It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Tuesday, December 16th. I’m Mac Watson.
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Strange flying objects over Sweetwater County’s Red Desert and Jim Bridger Power Plant are so common now they're "the new normal," the sheriff’s office says. But Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that no one is giving any answers about what they are.
“They're so frequent that people aren't even reporting them anymore, and they're just the new normal. This is among the most transparent sheriff's offices that we work with, and so they were open with the public about pushing for answers on the federal the state level, trying to figure out what was going on. And they did that in the spokesman's words, they exhausted all those avenues, ended up with nothing. They had to just move on and enforce laws on the ground.”
Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Jason Mower tells Cowboy State Daily that December marks 13 months of lighted, drone-like objects congregating, often in coordinated formations, over the Red Desert and power plant, adding that they’re too high to shoot down from the ground level.
Read the full story HERE.
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A Wyoming family shares an inside view of their struggles to ranch in pricey Jackson Hole and pass their ranch on to the next generation. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that the family’s journey and tough decision on the future of their ranch is part of a new eight-part Cowboy Channel documentary that started Sunday.
“They're realizing that if they don't start to build now, they're not going to be able to, you know, if they don't start now, they're either going to have to, either the ranch is going to have to get with the program, or they're going to have to go out in the world and make their fortune and come back, kind of thing. So there was a lot of tension, a lot of different visions. They just laid that all bare, not scripted, no storyboards. It's just the real deal. This is the discussion we had. They brought in a dad. There was so much tension, they had to bring in a third party to kind of mediate for them, to keep it from, you know, really blowing up.”
Wealthy people have been trying to buy the Diamond Cross Ranch for a long time. In the 1920s, it was the Rockefellers making the offers. But the family refused to sell.
Read the full story HERE.
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A motion in defense of Weston County Clerk Becky Hadlock filed on Monday says lawmakers, not Hadlock, were the ones who broke the law when issuing a subpoena for her to appear before an investigative committee this fall. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports Hadlock has hired attorney Ryan Semerad, who is asking the court to dismiss the case “with prejudice,” meaning permanently.
“Hadlock’s attorney who is well-known in Wyoming, so he's got chops in Wyoming, first of all. Secondly, he filed a motion Monday in Casper circuit court saying, ‘Whoa, these lawmakers vaulted over their statutory authority, and this whole subpoena is void.’ The state can respond, and then the court can rule. Another thing the court can do is certify questions to a higher court like the Natrona County District Court and be like, hey, higher court, you want to weigh in here?”
After a legislative committee subpoenaed the Weston County Clerk and she did not appear for its September meeting, the Natrona County District Attorney’s Office charged her, on Oct. 24th, with failure to appear for a legislative subpoena.
Read the full story HERE.
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A Chevy Impala ended up inside the Ichiban Japanese Steakhouse after the driver hit the gas instead of the brakes. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that owner Jerry Zhang says repairs to the Riverton restaurant will take a lot of time and money.
“It was a young driver who hit the gas instead of the brake. Now the thing is, I imagine most people would think you just put up a new door and put up a new window, and getting a new door in is easy enough, even if it's the holidays, and getting all the money to do it from the insurance company. The window is a different story, because the owner of Ichiban said that he had that window custom made and shipped from Hong Kong. So just the fact that the window is broken, that's automatically going to set him back $10,000 just to get a new one, custom made and shipped and delivered here. There are no charges pressed against the driver. He believes he is probably just eager to get in there and enjoy the Dining Services, although it's not a drive through. And in this case, it unfortunately was.”
Despite the accident and damage, the owner tells Cowboy State Daily the restaurant will remain open for the holiday season.
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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Wyoming oil and gas lease sales have rebounded in 2025, with a sixth sale set for Dec. 30 after years of record lows. But Cowboy State Daily’s Kate Meadows reports that industry leaders say Biden-era rules and higher minimum bids still cloud investment and leave key questions unanswered.
“One of the questions is, under the Biden administration, parcels per acre, cost per acre increased tenfold, from $1 per acre under the Trump administration to $10 per acre under the Biden administration. So that increase has remained in place in 2025 and as a result, these companies are paying a lot more each year to keep their leases going. So one of the questions is that going to continue under the Trump administration? A lot of these gas companies are asking, Well, what happens to the land that doesn't sell during that sale? The question is, kind of, is there a way to incentivize these lease sales if a piece of land doesn't sell the first time around?”
The Bureau of Land Management last week announced two new oil and gas lease sales in Wyoming — one on Dec. 30 and another on March 3, 2026. The Dec. 30 sale marks the sixth oil and gas lease sale to take place in Wyoming this year.
Read the full story HERE.
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Six years, two judges and multiple failed negotiations have passed since a welder started building his storage shop without a permit from the city of Laramie. Cowboy State daily’s Clair McFarland reports that the Wyoming Supreme Court on Monday told the newest judge on the case to pick a side — landowner or city and the resolution could be severe.
“On the one hand, you have the landowner saying, ‘Come on, we have this evidence that we built everything safely. Can you drop the court order for us to stop building already? This thing is up.’ And then on the other hand you have the city like, ‘No, they never let us inspect, or never worked out for us to inspect, and so we got to take this thing apart and make sure it's built well.’ And the judge basically said, you guys got to try to agree. And the Wyoming Supreme Court fired back, saying, weigh the arguments, pick a side. Because this has been going on for such a long time, the outcome could be extreme. It could be approaching or over a million dollars in fines maximum.”
Wyoming Supreme Court Justice Bridget Hill in a unanimous opinion, filed on Monday, stated that this is a contentious case where “the record reveals two parties stubbornly entrenched in the rightness of their position.”
Read the full story HERE.
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The owner of Sloanes General Store in Alcova, Wyoming, will be out $8,000 if whoever stole the store’s Sinclair dinosaur mascot doesn’t return it. Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck reports law enforcement has video of a truck that may be connected to the stolen dino.
“The sheriff's department is asking people to be on the lookout for a pickup truck. They sent out a photo of that. And so obviously it was something that took a little bit of effort, because this 10 foot long creature was behind some picnic tables and in kind of a fenced area beside the Sloan general store in Alcova…They do have some security, security camera footage that shows this pickup. So that's what the sheriff's department in Natrona County has put out. As you know, if anybody has seen this truck, can identify it, please contact the sheriff's department about that.”
Stealing the 10-foot, 300-pound green Apatosaurus may seem harmless, but its value makes the heist a felony.
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 watching - I’m Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.
