It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Tuesday, July 22nd. I’m Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - Brought to you by Cheyenne Frontier Days! Brace for heart-pounding adrenaline with the PRCA Xtreme Bulls tonight. Just one night left to watch elite bull riders, pitted against the rankest bulls. A fierce showdown in the legendary CFD arena. Don’t miss the 129th Daddy of ‘Em all, now through Sunday.
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The University of Wyoming’s president has informed the UW Board of Trustees that he will step down from his position when his contract expires on June 30 of next year.
President Ed Seidel became UW’s 28th president in July of 2020. Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland reports that Seidel’s resignation comes after the demotion of a popular professor, who has since sued the university.
“A very popular dean of the engineering school was demoted after, you know, controversy, Ed Seidel is accused now in court, in a lawsuit, of pushing for substantial state monies to go away from the engineering college and into a school, a spin off school that his wife was running.”
According to a statement UW released Monday, Seidel shared his plans with the board one year in advance to give time for a thoughtful, inclusive search for the university’s next president and to help with the transition.
Read the full story HERE.
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The mayor of Cody spent the weekend in the Park County Detention Center after her arrest early Saturday morning on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol.
65-year-old Lee Ann Reiter made her first court appearance in Park County Circuit Court on Monday afternoon. Cowboy State Daily's Greg Johnson reports that Reiter has pleaded not guilty to the charge.
“She was arrested in the early morning, and took a breathalyzer. We don't know exactly what the level was, but it was, according to the sheriff's office, above the .08% limit… the mayor had her first appearance in circuit court Monday afternoon. It was virtual… And it was very, very short, they pled not guilty. The judge set a possible trial date and just released her on her own recognizance.”
Reiter was elected to the Cody City Council in 2023, then ran for mayor in 2024. She beat her challenger by a landslide in November’s general election, getting more than 73% of the vote.
Read the full story HERE.
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For a while on Sunday, it seemed that the prayers of Grizzly 399’s fans had been answered, with social media posts declaring that her last cub, Spirit, had been found alive and that her identity was confirmed through DNA testing.
The story blew up online, but it was bogus. But Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports that, like many rumors that gain traction, this one was at least somewhat based in truth.
“The grizzly bear study team did capture and study just as part of their routine bear studies, an approximately two year old female bear in June. Somehow the rumor got started that there was DNA confirmed to be Spirit… There's two big problems with that. Number one, the Park Service is telling me the DNA samples from that bear that was actually captured haven't been processed yet. And number two, as Tom Mangelsen, who probably knows 399 and her family better than anybody, said, Just because a bear, even if they did find out that it shared DNA with 399, so many bears in the Grand Teton area do. And he's right. I think she had 18 cubs, plus many of them went on to have cubs.”
Mangelsen said if DNA results reveal that the bear in question is related to Grizzly 399, then this bear’s 2-year-old demographic could lend credence to the idea that she is, in fact, Spirit.
Read the full story HERE.
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If Longmire Days had to pay Australian actor Robert Taylor to attend, it would be far out of reach. But it’s not money that brings the actor to Buffalo’s annual festival, celebrating the television show based on author Craig Johnson’s best-selling novels.
Taylor, who played the show’s title character until the series ended in 2017, told Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean that he comes to Longmire Days in Buffalo every year because - just like the thousands of fans who flock to the fictional town of Durant every summer - he loves Wyoming.
“Half of the people who come to Longmire Days every year are new. People who have just discovered Longmire days, I talked to a 78 year old woman who stumbled across it. She's traveling around her little camper van… One gal I talked to actually moved to Wyoming after going to Longmire days… just the people being so friendly, the place is beautiful. People fall in love with it… One lady I talked to actually tattooed Sheriff Walt Longmire on her leg… Longmire has just tapped into something very deep for people. I think part of it is, we're not talking about an anti hero here. Walt Longmire has his problems, like we all do, but he's a good guy trying to do good in a world that's not always good. I think people just relate to that.”
The show’s star, Robert Taylor, has turned down paying work twice to be in a place where no one is paying him at all, except with smiles and reunion hugs, from the extended family he’s met over the years he’s participated in the festival.
Read the full story HERE.
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An emu named Gary was killed when the Evanston Police Department lassoed it as it was wandering through a trailer park on Sunday. They were trying to wrangle it to the ground when the bird’s neck broke.
The emu’s owner, 18-year-old Raiden Lopez, acknowledges it was an accident, but told Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi that police didn’t have to use force to subdue the peaceful bird.
“There's not an established protocol that Wyoming law enforcement agencies can follow when dealing with a loose emu, although the owner of Gary, the emu who died in Evanston, did have some critiques in terms of how they handled it. Emus are big birds, but they're the most placid of the big, flightless birds, they do kick and they can get defensive of territory or if they're threatened, but they're pretty placid for the most part. So he said, if someone had just thought to get some fruit, the emu probably could have walked right up to them and been led to any yard where it could have stayed safe. But instead, they made the decision to attempt to control the bird by lassoing its leg, and then in the struggle to get it pinned to the ground and keep it under control, it broke its neck… hopefully everybody learned something from this encounter. Not a lot of emergency emu calls in Wyoming, but now we know.”
Lopez’s mother said her son had spent the last three weeks fighting wildfires in Utah to get the money to pick up the emu. He was using that money and other money he earned from odd jobs and graduation gifts to set up a petting zoo at the Uinta County Fairgrounds.
Read the full story HERE.
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Following a trend of firearms companies setting up shop in gun-friendly Wyoming, the KelTec factory in Rock Springs is up and running, with a goal of churning out 1,000 pistols every week.
The operation was years in the making. Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports that the Florida-based company announced plans for its KelTec West factory in Rock Springs in 2022.
“They're turning out their P 57 model handgun, which is a very bare bones, basic, lightweight, high capacity self defense pistol. It's a bit unusual in so far as it loads through stripper clips, which is… a strip of cartridges that you put inside the action of the pistol and push down kind of old school that dates back to, like World War One infantry rifles. But they expect it to gain good traction and kind of hit that niche in, like the beginning self defense shooter market, because it's lightweight, easy to handle, high capacity, affordable price, and that is coming out of Wyoming.”
Other firearms companies that recently set up shop in Wyoming, such as Weatherby in Sheridan, have also cited Wyoming’s conservative, gun-friendly culture as reasons why they decided to settle in the Cowboy State.
Read the full story HERE.
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Out-of-state immigration detainees are entering Wyoming in high volumes, including a batch of 44 transported Friday to Casper.
An ICE official told Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland on Monday that the intent is to alleviate the constant overcrowding of the U.S. Immigration Enforcement and Customs detention facility in Aurora, Colorado.
“Dozens of ICE detainees from the Aurora facility down in Colorado are being transported into Wyoming jails. Natrona, Uinta, Sweetwater, others with federal contracts or federal agreements in place… detractors worried like, is this going to overburden the jails? Are they going to be released onto the streets of those counties potentially? ICE countered, saying, okay, they can't think of any situation where those detainees would be released, like into Sweetwater County, for example, because to get released, they have to go back down for immigration court in Denver. They also said that they would work with the sheriffs about not just capacity concerns, but other concerns, like staffing before just overburdening the jails.”
Another concern is that immigration attorneys may have a harder time contacting their clients amid the frequent movement. However, ICE officials praised the arrangements as a measure helping the agency to be more efficient in its work.
Read the full story HERE.
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Murphy’s Law is simple — if something bad can happen, it will. The phrase is widely known - but what isn’t widely known is that the origin of the phrase dates back to 1885, right here in Wyoming, and is connected to the iconic Ames Monument - the monolithic, 60-foot high granite pyramid that was built by the Union Pacific Railroad Company in Albany County.
Cowboy State Daily’s Jackie Dorothy tracked down the details of this popular cliche, and found that it all started with the Union Pacific Railroad and a Justice of the Peace in Laramie.
“Judge Billy Murphy actually pulled a prank on the Union Pacific. He embarrassed them, and what he did is he placed a desert claim on their new $60,000 Ames monument in 1885 … he successfully homesteaded it and owned the property. Thus he owned the Ames monument, and the Union Pacific said that everything that could go wrong was going wrong.”
Like many in the territorial lands of Wyoming, Murphy resented that the railroad received the best lands and was delighted to get the upper hand of the powerful Union Pacific.
Read the full story HERE.
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And that’s today’s news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app. Thanks for tuning in - I’m Wendy Corr, for Cowboy State Daily.
