It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Monday, October 13th. Bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily news center, I’m Mac Watson. “Brought to you by the Wyoming Business Council. Wyoming youth are our future, but they're leaving the state at ALMOST TWICE the national average. What would bring them back home? Share your bold ideas with the Wyoming Business Council at wbc dot P U B forward slash story."
–
Remains found Saturday morning near rural Gering, Nebraska, may be that of Moorcroft man Chance Englebert, who mysteriously disappeared in July of 2019. Cowboy State Daily’s Jen Kocher reports that Englebert’s family and a private investigator have been working tirelessly to solve the disappearance.
“The second he disappeared from Moorcroft, the family was extremely concerned, because, of course, he had been to a family vacation with his in-laws in Gering, Nebraska, and when he disappeared that night everybody, it threw everybody, including the family. Because this is not a guy who would disappear. This is not a guy who would walk away from his life willingly. He was a young dad, 25 at the time.”
The remains were discovered in Scotts Bluff National Monument, about four miles from where Englebert was last seen on video surveillance walking alone in a neighboring town.
Read the full story HERE.
–
100 years ago, the Midwest Oil and Refining company set up lights that would re-define when and how the nation’s high school athletes could play.
It was the first high school game in the nation to play at night under electric lights. This past Friday, under the lights, Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck was there to mark the 100 year anniversary and the football used at that game was brought out at halftime.
“In Midwest on Friday night, they celebrated a century of Friday Night Light and actually the first game was played on a Thursday back in 1925 on November 19. But their schedule doesn't go to November 19th, so they celebrated 100 years this past Friday, and the team now plays a six-man game instead of 11.
The local Salt Creek Museum brought out the white football used in the 1925 Yellow Dogs game to allow the 2025 football team to take a team photo with the historic ball.
Read the full story HERE.
–A new, national report says that Americans are eating less sugar, thanks in part to weight loss drugs like Wegovy and Ozempic. But Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that Wyoming farmers are saying that’s not the real reason that prices in the sugar beet market have plunged 33% year-over-year.
“Some countries subsidize sugar so much that it really kind of amounts to dumping the cost of their sugar is so far below the cost to produce, it's anti competitive. I'm told by the Wyoming sugar beet growers that…it got worse under Biden's administration. He evidently wasn't calculating something correctly about that, and so he let in too much of this ultra low cost sugar.”
Wyoming Sugar Company CEO Mike Greear told Cowboy State Daily that there is also a trend toward higher protein items and so there is a decrease in the demand for sugar.
Read the full story HERE.
–
A Laramie man who has faced medical hardships since a bone cancer diagnosis in 2002 wasn’t about to let this year’s antelope season pass him by. Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports that even though Randy Svalina recently got a new prosthetic right leg, he wasn’t going to let that stop him from hunting.
“In 2002 got diagnosed with really aggressive bone cancer. Barely survived, lost most of one of his legs, and for years and years, he went with an internal prosthetic. In other words, the internal part of his leg, they basically reposed, replaced the bone with titanium, but outwardly, it was just a leg. Well, they, a few years ago, started developing complications, nasty infections, and almost lost his life again, and they had to take his leg off about mid thigh. So now he has, like an actual external prosthetic.”
Even though Randy is still getting used to the new prosthetic, he and his wife went hunting and they both harvested an antelope buck.
Read the full story HERE.
–
I’ll be back with more news, right after this.
– When Hannah Kellerby was growing up in Cody, she never thought she’d realize her dream of being a film and television actor. Now with 72 film and screen credits to her name, Cowboy State Daily’s Wendy Corr reports that now Hannah Barefoot is realizing a new dream: producing a feature film that she wrote, in her own hometown.
“She is on her way, but she wants to set it in Cody. It's going to have all of these Cody sets using Wyoming people. It's really the culmination of a dream that she's had since she was a small child, and she wants all of us in Wyoming to be a part of it and to be able to contribute as well.”
“Wyoming Christmas Carol” is a story of a family fighting to hold on to their struggling Wyoming dude ranch, in the face of mounting pressure from the IRS.
Read the full story HERE.
–
With about 15-thousand uranium waste sites in the west, a Wyoming tech startup aims to finally clean up cold war uranium's deadly legacy. Cowboy State Daily’s David Madison reports the Casper-based company DISA Technologies, could clean up these radioactive dumps.
“The developers of this technology describe it as muddy tennis balls fired at each other. Then the particles the mud come come off the ball essentially. Well, instead of balls, what we're talking about is a slurry of mine waste left over from the Cold War uranium boom and rush to beat the Soviets with more atomic power…this company in Casper is saying, ‘Hey, we can take high pressure slurry water streams, fire that stuff at each other, and then it the radioactivity can separate out.’”
Greyson Buckingham, DISA Technologies’ CEO, says his company's technology of high-pressure slurry ablation is a mechanical process — no chemicals are involved.
Read the full story HERE.
– Every day in the month of October, we tell ghost stories with a Wyoming twist. This time, it was September 9, 1870, and Truman Everts had become separated from the rest of his party in a dense pine forest in the heart of Yellowstone. Cowboy State Daily’s Jackie Dorothy tells us the spooky story of how two ghastly, but argumentative visions stopped him from imminent death.
“Everts is starving. He is alone in the wilderness for weeks at this point when he decides he is going to climb up Madison mountain. It was a foolhardy attempt that would have surely killed him, but what saved him is the appearance of these ghostly companions. One of them, he claims, was a deacon who, for all accounts, that was still alive back home. This ghostly companion came to him and told him, you're a fool. That's the wrong thing to do, and you need to head back the route you came. They argued, but he listened to those ghosts, and that's what saved Everts in the middle of Yellowstone.”
Besides the ghostly advice, Everts credits his two knives and opera glasses that he brought in keeping him alive. He figured out how to start a fire with the lenses of the opera glasses.
Read the full story HERE.
–
It might seem surprising to hear of a business that is going non-smoking in 2025, but Wyoming is one of only 12 states in the U.S. without a statewide smoking ban. So, the fact that Rocky Mountain Liquor and Lounge in Cody just went smoke-free is interesting because consumers led the charge here – not a state statute.
“There are smoking bans in effect throughout Wyoming, but those are there are smoking bans in effect throughout Wyoming, but those are municipal bands and places within the city limits of…Laramie, Cheyenne, Rock Springs, to name a few…But otherwise…if there's a no smoking ban in a bar or restaurant or private business, that's at the prerogative of the owners, rather than any mandate that's saying that they don't allow smoking.”
The new owners of the bar said they went smoke-free to create a space that all of Cody can enjoy. In the last 25 years or so, public opinion and preference have erred toward smoke-free environments ever since the dangers of second-hand smoke were better understood.
Read the full story HERE.
—
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 watching - I’m Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.
