’s salary. 

The mother of four had second thoughts over the home’s ancient heating unit. It looked Jurassic — like something that could go extinct at any moment, leaving her holding an expensive bag.

With four children to feed and care for, how could she possibly afford to replace the furnace if it finally croaked?

“I told them, I don’t want to move in with that in there,” she said. “I wanted them to go ahead and just replace it. They wouldn’t, so I decided not to purchase it.”

Homes in Boyd’s range — around $200,000 at current interest rates — haven’t gotten any better since then. 

“The homes in that range are trailers in trailer parks,” she said. “They’re not even on a foundation or anything.”

Or they are “massive” fixer uppers, like the $180,000 home she went to see that turned out to be a burned-out shell.

“I went to see it and when I looked inside, the whole inside was burned down,” she said. “I was like, ‘You’re selling this for that much money? You can’t even live in this'. It’s just crazy. Just insane.”

. Wyoming needs 20,000 to 38,000 more homes by 2030 to keep up with demand, according to a statewide housing study commissioned by Wyoming Community Development Authority. 

That gap is continuing to widen, as housing costs continue to rise faster than median incomes. 

Boyd was never supposed to be shopping for a home as a single parent. She and her children’s father had been looking at houses together, but he died a couple years ago.

Her hospital job as a team leader in the payments division pays well, she said, but she still can’t afford anything on the market in Cheyenne.

“Prices just keep getting higher and higher,” she said. “Really, without two incomes, without two people having a decent job, you’ll just be renting the rest of your life.”

Buyers like Boyd — working families shut out of conventional starter homes even with decent, full-time paychecks — are exactly who Habitat for Humanity is working to reach with its new Pronghorn Crossing neighborhood in Cheyenne, a 12-home development reserved for buyers who make 80% or less of median incomes. 

The development on the city’s eastern edge is the largest, most ambitious project to date for Habitat for Humanity of Laramie County. 

It will ultimately have six attached twin homes, for a total of 12 in all, ranging from three to four bedrooms, with two baths. 

The homes are being built with structurally insulated panels, high-efficiency mini-split heating and cooling, tankless water heaters and solar panels, all aimed at keeping utility bills low once families move in.

There are no garages and the yards are tiny, but for working-class families trying to find that first stepping stone to financial stability, it’s a lifesaver, Boyd said. 

“I lived in a townhome before and I always said, like, ‘I will never live back in a townhome style house',” Boyd said. “And when these came up, I was like, you know what, I’m not going to argue. I’m not going to be picking about it. This is a blessing, and I’m so grateful, so happy for this.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Not A Free Home"}]

Boyd isn’t the only Pronghorn Crossing buyer who has been shut out of Cheyenne’s starter home market. Victoria Hunt is also in line for one of the twin homes. 

The mother of three is a recovering addict, working hard for a second chance at life. 

“I met someone and just kind of got into like opiates and pills and things, and it just became worse and worse,” she said. “I went through a pretty rough divorce and I was separated, living with my family.”

During that time, she learned about drugs and street life. 

“That totally changed everything for me,” she said. “And then it went downhill really, really fast.”

After an arrest, she was offered the chance to try a treatment program in Rock Springs. 

“I spent five months there, and then literally came out with just the clothes on my back,” she said. 

She’s employed full-time now, but starting from scratch with three children is not an easy road. 

The day she learned she had been selected to become one of the 12 Habitat for Humanity home owners was one of the best of her life.

“I’ve already saved and have my down payment,” she said. “And now I just have to put in the hours.”

Habitat homes are not free. Buyers like Hunt and Boyd must get mortgages and pay closing costs. They also put in hundreds of hours of “sweat equity” working on their and their neighbors’ homes, which further helps lower the costs of building the homes.

Creating this development for second chances and first-time homebuyers wasn’t an easy task. It was a jigsaw puzzle from the start, one missing a few key pieces.

Habitat for Humanity’s Daffney Sandoval told Cowboy State Daily the .93-acre lot for the project was donated to Habitat for Humanity of Laramie County six years ago by Leaning Tree Homes. 

But a bare piece of land is just one piece of the puzzle. There were no streets, no sidewalks, no sewer or water lines — none of the basic infrastructure a nice neighborhood requires before even one house can go up.

“We kind of sat on it for a while because the cost of the infrastructure was going to cost over $1.8 million,” Sandoval said. “And that’s just the road, gutters, sewer, sidewalk, water stuff, the retaining walls and this detention pond.”

Two single moms shut out of Cheyenne’s starter-home market are among 12 families getting a chance at homeownership in a new Habitat for Humanity  neighborhood. Once set for eight houses, it grew to 12 after Cheyenne rewrote building and zoning rules.

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