Rudy Butch Stanko was a complicated character with traits ranging from heroic to pioneering to puzzling. He was a bare-knuckle fighter in life and in the courtroom, where he spent a lot of time defending himself for everything from college indiscretions to serious felonies.
Each spring while a student at the University of Wyoming, he transformed Vedauwoo — that otherworldly rock landscape just outside Laramie — into ground zero for an epic kegger called Polish May Fest.
He'd go on to become a meatpacking baron in Nebraska before succumbing to federal charges that sent him to prison.
When he got out, he was clocked driving over 121 mph in Montana, which had no speed limit at the time. No matter, Butch still found a way to get in trouble.
He ended up fighting his ticket and his court case put an end to the Montanabahn — that glorious era of no-speed-limit travel under the big sky.
This profile was my favorite story of 2025 because Stanko was such a knot of human contradictions. He was whip smart, but also prone to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. He was a professional poker player, but when it came to the law, he didn't always appear to play his cards right.
His son Scott told me his father was arrested around 250 times before cancer claimed him at 76 years old. That must be some kind of record, and as his obituary put it, Stanko, "blazed his own trail through the West."
Rudy “Butch” Stanko: The Wyoming Maverick Who Ended Montana’s No Speed Limit Era
