Daily Smile

[{"type":"text","text":"How many peanuts can a hamster stuff in its cheeks?"}]

Smile 3 31 25

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

<title>Monday Smile: March 31, 2025 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

How many peanuts can a hamster stuff in its cheeks?

Monday Smile: March 31, 2025

 How many peanuts can a hamster stuff in its cheeks?

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Around Wyoming

Public Safety

A violent storm ripped through southern Campbell County on Wednesday afternoon, tearing roofs from buildings, demolishing a vacant mobile home, flipping a camper upside down and requiring emergency crews to rescue four people from a damaged home.

Whether it was a tornado isn't official yet, but witnesses might have caught something on video, Campbell County Fire Marshal Stuart Burnham told Cowboy State Daily.

The storm struck near Rattlesnake Road and South Highway 59 shortly after noon, leaving pieces of roofs and other debris scattered across the rural landscape.

"Crews were called out to South Highway 59 near Rattlesnake Road (at about 12:36 p.m.) for a report of occupants stuck in a residence due to a possible tornado," Burnham said.

When firefighters arrived, Burnham said, crews were able to help the four people out of the house. All four were evaluated by emergency medical personnel, and Burnham said he did not believe anyone suffered significant injuries.

Firefighters then began working through the surrounding neighborhood, checking other damaged properties to make sure nobody else was trapped or hurt.

"We have not located anybody with significant injuries, fortunately," Burnham said.

By midafternoon, the response was beginning to wind down as officials turned their attention toward recovery.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Roofs Ripped Off"}]

Photos from the area show metal roofing ripped from structures, debris scattered across fields and the camper thrown onto its side.

"The structure that sustained the most damage, yeah, the roof was removed from it," Burnham said. "There are multiple buildings with roofs that have been removed. There was a mobile home that was demolished as well. However, that mobile home was vacant."

[{"type":"text","text":"Exactly how many properties were damaged was unknown Wednesday afternoon."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"Multiple,\" Burnham said."}]

Crews were still surveying the neighborhood, and some damage might not be discovered until property owners return home and inspect their land and buildings.

Powder River Energy Corp. was checking electrical infrastructure throughout the affected area.

The storm had moved out of Campbell County shortly after 2 p.m., and officials said there was no longer an immediate threat. South Highway 59 remained open.

[{"type":"text","text":"The American Red Cross was also preparing to help."}]

Robby Gallob said the organization was "working to get into contact with the primary family affected."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Did A Tornado Touch Down?"}]

The original emergency call reported a possible tornado, but nobody had called Campbell County's 911 center to report actually seeing a funnel, Burnham said.

[{"type":"text","text":"Highway 59 is heavily traveled, making that absence notable."}]

"That's not to say that there wasn't one," Burnham said. "It just wasn't necessarily noticed."

[{"type":"text","text":"Officials were beginning to find potential evidence Wednesday afternoon."}]

Burnham said responders were talking with people who had been in the area, and shortly before speaking with Cowboy State Daily he had watched a couple of videos taken during the storm.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"It looks like they may have had something on camera,\" he said."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Those videos could now help meteorologists piece together what happened."}]

The National Weather Service office in Rapid City, South Dakota, will make the official determination about whether a tornado touched down.

Campbell County officials were coordinating with NWS on a damage assessment, but Burnham didn't yet know when meteorologists would arrive.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Familiar Date"}]

Exactly 21 years earlier, on Aug. 12, 2005, one of Wyoming's deadliest tornadoes tore through Wright, about 30 miles south of Gillette.

[{"type":"text","text":"Jim Konyn remembers that afternoon."}]

He wasn't in Wright, he was working at Midway Supply in Gillette, an oilfield supply company located off Lakeway Road.

[{"type":"text","text":"Konyn and his coworkers happened to be outside when the sirens began."}]

From Gillette, they couldn't quite see the tornado, Konyn recalled, but they could see the storm looming in the distance.

[{"type":"text","text":"The next day, Konyn had to travel through the Wright area."}]

"I've been here for a long time, and I just remember that day because there's a lot of damage," he said.

The tornado Konyn remembers touched down north of Wright before moving southeast into town and striking the Cottonwood Mobile Home Park.

The Wyoming State Climate Office said the F2 tornado killed two people and injured 13. About 40 mobile homes were destroyed. 

Twenty-one years later, Konyn was again watching severe weather move across Campbell County.

Wednesday morning and early afternoon brought rain, lightning and thunder around Gillette, he said. Then a severe thunderstorm warning appeared for Campbell County.

Konyn recalled the warning tracking the storm from around Savageton toward the area between Gillette and Wright and the mines. He said the warning mentioned hail around the size of ping pong balls.

"They never said no tornado," he said. "They just said a severe storm."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Campbell County Tornadoes"}]

Two summers ago, an EF2 tornado struck the North Antelope Rochelle Mine south of Gillette, flipping vehicles and empty railroad cars and tearing portions of roofs and walls from mine buildings.

[{"type":"text","text":"Seven people were injured, but nobody was killed."}]

Then, just seven weeks ago, on June 22, another EF2 tornado crossed Campbell County between the Savageton and Wright areas.

The National Weather Service estimated its peak winds at 115 mph. It traveled nearly 13 miles, damaged a home and snapped more than a dozen power poles. No injuries or deaths were reported.

Now Campbell County is waiting to learn whether Aug. 12 will be added to that list.

For the moment, Burnham said the important news was that despite the destruction responders had not found anyone seriously hurt.

Tornado 1 8 13 26

<title>Suspected Tornado Rips Through Campbell County, Leaving Widespread Property Damage | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Suspected Tornado Rips Through Campbell County, Leaving Widespread Property Damage

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

Greg Johnson

Crime & Courts

Courts

A Tinder date gone horribly wrong ended with a Newcastle man dead with a hollow-point round in his chest and a South Dakota man facing a second-degree murder charge — and vastly different stories from the couple who had just met for a hook-up.

The woman Drake Alexander Ingalls of Belle Fourche, South Dakota, had driven nearly 90 minutes to meet this past weekend told investigators that Ingalls “did not need to shoot that gun at all.”

Ingalls, however, says he shot the other man in defense of his Tinder date after the woman screamed for “help” several times, according to an affidavit of probable cause written by Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation Agent Zack Miller.

The shooting happened a little before 5 a.m. Sunday, and Ingalls had his initial court appearance Tuesday, where a Weston County Circuit Court judge gave him a $250,000 cash-only bond and set an Aug. 19 preliminary hearing.

By the time Newcastle police responded to the home of the victim, identified in court documents as Jason Greene, he was lying face-down on the floor and obviously dead, wrote Miller.

An officer “entered the trailer home and located the victim … lying face-down on the floor between the hallway and living room with a large pool of blood underneath his chest,” the affidavit says. “Officers and emergency medical personnel confirmed Greene was deceased.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"What She Said"}]

In separate interviews with the woman and Ingalls, both told investigators how they met on Tinder and had been talking for anywhere from a couple weeks (according to her) to a few months (according to him) before Ingalls drove to Newcastle on Saturday so they could meet up, the affidavit says.

They had a room at a local hotel and had been drinking for hours by the time the woman got a text from Greene calling her a “whore,” Miller wrote.

The woman then allegedly proceeded to claim Greene had mistreated her, but later told investigators that Greene had “never assaulted her and the two were not in any physical altercation,” the affidavit says.

Upset after getting the text, the woman asked Ingalls to take her to Greene’s place “so she could talk to him,” Miller wrote.

The woman “told Ingalls about the text message and that Greene had abused her in the past,” the affidavit says. “(She) told Ingalls that if he heard her yell for help to come and help her.”

Greene didn’t know they were coming to his residence, the document adds. Miller’s affidavit also doesn’t elaborate on how the woman and Greene knew each other.

The woman and Greene were in a “heated verbal argument” with her “yelling loudly,” which Ingalls reportedly heard, the affidavit says. So, he left his car outside the trailer and went to the woman.

The woman also told investigators that she didn’t actually see the shooting, “and adamantly stated Greene never assaulted her and the two were not in any physical altercation,” the affidavit says.

She continued to say that Ingalls “did not need to shoot that gun at all,” Miller wrote about her statement.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"What He Said"}]

That’s not how the confrontation went down, however, Ingalls said in his own interview with investigators, the affidavit says.

“Ingalls claimed he came around a shed and observed Greene struggling with (the woman) near the doorway threshold,” Miller wrote. “Ingalls described the struggle as Greene behind (the woman) and he had his arms hooked under her armpits and another hand on the back of her head or hair, and it appeared he was trying to pull (her) into his trailer.”

Ingalls said he tried to pull the door open, then pointed a handgun at Greene and demanded he let the woman go, according to his statement detailed in the affidavit.

“At which point, Ingalls said he fired his handgun,” Miller wrote. “Ingalls could only see Greene’s chest as (the woman) was in front of him and he believed he shot him right in the middle of the chest.”

That’s when Greene stumbled back into the trailer and fell onto the living room floor.

Ingalls had the gun because he had it in his car and grabbed it when he heard the woman yell for help, the affidavit says.

“Ingalls retrieved his 9 mm Glock 17 handgun from the center console of his car and chambered a hollow-point round into the handgun as he approached the side entrance of the trailer,” Miller wrote.

Ingalls and the woman then got back into his car and drove around the block before returning to the scene and the woman called 911.

If convicted of second-degree murder, Ingalls could get anywhere from 20 years ot life in prison, a fine of not more than $10,000, or both.

Newcastle highway sign Drake Alexander Ingalls 8 12 26

<title>Tinder Date Ends With Newcastle Man Shot Dead, S.D. Man Facing Murder Charge | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Tinder Date Ends With Newcastle Man Shot Dead, S.D. Man Facing Murder Charge

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

Andrew Rossi

This story was updated at 4:45 p.m. Wednesday.

A multi-vehicle accident between Cody and Yellowstone National Park involving multiple motorcycles on Wednesday morning resulted in one confirmed fatality and five serious injuries, the Wyoming Highway Patrol tells Cowboy State Daily.

WHP spokesman Aaron Brown said the multi-vehicle incident at Wapiti involved four motorcycles, a pickup truck, and a Wyoming Department of Transportation vehicle.

“What we know is we had one fatality,” Brown said. “One (victim) was LifeFlighted to a hospital in Billings, Montana, and the other three were taken to Cody Regional Health via ambulance. I don't know who was taken or transferred where, but they all had severe injuries."

Because the investigation into the accident is ongoing, Brown didn’t know what the contributing factors might have been. He could confirm that the driver of the WYDOT truck was not injured.

“The WYDOT vehicle looks to have been struck toward the end of the crash,” he said

WHIP will release the deceased victim’s name once next-of-kin is notified, Brown said.

As of 2:50 p.m., U.S. Highway 14/16/20 was cleared of debris and open to traffic in both directions.

At 9:38 a.m., WYDOT closed all lanes on the highway due to the crash. First responders were rushing to the scene, which an eyewitness says involved multiple people who appeared to be seriously injured.

According to exchanges on the Park County Public Safety-WyoLink radio scanner, first responders had received “a report of two fatalities.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Too Grisly"}]

Wapiti resident Jimmy Rush was heading toward Cody for work when he observed the scene of the incident. It happened sometime between 8 and 8:30 a.m. Wednesday near the Old Faithful RV Park, just outside Wapiti.

“When I passed by, it was still a very early stage of the accident,” he said. “There were no first responders on the scene. There were at least four to five motorcycles and debris everywhere. I counted at least three bodies that I could see lying on the ground, not moving, with more down in ditches."

Rush said the victims were being attended to “by all of the gracious people of Wyoming,” who immediately pulled over and jumped out of vehicles to help.

A Silver Ford pickup truck, either an F-250 or F-350, had been “ejected out into a field,” according to Rush. From what he could see, it appeared to have "impacted something.”

“I immediately called (Park County Dispatch) and said, ‘You guys got to send everybody. There’s multiple bodies and multiple injuries, and one ambulance ain't going to get it done.’”

As Rush continued into Cody, he saw five Park County Sheriff’s deputies, multiple fire trucks, a Wyoming Highway Patrol trooper, and two ambulances heading to the scene.

Rush took a photo of a WYDOT truck at the scene, which showed a damaged tailgate.

“It was the only picture I felt comfortable taking,” he said. “It was too grisly.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"What Happened?"}]

Rush could only piece together a rough scenario of events based on what he observed.

“From what I can tell, the WYDOT truck was starting to do some type of work,” he said. “There were cones set up, but I don't know if he was setting those cones up for some pending work that was about to happen, or if he had set those cones up because of the accident.

[{"type":"text","text":"“It’s really hard to tell, but it was severe.”"}]

This is a developing story and will be updated as more information is available.

Wapiti Crash 308 12 26

<title>UPDATE: Fatality Reported In Crash Involving Four Motorcycles, WYDOT Truck Near Cody | Cowboy State Daily</title>

An accident involving multiple motorcycles and a WYDOT truck has resulted in at least one fatality and serious injuries on U.S. Highway 14-16-20 near Cody. "I counted at least three bodies that I could see lying on the ground, not moving," one witness said.

UPDATE: Fatality Reported In Crash Involving Four Motorcycles, WYDOT Truck Near Cody

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

Renée Jean

Growing up, Texan James Neeley had never heard of mountain man Jim Baker, who was a frontier scout, trapper and early non-Native settler with ties to both Colorado and Wyoming when the West was young.

A sister’s genealogy search changed all that a couple decades ago. On Saturday, he was among a handful of Baker descendants who gathered for a photo commemorating the Little Snake River Museum’s work to preserve the cabin Baker built when he settled in present-day Savery in 1873.

Members of HistoriCorps and other volunteers in the Savery area spent last summer hand-hewing cottonwood logs to replace water-damaged logs at the cabin. The work is not finished, Little Snake River Museum Director Lela Emmons told Cowboy State Daily. 

Efforts are already underway to raise additional funds to keep the restoration going, and to source more of the huge cottonwood logs 

“There’s still another 10 or 12 logs we need to replace,” she said. “Getting those logs is the hardest part of the whole thing.”

Large cottonwood logs aren’t simply available at Home Depot or some other lumberyard.

“We have to find the right cottonwoods, get them milled,” she said. “And they’re so heavy, you can’t just lift them up. You have to hire a guy with a big backhoe or something who can lift them.”

It’s a fuel-intensive process, Emmons added, which means the logs must be sourced as near to the museum as possible.

Once they have the right logs, they’ll also need to bring HistoriCorps back to do the work, which will cost around $40,000 for another two-week stint.

Emmons said she hopes to identify grant funding to help with that.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Best Shot In The West"}]

Neeley drove from Texas with his wife, Sandra, just to learn more about his ancestor and see the cabin where Baker once lived.

“I would be a first cousin, three times removed,” Neeley told Cowboy State Daily. “So, there’s a lot of people here who know more about him than I do.”

The work done on the cabin, which is a rare surviving structure from the mountain man era, is “wonderful,” he said. 

“It’s an important part of history and, of course, if it deteriorates, nobody can enjoy it,” Neeley said. “So it’s really nice that they have done this. A lot of people, at least in our part of the world, are not familiar with Jim Baker. They’ve heard of Jim Bridger, people like that … but (Baker) was an important character, too.”

Kit Carson, in fact, has been quoted in newspaper articles of the time saying Baker was the “best shot in the West,” next to himself, of course. When Carson sent invitations to 18 mountain men for what would be their last trapping event together in 1851, Baker was on that list. 

Bridger, when he was looking for an elite scout to help him at Fort Phil Kearney, hired Baker. Baker was also one of the scouts for Gen. John Charles Fremont’s third expedition to explore and map the American West alongside Carson, and he was part of the 1841 Bartleson-Bidwell Party, among the earliest wagon parties bound for California.

Baker’s contemporaries certainly thought he was important. But unlike them, Baker was not interested in publicity, biographer Leighton Baker wrote in his book, “The Red-Headed Shoshoni.” 

Baker loved the mountains and hated the spotlight. So, when Ned Buntline suggested writing a biography about him, Baker flat out refused. 

He did not care if the world forgot who he was.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Too Many People"}]

In fact, when Denver became too populous for his tastes, he packed up and in 1873 moved to Savery, where he built a two-story cabin with a third-story tower as his home. The tower, dismantled in 1881, was so he could climb high and see far — just in case any of the American Indian tribes who disliked him decided to come to call. 

Baker is thought to be one of the first non-Native settlers in Denver. He was later honored with a stained-glass likeness at the state Capitol, and he became one of the first settlers of the Little Snake River Valley. 

The cabin itself has lived several lives. 

Baker first built it from massive cottonwood logs felled by himself and some of his children along the Little Snake River. They squared the timbers by hand with broad axes and not much else.

After Baker’s death in 1898, there was a tussle between Wyoming, Colorado, and Savery over who would keep the cabin. 

Wyoming won the first round of that battle, and Baker’s cabin was displayed in Frontier Park in Cheyenne for 60-some years starting in 1917. Then, one year, the cabin was disassembled and stored, never to return as a display at Frontier Park. 

Savery still wanted Baker’s cabin though, and was eventually successful in convincing the state to send it back home to the Little Snake River Valley in 1976.

When it arrived, it was like a giant pile of scattered Lincoln logs, with few numbers explaining how the cabin had been put together. 

Original photos of the cabin and miniature models of the logs were used to figure out just how to reassemble the cabin in its present location, a mile from where Baker had originally built it.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Fight Is On"}]

Three decades before Baker built his fortified cottonwood cabin near Savery, he’d already helped make the surrounding landscape part of Wyoming history.

In 1841, near the Little Snake River Valley, Baker was among trappers who survived the fight that gave Battle Mountain its name. 

The conflict also became associated with Battle Creek, Battle Pass, and Battle Highway — place names that still mark the country where Baker later chose to make his home.

The battle is one of the most stunning tales of the mountain man era.

That summer, Baker had been trapping in the Green River country. Bridger decided to send the young scout to warn French-Canadian trader Henry Fraeb, who was building a trading post somewhere near the confluence of Battle Creek and the Little Snake River, that large war parties of Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho were gathering in the region.

Bridger wanted Fraeb to abandon his exposed trading post and come back to Bridger’s camp along Henry’s Fork of the Green River, where he and his men would be much safer.

But Fraeb wasn’t keen to abandon his post. 

One day, while Baker and a few companions were hunting bison and cleaning their kills in the vicinity of Fraeb’s outpost, they saw huge puffs of dust suddenly appear over the southwest flank of the peak now known as Battle Mountain, which was then called Bastion Mountain. A large allied war party of Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Sioux — what Baker relative Chilly Rollingson calls the “Platte River Indians” —  then came riding down the southwest side of Battle Mountain. 

They were making a beeline for Fraeb’s trading post — exactly the scenario Bridger had feared.

Baker and his companions raced back to the outpost to help defend it and their lives. In the ensuing battle, Fraeb was among the first killed.

Baker, just 21 or so at the time, stepped up to take command, and his fellow scouts would later credit him with saving their lives. 

Baker, in an account decades later in a Denver newspaper, said the Indians numbered 700 or more. Other accounts have put the numbers anywhere from 200 to thousands. 

Baker told the newspaper he and the men hid behind stumps and positioned dead horses as breastworks to withstand what was about to happen.

With their manpower limited to about 24 scouts, and scarce quantities of ammunition, Baker told the men they had to make every shot count. That meant waiting until their attackers were close enough to ensure each bullet was going to hit someone or a horse. 

Baker and the men with him believed they were going to die. All they could do was make their own lives as costly as possible.

Baker’s strategy worked better than they could have imagined. Each time one of their fellow warriors fell, the Indians would stop their charge and draw back. Eventually, with only five horses left to fight over, the Indians decided to take their dead and wounded away and leave the trappers alone.

It was a stunning reversal of fate for the surviving trappers.

Carson, who told a Denver reporter he heard the story later from Indian points of view, said the warriors believed a supernatural force had turned the fight against them. They could not otherwise see how a battle where they held such overwhelming odds went so poorly.

Bastion Mountain was renamed Battle Mountain after the fight, and a different mountain was renamed Baker’s Peak.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Keeping History Alive"}]

In later times, some of Baker’s favorite trails, drawn out on his trapper maps, have become paved highways today. 

Many people travel these routes who do not realize how these roads came to be. 

The preservation of Baker’s cabin, as the mountain man who helped settle this area of the West, is a “big responsibility,” Cynthia Reschke Collyard told Cowboy State Daily. 

She now lives in Colorado and is a direct descendant of Baker. Her great-grandmother was Baker’s daughter, Jenny, making him her great-great grandfather.

“This is rightly where it belonged, because this is where it was originally built,” she said. “But it’s a big thing for a little museum to take on the care of something like this, outside in the elements.”

She hopes to see the restoration work continue, knowing some logs on the cabin have rotted and need to be replaced. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"The restoration so far is good, she added."}]

“It’s been done in the nick of time,” she said. “And I think a lot more work needs to be done. I don’t think it’s finished by any means.”

Collyard has been actively working through tribal records to learn more about Baker, trying to separate facts from “barstool” storytelling through the years, which have muddied the historical waters.

What she hopes for, more than anything, is for Baker and his role in history to be remembered accurately.

That’s a goal important as well to other Baker relatives such as Rollingson and Paul and Michael McAllister.

The McAllisters have donated rare Baker photos and artifacts to museums in Craig and Savery, as well as donated time to helping preserve Baker’s cabin.

“History is important,” Michael said, noting that he and his brother both helped mill and square many of the new cottonwood logs for the restoration. “Anytime you can keep history alive, it’s all for the good.”

Baker cabin 2 8 11 26

<title>Jim Baker Descendants Celebrate Work To Save Forgotten Mountain Man’s Savery Home | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Long before he built his cabin in Savery, Jim Baker led two dozen men in an 1841 fight that gave Battle Mountain its name. Now his far-flung descendants and a tiny museum are fighting time, money and rotten logs to save the frontier scout’s last home.

Jim Baker Descendants Celebrate Work To Save Forgotten Mountain Man’s Savery Home

Wyoming Life

Sunday morning, I threw some clothes in a bag and headed east, Sturgis-bound.

For hundreds of miles, Wyoming unspooled beneath a great blue sky, the prairie rolling toward the horizon through cattle, sagebrush and long stretches of nothing at all, until the earth began to rise and the plains folded themselves into the dark, pine-covered ridges of Meade County.

[{"type":"text","text":"Motorcycles seemed to materialize out of thin air."}]

Climbing into a three-wheeler called "The Pantydropper" with a 50-year Sturgis veteran who boasted "it goes zero to 100 in a second," ended up with me at the wheel and the flashing lights of a South Dakota patrol car behind us.

Monday Smile: March 31, 2025

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