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"I miss the days when kids were just eating Tide Pods," as narrated by MMA announcer, Steve Inman......

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

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

Steve Inman: Saturday, January 17, 2026

 "I miss the days when kids were just eating Tide Pods," as narrated by MMA announcer, Steve Inman......

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

Business & Tourism

A dinosaur was spotted near Yellowstone National Park this week for the first time in 68 million years.

A 12-foot-long Sinclair dinosaur that usually stands outside Gardiner Sinclair & Yellowstone Dino Lube and Repair north of Gardiner, Montana, was stolen, taken and anchored down 10 miles away on a cliff overlooking the Yellowstone River in Yankee Jim Canyon.

Drivers traveling along U.S. Highway 89 on Sunday could clearly see the majestic beast looming over its prehistoric stomping grounds.

The dinosaur couldn’t bolt away because it was literally bolted to the rock on which it was standing.

That made it more difficult to retrieve, said Derek Johnston, who works for the Sinclair station.

“I’m the guy who had to retrieve it,” said Johnston, adding that he likes to call the 6-foot-high and 12-foot-long, 150-pound fiberglass dinosaur “Dino.”

“It could’ve been worse,” he told Cowboy State Daily on Friday. “Whoever took him obviously planned this, because they brought all the proper tools to remove it from our location, then drill into the granite and anchor it to the cliff face.”

Throughout Dino’s excellent adventure, the dinosaur wasn’t damaged at all, Johnston said.

“They did a pretty good job, and I was absolutely impressed,” he said. “They didn’t even damage it — and definitely put some thought into it.”

That the pranksters didn’t damage Dino is a bonus, he said, because it costs about $8,000.

There isn’t a camera covering where the dinosaur sat on a concrete pad outside the Sinclair station, he said, but there is on a second dinosaur on the property.

“It might be a smart thing to put a tracker on it in the future,” Johnston added.

Nobody’s stepped up to take credit for taking Dino, but Johnston has a theory.

“The jury’s still out on who actually took it,” he said. “We suspect it was locals because there’s no damage.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Unbolted And Rebolted"}]

The stolen dinosaur statue is usually bolted to a concrete pad in front of the station along U.S. 89. Whoever stole and relocated it must have been aware and prepared.

"I found it funny," Sinclair employee Jacque Sims 

. "To think that our dinosaur was sitting up in the canyon up there, it was funny. We were laughing all day."

According to Sims, the still-unknown thieves managed to steal the dinosaur during the night from a spot where they wouldn’t be caught on camera. They also had the means to secure transport.

When Sims and other Sinclair employees went to recover their dinosaur, they found it bolted to the hard rock in Yankee Jim Canyon, Johnston said. They ensured the dinosaur they stole wouldn’t be stolen by anyone else.

"They literally had to unbolt it from a cement pad out here, and they re-bolted it up on a cliff," Sims told KBZK.

Plenty of people spotted the bright green dinosaur as they drove past.

Bozeman resident Justice Bartlett said these types of “shenanigans” were “the crimes we deserve.”

The most difficult part was making sure Dino didn’t tip over and fall 100 feet into the Yellowstone River below, Johnston said. That, and carrying it, because it doesn’t have handles and is hard to get a grip on.

Now, Dino is back and safely inside the shop at the station until they figure out how to bolt it down again in a way it can’t be dino-napped again, Johnston said.

“We brought it back and tucked it inside our shop,” he said. “It’s in a safe place right now until we figure out how to anchor it so that doesn’t happen again.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Targets Of Theft"}]

Stealing Sinclair dinosaurs has become a common Western prank.

, “DINO,” a 300-pound dinosaur standing outside Sloanes General Store in Alcova, was stolen overnight. For Brian Black, it wasn’t a victimless crime.

"We don’t know what happened to it, but he’s a pretty big guy, so he just doesn’t walk off,” he told Cowboy State Daily at the time. “We sure would like to have him back. I would do ‘no questions asked,’ personally.”

That was an important caveat, because the dinosaur statue cost more than $8,000. That would make the theft a felony charge.

 in July 2022. The Flynn family was distraught to find their 150-pound green dinosaur had gone missing overnight.

“I’ve always had a dream of owning a Sinclair dinosaur, and it was going to happen someday,” Flynn told Cowboy State Daily. “Last year, we were traveling through Minnesota, and I saw a Bob’s Big Boy for sale at this statue place. When we got there, I saw they had a Sinclair dinosaur.”

In this case, the Flynns used social media to spread the word on their stolen Sinclair dinosaur. A few days later, it mysteriously returned to their home overnight.

“I think he ended up in a garage for a couple days and (the thieves) realized, ‘We have got to get this thing out of here,’ so they brought him back,” Flynn said. “I was thinking he’d show up in a park somewhere, but instead, they brought him back to the house and pushed him out. I was just so excited that morning.”

Montanans have their own penchant for stealing Sinclair dinosaurs.

In November 2025, a dinosaur statue was stolen from the Sinclair Gas Station off Bridger Drive in Bozeman, Montana. It appeared at the top of the M Trail, overlooking the valley, right above the giant white “M” on the mountainside.

Yellowstone is renowned for its modern-day wildlife, but it’s been 

a haven for plenty of prehistoric animals

During the last Ice Age, the park was filled with giant mammals such as mammoths, dire wolves, 

In October 2023, a team of paleontologists published a paper on 

 found within the boundaries of the park.

Matt Carrano, curator of dinosaurs at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., said it was “the first identifiable dinosaur fossil from Yellowstone that we are aware of.”

“T.rex is very typical of the end of the Cretaceous,” he said. “This is just a tooth, but it does have all the features of a tyrannosaur tooth.

“Because there’s only one tyrannosaur around at the end of the Cretaceous, we felt pretty comfortable referring this to Tyrannosaurus.”

The tooth was from the Harebell Formation, which is roughly 68 million years old. That makes it much younger than the Sinclair sauropod, which is modeled after the massive long-necked sauropods that roamed Wyoming around 150 to 146 million years ago.

The Sinclair Oil Corp. adopted “Dino,” a green Brontosaurus, as its corporate mascot in 1930.

The company claimed its lubricants had been "mellowing in the ground during the Mesozoic era when dinosaurs populated the earth."

Sinclair also funded paleontological research undertaken by the American Museum of Natural History in Wyoming and other states in the 1930s.

The company famously sponsored “Dinoland,” an exhibit featuring several life-size dinosaur replicas, for the New York World’s Fair of 1964-1965.

No sauropod fossils have been found in or near Yellowstone, but anything’s possible.

While northwest Wyoming would have been different during the Late Jurassic, Brontosaurus, Diplodocus, and other sauropods likely roamed across Yellowstone during that time.

“You don’t think of fossils when you think of Yellowstone, but it has incredible geology, not just the geysers,” Carrano said. “It’s nice to remind visitors and even scientists that this is a place where we can make these discoveries. There are rocks of all ages in the park.”

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<title>Stolen 12-Foot Sinclair Dinosaur Bolted To 100-Foot Cliff Over Yellowstone River | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A 12-foot-long dinosaur nicknaed Dino that usually stands outside a Sinclair gas station near Gardiner, Montana, was stolen Sunday night. It reappeared bolted to a 100-foot cliff face overlooking the Yellowstone River.

Stolen 12-Foot Sinclair Dinosaur Bolted To 100-Foot Cliff Over Yellowstone River

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's general assignment reporter, Clair McFarland.

Clair McFarland

Politics

Government & Politics

A Republican U.S. House candidate debate Thursday night in Casper featured both direct and subtle jabs, recurring speech patterns, bragging points and just a couple moderator interventions.

Nine candidates are running to win the GOP nomination to Wyoming’s lone U.S. House seat at the Aug. 18 primary election. 

Eight of those – not Keith Goodenough – answered questions Thursday night at Casper College in a forum hosted by the League of Women Voters of Wyoming, WyoFile, and Wyoming Public Media.  

The eight attending were: Philanthropist Steve Friess, Secretary of State Chuck Gray, state Senate President Bo Biteman, veteran and former congressional staffer David Giralt, veteran and former High Plains-District BLM leader Kevin Christensen, actor and singer Richard Dodson, former Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow, and Casper businessman Reid Rasner.

Friess in his closing statements asserted the race is actually between two people.

His campaign spokesman Tim Edson confirmed Friday that Friess was talking about himself and Gray.

"Our internal polling shows it is now a two-person race between Steve Friess and Chuck Gray - tied at 16%, with the rest of the field lagging behind," wrote Edson. "Despite 100% name awareness, Chuck struggles to get above 20% in his own polling -- because his unfavorable ratings are astronomically high. Steve Friess is now tied with Chuck Gray, has the momentum, and will overtake him by August 18th."  

[{"type":"text","text":"Friess noted that a candidate was missing from the stage that night."}]

Teton County-based attorney Frank Chapman dropped out of the race that morning, casting it as a waste of multiple people’s money for him to continue in a race with so much “clutter.”

“I believe that’s because he’s been looking at the same polling I’ve seen,” said Friess, “which really shows that this is now a two-man race. The polling shows it quite clearly.”

Rasner apparently disagreed, proclaiming himself the winner of the debate in a Thursday announcement. 

Friess leveled a subtle jab at career politicians and said, “We need someone with a businessman’s point of view who will solve problems in Washington, and not a career politician.”

With Chapman’s departure, Friess is now among three candidates, with Gray and Rasner, who have loaned more than $1 million to their own campaigns.

[{"type":"text","text":"Other candidates derided the practice."}]

The candidates with war chests under $200,000 as of July 1 - Christensen, Dodson, Giralt, Balow, and Biteman – all placed the emphasis on connecting with the people rather than pouring money into the race.

Rasner, who’s loaned himself at least $1.7 million and spent around $2 million, pointed to the individual contributions he’s also won across Wyoming. As of July 1 his campaign showed nearly $320,000 in individual contributions. 

Friess has the most financial momentum. He acknowledged he’s self-loaned considerable sums – at least $2 million as of July 1 – but has also raised over $400,000 from individual contributors.

He said he raised that money because he cares deeply about the opportunity to serve the state and would ban stock trading in Washington, D.C.

“I’m not going there to get more money. I’m going there because it’s an opportunity to serve,” said Friess. “Our family’s had a tradition of doing so.”

In response to Friess's claim and polling numbers, Gray said Friday: that Friess "thinks he can trick Wyoming from Jackson" and "can pretend this is a two-person race if he wants."

Friess lives in Jackson, as did his late father Foster Friess, who lost in a three-way race to Gov. Mark Gordon in the latter's first run for the seat in 2018. 

"Wyoming Republicans know better," said Gray, noting that nine candidates remain in the GOP primary and many have spent years serving Wyoming. 

Friess has not held legislative or statewide office in Wyoming. He’s cast himself as a political outsider in the race. He has pointed to his unorthodox political efforts, such as his family seed-funding Charlie Kirk's group Turning Point USA, and what he's called his work helping to furnish President Donald Trump with proposed executive orders ahead of Trump's first term. 

Gray said voters will decide the election, made a reference to "Friess' false keystrokes from his computer in Jackson" and called him out of touch. 

[{"type":"text","text":"Please Don’t"}]

In opening the forum Thursday, WyoFile executive editor Matt Copeland warned all participants they could face removal if they weren’t respectful and courteous, and if they personally attacked or sparred directly with the other candidates.

One introductory prompt and two questions later, Copeland warned Gray for breaking the rules.

Gray attacked both WyoFile and Rasner, claiming WyoFile “has millions of false attacks” on its website over the years and Rasner “has put thousands of dollars of false attacks” against him.”

“But like President Trump –“ Gray continued, then Copeland cut him off.

“Mr. Gray. Please don’t address your fellow candidates,” said Copeland.

Gray pressed on, saying, “I’m not spending as much as Mr. Friess over there with the Jackson element …"

[{"type":"text","text":"Again Copeland intervened with a warning."}]

“But I am going to spend to take on the radical media and the insiders,” Gray said.

[{"type":"text","text":"Boos sounded from the audience."}]

Copeland in a brief Friday phone interview denied both the “insider” charge and the false reporting charge.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"Absolutely not,” he said of the latter claim."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Media, Insiders"}]

The media and an unspecified group of “insiders” dominated many of Gray’s points that night.

He used either the word “insider” or “insiders” 12 times, though one was a specific reference to the problem of insider trading in Congress. He used the word “media” nine times.

He used the term “track record” eight times, referencing his work in state government.

[{"type":"text","text":"Rasner picked up on the trend and fired back at Gray."}]

“Cheyenne and Washington, D.C., are full of politicians with a proven track record,” said Rasner in his closing speech. “A proven track record in Cheyenne or D.C. means nothing. I have a proven track record in Wyoming, in business. Of signing both sides of the checks.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Rasner runs Casper-based financial advisor business Omnivest Financial."}]

While Rasner was more subtle than Gray and was not warned for civility, he did take another oblique shot, referencing occasions when a state land management board voted – as did Gray – in favor of leasing state public lands to wind farms.

Gray repeatedly derides wind power as “woke” and wrong for Wyoming, and after his three “aye" votes, he became one of the state’s most vocal critics against two bigger, foreign-backed wind projects on state lands.

[{"type":"text","text":"Workhorse, Roots"}]

Biteman’s go-to term was “work,” which recurred in his points at least seven times.

He pointed to his decade in the state Legislature and term as Senate president, as well as his career as a landman.

“I’m a workhorse, not a show horse. I’m not going to Congress to be famous, to get on Fox News or to shoot off press releases every day,” said Biteman.

Balow pointed to her Wyoming roots and upbringing, her earlier work with the late U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi, and how she handled Wyoming’s schools during COVID.

Christensen was the only candidate who wanted to reform, rather than rescind, the Clinton-era Roadless Rule for public lands.

Everyone proposed means, some varying, for rescuing the Social Security system.

Gray friess 7 24 26

<title>Steve Friess Says Wyoming U.S. House Race A 'Two-Man Race' Now | Cowboy State Daily</title>

U.S. House candidate Steve Friess concluded the Thursday-night debate by saying polling shows the Wyoming GOP race is really between two people — himself and Chuck Gray. "[Gray's] unfavorable ratings are astronomically high," a campaign spokesman said.

Steve Friess Says Wyoming U.S. House Race A 'Two-Man Race' Now

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

Renée Jean

Wyoming Life

The sound of pounding hammers and children giggling rang at the Old West Museum during Cheyenne Frontier Days — a symphony to Cheyenne’s leatherman, Rob Underwood, there to demonstrate an old-world skill to a brand-new generation.

You won’t find Underwood advertised on billboards or signs. He works strictly by word of mouth. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Yet he’s as busy as he wants to be. "}]

The people who need him find him, whether they just want to save a family heirloom or their favorite purse.

“I’ve done 26 purses so far this year,” Underwood said with a chuckle. “That’s a bread-and-butter item.”

A military veteran, Underwood has long made a hobby of fixing leather items. 

“I was working part-time at the local Tandy Leather, and there were so many people who would come in and say, ‘The strap broke off my purse. Can you guys fix it?’,” he said.

Saying “no” to a broken purse wasn’t the worst thing. But the ones who came in holding a piece of history — that was different. 

“It was the people who would say, ‘This is the wallet my grandfather carried in Vietnam. Can you fix it?’” he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Those were the stories that got to him. "}]

“So, I left Tandy in 2017 and opened up Rocking RA Leatherworks specifically because I wanted to be able to fix things,” he said. “To me, leather is something you should be able to give to your grandchildren.”

One of his first big projects was repairing three leather aprons for Freemasons. 

“They brought it to me and said, ‘Is there any way to restore this?’” Underwood said. “And I said, ‘Absolutely.’”

All it took was a little knowledge, a little TLC, and a lot of patience — the main ingredient in all successful leatherwork. 

That restoration turned out well enough that the aprons were displayed at a museum in Baltimore. 

During the Great Depression, there were 120,000 cobbler shops in the United States. Today, only a few thousand remain — a sign of how rare this kind of handiwork has become.

“My father-in-law, after he got out of the war in Vietnam, they sent him to learn how to be a cobbler,” Underwood said.

He didn’t go to a school to learn his craft. Nor did he learn it from a YouTube video.

He learned the old-fashioned way, huddled up next to a potbellied stove with his grandfather during the winter. That was when they repaired saddles, halters, and all the other leather items needed on the ranch.

He didn’t glimpse the wider world of leather work until junior high, thanks to a required rotation through home economics, wood shop, and arts and crafts.

“If you didn’t want to do ceramics or painting, you could do leatherwork,” he said. “And basically, what I’m demonstrating here is kind of how I got started as a young man.”

At first, it was just to pass the time. He liked the idea of making something both beautiful and useful. And leather was so versatile. He could make anything he could imagine. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Second Chances"}]

The hobby became something more after he retired from a military career as a medic in 2015. 

“I deal with vertigo,” he said. “Sometimes the room will spin. It’s damage from a bomb that went off and caused some problems, as they tend to do.”

Because of that, Underwood needed a service dog. But, to keep him upright, the dog needed a special harness. 

Underwood worked with a physical therapist at Baylor University in Texas to design a custom harness that would let the dog subtly pull him back into alignment whenever his world tilted. 

“That was the difference between me being in my house 29 out of 30 days, versus being here and able to do this,” Underwood said, gesturing at all the children pounding their wooden mallets onto butterfly and flower stamps planted on a strip of moistened leather — and giggling all the while.

Underwood no longer needs a service dog, but it helped start him down the right road, doing his physical therapy and learning to “trust humanity” again.

“So when I know there are veterans who have service dogs, I like to get with them and build them a harness,” he said. “And instead of charging the $500 or $600 that those typically are, I will let them pay whatever they can pay. Because, knowing what my dog did for me, I want them to have that opportunity as well.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Keeping A Legacy Alive"}]

As western culture surges in popularity, the number of leather items needing repair continues to outstrip the number of people who can fix them. 

That’s lamentable to Underwood, and it’s one reason he’s always willing to demonstrate the craft whenever he’s asked.

“My biggest hope is someone will walk away and go online and go, ‘OK, I remember this hammer, and here’s that butterfly, and then they’ll start,’” he said. “And then, just like any trade, you work. You practice. People tell you, ‘You could do this better, you could do this different.’ And, eventually, you grow into people who do stuff like this.”

He gestured toward a magazine cover with carved leather plates that have been infused with beeswax, to make them stiff and waterproof.

“One of the things you can do is use leather and melt beeswax into it, and then put it at like 122 degrees and it becomes incredibly stiff,” he said. “So folks who didn’t have money to pay for ceramic or tile would make plates of leather.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"It’s also waterproof."}]

“You can wash the plates in water,” he said. “And you wouldn’t have to worry about it.”

Leather can do almost anything a person can dream up, Underwood said.

All it requires is for the next generation to pick up the tools and make something beautiful and useful. 

The legacy Cheyenne’s leatherman hopes to pass on is simple. It’s to hear someone say, “My grandpa made this back in 1900, and it still looks great.” 

Leather 1 7 24 26

<title>Meet The Cheyenne Leatherman Repairing Heirlooms — And Reviving A Lost Skill | Cowboy State Daily</title>

In an era of mass-produced, throwaway goods, Cheyenne craftsman Rob Underwood is different. Amid a surge in western culture popularity, he demonstrated old-world leatherman skills during Cheyenne Frontier Days, hoping to keep a dying trade alive.

Meet The Cheyenne Leatherman Repairing Heirlooms — And Reviving A Lost Skill

Around Wyoming

For the first time since it was homesteaded 138 years ago, the Hoback River Homestead — a legacy Wyoming ranch that brokers say has the largest privately owned stretch of the Hoback River — has hit the market.

The 2,062-acre ranch located just south of Bondurant doesn’t boast a $20 million mansion, but is still listing as one of Wyoming’s most expensive properties on the market today at $59.5 million. 

That’s because it’s one of the rarest opportunities Hall and Hall real estate broker Pete Widener says he’s ever seen.

Widener, who specializes in high-end ranch properties, says the ranch’s size and its intact nature — including the original homestead — make it almost impossible to compare to anything else on the market. The ranch’s size is particularly notable given its proximity to heavily carved-up valleys near Jackson Hole. 

“If you took a ruler and made a line and had a radius around Jackson Hole and you did 100 miles out, this would probably be the largest ranch without encumbrances on it,” he said. “It’s probably one of the larger ranches in existence without easements on it — no encumbrances — and it’s certainly the only one I know of that’s never been sold since homesteading.”

The ranch’s marquee feature is its live water. The 2-mile stretch of the Hoback River means private access to a productive cutthroat trout fishery, all surrounded on three sides by mountains and federally managed land. 

“Every corner you go around that looks like the fish will be in it — they’re in it,” Widener said. “They’re nice-size cutthroat rising to dry flies … It’s just really fun, visual fishing, with the river and the mountains in the background.”

The Hoback isn’t the only live water on the ranch, either. Fisherman’s Creek provides important irrigation diversions that support large meadows across the valley floor, which in turn supports 45 to 100 livestock.

Today the ranch runs about 45 horses for one of the owners. In earlier times, from 80 to 150 cattle grazed there. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Wildlife And Wilderness"}]

The ranch lies in a major elk migration corner, and animals have been visible on most of Widener’s visits, from calving cows to bugling bulls in the fall. 

Widener has also seen sage-grouse and sandhill cranes. Grizzly bears and wolves use the property and the surrounding national forest.

The outdoor recreation opportunities are “massive,” Widener said. They range from off-roading, hiking, mountain biking and swimming in freshwater springs to horseback riding. 

There’s also a spot where previous owners maintained a private airstrip. The old windsock is still there, fluttering in the valley breeze.

The homestead’s historic bones are still visible, Widener said. That includes the original homestead and its associated cabins. Some of those cabins still have spent cartridge casings hammered into the walls after they were used to carve the occupants’ initials. 

Widener said the family selling the ranch has chosen not to be identified, but said they are well-known locally and have decided to go in a different direction after the passing of the family’s patriarch a few years ago. 

That history includes a lightning-struck tree near the entrance.

“It looks like a limber pine, but it could be a ponderosa,” Widener said. “It’s really big and old.”

The lightning bolt came straight down, striking the tree in the 1940s, leaving it half-dead. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A 'Show Ranch' Opportunity"}]

In an era when many legacy ranches are getting chopped into smaller luxury parcels, Widener said he sees Hoback River Homestead as a “show ranch” opportunity — the kind that doesn’t come around in every generation.

Other big ranches in the region, such as the Little Jenny, which sold 8 to 10 years ago, contend with public roads slicing through their heart. The Hoback River Homestead does not have that. It sits behind a locked gate on one side, and is surrounded by national forests on the other three sides.

Widener remembers thinking when he first visited how remote the ranch felt. 

“I remember looking around thinking, ‘Man, there’s nobody here,’” he said. “We see this ranch as far more valuable due to its privacy.”

The ranch sits halfway between Jackson and Pinedale, however, and is a short drive from either community, making it convenient for last-minute dinner decisions like sushi in Jackson or steak in Pinedale.

For the first time since it was homesteaded 138 years ago, the 2,000-acre Hoback River Homestead is on the market. The legacy Wyoming ranch has the largest privately owned stretch of the Hoback River and is listed at $59.5 million.

Steve Inman: Saturday, January 17, 2026

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