Daily Darwin

[{"type":"text","text":"Why the British are not allowed to celebrate Independence Day....."}]

Darwin 1 17 26

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>Daily Darwin: Saturday, January 17, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Why the British are not allowed to celebrate Independence Day.....

Daily Darwin: Saturday, January 17, 2026

 Why the British are not allowed to celebrate Independence Day.....

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Jackie Dorothy.

Jackie Dorothy

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

Dietz was once a busy and bustling community made up of a collection of mining camps scattered along the Tongue River Valley.  

Barefoot children were full of mischief, baseball games were played between rival camps, and then the explosions would come. 

Families would rush to the mines to discover if the men who were working that shift had survived.  

Stanley A. Kuzara of Sheridan was born on Oct. 15, 1906, into this dangerous and poor — but lively — life. Along with many others, found that growing up in a dangerous coal town, the first life lesson was survival.

His parents were Polish immigrants and his father was working in Mine No. 5, so the family lived at the coal mining camp of Dietz No. 5 at the time of Kuzara's birth. 

The Kuzara family, which eventually grew to seven boys and five girls, lived in a converted barn that was formerly a camp grocery store and post office, Kuzara wrote in his book “Black Diamonds of Sheridan.” 

Later, their camp would be renamed Dietz No. 8 when Mine No. 5 closed and a new mine established in the same area.

By the early 1900s, Dietz was among the largest coal-producing communities in northern Wyoming with 800 men working the mines in the winter and 400 in the summer. 

[{"type":"text","text":"Unlike a single town, Dietz was a collection of mining camps. "}]

G.B Dobson of Wyoming Tales and Trails wrote that each town bore the number of its corresponding mine, thus when Mine No. 5 was closed and replaced by Mine No. 8, the camp was renamed Dietz No. 8.   

Other mines in the region included the Hotchkiss, Acme, Model, Carneyville (later Kleenburn), Monarch, and Kooi.

Nearly every European country was represented in the camps which Kuzara listed as Polish, Hungarians, Welsh, Scotch, English, Italians, Czechoslovakians, Bulgarians, Austrians, Germans, Serbians, Montenegrans, Irish, Slovaks, Japanese, and French.

[{"type":"text","text":"Life was precarious in the camp. "}]

When Kuzara was a year old, his parents had to live in a tent with the family while they waited for their new house to become available. That would be the John Hecht Place located about midway between the Dietz No. 7 and the Dietz No. 5 camps.

It was while in this tent that Kuzara said his mother had him in a high chair placed near the coal range to keep him warm. 

One of the other small boys began to climb on the high chair and, when it became unbalanced, Kuzara fell on top of the hot range. 

He severely burned his right cheek and carried the scar for the rest of his life.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Dangerous Games"}]

Kuzara said that the kids in the coal mining camp would have to get inventive in their games.

He remembered how at times, they would “borrow” a handcar from the CB&Q railroad. 

These carts would be left on the siding of the tracks by a maintenance crew and proved too tempting to the boys who found it. 

Some of the older boys would carry them to the interurban tracks whose bed was not level as the railroad tracks.

“We would all push the hand-car up to the top of an incline just to experience the sensation of coasting down at quite a speed,” Kuzara said. “It was a wonder that we survived as the handles of the hand-car would be pumping up and down of their own accord.”

Another favorite pastime in the winter was to slide down the hills on homemade sleds, bobsled and toboggans.

The children would also ice skate on the sloughs and river, the latter which was kept clean of snow by flooding.

“Of course, skating on the river was sometimes very dangerous since the ice was either very thin where the water was naturally swift or was even non-existent,” Kuzara said. “We had to remain constantly on guard and did have some narrow escapes.”

A game unique to the coal mining camps was playing with carbide, a compound of carbon and a metal.

Kuzara explained that it was the habit of the miners to clean out their carbide lamps of the residue of carbide. 

He said that near the exit of the mine, one miner after another would unscrew the base of his lamp, knock it against the post and deposit the residue until there was quite a pile of spent carbide powder.

“As the men would empty their cans, we children would finger through the carbide dust, picking out all granules of unused carbide,” Kuzara said. “Sometimes we would merely pile it, drop water on it and light it; other times, place a supply of carbide in a bottle and after watering it, quickly cap the bottle and get quite a charge out of the resulting explosion.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Different Rules"}]

Kuzara recalled that even the men had their games that were usually of various contests of strength such as boxing, wrestling, weightlifting, and throwing horseshoes.

“My father once bet one of the more husky miners, Joe Stucca, that he could not lift a certain water-soaked oak railroad tie about 20 feet long,” Kuzara said. “The bet was $5.”

Stucca not only lifted one end of the tie on his shoulder, but gradually worked to its center until he had it balanced. Then the miner walked off with it. 

[{"type":"text","text":"It was estimated that the tie weighed about 800 pounds."}]

Kuzara said that all ages played baseball. Each camp had its own team and there was real rivalry among the various camps as well as with teams from Sheridan and the surrounding area.

“Even with us younger boys, baseball was one of our principal activities,” Kuzara said. “However, instead of competing teams, we used to play work-up.”

A player would begin at left field position and as a batter was struck out, the players would gradually move up a position until finally, the boy would arrive at the batter’s box where he remained until he was put out. 

This made it so that the younger boys became very adept in each position, and they became particularly good batters. 

The end results were that when they were older and joined the men on the baseball teams, they were already very good at the game.  

Even in the wintertime, Kuzara said the men were able to keep involved in physical activities when not working their long hours in the mine

“Frequently with a keg of beer nearby, the frozen river became the scene of a game called Pravo, sometimes referred to as curling,” Kuzara said. “In this game of competition, one would run to a foul line and slide a disk or quoit along the ice, as in bowling, to an objective spot or line, frequently glancing off another’s quoit to gain advantage.”

Kuzara said that as a young boy, he also played on the frozen river in the wintertime. One of the games was called Shinny, which resembles hockey today.  

“Instead of owning any manufactured hockey stick and puck, we used to find a willow or some other tree which had a crook in it shaped like a hockey stick, and for a puck we used to use a bung from a barrel,” Kuzara said.

In the summertime as they tramped around in the trees, he said they were always on the lookout for a better “shinny stick.”

Another game Kuzara said was played by the men on the ice was called Bolina. 

He described this as similar to curling except that balls were used. A smaller target ball was rolled a distance, then the larger ball rolled, or lagged, to see how near one could get to the target ball.

[{"type":"text","text":"In all of these games, enthusiasm ran very high."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Celebrations"}]

Each of the mining camps had its own polka band that appeared in many of the big parades that were held in the early 1900s. They also played at the many Polish weddings and christenings.

Instead of celebrating birthdays, it was the accepted custom at the camps to celebrate their “name days.” 

On St. Joseph day, for example, every Joe in the camp set that day aside for celebrating his patron saint. On St. Maria Day, all Marys would celebrate. 

By the time all the Joes or Marys got together to celebrate they would have quite a party, complete with a band, Kuzara said.

The union hall in practically each mining camp would usually also serve as an auditorium for functions of other organizations and also for school plays and programs. 

Frequently, officials at the mine would give gifts to children at the Christmas party and, if times were good, these were quite elaborate.

Despite all the fun and community spirit Kuzara experienced, he also saw a lot of tragedy at a young age. 

Deaths were all too common from explosions, gas leaks and other accidents. 

His own father tried to stay out of the mines, and throughout Kuzara’s childhood, his father opened up stores that sold a wide range of goods, from liquor to furniture. 

Despite his efforts, his father would often have to return to the mines to feed his large family. 

Kuzara said that knowing he did not want a low-paying mine job, he studied hard in school. He pursued many careers to keep himself out of the mines. 

However, he also ended up doing his time underground, but kept striving to get other jobs that would get him above ground.

It was when looking back at his childhood that Kuzara appreciated what he had survived. 

Not just the hard labor, but the antics of the boys and men who lived in the coal mining camps of Wyoming, especially now that most of these coal mining camps are ghost towns with fading memories. 

"As I look back retrospect, I feel now that it really was a unique privilege to have been born in the mining camp of Dietz No.5, Wyoming," Kuzara wrote. "The fun, the frivolity, the pathos, and the hardships."

7 Dietz schoolchildren 1920s

<title>Wyoming History: Surviving A Dangerous Childhood Growing Up In Coal Town Of Dietz | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The ghost town of Dietz was once a thriving coal mining community near Sheridan. Stanley Kuzara grew up around the mines where explosions were commonplace. Families would rush to the mines to discover if the men working that shift had survived.  

Wyoming History: Surviving A Dangerous Childhood Growing Up In Coal Town Of Dietz

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

A Casper man says he's being forced to part ways with his beloved Bigfoot-hunting rig at his wife's behest, blaming the vehicle's irresistible appeal to the opposite sex.

"I knew this day would come, but that doesn't make it hurt any less," Austin Griess wrote in a tongue-in-cheek Facebook post advertising his lifted 1984 AMC Eagle wagon for sale. "My wife is making me sell my lifted AMC Eagle because of all the attention it brings. 

"I only have eyes for her, yet this car seems to draw in way too many female lookers for my comfort."

Austin Griess found the 1984 AMC Eagle 4X4 Wagon on Facebook Marketplace during the dead of winter.

During the cold months he worked on it, installing a lift kit, tuning it up and making it reliable enough to serve as a daily driver. Then he said he turned it into a true “chick magnet” by added a modern stereo.

The goal was to debut the finished wagon with 150,000 original miles on it at a Memorial Day car show.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"We didn't make it in time for entry,\" Griess said."}]

"The payment is due here in June," he joked. "No trophy making a payment."

After months of wrenching and modifying the Oldsmobile, he said that his wife has had enough of competing with the AMC for attention.

[{"type":"text","text":"“The wife just kind of had enough of me at that point,” he said."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"So, the Eagle is now looking for its next owner."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Finding Bigfoot"}]

Along with making whoever drives it irresistible, "This would be a perfect Bigfoot hunting rig,” said Griess, adding that his day job is in sales.

[{"type":"text","text":"The four-door Eagle is rugged, practical, and weird. "}]

"That's the ideal car to take your wife and two kids and throw all your crap in the back, go to the mountains for a picnic, and go fishing" says mechanical philosopher Ron Gordon. 

The Eagle is powered by a 4.2-liter inline-six engine shared with old Jeeps.

The original muffler is still hanging on, although Griess admits it's become a little rough around the edges.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"It's a little bit raspy,\" he said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Perfect For Wyoming"}]

Long before crossovers filled dealership lots, vehicles like the AMC Eagle were doing much of the same work.

Ron Gordon owned an auto shop in Big Piney for 15 years and has spent nearly 70 years around cars. When shown photos of Griess’ golden Eagle, his first reaction was blunt.

"One of the Lee brothers made it: Ug Lee or Home Lee," Gordon said with a laugh.

[{"type":"text","text":"But beneath the humor was genuine admiration."}]

"It was a pretty unique car in its day," he said. "It was the first real sport utility vehicle on the market."

[{"type":"text","text":"The Eagle debuted years before today's crossover craze."}]

It combined station wagon practicality with four-wheel-drive capability, making it particularly appealing in places where winter weather and rough roads were facts of life.

"It'd be good for anything from going fishing or to sheep ranch," Gordon said.

That versatility made vehicles like the Eagle a natural fit in the Cowboy State. 

Griess agrees, calling it "the perfect Wyoming car — great for snow, inclement weather and getting off the paved roads."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Before SUVs"}]

To understand why people get nostalgic about station wagons, Gordon said you have to remember what Wyoming life looked like decades ago.

[{"type":"text","text":"Then, a trip to town wasn't a quick errand."}]

"It was 60 miles to go buy groceries," Gordon recalled. "When you got in the car to go someplace, it was an event."

Station wagons weren't fashion statements, he added, "They were tools. They hauled groceries, hauled kids, and camping gear." 

Gordon remembers one summer when his family traveled to Idaho, where his father was working in the mountains.

The family camped, and he and his brothers slept in the back of a station wagon.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"There was a bear come in one night,\" Gordon said."}]

The animal poked holes in juice cans before dogs chased it away and up a tree. Looking back, Gordon laughs at the memory.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"I guess the station wagon was a safe haven for me,” he said."}]

For families throughout the West, station wagons were simply part of life before minivans hit the scene.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"Everybody that had a big family had a station wagon,\" he said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Time Machine "}]

Griess was born in 1988, but said he grew up surrounded by remnants of the decade. 

His parents were older. His uncles still wore the giant mustaches that survived long after the 1980s were over. 

"Life was simpler back then," says Griess. "If you wanted to do something, you just did it." 

[{"type":"text","text":"The AMC Eagle was meant to embody that mindset. "}]

"It just screams going out and camping with just the necessities," he said.

Music helps complete the vision. The Eagle has speakers — of course. Its soundtrack, according to Griess, has plenty of Molly Hatchet, Ted Nugent, and old-school rock.

It’s the kind of music that sounds best with the windows down and a dirt road ahead.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'Let The Eagle Fly'"}]

Selling a lifted 1984 AMC Eagle won't be easy. Building it was part of the fun, said Griess, and bringing it to life was the reward. 

"It's hard to part with,” he added. "But when you have limited space, you've got to let go sometimes. Let the Eagle fly free."

Its next owner will get a lifted station wagon, a conversation starter, a piece of nostalgia, and a camper.

Or, as Gordon puts it, they'll get exactly what station wagons were always meant to be, "a helluva good car." 

AMC Eagle IMG 5493 6 20 26

<title>Casper Man Selling His 1984 AMC Eagle 'Chick Magnet' Because Wife Wants It Gone | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Casper man says his wife is making him sell his beloved Bigfoot-hunting rig — a lifted 1984 AMC Eagle wagon with 150,000 miles he says attracts too much female attention. "I knew this day would come, but that doesn't make it hurt any less,” he said.

Casper Man Selling His 1984 AMC Eagle 'Chick Magnet' Because Wife Wants It Gone

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Business & Tourism

Business

On summer nights just outside of Powell, headlights still crest a small rise and swing past a hand-lettered marquee leading onto a wide gravel lot. 

The families in those cars will spill out of their trucks and SUVs with lawn chairs, blankets, and sleepy kids in pajamas.

Some of the locals go so far as to bring full-size couches in their pickup beds and camp stoves to make s’mores and other snacks as the overhead sky darkens and an impossible sweep of stars begins to shine.

Then, as it has since 1949, the screen at the American Dream Drive-In will flicker to life at what is Wyoming’s last, bonafide drive-in movie theater. 

The owner, Kathleen “Pokey” Heny, didn’t set out to become the owner of this American treasure. 

She and her husband built a home across from it decades ago — when it was called the Vali Drive-In — primarily so they could see Powell’s landmark Heart Mountain from their windows. 

It just so happened that they were also right across from the drive-in as well, a place Heny remembers fondly.

“I have really good memories of going to the drive-in as a kid,” she said. “I’m one of seven children, so we’d float up in the station wagon in our jammies and pop our popcorn at home. 

"Probably only twice a summer, but I just love the memory of that.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Best Seat"}]

Heny and her husband cleared a line of sight to the drive-in’s big white screen from their property so they could watch movies from their garage. 

“We could sit in the garage and watch a movie across the road,” she said with a chuckle. “And now you can tune your radio into it, so if you don’t have a speaker, you could listen to it on your radio.”

Then one day in 2004, her husband returned from the lumber store with a rumor that was about to forever change Heny’s life.

“I heard the drive-in is for sale,” he told her. 

“Well, I have to buy it,” Heny recalls telling him. “I don’t want it to get knocked down. I don’t want it to become obsolete.”

Heny had no idea what she was getting herself into at the time. 

She’d never owned a business, and she didn’t know anything at all about the movie business.

“At that time, it was reel to reel,” she said. “You actually had to splice the movies and put them together.”

Her first years were also lean — heartbreakingly so.

“There was a huge learning curve. I was happy to have 10 cars a night,” she said. “We really thought we were doing something if we got 15. 

"So just trying to get it up and running, and figure out how to run the movie, order the movies, use a movie broker.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Steep Learning Curve"}]

Dusty pickups and kids in pajamas are at the core of Heny’s successful business model, which packs in as many as 150 cars a night in the summer.

While many of the nation’s remaining 370 or so drive-in movie theaters have leaned into attracting tourists, Heny has instead leaned into community.

“What we did to build it back up is just changing it to become family-friendly,” she said. “I learned that the ones who spend the money are the parents. The teens? They don’t spend as much money in the concessions, which is where you’re going to make your money. 

"You don’t make money on your ticket sales at the door, because that’s what goes to the movie industry.”

That dynamic means Heny is not showing movies with “R” or “X” ratings. It’s strictly PG-13 and on down.

She’s also learned not to shoot for the latest blockbuster right out of the gate.

“If was to show let’s say, ‘Toy Story 5,’ which is playing right now, I’d have to keep that for three weeks,” she said. “Well, three weekends in a row at the drive-in isn’t going to be successful for me.”

Eventually, she’ll bring that move in, but she’ll wait until it’s been out for a while. 

“Then I’ll get it on what they call the break,” she said. “And guess what, they’ll come back and watch it a second, sometimes a third time.”

Movie producers wouldn’t let her drive-in have such a movie anyway, she added, because she’s only open three nights a week.

“They can put it somewhere like Billings or Cheyenne and run it five times a day,” she said. “So that’s kind of how the drive-in business works.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Eternally Vintage"}]

The beating heart that is keeping the American Dream alive when every other drive-in in Wyoming has died goes back to the post-war golden age of drive-in movie theaters. 

Land was still abundant and cheap, and it was newly accessible thanks to a new post-war highway system. 

The economy was booming. Moms and dads had real, disposable income that could be devoted to entertainment. And there were also lots of moms and dads — so many that their children would become known as Baby Boomers. 

These families wanted fun, family experiences, and they had cars with lots of flashy chrome to show off to their neighbors, who were also at the drive-in chasing the same thing. 

The dynamic fueled nearly 4,500 drive-in movie theaters at the height of the sector between the 1950s and 1960s.

“This was originally built in 1949 by a man who had been back East and gone to a drive-in of sorts,” Heny said about the origins of the American Dream. “It was just a big, white sheet stretched across some trees and he just watched and watched.”

The man was so enthralled with watching movies this way, he came home and built his own drive-in theater right next to his property. 

Heny still has many of the speakers from the original drive-in, and she still uses them. 

“I always tell people these are 1949 monotone, metallic-sounding speakers,” she said. “It’s not surround-sound stereo. It’s a little buzzy, but I still like to listen on the speaker.”

She also still has the original popcorn machine. 

“We gutted it and our candy is displayed inside the glass part of it,” she said. “I wanted to keep that a part of the drive-in.”

She kept the patio so people could sit and eat there if they wanted, with tiny tables. 

The drive-in has become known for its cheesy fries, but also offers burgers, hot dogs, donuts, big soft pretzels, popcorn, and ice cream sodas. 

“We still have the big marquee out front, with the letters where you have to climb up on the marquee to put the big plastic letters up,” she said. 

Over the last 22 years that she’s owned the theater, Heny's had the occasional guest suggest that she should just get rid of things like the marquee or the old-fashioned speakers. 

But there’s no way that’s ever happening.

The classic metal speaker boxes aren’t some kind of issue to be fixed The marquee is, in her opinion, a masterpiece. As are the retro Formica countertops in the concession area, which she and her sister spent hours scouring the internet to find.

“I find it funny when kids will say, ‘You know what, you should knock this down and make it more modern,’” she said. “I’m like, ‘It’s a 1949 building. It’s a very ’50s vibe, a very ’50s-diner-type vibe. It’s red, white, and blue. It’s the American dream.

“This is your dream to come to the drive-in,” she added. “Modern? No, that would take away from what it is.”

Heny doesn’t have to look too far to see that she is right. 

Her drive-in routinely has upward of 100 cars a night, often more. She’s drawing people in from all over Wyoming who want the vintage experience of a retro drive-in movie theater. 

Some of them like the experience so much, they have made her drive-in a tradition every summer.

The American Dream in Powell, Wyoming’s last operating drive-in theater, has survived since 1949 as a retro experience for movie-goers. The current owner bought it in 2004 just to save it. “I didn't want it to get knocked down," Kathleen Heny said.

Daily Darwin: Saturday, January 17, 2026

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