C.J. Box Looking At Afton For Possible Next Joe Pickett Wyoming Mystery

If Joe Pickett needs a rescue while he’s sleuthing around in Afton, Wyoming, in what will be the 27th adventure of New York Times best-selling Wyoming author C.J. Box’s popular series, the community stands ready to swoop in and save the outspoken game warden. 

“We have a very robust search and rescue here in Afton,” Visit Afton tourism director Lisa Grimsley told Cowboy State Daily. “We have a lot of volunteers who are on our search and rescue, so maybe, if Joe Pickett goes off to find some remote herd of elk on the mountain and he probably doesn’t need to get rescued …. but yes, we’re on the ready.”

Box told Cowboy State Daily that Afton is one of few places left in Wyoming where Pickett hasn’t yet appeared in one of his many adventures. 

After 26 novels, Box has decided it’s high time to remedy that.

Box plans to travel to Afton in the near future with both an “open mind and an open notebook” to do some “poking around” and make sure he’s got the essence of the community just right for his next novel. 

Who knows what Box will be up to while he’s there. 

He’s been known to take two-week pack trail rides and climb wind towers for the sake of realism in his novels, so anything goes in this western Wyoming valley that offers stunning, but remote, scenery to explore.

Winter elements in the entire Star Valley region are probably the area’s most deadly aspect, Grimsley said. 

“One of our Olympians who was in the Roman Greco wrestling years ago lives here, his name is Rulon Gardner, and his family owned the Sinclair station on the south end of town,” she said. “And he was out in the elements and thinking him and his buddies were just going to be out snowmobiling for the day, and he wasn’t dressed appropriately and got wet.”

When the snowmobile broke down, Gardner faced a life-threatening situation. 

“He lost some toes, and he’s spoken publicly about his adventure out there, and kind of what not to do and how to be prepared,” Grimsley said. “I mean, it’s the elements here that will kill you. It’s the weather, the climate.”

That’s made a stronger-than-average search and rescue team a priority for the community, which Grimsley said gets called out nearly every day during winter months. 

That could provide some fertile ground for conflict in a Joe Pickett novel.

With Box’s propensity for putting real Wyoming people in his books, there’s a good chance any Afton-based mystery would likely include a mention of Gardner.

He pulled off what’s still considered one of the greatest underdog upsets in sports history when he beat the unbeatable Russian heavyweight Aleksandr Karelin, who hadn’t lost a match in 13 years before Gardner out-wrestled him to win gold at the 2000 Sydney Summer Games.

Thrilling Chase Option

Pickett frequently finds the most conflict where it should be least expected in the most remote areas of Wyoming. Star Valley can deliver on that, too, Grimsley said. 

Afton sits in the southern end of Star Valley, which is about 70 miles long and about 5 miles wide at its widest point, but just beyond Afton is an area the locals refer to as the South End, or the South Pass.

“That’s not at all populated,” Grimsley said. “It’s government land and a zillion trails and kind of a lot of snowmobiling and hunting and horseback riding and skiing and fishing and Razor (ATV) riding and camping.”

While stunning and beautiful, there are still plenty of remote corners for Pickett to poke around in as he’s looking out for trouble. 

“Literally in a few minutes, you can be at a different rail head and get into a completely different scenario,” Grimsley said. “Like a lot of alpine lakes and interesting places to go.”

If Pickett is in Afton in the winter, he could choose a pretty interesting way to get around the remote areas surrounding Afton in the Star Valley. 

It’s called a snow plane, and it’s something that was popularized in Afton, where the Call family manufactured helicopter-looking snowmobile precursors starting in the 1940s.

“They have skis and they’re, like, an overgrown snowmobile on skis,” Grimsley said. “But they’re kind of like an airboat, so they’re propelled by air, but they don’t get off the ground.”

Snow planes were invaluable for winter travel through the 1960s, helping deliver mail and medicine to remote areas, as well as providing one of the best ways to get around Yellowstone’s snowy terrain in winter. 

But they were also quite fun — the race cars of winter — capable of hitting top speeds of 100 to 110 mph.

They were also quite dangerous. 

There are no brakes or seatbelts, and nothing to guard people from those whirling propeller blades in the back at all. Get too close, and you could lose a limb or worse. 

In fact, a game warden named Allen Down lost an arm to a snow plane in 1955, making that a totally realistic possibility for a Joe Pickett novel in Afton.

And a snow plane would certainly make for an exciting and interesting chase scene. 

Imagine racing one of them at 110 mph, a ​swerve away from being stranded in below-freezing temperatures in the deadly cold of a Star Valley winter. 

Snowmobiles have long since replaced snow planes, but there are still those who collect and restore them, as well as those who still use them for their own personal, over-the-snow enjoyment. 

There are even, for those in the know, snow plane reunions that take place in remote locations where people gather to remember and reminisce about the good old days, running their snow planes at top speeds in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks.

The Tallest And The Oldest

But not all interesting crime scenes have to be in remote places. There are also cool places in town that could make for a quirky and interesting crime scene, like Colter's Lodge.

“It’s the oldest building in town,” Grimsley said. “It’s also the tallest in town at three stories.”

Where better to see something happening in the wee hours of a starry Afton night in some remote area far away than a three-story hotel with lots of history and character — and maybe even rumors of a ghost?

“There’s a liquor store and a bar,” Grimsley said. “And there’s a huge, big, hand-painted mural in there, as well as a cafe and a steakhouse. So, it’s kind of a one-stop shop. It’s an icon here in town.”

The furniture looks rustic, handmade from logs with lots of throwbacks to another era decorating the place, including a life-sized statue of a woman in the lobby. 

“Each room is a little bit different,” Grimsley said. “And the wedding suites are all uniquely decorated and really pay homage to and have a historical value.”

Rustic, kitchsy history might not quite be Joe Pickett’s taste, so there are other options in town for a stay, like the Kodiak Mountain Resort.

“These are all very high, like, technologically advanced,” Grimsley said. “They all have like smart controls in them, and they’re all fully furnished. And they have family cabins, too.

"So that’s a beautiful area, and that’s a great place to launch and then just take off on your snowmobile or Razor.”

Kodiak Mountain Resort is near a couple of trails, including the Swift Creek Trail, which leads to the intermittent spring — another Afton claim to fame.

“That’s one of like a small handful in the world,” she said. “And our water supply comes from there for the town of Afton.”

A water supply could be vulnerable to ecoterrorists, a favorite Joe Pickett villain.

Culture Clash

C.J. Box books tend to draw from headlines of the day for inspiration, and Afton, as well as Lincoln County, have a lot to offer in that regard, said Lincoln County Economic Development Director Robert King.

“A majority of the population in Wyoming is (reflected) here in the Star Valley area,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of people moving in from California, Colorado, and Texas. And they bring their own ideas, they bring their own problems with them. 

“Sometimes, they want us to be like what they left, and that just doesn’t work. We’re very conservative. We have a very big crowd here that hunts and fishes.”

Those could provide some interesting flashpoints for a Joe Pickett novel, King suggested.

The southern part of Lincoln County, meanwhile, is somewhat more industrial, with major trucking routes and rail, as well as the nation’s first TerraPower Natrium nuclear plant in Kemmerer, not to mention a new helium plant that’s locating near Exxon’s existing plant near La Barge.

“There’s a coal mine down there (by Kemmerer), and a lot of underground mines,” he added. 

Another Thrilling Chase Option

New developments like the nuclear plant and the new helium plant have been bringing lots of speculative types to Lincoln County, King said. 

Those projects are also going to bring in literally thousands of new workers to the area, some of whom may decide to stay.

There’s also existing industry like Aviat Aircraft Inc., which makes high-performance sport and utility aircraft at what the company says is the longest-running production facility in the United States.

The planes might be another fun way for Joe Pickett to get to remote, inaccessible areas while he’s in Afton, as well as ultimately — through no fault of his own, ending up in a thrilling high-speed chase.

A Husky, for example, can climb 1,500 feet per minute and boasts top speeds of up to 145 mph. They also have enough fuel to fly around 800 miles at maximum range, so Pickett could go far and very fast.

There’s Gold In The Hills, Maybe

It’s not always all about what’s happening in the modern world today, though. History often plays a part in what’s happening on the ground as well. 

One place where Afton history might shine in a Joe Pickett novel are all the tales told of famous American cowboy outlaw Butch Cassidy. 

Some believe that Cassidy hid gold and treasure in the Afton area, somewhere in the hills and mountains that surround Star Valley. 

Jody Shumway, who owns the last legacy dairy in Star Valley, believes Pickett would run into lots of people with at least one or two Butch Cassidy stories to tell him while he’s here. 

“My daughters still live in the very house and the same kitchen where Cassidy had his hair cut,” Shumway said. “That’s always been my son-in-law’s (family’s) claim to fame in. That they cut his hair in that very kitchen.”

That house is 130 years old and underscores how rich and deep the history in Afton and the Star Valley runs.

Cassidy did winter in Star Valley, Shumway added, and the outlaw was said to have attended a dance at the Old Rock Meeting House in Auburn, Wyoming, which is still standing.

Dancing was a Saturday night standby at the historic meeting hall, the first in the valley to boast a wooden floor. 

People came from all over the valley to participate in that, and winter didn’t stop them. They’d show up on a bobsled or snowshoes just as easily as a wagon. 

Most would plan to arrive early on Saturday, bringing a lunch. They’d stay all day and then all night, dancing to the zero-dark-​ hours of the morning. Then they’d attend church services the next morning, before returning home in the afternoon.

Enterprising gold hunters running rampant through Afton looking for historic gold and treasure, and leaving mayhem in their wake, could be a fun theme for a Joe Pickett book and take the game warden to some surprising locations, like hidden caves and underground tunnels.

There’s also an old salt mine that was a favorite stop along the Oregon Trail for pioneers who would stock up before continuing on their way.

“I would spin a story around the old salt mine,” King said.

Long, Long Trip To Jail

Great places to eat in the Star Valley abound. 

Grimsley and King both would recommend Swirl, where there’s an adult grilled cheese sandwich that both say is out of this world, while Shumway would recommend Rocky Mountain Seafood.

“It’s a little bit pricy,” he said. “But it’s a good, good place to eat. They bring in some good stuff.”

Sheriff Shane Johnson, however, had an entirely different take on where he could see Joe Pickett hanging out after a long day of sleuthing. 

“I would send Joe Pickett to Dad’s (Bar & Steakhouse),” he said. “They have good steaks. And, of course, if it’s summer, he’d have to stop by the Red Baron drive-in. That’s only open in the summer, but it’s kind of an Afton classic.”

One fun, little factoid Johnson recommends Pickett keep in mind while he’s in Lincoln County is the sheer size of this ultra long county along the western border of the state. 

“If you get arrested here in Star Valley, your trip to jail is anywhere between 100 to 130 miles away one way,” he said. “So, the county seat of Lincoln County is Kemmerer, and three-quarters of the population is in Star Valley. So, if you get arrested in Afton, you’ve got a long, long trip to jail.”

In fact, the county is so long that Johnson has offices at both ends of the county. His office in Kemmerer also includes an apartment, just in case he needs to spend the night.

A River Runs Through It

Lincoln County shares a border with multiple states, which can also be somewhat interesting when it comes to enforcement.

“Out in Freedom there’s what’s called the State Line Road, because it separates Wyoming from Utah,” he said. “Even though it’s all part of the same community, half of it is in Idaho and half of it is in Wyoming. 

"So, there’s always potential for someone to cross state lines to avoid capture. We do have agreements now, so that’s not as big a deal, but it’s kind of an interesting thing.”

Johnson is also a big fan of Box’s Pickett series and has read all of them. 

One thing he thinks some people in Wyoming may not realize is that Afton is the home of Freedom Arms, which manufactures Nate Romanowski’s favorite firearm.

“They make really good single-action revolvers,” Johnson said. “And I have a few of them myself.”

The Snake River runs through Lincoln County, Johnson added, and that’s something he could see figuring into a Pickett novel since it’s not uncommon for dead bodies to show up as a result of rafting accidents.

“They’ll put the raft in at Teton County up in Jackson, and then they fall out and drown in Lincoln County, and then they float up in Idaho a while later,” he said. “That’s happened more than once. And the Snake River is part of our county.”

It’s just one more intriguing possibility for spine-tingling suspense in the next Joe Pickett novel, in a county that has endless possibilities for rounding out a popular series that has kept so many entertained for nearly three decades now.

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.