Daily Smile

[{"type":"text","text":"He thinks he's a cat....."}]

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

<title>Daily Smile: Wednesday, April 23, 2025 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

He thinks he's a cat.....

Daily Smile: Wednesday, April 23, 2025

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Wildlife

Agriculture

With countless miles of rusty old fences threatening pronghorn and other wildlife across Wyoming, conservationists say devices called wire winders are giving them an edge.

A wire winder mounted on a skid steer can roll up a half-mile of old fence in about two minutes, a task that would probably take a half-day to accomplish by hand, said John Graves, director of conservation and resource management for the Sheridan Community Land Trust.

“It’s pretty darn cool,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “To sit there in the cab of the skid steer and watch that wire come in, it’s great.”

The importance of removing old barbed wire and woven-wire fences can’t be overstated, said Steve Martin, Wyoming director of the North American Pronghorn Association.

Old fences can block pronghorn from reaching thousands of acres of habitat in the Red Desert and other places in Wyoming and Montana, Martin told Cowboy State Daily.

There are countless miles of fence that must be removed and replaced with wildlife-friendly fencing, he said.

Bringing wire winders to bear “is a game changer” in that daunting task, Martin said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Short Work By Sheridan"}]

The Sheridan Community Land Trust manages the Big Goose Natural Area, just west of the city.

The area includes an off-leash dog-walking trail for residents and cattle ranching, as well as ideal habitat for pronghorn and other wildlife, Graves said.

The problem was that about a mile and a half of old barbed wire and woven-wire fence was making it nearly impossible for pronghorn to get in, he said.

The land trust had a contractor, Black Fern Fencing, lined up to replace it with wildlife-friendly fence in early July. But the old fence had to come out first.

“Rolling up all of that wire by hand takes hours and hours, and it will get you all cut and scraped up,” Graves said.

The trust had a skid steer. And the Pronghorn Foundation and Bowhunters of Wyoming donated about $8,000 to buy a wire winder to mount on it.

Volunteers removed the wire from fence posts and then pulled the posts.

That cleared the way for Graves to come in with the wire winder.

“That machine just sucks up all the old barbed wire and woven wire into neat rolls that can be taken to the recycling center,” Graves said.

The Black Fern crew came in right behind him, installing the new fencing.

It includes a smooth bottom wire, which allows pronghorn to crawl under without getting snagged on rusty barbed wire.

“We’ve already seen increased pronghorn activity on the property,” Graves said.

The Pronghorn Foundation hopes to soon acquire a skid steer with a wire winder to start going after other old fences in Wyoming and Montana, Martin said.

Old fencing hampers wildlife movements across the West, and removing and replacing all of it will be a gargantuan task, he said.

“Unlike deer and elk, pronghorn will rarely, if ever, jump a fence. They want to crawl under it,” he said.

So woven-wire fences are particularly hard on pronghorn, he said, because there’s no way to get underneath them.

Researchers from the University of Wyoming concluded that fences trapped pronghorn in areas of the Red Desert during the harsh 2022-2023 winter, and many of them died.

Recent upgrades to wildlife-friendly fences in the Red Desert opened up about 10,000 acres to pronghorn, Martin said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Never-Ending Job"}]

The task of removing and replacing old fences won’t be finished anytime soon, Martin said.

But bringing wire winders will expedite the process.

“If you’ve ever been out there, wrestling with that old wire by hand, you know how many hours that can take,” he said.

Removing old fence can be done mostly with volunteer labor, and wire winders can spare volunteers the nastiest part of the job, he said.

The next hurdle is coming up with the funding for new fencing, which allows wildlife to crawl under or jump over it but still keeps cattle safely contained, Martin said.

“That new fence can cost $25,000 per mile,” he said.

Fence winder

<title>How "Wire Winders" Roll Up Old Fencing Quickly, Keep Wildlife From Getting Tangled | Cowboy State Daily</title>

With countless miles of rusty old fences threatening wildlife across Wyoming, conservationists say devices called wire winders are a game changer. They can roll up a half-mile of old fence in two minutes, a task that would take a half-day by hand,

How "Wire Winders" Roll Up Old Fencing Quickly, Keep Wildlife From Getting Tangled

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

Renée Jean

Business

The cornerstone of a western fashion empire rising in Saratoga wasn’t a bright idea. It was a problem — a whole series of them, in fact, starting with a beautiful belt that wouldn’t fit.

From a 150-square-foot spare bedroom to two warehouses and a patented D-ring system, Dixie and Kirby Berger have built their company, Pure Dixie, into an international western fashion brand and a favorite at some of the largest rodeos in the nation, from Cheyenne Frontier Days to the National Finals Rodeo.

They did it not by avoiding mistakes but by stubbornly working through them, one bad belt and one busted box of inventory at a time. 

The bad belt was a beaded strip that caught Dixie’s eye during Cheyenne Frontier Days a decade ago.

It took her hours and hours to make the belt once she got it home, sewing each little bead into place one by one.  

When she was finished, though, it was too long for a traditional belt buckle. It wasn’t going to fit.

“I gave it to my husband and I said, ‘I made this and I can’t take it apart. It’s all beaded,’” she told Cowboy State Daily. “You need to make this fit me because if I put a traditional buckle on, it just doesn’t fit.’”

Her husband, an expert leatherworker, had been helping his wife make embroidered leather belts they were selling in little totes at local rodeos. So he took her project back to his workshop to see what he could figure out. 

The system he came up with was to place a metal ring on one end of the belt that he could fit into slots along the other end. That made the belt not only shorter, but more adjustable. 

That was the birth of the couple’s patented D-ring system, which has made their business, Pure Dixie, an international best-seller, as well as frequent vendors at choosy venues like the National Finals Rodeo and Cheyenne Frontier Days.

“That system completely changed how we thought of our products,” Berger said. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"The problems didn’t end there, though. "}]

Berger’s mom was always losing her cell phone, so one day she asked Dixie if she could make a purse for her.

“That’s how the crossbody minis came to attach to the front of the bag,” Berger said. “And so, through like a process of things that have happened in our life, the ideas kind of came full circle, almost in a moment.” 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Belt Everyone Wanted"}]

Long before any of that, though, the whole operation fit inside a single 150-square-foot bedroom. That solved a different problem for Dixie.

“I was a stay-at-home mom with three kids,” she said. “And I was not willing to give that up. So I set up my spare bedroom with an embroidery business, and then my husband had leather stuff upstairs with all the sewing machines.”

By day, Dixie watched her children and squeezed in embroidery orders whenever time allowed while her husband worked saddles and tack and chaps on his family’s ranch. 

At night, after their kids went to bed, the two combined their skills to make pieces, first just for each other and then for a growing list of customers. One of those first pieces was an embroidered leather belt with Wyoming’s bucking horse logo on it — a Christmas present for Dixie. 

Dixie was proud of that belt, so it went with her to lots of places — including ranch rodeos where other girls wanted to know where she’d gotten such a cool belt. 

When they learned she and her husband made it, Dixie found herself taking orders for more belts. Lots of them.

That led to the couple bringing some of their belts to ranch rodeos in totes and selling them on the spot. 

“So it wasn’t really on purpose,” Berger said with a chuckle. “It was definitely something that just came to us, and definitely something we’ve enjoyed pursuing.”

One day not long after Kirby came up with the D-ring system, the couple was showing off their belts to someone named Diana.

As Diana picked up each belt to inspect, she would sling the one she’d just looked at over one shoulder to look at another. 

The belts looked so nice draped over her shoulder it gave Dixie instant inspiration. 

She realized the belts could double as purse straps, creating a more customizable purse using the D-ring system her husband designed.

She feels those moments — the too-long belt,  her mom’s missing phone, and even a customer casually slinging belts over her shoulder — all stacked together into the core of Pure Dixie’s patented mix-and-match system. 

“That belt has become a pretty iconic piece for the business,” Dixie said. 

Over time Berger has continued to add mix-and-match ideas, including patches that snap on and off. Cowboy hats, ball caps, and crossbody-minis all have a set of four snaps for patches. Feel like a bucking horse one day, and a bow the next? No problem, there’s a patch for every mood and every occasion.

“I love the aspect where every girl kind of gets to design her piece, and so girls aren’t walking out of our booth looking the same,” Berger said.  “We have so many options that everybody gets to pick their unique style.” 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Two Warehouses Later"}]

Today, the business no longer fits in a tiny bedroom. The couple has built two warehouses and hired four to five full-time employees to help them scale up the business.

“We have a custom tannery that tans all of our leather,” Dixie said. “And we do have manufacturing now in Mexico that helps us, and then we do all the finish work in Saratoga.”

Learning to navigate mass manufacturing with a company in Mexico, though, was its own steep learning curve.

“So my very first box ... I spent all of my money on this box of inventory from Mexico to have my designs produced by someone just to test it and see,” she said. “So I spent all my money and every single piece came back incorrect.”

This wasn’t just a bad order. It was literally every dollar she had, tied up in a box of unusable bags. 

“I was pretty sad about it and just frustrated and pretty deflated,” she said. “And my husband said to me, ‘This is the moment where someone else gave up.’ He’s like, ‘If you can figure it out and push through it, you just went past someone who would have given up.’”

Instead of sending back the box or walking away, they hauled out every bag and fixed them one by one, leaning on the leather-working skills they’d honed since the spare-bedroom days. 

“That was probably 2016, 2017 that that happened,” she said. “So we took every single bag out. We fixed them all, since we know how to do leather work and we can fix about whatever.”

That box has rewired how Dixie thinks about every problem in her business. If she can get through it, she’s always stepping past the point where someone else would have quit.

“It’s like, if I can get through this issue, through this tariff issue, through this leather-production issue, through this logistics issue, you know, that’s where someone else gave up,” she said. “And I just don’t want to, we’ve decided we don’t want to give up. We just want to do the very best we can and keep pursuing the dream.”

For this couple, that dream looks like a world where they are building an international business together and the children are part of that effort in a tiny Wyoming town where they can remain close to family.

“We failed a lot and we did some things right,” Dixie said. “And we just kept at it. It was a step-by-step process.”

Pure Dixie 20260724 155609 8 1 26

<title>How A Saratoga Woman Built An International Western Fashion Brand From Her Bedroom | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Saratoga woman was determined to remain a stay-at-home mom, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t build an international Western fashion brand. Her business Pure Dixie started in a 150-square-foot bedroom, now takes up two warehouses and continues to grow.

How A Saratoga Woman Built An International Western Fashion Brand From Her Bedroom

Business & Tourism

Another of Wyoming’s legacy ranches is hitting the market after nearly a century of stewardship. The T Diamond Ranch comes with a front-row seat to the Black Hills, as well as history to match.

It’s tucked into Crook County just a few miles from the South Dakota border on a 433-acre spread where trout streams, 

red bluffs and Wyoming tax laws all come together for a $5 million asking price.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Deep Historic Roots"}]

Aerial photos of the property show Lower Redwater Creek meandering through, with pine-studded hills and red-rock cliffs in the background. The ranch is part of an operation that was founded by the Matthews family, who trailed into Wyoming from Texas, first settling near Gillette in 1888 then expanding outward to Sundance and Spearfish. 

In Spearfish, the family is known for the Matthews Block, which includes the Matthews Opera House, a vibrant community arts center.

T Diamond Ranch is one-fourth of a larger ranch the Matthews family owned. It includes the 1930s farmstead and dairy, along with other working ranch structures. These are not relics. They are part of what is already a working cattle ranch rated for about 50 head. 

With an existing lease in place, there’s an immediate income stream.

But it’s not just the original farmhouse and ranch structures that come with this property. There’s a 7,500-square-foot mansion as well, built In 2001.

“They spared no expense when they built it,” Hayden Outdoors listing agent Kerry Englemann told Cowboy State Daily. “It’s just a beautiful, beautiful place.” 

The home was built with entertaining in mind, so has expansive gathering spaces in addition to three bedrooms and seven full bathrooms. Large windows frame a sweeping view of the scenery, including creek bottoms below. 

The interior is finished with warm wood, high-quality appliances, and multiple fireplaces. The price competitive compared to other areas with the kind of outdoor recreation the Black Hills offer.

“This would probably be $20 million in Jackson Hole,” Englemann said. “We sold a ranch down the road there last year for $2.5 million, and it had no improvements to the property, so no residence and no working ranch headquarters.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Where The Trout Live"}]

With few neighbors nearby, and easements that protect the character of all four of the original ranches that were part of this cluster, the new owner will feel as though they’ve found a private sanctuary, he said. 

“It’s rough country, it’s Wyoming country,” Englemann said. “But when you get down to the running water, it’s just beautiful. You have those rugged red bluffs and the contrast with the green riparian area, with all the things you want to see as a country boy.”

Water is a highlight on this turnkey ranch, with substantial, long-standing water rights that support about 125 acres of riparian and irrigated hay bottom along Lower Redwater Creek. That supports one to two cuttings of grass and grass legume hay every season, he said. 

Two registered wells serve the headquarters, providing water to both residences, as well as for domestic stock use. There’s a permanent stock water pipeline easement delivering year-round stock water to the southern grazing units. 

“The highlight is the running water,” Englemann said. “The Redwater Creek — in South Dakota they call it Redwater River — is just beautiful. Those riparian areas are just lush, and there’s trout swimming.”

It’s the kind of fishing many people travel hundreds of miles to find, Englemann said. Lower Redwater Creek runs the length of the property, offering cold, clear trout water starting about 100 yards from the mansion’s backdoor. 

Hay bottoms and timbered draws create wildlife habitat too, attracting whitetail deer, mule deer, turkeys, and elk, who roam freely from the nearby Black Hills National Forest and creek corridor, as well as plenty of upland birds that work the field edges and frequent the creek, Englemann said.

The ranch is also situated to access the Black Hills in both Wyoming and South Dakota, but it comes with a much lower tax bill than its neighboring state. 

“I don’t know what the exact percentages are, but when I look at properties that are similar to my property in South Dakota, my tax bill for that property is somewhere around $7,000 to $8,000 a year,” he said. “And if you go across the border to Wyoming those taxes might be around $1,200 a year. So it’s a huge discrepancy in terms of property taxes.”

The range of outdoor recreation opportunities includes horseback riding, hiking, mountain biking and backcountry skiing. The historic mining town of Deadwood, Devils Tower, Spearfish Canyon, Black Hills National Forest — all are within a half-hour or so drive. 

Rapid City, a regional hub with medical specialists, an airport with flights to Denver and Dallas as well as seasonal routes to Chicago, Las Vegas and Orlando, is 63 miles away. 

Noncommercial recreation on the ranch is protected in perpetuity by a conservation partnership, ensuring the property’s open-space character and ranching heritage remain intact.

T Diamond Ranch 35 Aerial primary residence and grounds from above adjusted 1784821086 scaled 8 1 26

<title>T Diamond Ranch, Legacy Black Hills Spread, Hits Wyoming Market For $5 Million | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Another of Wyoming’s legacy ranches is hitting the market after nearly a century of stewardship. The T Diamond Ranch in Crook County comes with a 7,500-square-foot mansion, trout streams, scenic red bluffs, and a front-row seat to the Black Hills.

T Diamond Ranch, Legacy Black Hills Spread, Hits Wyoming Market For $5 Million

Entertainment

John Mionczynski has been part of the living history that has brought Gold Rush Days and South Pass City to life for more than 50 years.

Watching him play a flawless rendition of “The Entertainer” in the 1870s gold rush town’s saloon, one would never guess that South Pass City’s beloved piano man once couldn’t use his fingers at all.

When he was 8, Mionczynski fell from a high-backed lawn chair and shattered his elbow.

“It was in a cast for six months, I think, because the bones had really gotten mangled in the elbow,” Mionczynski recalled. “The surgeon took out the elbow, so it was a stiff arm. So they asked my parents if I wanted the arm to be like this …”  

[{"type":"text","text":"Mionczynski bent his arm horizontal. "}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“Or like this,” he said, unbending the arm so it was vertical."}]

Those were his two choices, because the doctor couldn’t see any way to put back his elbow. 

Neither choice was appealing to his parents. So the surgeon tried something radical.

“He carved a joint in there,” Mionczynski said. “He said, ‘I don’t know if it’ll work, but it could allow him to move his elbow like a normal elbow.”

It wasn’t a real elbow. By carving the bone ends into a functional shape, the surgeon created a false joint in hopes that scar tissue would fill the gap, acting as a makeshift cushion that could allow for a surprising amount of mobility. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"An Accordion Saves The Day"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"It wasn’t an immediate success. "}]

At first, the joint wouldn’t move at all. It took weeks of concerted effort to budge the tiniest fraction. 

Mionczynski had to work at moving it a little more every day. In the meantime, his fingers had begun to atrophy.

So his mom bought him a small accordion, knowing he loved music. She hoped it would motivate him to work harder at regaining use of his arm and his fingers. 

Mionczynski’s dad had been teaching him how to play instruments like the harmonica and the violin before the accident.

“I couldn’t play any of those instruments after the accident,” he said. “But with an accordion, you have to use your left arm to pull the bellows in and out. And then there’s buttons there, too. You have to move it up and down. So it was a brilliant idea.”

It took two years to fully regain the function in his arm and fingers. But his mother had picked the right motivation.

“The problem was, at first I was not interested in exercises,” Mionczynski said. “But with accordion ballads, I was interested. It was fun. I enjoyed it.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Piano Therapy In A 150-Year-Old Saloon"}]

Decades later, that once-shattered arm is what powers the music that gives South Pass City’s saloon its heart. 

On Gold Rush Days, tourists crowd inside to hear the piano music and to buy ice-cold sarsaparilla. 

Mionczynski is in his element in these moments. To him, it’s not a performance at all. It’s more like therapy. 

He’ll spend most of his summers running pack trips, plant classes and history tours back to back for a couple of months. It’s a season of logistics and long miles in the high country of Wyoming. 

But in South Pass, all of that’s far away. He’s playing the tunes of a forgotten era in a 150-year-old saloon.

It’s a reset button tapped out in ragtime and waltzes alongside re-enactors in dusters and satin dresses. 

“I just face the wall,” he said with a chuckle. “I don’t have to talk to people until I stop playing. For me, it takes my mind completely off any scheduling problems I have, or vehicle problems that have to get fixed before the next trip, or any of the other usual problems people have.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"South Pass Gets A Piano Man"}]

Mionczynski has been South Pass City’s piano man since 1974, when the state resurrected the gold-rush town. 

“The governor came down,” he recalled. “And at that time, there were some people still living here. Most of these buildings were leaning with the wind.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Poles had been used to prop up some of them, Mionczynski recalls. "}]

“They finally got the main hotel here and the Smith-Sherlock store rebuilt, resurrected,” he said. “And the interiors were done and the windows that were broken replaced. They were starting to make it look like a real town, without buildings that looked like they were about to fall over.”

For the occasion, there was a band wagon in front of what’s called The Exchange today. But at the time, it was named the Grecian Bend Saloon.

“The state’s trying to rebuild this place the way it was around 1870,” Mionczynski said. “So they’re going with what the buildings were at that time.”

Mionczynski had already made something of a name for himself playing with his band, The Buffalo Chips, at Atlantic City’s Mercantile. 

“We had more fun than we should have,” he said, his eyes filling up with the memories. “It was a great band. We all liked each other like a family. We played old-time music of different sorts, and we had people who would dress up in the 1890s Western clothing.”

[{"type":"text","text":"The band wasn’t interested in the typical venue, either."}]

“What our band liked to do was play for the smallest towns in Wyoming,” Mionczynski said. “We’d go there and we’d visit and get to know a person or two. And some of these towns only had two.”

Eventually, they’d suggest the idea of coming to play for the town for free. 

“We played for a lot of small towns,” Mionczynski said. “We just had a lot of fun playing old-time music.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"From Long Island To Wyoming"}]

Mionczynski was born in 1947, thousands of miles away from Wyoming, on the east end of Long Island, New York — closer to the Atlantic Ocean than to Atlantic City, where he makes his home.

Mionczynski had a high school pal named Dennis. The two did basically everything together, including graduate from high school in 1964. Where Mionczynski was shy, Dennis was outgoing. They complemented each other in that way. 

“We were adventurous kids,” Mionczynski recalled. “We liked to go camping while we were in high school, and we camped all over.”

The Vietnam War was going on at the time, and their teachers had been encouraging them to enlist in the Army right out of high school.

“We all took it to heart,” Mionczynski said. “I was very patriotic. I wanted to go in the Army and Dennis and I were going to go in together. But I was too young and my brother was already in the Navy, so my parents wouldn’t sign me up.”

The two young men decided they would take a year off to travel the country, and then sign up to serve.

“I could afford to have a car because I played in this band, and we made money in high school,” Mionczynski said. “So my dad found a ’58 Ford coupe that I could afford to buy for $300, and he helped me purchase it.”

Mionczynski and Dennis had no idea, however, where to go in this brand-new car.

“So what we did was, we took an atlas of the United States and I think we blindfolded Dennis first,” Mionczynski said. “After he had his blindfold on, I took the map of the United States and just spun it around on the table.”

Dennis put his finger down on the map, right smack in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Mionczynski took a turn next but his finger also landed somewhere ridiculous — southern Mexico.

[{"type":"text","text":"The third time was the charm. "}]

“Dennis was blindfolded, and he put his finger down on Boyd, Montana, which is right near Red Lodge,” Mionczynski said. “So that’s where we were going.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Four Flat Tires And Fate"}]

The boys loved Boyd and thought they’d found the place they wanted to live someday.

[{"type":"text","text":"But fate was about to take another turn."}]

“We didn’t want to go to Yellowstone Park because it was too big and full of people,” Mionczynski said. “So we went down what is the Chief Joseph Highway now. It was a dirt road, and we went to Cody and then we went to the Bighorn Mountains.”

The two camped in a Forest Service campground, which was a rustic affair quite unlike what’s there today. 

“There was an outhouse there, and a place to park your car, and that was about it,” Mionczynski said with a chuckle. “And the first night it rained really heavily.”

That forced the boys to sleep in the car, one boy to each of the bench seats. 

“When we woke the next day, we had three flat tires that night,” Mionczynski said. “What are the chances of having three tires go flat on the same night when you’re not driving?”

[{"type":"text","text":"The flat tires didn’t upset them though."}]

“We took it as kind of some sort of sign and didn’t bother to fix them,” Mionczynski said. “We just took off, into the mountains. We hunted with our throwing knives and found squirrels and fish. We had a wonderful time and decided we were going to live in Wyoming.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Enter The Red Desert"}]

That’s how Mionczynski fell in love with Wyoming, ultimately becoming a prospector for gold and jade.

“I was looking for a place to be alone more than prospecting,” he said. “I liked traveling alone. I liked living off the land. Both Dennis and I used to like to do that.”

Because he liked to be alone, he gravitated to the biggest “white spot” on the map — the Red Desert.

“I went there in ’67 just to see it,” Mionczynski said. “By then, I had the prospecting bug, so I was there with the intent of finding something that I could prospect for to pay off my college debts.”

John Mionczynski has entertained patrons of the South Pass City Saloon since 1974, when the state resurrected the gold-rush town. Watching him play a flawless rendition of “The Entertainer," one would never guess that once he couldn’t use his fingers at all.

Daily Smile: Wednesday, April 23, 2025

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