Rock Springs Filmmakers Explore Amelia Earhart’s Wyoming Connection

For years, a single photograph has captivated filmmaker Mark Pedri. It's an image that's displayed at the Rock Springs airport and the local museum, and regularly surfaces on social media. 

It shows Amelia Earhart standing in front of an aircraft in 1931 in Rock Springs, surrounded by a crowd of locals eager to catch a glimpse of the famous aviator.

There’s a boy curiously peering in at the camera, a woman gazing admiringly at Earhart and a cross-section of Sweetwater County locals. 

"There were the county commissioners, the mayor, the Lions Club president. It was really like a who's who of Sweetwater County,” Pedri told Cowboy State Daily. “Everyone was there to just catch a piece of this magic of who this person was flying cross-country, making this stop in Rock Springs, of all places."

That image has now inspired Pedri and his producing partner Carrie McCarthy of Burning Torch Productions to create a new documentary with the working title "Sky Queens." 

The project gained momentum this summer when the all-female cross-country air race that Earhart helped popularize made a stop in Rock Springs, providing the filmmakers with a perfect opportunity to capture modern footage connecting past and present.

“What we're trying to do is rejuvenate Amelia's legacy in relation to Wyoming, but also modernize it," Pedri said. “If we don't pass down these legacies, then they become diluted, and we lose touch with them."

In building their careers as documentary filmmakers, Pedri and McCarthy continue to find inspiration in a connection to Rock Springs and Sweetwater County. 

“There is a creative economy here, but it’s very spread out,” McCarthy told Cowboy State Daily. “So you have to put in a little more effort to create community than in a city.”

Sizing up what it takes to succeed as a documentary filmmaker in Wyoming, McCarthy said, “The most valuable skill is just finding a way to get things done.”

Their latest film, "Afar & Below: The Story of the Wyoming Trona Miners," premieres on Oct. 28 and picks up in Rock Springs where another project — “Dear Sirs” — left off. 

“We made the film, ‘Dear Sirs,’ about my grandpa who was a prisoner of war in World War II. And that film ends when he comes back to Rock Springs and goes underground for the remainder of his life,” Pedri said. 

"Both my mom's dad and my dad's dad both worked at the same mine,” he continued. “So, I started to look into that and really just saw this camaraderie and this community underground.”

Along the way, Pedri was reunited with an old friend — Aldo Valdez — who he’s known since elementary school. They used to attend each other's birthdays at the local McDonald’s. 

"He's part of the special projects. Those are the guys that they just go into the deepest depths. They're like the special forces of the mines,” said Pedri. "If there's a cave in, he's the one there trying to make that safe again. Going into the old parts of the mine, places that, like my grandpa, would have been blasting back when they did traditional mining."

Joanna Kail, CEO and general manager of Wyoming PBS, said, “This is the beginning of a series of films that we want to do honoring our mineral workers. So the Trona miners were first.”

Pedri and McCarthy were a good fit for the project because they are both from Wyoming, went to college in Laramie and are now likely the only two award-winning documentarians in Sweetwater County. 

"They take every story so seriously,” said Kail. “They dive as deep as they can to get accuracy, to get the emotion, to preserve the culture, the courage, that grit that Wyomingites have. They get it."

Afar And Bespoke

On a recent Wednesday morning, the Burning Torch Productions team is at work in Rock Springs. McCarthy is upstairs in the home she shares with Pedri working the phones ahead of a shoot in Dallas, Texas.

Pedri is in his basement office, joining a Zoom with James Craft, the company’s go-to composer. 

Craft’s credits include scores for projects on HBO, Showtime and PBS. For “Dear Sirs,” which includes moody footage of Rock Springs, Craft composed an understated score that delicately punctuates the emotionally charged imagery and storyline. 

"In the ideal world, I think some of the best collaborations we've had, we've had this conversation about the role of music, before any images exist," Pedri explained about their process with Craft. "That was certainly the case with ‘Dear Sirs.’ And then he was able to create some music that then took us through production and then sort of evolved into what became the score."

Craft, who runs a music education business and scores for film and TV from his studio in Los Angeles, embraces a collaborative approach that allows Burning Torch Productions to “speak with music.”

As the team continues developing the Amelia Earhart documentary, they're maintaining their innovative workflow. Meeting over Zoom, Pedri and Craft compare notes and brainstorm ideas. 

"We can bring in original music early on, and a piece of that music might influence how we shoot something or how we edit," Pedri explained, describing how this method creates a more integrated final product where music and visuals develop together. 

With the latest project, “Afar & Below,” Craft said, “Mark came with a kind of a rough long cut, in the very beginning, with some ideas and then we went really deep into the imagination of the film. What we wanted to express underground and all that. It was very satisfying."

Craft will be in Rock Springs for the “Afar & Below” premiere, when he will stay at what Pedri calls “The Fun House.”

“It’s right next to Halliburton’s former regional headquarters,” said Pedri, in a nod to the local oil and gas industry. “It's right off the railroad. It’s just a large warehouse that has had a lot of tenants over the years and sort of the boom-and-bust cycle of Rock Springs.”

It’s now part of Burning Torch’s business plan as it allows them to put up key collaborators when they come to town. 

“It's got living quarters. It's got an office, it's got a piano, musical instruments,” said Pedri. “But it also, for us as a production company, it checks that box of a soundstage. It's got massive square footage to do whatever you need to do. So, some of the interviews for the trona film were shot there.” 

From Archive to Live

In a 2024 interview at DePaul University in Chicago, Pedri and McCarthy explained the process of telling stories with archive photos and other artifacts like letters and journals. 

McCarthy posed a guiding question, “How does this serve the story and how can I pull things that are artistically relevant to putting the audience there?”

Photos of Amelia Earhart in Rock Springs put viewers back in a moment when Wyoming shared the spotlight with the famous aviator. Now comes the work of pulling that storyline into the present tense.

"The idea of the film was, ‘Let's see if we can find two pilots that really kind of embody that adventure.’ You know, the romance of flying, experiencing the surrounding area from the sky, finding two pilots that really represent a piece of Amelia and see if they would be interested in stopping here during the race and recreating that photo,” explained Pedri. 

Reflecting on production from this past summer, Pedri said, “That was what kind of supercharged us to reach out to all of our potential funders and just say, ‘Look, this thing's happening next week. We got to get some cameras on the ground.’ And then we'll build out a cinematic film from there. But really capturing this moment in time while we have it."

“It’s amazing to see how the community comes together to help tell a story,” added McCarthy. “For example, with the Amelia Earhart project the Rock Springs airport and Sweetwater County tourism were the first to support the project in a very timely way that allowed us to film.”

The two pilots Burning Torch chose to profile call themselves the “Sky Queens,” the working title of the new film. 

Rachel Skirvin and Sarah Roark competed in the 2025 Air Race Classic, flying from Fairhope, Alabama, to the pair’s home base in Spokane, Washington. 

The race included stops in Gillette and Rock Springs, where a Burning Torch Productions crew greeted them.

“We all just wanted to try to capture this magic that Amelia brought with her back in 1931 when she made this stop,” said Pedri. “So that's the next collaboration that James and I are going to be talking about — is bringing the ‘Sky Queens’ film to life.”

That means developing a soundtrack long before a film is picture locked because Pedri feels adding music late in production misses the mark. 

"I think that's when things fall apart. That's when you get maybe a score that doesn't give you goosebumps,” said Pedri, who hopes that’s how the audience responds at the “Afar & Below” premiere on Oct. 28. “If we can say it with music and we can feel it with the music, then you could turn off the picture, and you can still experience the main core themes of what that scene needs to be."

Contact David Madison at david@cowboystatedaily.com

David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.