You Still Here

[{"type":"text","text":"You can tell me, I'm a doctor...."}]

Movies 3 18 25

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

<title>Today In Movies: Tuesday, March 18, 2025 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

You can tell me, I'm a doctor....

Today In Movies: Tuesday, March 18, 2025

Employee kate meadows cropped

Kate Meadows

Government & Politics

A controversial flood mitigation effort that brought 150-200 goats to graze along Bitter Creek in Rock Springs is on hold, at least for now.

After spending about $200,000 over three grazing sessions since the spring of 2025, the Rock Springs City Council chose not to budget additional money for the project in the coming fiscal year, instead directing funding toward cemetery lighting.

"This will be the last we see goats, at least for the next fiscal year of operations," Councilman Dan Pedri told Cowboy State Daily.

The decision at least temporarily halts a program that has generated equal parts criticism and curiosity.

Some residents questioned whether taxpayers should spend tens of thousands of dollars to have goats eat weeds. Others regularly stopped to watch the herd quietly graze along Bitter Creek.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"It's a little source of entertainment,\" Pedri said."}]

During the latest grazing session, which began April 1 and ended June 30, the goats removed roughly 35 tons of vegetation, according to mayor Max Mickelson.

“This does not meet the creeks are ‘fixed',” he said. “It means one more piece of the long-term flood mitigation work was completed.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Different Approach"}]

Rock Springs has struggled with periodic flooding for decades, Mickelson said, dating to alterations made to the creek channel by the former Union Pacific Coal Company.

"The goal was simple," Mickelson said of the Bitter Creek project. "Reduce noxious weeds, brush and fuel load along the creek corridors so water can flow more freely, fire risk is reduced, and our intermittent creek system is in better condition before the next major storm event.

"Our broader work is about protecting homes, businesses, infrastructure and development opportunities from recurring floodplain impacts."

The city brought in goats in the spring of 2025 on a trial basis, paying a Cheyenne operation $50,000. Mickelson said the goats “performed better than expected.”

Council member Randy Hanson had asked the council to look into goats, pointing to other Wyoming communities such as Cheyenne and Gillette that were using them successfully for targeted grazing.

[{"type":"text","text":"“We aren’t pioneers of this process by any means,” Pedri said."}]

Farson land and livestock owner Josh Skorcz caught wind of the project “through the Rock Springs grapevine” and pitched himself as a local solution to the flood-risk problem.

[{"type":"text","text":"Skorcz was the only person who bid."}]

“I provide a service,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “I saw an opportunity where we could supply a service to a local entity that needed it.”

In the fall of 2025, the city paid $58,000 to Skorcz’s LS 5 Livestock for eight weeks.

Then, in April, the Rock Springs City Council voted 6-2 to use goats for a third year for $92,000 – a 59% cost increase.

The increase was largely due to more acreage and longer duration, Skorcz said.

"The city did not pay $34,000 more for the same amount of work," Mickelson said. "The scope, timing, staffing and logistical burden increased in relation to the scope of the project."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Why Goats?"}]

Skorcz said goats can reach steep, brush-choked areas where heavy equipment struggles to operate, reducing vegetation that can create debris dams during high-water events.

[{"type":"text","text":"The work, however, is labor intensive."}]

Under the city's contract, the herd had to be supervised around the clock. Workers also installed and repeatedly moved roughly 10,000 feet of portable electric fencing by hand.

"We're trying to see that incremental decrease over time of the amount of noxious weeds and thick vegetation," Skorcz said. "You're always going to have vegetation, but the type is what's important."

Mickelson said alternatives such as mechanical removal, herbicides, prescribed burning or major construction each come with significant limitations, permitting requirements or environmental restrictions.

Despite reaching stated goals, the project’s growing price tag remained a sticking point.

Pedri and Councilman Rick Milonas – a vocal critic of Mickelson and a contender for this year’s mayoral seat – voted against approving this year's $92,000 contract, saying many constituents questioned the expense.

"That's why I opted not to do it," Pedri said. "My vote was based on the constituents that reached out to me and my promise to be the voice of the majority."

The cumulative cost — roughly $200,000 over three projects — has also become an issue in the mayoral race.

Candidate Katherine Phelps has repeatedly criticized the program on social media. She did not respond to Cowboy State Daily's request for comment.

[{"type":"text","text":"Pedri said the debate ultimately came down to competing priorities."}]

Like many cities, Rock Springs faces a limited budget while weighing other costly needs, including long-term repairs to its civic center.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Could The Goats Return?"}]

Although the goats won't return next year, Mickelson said the city is awaiting a vegetation study from LS 5 Livestock evaluating the project's effectiveness.

That report will help determine whether targeted grazing is included in future budgets after the 2027 fiscal year.

"We intend to make it an annual tool," Mickelson said, "based on council deciding to allocate funds for it."

[{"type":"text","text":"He acknowledged the program's cost can be difficult to justify."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"Nobody likes spending $92,000,\" he said."}]

But he said he believes prevention is ultimately less expensive than recovering from flood damage.

"A community pays one way or another," Mickelson said. "We can pay in steady, boring maintenance before the storm, or we can pay in emergency response, damaged property and regret after it.

"I would much rather answer hard questions about prevention today than stand in front of flooded homes and explain why we didn't use a cost-effective tool we had available."

For now, the city will continue monitoring the Bitter Creek corridor. If conditions create an immediate flood or fire risk, Mickelson said, the council could consider a future budget amendment.

Hungry goats 1 7 6 26

<title>Rock Springs Ends Controversial Goat Grazing Program After Spending $200,000 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

After spending about $200,000 in goat grazing for flood mitigation since 2025, the town of Rock Springs is putting an end to it for now. One council member said residents say it’s too expensive. "This will be the last we see goats,” he said.

Rock Springs Ends Controversial Goat Grazing Program After Spending $200,000

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Crime & Courts

Public Safety

A Fourth of July fundraiser concert at a Gillette bar had ended, the music was over and patrons were beginning to head home when a firework exploded outside the entrance, blowing all the fingers off one man’s hand and injuring four other people.

"I tried to light a firework and throw it, it blew up instantly," Matthew Lynch said in a public apology he issued Monday about the mishap. "People got hurt and I feel like total shit for it.

[{"type":"text","text":"“I’m sorry for being wreckless (sic) and injuring anyone.\""}]

The explosion happened around midnight early Saturday outside the Otherside Bar & Grill, where a concert raising money for a reproductive health clinic had wrapped up about 30 minutes earlier.

"I almost bled out and got life flighted to Billings,” Lynch wrote in his apology posted to Facebook. "I'm gonna be fine. I'm back home. I'm positive and feel OK, other than immense pain."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Bleeding Profusely"}]

Otherside Bar & Grill owner Chris Ingersoll described the scene to Cowboy State Daily on Monday.

"There was a gentleman with an arm injury bleeding profusely,” he said.

Ingersoll said someone — possibly one of his bartenders — applied a tourniquet before first responders arrived. 

Police officers were only about a block away and reached the scene within minutes to begin rendering aid, he said.

Ingersoll said he believes a man who had come over from another nearby bar ignited what appeared to be a large firecracker near the front entrance.

Surveillance cameras captured the incident, and the video has been turned over to investigators, he said.

Lynch also wrote that he lost all the fingers on his right hand, shattered the bones in his left hand, suffered burns, hearing damage and partial blindness.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Investigation Ongoing"}]

Gillette Police Department Interim Chief Brent Wasson said the incident remains under investigation and no tickets or arrests have been made.

He also pushed back on early reports that the firework had been "launched" from the man's hand.

"There were no launching of fireworks," Wasson told Cowboy State Daily, cautioning against relying on initial reports while investigators continue determining exactly what happened.

[{"type":"text","text":"Whether alcohol played a role remains unknown, he said."}]

According to Wasson, the person who was handling the firework suffered the most serious injuries and was transported by ambulance to the emergency room at Campbell County Health.

Two additional people were taken by ambulance but declined treatment at the hospital, while two others refused transport at the scene.

Ingersoll said he believed the man who was holding the explosive was out of the hospital and back in Gillette, which Lynch confirmed.

[{"type":"text","text":"Messages left for Lynch weren’t returned by publication."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Explosion, Not Fire"}]

Campbell County Fire Department Battalion Chief Cam Siplon said firefighters were dispatched to the bar for a report of an explosion.

By the time crews arrived, the Gillette Police Department and EMS personnel were already treating patients, he said. Firefighters found no fire or smoke, only a crowd gathered in the parking lot.

Based on the severity of the injuries, Siplon said he would expect the firework was something larger than a typical firecracker, although he emphasized that was not an official determination.

He also could not confirm who applied the tourniquet because EMS had already begun treating the injured man when firefighters arrived.

Siplon urged people to leave fireworks to professionals, noting that serious injuries are more common than many people realize.

"Our best bet is that fireworks should be left to the professionals," he said. "They tend to be better anyway, and not as many people get hurt that way.”

Otherside bar and grill gillette 7 6 26

<title>Gillette Man Blows Fingers Off Hand With Firework Outside Bar, Four Others Hurt | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A man blew the fingers off his hand and injured four other people outside a Gillette bar around midnight Saturday. In a public apology, the man, who was life-flighted to Billings, said he tried to throw the firework "but it blew up instantly."

Gillette Man Blows Fingers Off Hand With Firework Outside Bar, Four Others Hurt

A Glenrock family's Fourth of July celebration ended in chaos when a firework exploded in the middle of a crowd of spectators, seriously injuring a young boy and prompting an emergency helicopter flight to a Denver hospital.

Now, the boy's family is pleading for witnesses to come forward as they search for answers about what happened.

"Accident or not, we want to know the truth” the boy’s mother, Katrina Pergande, said in a Sunday post shared to a Glenrock community Facebook page.

On Monday, the mother told Cowboy State Daily she also wants to make people more aware of how careless people can be when it comes to fireworks.  

Pergande said her family was attending the annual Fourth of July fireworks celebration at the South Recreation Complex at around 9:30 p.m. Friday when a firework entered the area where they were gathered.

She said multiple members of her family, including herself and several of her children, suffered burns. 

Bu her son Lavon sustained the most serious injuries after the firework struck his eye and exploded.

He was transported by ambulance from Glenrock to Casper before being airlifted to Children's Hospital Colorado in Denver, she said.

"His end of the Fourth was cut short and had to be rushed to the hospital," Pergande wrote.

In Glenrock, the town doesn’t put on an organized, professional fireworks show. Instead, the fire department holds a fireworks event at the ball fields allowing people to set off their own.

Admission is $10 per car with a cap at 400 cars. No alcohol is allowed as well.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Eyewitness Describes Chaos"}]

John Rosenfeld of Casper, a former emergency medical technician who attended the event, said he was sitting on metal bleachers between two ball fields when he noticed something unusual.

"I saw it come across the ground," Rosenfeld said about observing the errant firework. "It came from the middle section of the left field, and I did see it explode in the middle of the crowd of people."

He said panic spread through the crowd almost immediately. 

Rosenfeld described people running from the area while at least one person cried out. Before he could reach the scene, firefighters had already responded.

"Big props to the Glenrock Fire Department," he said. "They were there before even I could get up and do anything."

Rosenfeld said responders quickly removed the injured person from the area. At the time, he didn't realize that was a child.

"I asked a couple of people that were in the area if they were all right, and that seemed to be the only injury that I saw," he said, adding that, "I don't think anyone shot it at the group of people. 

"I do think it was a complete accident that just happened to go that direction."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Family Seeking Witnesses"}]

Pergande is asking anyone who attended the fireworks celebration and witnessed the incident — or captured photos or video — to contact the Glenrock Police Department or reach out to her directly.

She said her family had been seated on the left field near the second-to-last row of fireworks stands when the incident happened.

"With so many people at this event, I truly feel that someone saw this happen or knows something that can help us find the person responsible," she wrote.

In a later update, Pergande said Lavon was receiving steroid treatments every few hours while doctors worked to reduce inflammation that was preventing them from fully examining his eye.

 she started to help cover medical costs that Lavon suffered multiple injuries “and burns on his eyelid and had significant trauma to his actual eye."

She said physicians expect to determine whether surgery would be an option after additional evaluation.

"Our sweet boy was just enjoying his night, smiling and loving his time with his family," Pergande wrote.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Not Just 'Pretty Sparks'"}]

Having responded to fireworks injuries during his career, Rosenfeld said incidents like this show how dangerous fireworks can be when they're not handled properly.

"A lot of people are not aware of fireworks," he said. "They think it's all just pretty sparks and don't really comprehend that it's an explosive device and can remove fingers and body parts.”

Glenrock Chief of Police Colter Felton said that there is an open investigation into the boy reportedly being "struck in the face by a firework."

Because there's an active investigation, the chief told Cowboy State Daily in a Monday email that he can't comment on some details, including about the possible source of the firework or who may have discharged it.

"I can confirm that the juvenile male was injured in the left eye and that he was transported by ambulance to the emergency room in Casper," he said, adding that anyone with information, photos or videos should contact the Glenrock Police Department.

"I would like to remind the public that fireworks are dangerous and unpredictable, and that those using them should exercise caution, not only for themselves but for the people and property around them as well," Felton said. "I pray for a quick and full recovery for the injured young man and his family."

Glenrock fireworks boy hurt 7 6 26

<title>Glenrock Boy Airlifted To Denver Hospital After Getting Hit In Eye By Fireworks | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Glenrock boy was airlifted to a Denver hospital on the Fourth of July after getting hit in the eye with an errant firework when it exploded in a crowd at a local park. A witness said he watched it "explode in the middle of the crowd of people.”

Glenrock Boy Airlifted To Denver Hospital After Getting Hit In Eye By Fireworks

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Jackie Dorothy.

Jackie Dorothy

Around Wyoming

 overnight in the Wyoming Territory with canvas tents, sectional housing and buildings on wheels. It was July 1868 and the town “bred by the devil” was ready for business.

“There are perhaps, three thousand people in and around Benton,” brothers Legh and Fred Freeman wrote in the Aug. 11, 1868, Frontier Index newspaper. “To give an idea of the on-wheels movement we will mention that the office of Wells, Fargo & Co., torn down at Laramie three days before, had its sectioned shingle roof on, and stage business resumed in it that night.”

The Frontier Index, known as the “Press on Wheels,” was also a 

 business that published its paper in these overnight towns.

“Business was so lively that we telegraphed the Laramie editor of our paper, to wheel on at once to Benton,” the Freeman brothers wrote. “We since learn that our new power press is threshing out the work there.”

Benton was an end-of-track town on the construction front of the Union Pacific Railroad, about 12 miles east of present-day Rawlins and just west of present-day Fort Fred Steele.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Baddest Reputation"}]

 the worst of these Hell’s Tent Towns, with claims that 100 men had been murdered there in its short lifetime. Their reputation as a home to “bawdy women and swindlers” was earned when visitors passed through and were shocked by what they saw.

According to historians Mary Lou Pence and Lola M. Homsher, co-authors of “The Ghost Towns of Wyoming,” one 

 that portrayed Benton’s devilishness had been a misunderstanding.

Water for this new town was one of its most valuable commodities. It had to be carted by team and tank from the North Platte River two miles away. The water hauler charged an exorbitant 

Seeing a new way to advertise, a whiskey distiller paid the hauler to paste large billboards on each side of his tank that read "Tanglefoot Whisky."

A Mormon woman soon arrived by train and was waiting for a stagecoach for the next leg of her trip to Brigham's Temple. When she saw the poster-plastered wagon and women rushing from their doors with pails in hands, Pence and Homsher said she became  indignant.

 woman said. “They're buying whisky by the bucketsful!"

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Grant & Buffalo Bill Campaign"}]

To add to Benton’s reputation, even future presidents visited the tent town. Ulyssis S. Grant arrived with Buffalo Bill Cody. The Republican candidate was said to have given a stump speech at Benton to an eclectic group of people, ranging from gentlemen to railroad laborers. 

The Freeman brothers were heavily Democratic and former Confederate soldiers so the story they ran in the Aug.11, 1868, Frontier Index was a satirical attack on Grant and Buffalo Bill.

“When Useless Slaughter Grant was at Benton the other night, Buffalo Bill mounted a dry goods box at a street corner and returned thanks to the people for the splendid ovation (that was not) given the military commander in chief,” they wrote.

The editors claimed Buffalo Bill then auctioned off an old watch to pay for Grant's expenses on his campaign in Wyoming. Otherwise, Grant would be forced to “bum” his way back to Washington, D.C.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Mundane Shootings"}]

In the same paper, when the Freeman brothers shared the local gossip, usually reserved for such tidbits as who had arrived in town or who was engaging in business, the story was about the latest shootings. This time Brownsville, a construction camp not far from Benton, was the scene of several murders.   

— a criminal offense involving at least two people —

 occurred on the streets between two men employed in Creighton's telegraph outfit, the Freeman brothers reported. 

[{"type":"text","text":"As the story goes:"}]

“They had been throwing dice for a pistol, when they became dissatisfied, and the person who owned the pistol — James Williams — refused to give up the money received, which led to a difficulty in which he was shot and supposed mortally wounded. The murderer has escaped.

"A man, named John Wood, accidentally shot himself on Sunday morning while drawing his pistol to shoot a man in a gambling house. He is now in the hospital and is doing well.

"Mike Meehan was shot by a ranchman near Reynolds & Dowling's grading camp, about eight miles from Brownsville. 

"The cause of the affair was, the graders were on a strike, and passed an order amongst themselves that any ranchman who would interfere with their strike or sell liquor to drunken men, they would clean out, and after giving them warning, they still sold liquor to the men, when the graders turned out and demolished some fourteen saloons. 

"During the row, Michael Meehan was shot and instantly killed. The ranchman delivered himself up to the military authorities at Fort Steele."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Rise and Fall of Benton"}]

During its short existence, 200 framed tents and portable buildings had been erected, lots sold to the highest bidder, from $800 to $1,000, and dusty streets laid out. Benton was plotted into five wards and a mayor and one alderman from each ward had been appointed.

might become a more permanent town. A forwarding house was even established to take advantage of the active business taking place.

The most prominent building was described by Pence and Homsher as an immense canvas tent lit by imported chandeliers.

“An immense plate-glass mirror behind the corner bar reflected a strange hubbub of humanity,” Pence and Homsher wrote. “Pistol-packing mamas; lace-gowned and French-heeled dancing damsels; plaid-vested and fob-twisting come-on spielers; campaign-uniformed Indian fighters; corduroyed and buckskinned freighters; bow-tied and velvet-coated dude dandies — all taking chances with fate.”

The historians claimed  more than once during his night shift an overworked barkeep would have to change into another clean white coat to be rid of spatters of beer, bullets or blood.

By September 1868, the railroad had moved on, and so did nearly everyone else. 

The depot was moved east three miles to Fort Steele and Rawlins was designated a rail terminal. Pence and Homsher said that as tents were erected in the new town of Rawlins, former Benton residents were hesitant to buy lots and be fooled again into spending money on real estate that would not last.

Benton only existed for three months before the town was dismantled and it became one of Wyoming’s most infamous ghost towns.

Benton 1 Benton A C Hull Photo 7 5 26

<title>Wyoming History: 100 Murders In 3 Months, Lawless Benton Was ‘Bred By The Devil’ | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Of the Wyoming Territory towns that arrived on wheels along the Union Pacific Railroad, none were as tawdry, bawdry and lawless as Benton, which witnessed as many as 100 murders in its three-month lifespan. Benton, it was said, was "bred by the devil."

Wyoming History: 100 Murders In 3 Months, Lawless Benton Was ‘Bred By The Devil’

CASPER — Thirteen years ago, James Pulver sat in a jail cell wondering whether his life was over.

At 24, he was facing federal kidnapping and domestic violence-related charges and staring at a $100,000 cash bond — an amount so far beyond his reach it may as well have been $1 million.

He remembers the clang of the steel doors, the uncertainty, and the crushing realization that he had no idea what happened next.

"You don't know anything," Pulver recalls "You don't know the process. You don't know the courts. You don't know what's coming."

Eventually, Pulver accepted a plea agreement, pleading no contest to misdemeanor domestic violence and misdemeanor theft after spending 367 days in the Fremont County Detention Center.

He still insists the most serious allegations against him weren't true, but says the experience permanently changed how he views people accused of crimes.

Today, when someone in Wyoming is arrested and their family doesn't know where to turn, there's a decent chance the phone rings on Pulver's desk.

[{"type":"text","text":"The irony isn't lost on him."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"Before I was a bail bondsman,\" he said, \"I was an inmate.\""}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"More Than Bond"}]

Most people picture a bail bondsman as someone who signs paperwork, takes a fee and disappears.

Pulver, who lives in Casper, laughs at that; he said he believes his job is to guide defendants through one of the most frightening experiences of their lives.

[{"type":"text","text":"He said his sister calls him the \"bail bond doula.\""}]

His advice starts immediately. He tells his bondees: eat well, get sunlight, and stay sober. 

"You're already walking in there in shackles looking guilty," he said. "They're literally judging you."

Know your lawyer's phone number. Know your address before standing in front of a judge.

[{"type":"text","text":"Wear your nicest clothes."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Be clean-shaven."}]

Pulver tells clients they have an advantage once they're released on bond: they can prepare.

[{"type":"text","text":"Someone sitting in jail cannot."}]

A Casper bail bondsman has an unorthodox job that requires him to be part bounty hunter and part life counselor. And he can empathize with his clients. "Before I was a bail bondsman, I was an inmate," he said.

Today In Movies: Tuesday, March 18, 2025

In case you missed it

More in You Still Here

Bonus Video 2: Tuesday, July 7, 2026

Steve Inman: Tuesday, July 7, 2026

Today In Fate: Tuesday, July 7, 2026

Today In Commercials: Tuesday, July 7, 2026

Most read