It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Monday, November 10th. I’m Mac Watson. This newscast is “Brought to you by the University of Wyoming Center on Aging. Did you know that 1 in 3 Wyoming adults have pre-diabetes, and most don’t realize it? Are you tough enough to know your numbers? Take the quiz at: Find Out WY dot org."
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President Donald Trump has pardoned Troy Lake, the 65-year-old Wyoming diesel mechanic who spent seven months in federal prison for tweaking and removing emissions systems on ailing engines. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that Lake found out he was pardoned by listening to a voice mail message on his phone.
“Troy Lake had been caring for his sick dog, and he was in his kitchen in his home there, just outside of Cheyenne, and he noticed he had a voicemail. It was Senator Cynthia Lummis saying that he had received a full and unconditional pardon. He'll no longer be a convicted felon or have to wear an ankle monitor or be on supervised release, and it's just a very victorious moment for this family of seeing all the people who had their backs, who cared about their case, really seeing Wyoming go to bat for them.”
Lake spent his 40th wedding anniversary and his 65th birthday in prison and says he believed he’d spend the rest of his life as a convicted felon, unable to vote, hold public office, or possess or hunt with firearms.
Read the full story HERE.
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Wyoming business leaders are saying the effort to bring manufacturing back to the U.S. is an existential crisis for America and the world. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that Wyoming has many advantages that manufacturing companies are looking for.
“We have all these resources that we export to other states, and the value is added in other states. The value chain there is huge, and we're missing out on all of it. It's multiple billions of dollars, you know. So if we can do that in Wyoming, we get better sales tax revenue, we have better jobs for people. We have better services as a result of all that, it's kind of this upward instead of a downward vicious cycle. It's an upward and optimistic cycle. And so that's why Wyoming officials are always trying to chase more diversity in the economy, get some of these value added things in Wyoming, and then we're not so dependent on what the commodity market is doing. The commodity market is constantly up and down, up and down, right? Manufacturing is a little more solid, a little more stable.”
Part of a top-to-bottom approach, according to Wyoming Business Council Executive Director Josh Dorrell, is making sure that Wyoming communities are nice places to live, have good schools, and the proper infrastructure to support economic growth.
Read the full story HERE.
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Justin Harris was a developmentally disabled Casper teen who vanished from a group home in 2004. Cowboy State Daily’s Jen Kocher reports that the Casper PD has put fresh eyes on the unsolved case and that’s giving hope to Justin’s family after 21 years of unanswered questions.
“A new detective took over the case in 2025, looked back at that information. So it's technically new information derived in 2011…new technology and forensic capabilities have significantly advanced. So those capabilities were not around in 2011 when this information was derived from these suspects in the subsequent follow up interviews.”
Harris was 13 when he disappeared from a Casper group home after staff found his bed stuffed with clothing as if he were in bed sleeping. Police believe the teen was either abducted or was aided in his escape.
Read the full story HERE.
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I’ll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily, after this….
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If there is one lesson to be taken away from a Uinta County family’s successful mule deer hunting season, it’s that putting in the work scouting an area ahead of time can pay off big. Outdoors Reporter Mark Heinz reports that all five members of the Hanson family bagged huge bucks because of their tenacity and preparation.
“The Hanson Family, it's they actually have five sons, but two are grown up and moved away. So they've got three sons ranging from 17 to 13 that still live at home…And they all five ended up getting nice, really nice, big mule deer bucks…there is an element of luck involved in just being tenacious, just not giving up when you're out in the field. But they also credited that what they did before the season, like over the summer, and whatnot. They went into that area, spent a lot of time in there beforehand, scouting it out, hiking around, checking things out, seeing where the deer were, pat you know, watching the deer's pattern of movement. So they kind of had it. They weren't just going in there blind. They kind of knew the lay of the land, and they had a lot of knowledge beforehand.”
Jannette Hanson tells Cowboy State Daily that she’s immensely proud of her family’s hunting accomplishment, and she doesn’t take living in Wyoming for granted.
Read the full story HERE.
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The head coach of the Campbell County High School football program in Gillette has been terminated, days before a playoff game. Cowboy State Daily’s Greg Johnson reports that the reason for the dismissal of coach Orah Garst was due to an escalating interaction with a player.
“I also was able to obtain at least a partial copy of a recording of the incident, about 25 seconds worth…ou can clearly hear him very angry at this player. There are profanities. Says something about his family at some point, about the coach, about his own family, presumably, something happened, but we don't really know, and you can kind of see in this video that there are other players with their phones out, presumably recording it.”
Coach Garst says he’s contrite about the incident and that he “deserves” the consequences.
Read the full story HERE.
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Wyoming meteorologist Don Day was living in the Great Lakes when the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank 50 years ago on Nov 10, 1975. Cowboy State Daily’s Zak Sonntag reports that even though Day was only 8 years old, he vividly recalls hearing storm bulletins crackle through the kitchen radio announcing "The Witch Of November."
“The Witch of November is the storm system that comes in November, when cold air from Canada meets the relatively warmer temperatures of the Great Lakes, and it creates a lot of turbulence. But this particular year, they called it the storm of the century, because you had an additional front moving up from the plains, and they met right over Lake Superior…They say that sailing on the Great Lakes is actually a lot more dangerous than sailing on the Atlantic or the Pacific Oceans because, among other reasons, the salt water will stretch the waves out so they occur at a frequency of about 10 to 16 seconds. On the Great Lakes, you get waves every four to eight seconds, and they're nearly as big.”
The ship sank and was never seen again but the tragedy continues to fascinate people because of the Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot, who memorialized the tragedy in the song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” which was a Top 40 hit back in August of 1976.
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.
