Daily Darwin

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"We want to hang out with this couple....."}]

Darwin 5 29 25

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

<title>Daily Darwin: Thursday, May 29, 2025 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

We want to hang out with this couple.....

Daily Darwin: Thursday, May 29, 2025

 We want to hang out with this couple.....

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Jackie Dorothy.

Jackie Dorothy

Wyoming Life

Journalist Margaret Coel’s journey to become The New York 

 best-selling author of a fiction series about mysteries and murders on the Wind River Reservation began with a question: Who was this “Left Hand” that had his name everywhere in Boulder, Colorado?

“We have Left Hand Creek, Left Hand Canyon and Indian Mountain,” said Coel. “The town of Niwot is named for him. Niwot is the Arapaho word for 'left hand'."

Coel discovered that Left Hand was a Southern Arapaho who would bring his people to Boulder to their winter camping area each year.

“I always thought he was a really well-known unknown,” said Coel, who lives in Boulder. “We all knew his name, but we didn't know who he was, and I got interested in him as a journalist.”

She intended only to write an article, but when she 

about him, such as he was fluent in English in the mid-1800s, her curiosity was piqued. Her article became her first book, “Chief Left Hand.” Published in 1981, it is still in print and selling.

“I started coming to the reservation then and began to get to know the people,” Coel said. “I met some wonderful people and learned some stories.”

Scotty Ratliff, a Shoshone, was especially helpful to Coel when she first came to the reservation. The first time she said she met Ratliff, Coel had an appointment with Arapaho elders. As a journalist, she was all set with questions.

"Margaret, zip up your lips. You don't ask anything,” Ratliff said to Coel. “You just sit there, and they will tell you what they want to tell you and you will learn things you wouldn't know to ask about.”

She always abided by his words and connected with people on the reservation.

“I just kept coming back and getting to know more people,” Coel said. “They were so friendly to us.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Catholic Father And Arapaho Lawyer"}]

“Left Hand” had introduced Coel to the publishing world and she decided her next project would be to write fiction.

“I thought maybe I could do that and set it on the Wind River Reservation,” Coel said. “I wrote the first book, “The Eagle Catcher,” and ended up writing 22 novels set on the reservation.”

The focus of Coel’s fiction is a mission on the reservation based on St. Stephen's Mission, which she calls St. Francis Mission in her books. Coel has two main characters, the first of whom is a Jesuit priest who she said came from her dreams.

“They're not based on real people, and they're probably not a composite,” Coel said. “I call them my dream people.”

Her second character is Vicky, an Arapaho lawyer who is determined to use the white man's law to help her people instead of 

“I realized I had this white man on the reservation solving all the problems, and I knew what was wrong with that picture,” Coel said. “I thought, no, we need a really strong Arapaho voice, and we need a woman.”

That gave Coel the idea for Vicky Holden, so named because “she's holding on.” Coel describes her female lead as a “a holding-on person”  who is a lawyer and there to help her people.

“Those are my two people, and they get involved in solving crimes,” Coel said. “I've laughed about that with Father Drew at St. Stephens. Father John doesn't have time to be a priest. He's so busy being a detective.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Stories Find Her"}]

Coel said she loves history and many of her novels go back in time. Through her fiction, she tries to show how 

 still affects the way people live today.

“Eye of the Wolf”, for instance, deals with the Bates Battle and the animosity and uneasiness between the Shoshone and Arapaho tribes. Even though they live together, inter-marry, and have to 

 different people and were traditional enemies.

“A couple of my Arapaho friends have said they're pretty sure the government deliberately put the Arapahos on the Shoshone Reservation thinking they would kill each other, and then that would be the end of the government's problems,” Coel said. “Isn't that horrible? There's probably some truth to it.”

 first book that hit the New York Times bestseller list was “The Lost Bird.” It was a novel about Indian babies stolen from the reservation and put on the black market.

“What I found out in doing my research was that it was alive and well,” Coel said. “It was pretty horrible and these people were finding out they had been taken from a tribal family.”

The details Coel came from the newspaper accounts of stolen children rediscovering their families.

“One of my Arapaho friends, Virginia Sutter, said to me, 'If something happened on one reservation like that, you can be sure it happened on another',” Coel said.

She created a story then about a young Arapaho infant who was stolen from her parents.

“When that book came out, it made the New York Times bestseller list, which was exciting,” Coel said. “But I also got a phone call from a young Arapaho woman who asked me how I knew her story.”

The woman told Coel she had been taken from her family as an infant and adopted into a white family in Longmont,

 but she knew they were not her family. When she 

to the reservation, she discovered who her parents were. Just like the characters in Coel’s fiction, her mother was dead but she found her father.

“That happened in my book,” Coel said. “My main character had been taken, and I had a whole plot about how that happened which was just like this young woman's real story.”

When Coel got the call that this book made the 

 thought they were about to cancel her contract because she wasn’t selling enough books.

 that her book had resonated with readers. Over the years, different books in her murder mysteries have made the best-selling list.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Mixing History With Mystery"}]

“I love bringing in the history and seeing how history is still important today,” Coel said. "It still impacts us."

She said that as a historian, she does not take liberties. Occasionally, small facts must be changed to make her stories flow better, but in those cases she lets her readers know.

In “Buffalo Bill's Dead,” Coel wanted to tell the story of Buffalo Bill 

, his Wild West Show and what it meant to the Arapahos who were there. It became a mystery about the theft of artifacts in the past and present.

“I've learned so much over the years coming to the reservation, and I've been so influenced by their spirituality,” Coel said. “If I didn't feel that way, I would not have written 22 novels about them.”

Every time a book came out, Coel would send a copy to each of the Four Old Men, the Tribal Council, St. Stephen's, and to many 

“I wanted the people to know what I was writing,” Coel said. “I figured if they didn't like it, they would let me know.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A New Modern Audience"}]

The world of books has changed over the years and Coel now mostly sells e-books and audiobooks.

“I just got a new audiobook publisher, so there are new readers, and they're doing new editions,” Coel said. “It's amazing. It just keeps going.”

When her first novel came out in 1996, Coel said her character Father John had a landline with a long cord. At night, when he went to bed, he had to put the phone on the stairway so he could stretch the cord upstairs. That way, if he got a call in the middle of the night, he could hear it. 

As the books went on, Father John got a mobile phone but the service didn't work on the reservation.

“Technology has changed so much, and I've tried to let Father John keep up with technology,” Coel said.

Coel may have retired from writing, but her books continue to evolve with the same technology as a new generation are introduced to her murder mysteries on the Wind River Reservation and the Arapaho people that Coel has come to respect and admire.

Margaret Coel and St Stephens Mission on Wind River Luc Novovitch via Alamy 7 11 26

<title>Best-Selling Wind River Reservation Mysteries Author Inspired By Famous Chief Left Hand | Cowboy State Daily</title>

When Margaret Coel first started writing history – then murder mysteries – she just shut up and listened to the Arapaho elders she met with. This ability to listen led her books to the New York best-seller list and ended up mirroring real life more than she expected.

Best-Selling Wind River Reservation Mysteries Author Inspired By Famous Chief Left Hand

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

Andrew Rossi

Outdoors

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Closeup of bison launch 7 11 26

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

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

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

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Around Wyoming

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Old Government Bridge Bridge 1 7 11 26

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

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

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

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Public Lands

So many dead trees are piling up on Wyoming’s remote wilderness trails, some outfitters are saying they should be allowed to use chainsaws to clear them rather than toiling for days with old-fashioned hand tools.

They argue the buildup of dead timber has exceeded the Forest Service's capacity to remove it in a timely manner, particularly with the agency's recent staff and budget cuts.

Allowing chainsaw use on a limited basis could solve the problem, some say. It’s already been tried – most recently this spring in the 2.3 million-acre Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness in central Idaho.

However, opponents argue the rules are clear about keeping designated areas strictly primitive under the 1964 Wilderness Act – no machinery of mechanical devices of any kind.

Not even bicycles are allowed in wilderness areas, opponents say, so why should an exception be made for chainsaws?

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Dead Trees Everywhere"}]

Pine beetle epidemics have torn through forests across the West, leaving dead trees everywhere. Thy frequently fall over on trails, or blow over in huge piles.

The Forest Service and volunteer trail associations across Wyoming 

That’s especially true during the spring and early summer, as hikers and equestrians head out on trails where trees have been dropping all winter.  

The task is made more difficult by orders of magnitude in wilderness areas, where only hand tools are allowed, says Dustin Stetter of Dubois, president of the Wyoming Outfitters and Guides Association.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘Misery Whips’"}]

The main campsite for his company, Stetter Outfitters, is about 20 miles from the nearest road. It’s for summer camping excursions and a base camp for hunting trips.

Stetter and his crew could typically clear the path for the first camping trip in June. And they could do so using old-fashioned hand saws, axes and two-person crosscut saws.

Crosscuts are huge saws with a handle at each end, which operators can continually by alternately pushing and pulling.

Stetter said he once heard an old-timer outfitter call crosscut saws “misery whips” because running them for hours can be utterly exhausting.  

With the amount of dead tress left in the wake of the pine beetle epidemic, the days of clearing trail on the way to camp are over, Stetter said.

“It’s gotten to where we can’t do that anymore. We have to send an advanced team in to clear the trail ahead of time,” he said.

It can take more than a day, and sometimes must be done in the spring and again in the fall before hunting season.

So many dead trees are piling up on Wyoming’s remote wilderness trails, some outfitters say they should be allowed to use chainsaws to clear them rather than working for days with hand tools. Chainsaws have been banned from those areas for 62 years.

Daily Darwin: Thursday, May 29, 2025

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