One More For The Road

It wasn't Wendy Corr's smoothest delivery at DoorDash, but she got the job done.....

One more for 4 10 25

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

<title>One More For The Road: Thursday, April 10, 2025 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

One More For The Road: Thursday, April 10, 2025

 It wasn't Wendy Corr's smoothest delivery at DoorDash, but she got the job done.....

Employee kate meadows cropped

Kate Meadows

Outdoors

Wildlife

The bull bison that attacked and killed a 70-year-old woman in Custer State Park last month will not be euthanized.

Instead, he will live out the rest of his life in the care of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe Game, Fish and Parks. The relocation will allow the bison to continue in his natural life in a secure environment away from the public.

The Rosebud Sioux Tribe agency announced the decision Wednesday, which effectively lifts a death sentence for the bison. 

The announcement followed fierce public debate over whether the bull should be put to death after it 

attacked and killed a 70-year-old Canadian tourist

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Public Weighs In"}]

Dave Scragg, a photographer who lives in Custer and frequently is in the area getting images of local wildlife, told Cowboy State Daily he’s heard rumors the bison was targeted to be put down.

[{"type":"text","text":"He’s glad that won’t happen. "}]

The South Dakota Governor’s Office did not confirm whether a kill order had been placed on the bison, nor did the South Dakota Game, Fish, and Parks Department.

When asked if he could confirm whether a kill order had been put in place, Nick Harrington, communications manager for the South Dakota Game, Fish, and Parks Department, said in a one-sentence email that “all options were being considered and evaluated.”

Scragg, believing along with many others that the bison was facing death, encouraged his followers on social media to plead with the South Dakota Governor’s Office, the South Dakota Game, Fish, and Parks and Custer State Park to not euthanize the bison.

“Our main goal was to save the animal,” he said, adding that people responded by calling officials with the state of South Dakota, Custer State Park and the South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks.

Scragg said he doesn’t know how many people made calls, but he believes the public input made the difference and saved the bison’s life.

“When this all started, the word from the top was that putting this animal down was the plan,” he said in a statement. "We didn’t accept that, and we made sure our voices were loud enough to reach the people who could actually make a change.” 

Rosebud Sioux Tribe Game, Fish, And Parks Takes Over

The Rosebud Sioux Tribe Game, Fish, and Parks department extended its condolences to the family of the deceased woman. 

It also acknowledged that bison are wild animals, and that the one who attacked her was “acting in accordance with its wild nature."

“We will honor both our cultural obligation to protect our relative and the need of keeping the public safe,” the tribe's statement reads.

Cowboy State Daily reached out to the Rosebud Sioux Tribe Game, Fish, and Parks for comment but had not heard back by publication.

Chad Kremer, the bison herd manager for Custer State Park, thanked the tribe for providing a safe home for the bison, sharing on social media that he has been the “steward and caretaker for this bull’s journey of life thus far.”

“As a prey animal, unfortunately, pressure was placed on him that caused him to REACT, not attack, but he didn’t deserve to be destroyed,” he said.

Kremer declined to comment further to Cowboy State Daily pending approval of Custer State Park officials for him to speak to the press. Phone calls to Custer State Park were not returned prior to publication.

Scragg called the decision not to euthanize the animal a “total win for the community and a win for our wildlife.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"South Dakota Game, Fish, And Parks Respond"}]

“Herd management decisions are made with public safety at the forefront, and we will continue to take necessary action to protect human life,” Harrington said in his statement.

The best management decision was to remove the bison from the park to ensure public safety, he said.

“We are grateful for Rosebud Sioux Tribe’s willingness to work with us to relocate the buffalo to a location that is suitable for the animal and away from interaction with the general public,” Harrington added.

Custer State Park Phil Gould via Alamy 6 1 26

<title>Bison Escapes Death Sentence After Killing Woman In Custer State Park | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Public backlash against a reported kill order saved a bison that killed a woman in Custer State Park last month. Advocates for the bison say he was acting within his wild nature on his home turf when he killed the 70-year-old Canadian tourist.

Bison Escapes Death Sentence After Killing Woman In Custer State Park

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Crime & Courts

Courts

A Sheridan couple is facing felony theft charges after police say they hauled away more than $1,400 worth of donations from outside a church that had been collected for a fundraiser.

The pair later told the Sheridan Police Department that they believed the items had been left outside for anyone to take.

Michael C. Forni, 27, and Amber Mae Walker, 32, were each charged Wednesday during initial appearances in Sheridan County Circuit Court.

According to an affidavit filed by the Sheridan PD, church staff discovered Saturday that more than a dozen items staged outside First United Methodist Church for an upcoming fundraising sale had disappeared overnight.

The haul was an eclectic mix of yard-sale treasures and oddities: a rototiller, propane tank, window air conditioner, camp cots and coolers, alongside retired traffic signals, rifle scopes, a handmade wooden wagon and even a jade plant.

Church staff told investigators they weren't exactly sure how many items in total were stolen. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Two Trips"}]

Investigators reviewed surveillance video from the church and reportedly observed a black Toyota Tundra pull into the parking lot at about 4:01 a.m.

A man and woman got out of the truck and loaded several items before leaving, says the affidavit.

About 17 minutes later, the same truck returned, and the pair loaded more property before driving away a second time.

Church staff later provided police with a detailed list of the missing items that had been gathered for a fundraising sale organized by the church's Methodist Men's Group.

Pastor Jim Barth was unavailable for comment, but the church receptionist immediately recognized the case.

The ministry regularly hosts parking lot sales and Palm Sunday breakfasts to raise money for projects that support both the church and the broader Sheridan community. 

Other items taken included several rifle scopes, a weed eater, Cabela's dry bags, and two retired traffic signals. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Facebook Tip"}]

After obtaining still images from surveillance video, Sheridan police posted photographs on the department's Facebook page seeking help identifying the pair. It appears the photos have since been removed.

According to court records, an anonymous tip identified the suspects as Forni and Walker.

When officers arrived at the couple's home, they reportedly found a black Toyota Tundra matching the truck seen in the surveillance video parked in the driveway, the affidavit says.

Investigators also observed a window air conditioner in the bed of the truck that matched one reported missing from the church.

Police then contacted Forni and Walker, who both acknowledged taking the items, according to the affidavit.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Wrong Assumption"}]

Court records indicate both told investigators they believed the items had been left outside for people to take for free. The couple told officers they had been driving around and noticed the collection of property outside the church.

Forni reportedly said they assumed the items were being discarded and decided to "dumpster dive" through them.

[{"type":"text","text":"Walker gave a similar account."}]

Police later recovered the property from them. The total value of the recovered items was estimated at about $1,455.

Under Wyoming law, theft of property valued at more than $1,000 is punishable by up to 10 years in prison, a fine of up to $10,000, or both.

Forni and Walker made their initial appearances Wednesday afternoon in Sheridan County Circuit Court.

First United Methodist Church in Sheridan 6 11 26

<title>Police Say Sheridan Couple Accused Of Stealing Fundraiser Donations From Church | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Sheridan couple is facing felony theft charges after police say they hauled away two pickup loads of donations from outside the church that had been collected for a fundraiser. They said they believed the items had been left outside for anyone to take.

Police Say Sheridan Couple Accused Of Stealing Fundraiser Donations From Church

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

Renée Jean

Business & Tourism

Business

CHEYENNE — There was a seismic shift months ago behind the scenes with Wyoming’s largest data center development, Project Jade. 

Crusoe, the company that was constructing the buildings for the massive 2.7-gigawatt data center, packed up its stuff and left.

The exit happened quickly and quietly, without the fanfare of press releases and company statements that had preceded the project, which at buildout would use nearly triple the power consumption of the entire state of Wyoming. 

Crusoe’s about face was so quiet, in fact, that few people outside the project even realized anything had happened at all.

That was until Tuesday, when the company was quoted in passing in a Bloomberg article saying that its data center client had asked Crusoe to pause construction of Project Jade, even as the company announced another 5 gigawatts worth of data center infrastructure for Crusoe Cloud. 

Crusoe’s statement made it seem as though Project Jade itself might be on hold or looking for a new partner, but nothing could be further from reality, officials for partner Tallgrass Energy told Cowboy State Daily on background. 

Work on Project Jade never stopped — not even for a minute — following Crusoe’s exit roughly two months ago, Cowboy State Daily was told Wednesday morning. 

Tallgrass officials are now working directly with the data center client and have been “full steam ahead” since Crusoe’s exit.

Black Hills Corp., the parent company of Black Hills Energy, meanwhile released a statement to the same effect, saying that the data center project has not been on pause.

“We remain committed to supporting the project’s data center customer and delivering the infrastructure necessary to meet their long-term energy needs,” President and CEO Linn Evans said. “The project has not been paused and continues to represent a significant opportunity for the company. Our efforts remain fully directed toward successfully delivering the project.”

Black Hills Corp’s statement added that its Wyoming subsidiary, Black Hills Energy, agreed in April to procure long lead-time generation equipment with the prospective customer to support the project, which will be served under Wyoming’s large-load tariff. 

“The customer has provided over $200 million in refundable contributions in aid of construction to date in support of milestone payments to secure generation equipment,” the statement says. “Additionally, the company executed a substation agreement with the large-load customer, and filed a CPCN (Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity) for a substation to support the project in January 2026.”

Project Jade, located in the Switchgrass Industrial Park along Highway 85 south of Cheyenne, is the largest data center yet announced in Wyoming and has received widespread attention because of that. 

Initially, the data center was announced as a 1.8-gigawatt facility. Later, during a Laramie County Commission meeting, company officials said the 

 — almost three times what the entire state of Wyoming uses when it comes to power. 

The facility can ultimately scale to 10 gigawatts of capacity.

Project Jade has always planned to build its own power, which company officials said avoids burdening the local power grid. It will also use a closed-loop system to cool its servers to minimize water use.

The closed-loop system will take an initial 20 households worth of water to fill, company officials have told Laramie County commissioners, and will come from aquifers far below those that supply water to residents of Laramie County and Cheyenne. 

Annual water use will be around three households, once the closed-loop system is filled.

Project plans show five buildings of up to 800,000 square feet. These will have their own onsite wastewater treatment and septic systems.

The company’s efforts to mitigate impact to the community do not stop at water and power. It also included building new roads into its facility to relieve pressure on existing routes, as well as a $2.9 million commitment to help the city of Cheyenne build affordable housing.

The company doesn’t plan to use man camps to house construction workers. Instead, it plans to use a range of local housing, including long- and short-term rentals, hotels and motels, RV accommodations, and other solutions. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Three Projects In One"}]

What the public has been calling Project Jade has actually always been three distinct but intertwined projects, Tallgrass officials said.

There was the power plant itself, a natural-gas-fired facility that includes large turbine generators and fuel-cell systems, which is what Tallgrass is developing. 

That is now being referred to by the company as the Cheyenne Power Hub. 

There are the data center buildings, which are essentially warehouse-like shells that will one day hold the racks of computing power for the unnamed data center client. 

That was in Crusoe’s court as the data center client who will eventually use all the computing capacity that’s built out in the data center.

Crusoe’s exit, which happened early this year, changes just one thing in all of that, Tallgrass officials said — the eventual sign on the buildings.

Everything else has stayed functionally the same, including the client. 

Dirt work at the site has already begun, Tallgrass officials say, leading up to construction of the power plant itself, which is the longest lead-time item. 

Work on the power generators is expected to ramp up this summer and will be brought on in phases. The first available phase is expected to begin operating sometime in 2027.

Service to the data center client is targeted for early 2028, after which the project is expected to create more than 100 permanent jobs.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Who Is Tallgrass"}]

Tallgrass has long operated large-scale, multi-commodity infrastructure, including more than 10,000 miles of pipeline and energy-related assets across 14 states.

The company has been in Wyoming for the past 10 years, where it has its third largest employee base at more than 200 existing employees. It operates more than 3,000 miles of natural gas, crude oil, water, and carbon dioxide pipelines.

Some of its infrastructure includes carbon dioxide wells for carbon capture, including some assets that are in the vicinity of Project Jade. The carbon capture capabilities have been touted as a vital element of building out the data center.

In the last three years, Tallgrass has invested almost a billion dollars into Wyoming’s economy. Its investment on Project Jade dwarfs that at $7 billion.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Crusoe Still Busy"}]

No one is saying publicly why Crusoe left the project, or whether the data center client is the one who asked them to leave.

Crusoe did not respond to Cowboy State Daily inquiries about its exit, and Tallgrass officials said they learned of Crusoe’s public statements the same way everyone else did — by reading about it in Bloomberg’s article.

While the reasons Crusoe exited the project remain unclear, one thing that isn’t unclear is just how busy Crusoe is right now.

Even after stepping away from Project Jade, Crusoe has more than 40 gigawatts worth of projects either in its total development pipeline or under active negotiation, according to its website. 

Its Bloomberg comments, meanwhile, came with an announcement of 5 more gigawatts for the Crusoe Cloud.

The company is widely expected by industry experts to go public and has been actively working on a pre-IPO funding round north of $10 billion.

Carson Kearl, a data center analyst for energy data analyst Enverus, said more dance steps are ahead for the data center space.

“There are a bunch of these Crusoe-like developers across the Lower 48 with announced projects of significant scale and capacity,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “I would say a majority of them do not have a publicly disclosed tenant or an off taker. 

"Our view is the reason they don’t have those disclosed is because they don’t have them, period.”

Kearl has been tracking data center capacity in various stages of discussion across the nation and said he expects as much as 80% to 85% of the projects to get canceled purely as a function of "supply chain constraints on the data center side of things, like how many chips are actually available between now and about 2030.”

Wyoming, as a state with lots of wide-open space and abundant energy, meanwhile, is well-positioned, to capture the real projects, Kearl added. 

In the race to build out data centers and capture market share first, Wyoming offers exactly what these companies want. 

“The ability to do behind-the-meter projects in an area where you would have faster interconnection times or power timelines … is super attractive,” Kearl said. “Everyone’s kind of working to try and make that faster, to level the playing field.”

Building your own power is not an inexpensive tactic, however.

“You’ll be well into the $100-plus-a-megawatt-hour range,” he said. “And then if you layer in the CCS (carbon capture and sequestration), it would probably be even higher, into the mid-$100 range.”

Crusoe and cheyenne sign 6 11 26

<title>Partner Pulling Out Doesn’t Slow Huge 2.7GW Cheyenne Project Jade Data Center | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Crusoe, a founding partner in the huge 2.7-gigawatt Project Jade data center near Cheyenne, quietly pulled out months ago. That hasn’t slowed the project, which is going “full steam ahead,” remaining partner Tallgrass Energy told Cowboy State Daily.

Partner Pulling Out Doesn’t Slow Huge 2.7GW Cheyenne Project Jade Data Center

You Still Here

[{"type":"text","text":"Pastor fires church employee but in a Christian way....."}]

Bonus vid 1 6 11 26 v2

<title>Bonus Video 1: Thursday, June 11, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Pastor fires church employee but in a Christian way.....

Bonus Video 1: Thursday, June 11, 2026

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

Andrew Rossi

Anyone enjoying an adventure in Yellowstone National Park might notice a bull bison lying in a lush meadow near Canyon Junction. If they see him stand up, they'll notice that he doesn't walk, but hops on three legs while keeping the fourth tucked up close to his body. 

That’s Tiny Tim, a well-known and easily identifiable bison that has been a cause of concern for many, but people who've followed his story of survival for the past two winters believe this bum-leg bison has been doing just fine for himself.

Instead of walking, Tiny Tim literally hops through his meadow to find food and shelter. He's a little skinny, but seems to be healthy, and the majority opinion is that he should be allowed to live on his own terms. 

“You can tell right before he's getting ready to hop, because he's having to really shift everything to get that hop done,” wildlife photographer April Holm told Cowboy State Daily. “It takes him a while to get anywhere, but he always gets there.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Poor Wretch"}]

Holm and her family were on one of their weekly trips to Yellowstone last month when they had their first encounter with Tiny Tim. He was lying down in his field near Canyon Junction, close enough for a great photograph.

“We just thought it was really cool that he was lying there,” Holm said. “It looked like he was just tired and resting. Then my daughter said, ‘Mommy, it looks like he’s dying. Look at his breathing.’”

Holm looked more closely. The bison’s breathing seemed labored, and his eyes looked like they were “rolled back into his head.”

When the bull bison finally stood up, Holm noticed his left front leg was “just hanging there.” 

He was clearly keeping it off the ground as he hopped around the field looking for fresh grass to graze on.

“He hopped around on three legs, and then he lay back down,” she said. “His leg doesn’t have any cuts or anything that we can see, but he was shifting all his weight and licking that front hoof.”

Sharing some sympathy for the bison’s predicament, the Holms got their photos and moved on.

Two weeks later, they were passing by the same spot and decided to see if the bull bison was still there.

[{"type":"text","text":"Remarkably, he was."}]

“He was lying there in the field again, not getting up and flopping his head up and down,” Holm said. “Then, we saw him get up and start eating.”

Three weeks after their first encounter with the bull, he’s in the same field.

“He hasn't moved more than 30 or 40 feet total that we've seen, or anybody else that we've talked to has seen,” Holm said.

Holm was concerned about Tiny Tim thinking he was living on borrowed time. While that may be true, Tiny Tim has borrowed a lot of time and doesn’t seem to be facing an imminent demise.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Village Grump"}]

After Holm posted several videos of Tiny Tim hobbling in his field, expressing concern about his condition and well-being, dozens of people have reached out with their own concerns for the bison.

One of those people was a year-round Yellowstone employee at Canyon Village who wanted to set the record straight.

“She said she was very familiar with the animal,” Holm said. “He first showed up sometime during the summer before last, so he has survived one full summer and two winters, at least.”

Many Canyon Village residents keep tabs on Tiny Tim. Everyone calls him Tiny Tim because he hobbles around, even though he's a fully-grown adult with a bad temperament. 

“Apparently, he gets quite defensive and grumpy if you get too close,” Holm said. 

During the winter, Tiny Tim left his field and moved into the employee housing area at Canyon. He was a stubborn, surviving roadblock for the entire season. 

"He’s blocked the road for days at a time, and that’s caused some trouble," Holm said. "You can’t just go around him in the winter.”

As for his condition, there’s something clearly wrong with Tiny Tim’s left front leg, but nobody can determine exactly what that is.

“His leg doesn’t have any cuts or anything that we can see,” Holm said. “Nobody has seen anything wrong with it, other than it looks swollen.”

Tiny Tim avoids putting any weight on that leg, but that hasn’t stopped him from finding enough to eat. Holm said he looks a little skinny, but seems “otherwise healthy.”

Furthermore, Tiny Tim seems to know he’s safe where he is. He’s not very mobile, but doesn’t seem eager to move out of the Canyon Village area.

“People who’ve watched him for a while say he never goes far,” Holm said. “He’s just that resilient.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Natural Environment"}]

Amidst the massive parking lots, snack-stocked general stores, and throngs of thousands, people can forget that Yellowstone is a natural ecosystem that’s mostly allowed to exist without interference.

Yellowstone’s bison aren’t commercial cattle or zoo attractions. They naturally move through the park and live as they have in the wild for millennia, which means enduring or succumbing to any injury and malady that afflicts them.

Regular Yellowstone visitors, like the Holms, are used to seeing the spectacular sagas of nature play out in the park. That’s why Tiny Tim’s survival is so surprising.

“I would’ve thought the wolves would’ve got him by now,” Holm said. “I’ve seen how wolves hunt bison, hanging off them and trying to rip their flesh apart. I wouldn’t think he’d be able to defend himself against wolves.”

Given his obvious point of weakness, Tiny Tim probably wouldn’t survive a wolf attack. The fact that he’s survived two full winters when wolves more actively target and bring down bison is nothing short of a Christmas miracle.

Nobody wants to see an animal suffer. A Scrooge would say that if Tiny Tim were going to die, he’d better do it and decrease the surplus population.

While the bison doesn’t appear to be suffering, sometimes an animal’s natural plight prompts an unnatural end to its life.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"When To Humanely Euthanize"}]

Holm has posted multiple videos of Tiny Tim since mid-May, garnering hundreds of thousands of views and a flood of comments and messages concerned about the bison’s ongoing plight.

“Every time I post a video, I have so many people reaching out to me asking what they’ve done about him,” she said.

“They” meaning Yellowstone rangers and park biologists. Holm knows that they are aware of Tiny Tim and have declined to do anything about it.

“I spoke to somebody who actually works in the park and knows all the rangers,” she said. “She told them that he doesn’t look good, and they told her that if he’s up and feeding himself, they won't do anything.”

Rangers and biologists rarely intercede in Yellowstone’s daily life-and-death struggles, unless it's an animal that poses a direct threat to humans. That's usually bears, not bison, but there are occasional instances where rangers decided to end an animal's suffering.

 in the muddy “No Moose Pond” last September, Yellowstone rangers humanely euthanized it after 24 hours of observation.

In that instance, the rangers determined the elk had no chance of escaping the muddy pond. Euthanizing the elk spared it from a long, agonizing death.

“I 100% support how they handled that situation,” wildlife photographer Jule Argyle told Cowboy State Daily. “I don't like to see anything suffer, and most of the time, (the rangers) won't interfere. I think this was one of those unique situations where you know that animal was suffering severely, and it needed to happen.”

Argyle, who’s the postmaster at Lake Village, is familiar with Tiny Tim. In her opinion, his story of survival is enough to justify leaving him alone.

“He’s been surviving on his terms,” she said. “He’s a fighter, and nature should be allowed to take its course. Stepping in would be going against the odds, and it’s unfair to the bison.”

Tiny Tim is a full-grown bull bison who has survived two winters in Yellowstone despite having one unusable leg. “It takes him a while to get anywhere, but he always gets there,” said one wildlife photographer who’s following Tiny Tim.

One More For The Road: Thursday, April 10, 2025

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