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

<title>Steve Inman: Wednesday, February 18, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Steve Inman: Wednesday, February 18, 2026

 Well, it appears that Darrin has started a new career in DIY videos, as narrated by MMA announcer, Steve Inman....

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

Renée Jean

Wyoming Life

ELK MOUNTAIN — Margaret Karstoft’s grandfather came to America from Sweden in 1870. He spent three years earning the money needed to bring his family to Elk Mountain, where he worked as a tie hack.

Karstoft is among longtime Elk Mountain residents whose memories are now preserved in a new 30-minute legacy film commissioned by the Elk Mountain Museum. 

Created as an America250 project, the film distills hours of interviews into an oral history of the Carbon County town — from its tie hacks and sheep camps to its blizzards, dances, and stubborn will to survive. 

The museum has also retained the raw interviews as part of its archive, and given copies of the tapes to their families. 

Karstoft’s grandfather had a backbreaking, seasonal job. The men lived in tents, working through the winter on Elk Mountain, a place where the brutality of wind and cold are legendary among locals.

The men hewed their ties by hand, one timber at a time, then hauled them to the river, where they were floated downstream in the spring, after it had warmed up enough to melt the ice. 

“My grandmother wanted to come to this country because she heard that the streets were paved with gold,” Karstoft said in a soft voice. “She wanted to come here because it was hard times in Sweden at that time, too.”

In the film, old-timers tell of wind sometimes so harsh men had to crawl rather than walk, and blizzards where they had to trust their horse to get them home. But they also remember neighbors who banded together to help each other not only survive but thrive.

Tie hack camps in Carbon County shut down as large corporate ventures in 1912, but many people in Elk Mountain were still cutting railroad ties by hand into the 1950s. 

[{"type":"text","text":"Bob Johnson was one of them."}]

“It was before chainsaws or anything like that,” Johnson said. “We used a handsaw and an ax. I had a measuring stick and it was 102 inches long. That’s how long a railroad tie was back then. They had to be 102 inches. I cut a lot of those.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Bill Jones remembers peeling the bark off railroad ties."}]

“It froze on there in the wintertime,” he said with a chuckle. “That was a ‘good’ job.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Before Elk Mountain Was The Crossing"}]

Elk Mountain today has 144 people, according to the most recent census. It has always been a tiny town, however, even from inception. When it was incorporated in 1909, it recorded 98 residents in the 1910 census. 

Its peak population was recorded in 1980 at 338, on the coattails of a regional energy development boom in Carbon County that started in the late 1970s and continued into the early 1980s. 

Before it was incorporated, people had a different name for the area. It was just called “The Crossing.” It had been a convenient stop along the Overland Trail in the 1860s, with the nearby river offering reliable, year-round water. 

Fort Halleck was built just west of The Crossing in 1862 to protect emigrants, mail carriers and telegraph lines In the developing area.

Nearby Carbon, which incorporated in 1868, was much larger with a peak population of 1,140 in 1890. But its coal mines closed in 1902 — the same year a mercantile store opened at The Crossing, followed by the Mountain View Hotel in 1905. Both the hotel and the store remain standing. 

[{"type":"text","text":"Life In A Wind Tunnel"}]

Elk Mountain has always been a place where weather sets the rules — especially true in winter. 

“Up on that mountain, the wind can blow,” Shorty Richardson said. “Me and Pete Johnson, we went up on one ridge and we had to cross the top of that. I ain’t saying I was tough, but Pete Johnson, he was a horse, and we was on our hands and knees crossing that ridge, because we couldn’t stand up, the wind was blowing so hard.”

Powd Boles remembers his dad chaining a large sled to a telephone pole so it couldn’t blow away at night. 

“That’s how hard the wind blows down through there all the time,” he said.

One day Pete’s brother, Bill Johnson, noticed a fellow walking what locals refer to as the UL flats, looking for something. 

“He asked the guy, he says, ‘What’s the trouble?’ He says, ‘Well, I’m looking for the wheel for my anemometer. It blew off last night and I’m looking for it,’" Richardson said. "And Bill says, ‘Well, how hard was the wind blowing?’ He says, ‘Well, it registered 200 and then it died.’ So he said, ‘I don’t know how much harder it blew, but it did register 200.”

Richardson believes the wind blows so fast because it’s coming in down between mountains, forming a wind funnel. 

It’s not unlike pinching a garden hose, causing the water to flow out with more force, but in this case the “water” is the wind.

[{"type":"text","text":"Getting To The Dance On Time"}]

Neither wind nor cold stopped people from getting to town for dances, though, Powd Boles added. He remembers the time a fiddle player was snowed in upriver and couldn’t get to town for a dance.

“So Henry Cheesbrough, he had a Jeep, and he says, by God, he’d run up and get the fiddle player,” he said. “So he ground up there and got the fiddle player, and they were having a dance here in the Odd Fellows Hall. 

"Old Cheesbrough, he just drove through the front doors, drove right up to the bandstand, and dumped the fiddle player off.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Then he drove right back out the same doors he’d come in. "}]

“The next day he had to, by God, go to town and find new doors for the Odd Fellows Hall,” Boles said with a laugh.

Another time, Boles remembers that a couple who wanted to get to a dance couldn’t get anything to start but an old tractor.

“So they drove it all the way down from the UL down here to the dance,” he said. “That was in the middle of wintertime, and of course that tractor didn’t have no cab on it or nothing.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Winter Fun, Winter Peril"}]

Winter was a time for fun. There was ice-skating on the frozen pond and there was skiing behind neighborhood vehicles. It was safe enough then because there were no major highways. 

“You’d go up over where the roads are going into people’s ranches or meadows,” Bill Jones recalled. “You had to bounce over them a little bit when you ski. And then we’d have a whole line of sleds hooked together and somebody pulling us with their pickup around the streets. If you were the last one, sometimes you’d get snapped around.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Winter wasn’t all fun and games, though. "}]

“We used to follow the telephone line across this one spot we called UL Flat,” Bob Johnson said. “The horse knew the way, and I knew the way kind of, if you could see.”

In a blizzard, though, Johnson learned to listen for telephone wires overhead. 

“You could follow them to get home,” he said. “It used to take me 45 minutes to come down this direction and nearly two hours going back against the wind and the crosswind.”

Cheryl Bowen remembers her dad making her stand with her back toward the wind to avoid her face becoming frostbitten.

[{"type":"text","text":"She, like many children in that day, rode horseback to school."}]

“You couldn’t wear jeans to school, so I had to pack my dress,” she said. “And then I put my dress on to attend school.”

[{"type":"text","text":"When Sheep Ruled The Range"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Elk Mountain was sheep country when he was growing up, Boles said. "}]

“Everybody had sheep back in the old days,” he said. “Predators got too thick and they couldn’t find any help to herd them, so that was the end of sheep. But Carbon County was like the largest sheep-producing county in the United States at one time.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Johnson remembers living in a sheep wagon with his brother. "}]

“My mother would live down on the ranch a mile and a half away,” he said. “We’d have lanterns, and we’d have a stake in the ground. We’d light a lantern to keep the coyotes away.”

His mother would climb up on the cellar to see if the light was burning at their sheep camp. 

“If we had a light in our sheep wagon, it meant we were done flagging sheep and we were cooking supper,” Johnson said. 

[{"type":"text","text":"Boles’ family was among the first to bring Angus cattle to the area. "}]

“Everybody else had Hereford cattle,” he said. “And everybody thought they were stupid for raising black cattle. But when they’d ship in the fall, their calves always weighed over 400 pounds and everybody else’s weighed like 310 or something. So they were a step ahead of everybody else.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Making Do On The Ranch"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Families worked hard and knew how to stretch a dollar, Karstoft said. "}]

“We’d get flour in feed sacks,” she said. “My mom always tried to get a couple of them that would match, so she’d have enough material to make us clothes. That’s all we had were clothes made out of flour sacks. She did everything. She milked cows, fed chickens ...”

And she also cut the heads off those chickens herself whenever it was time to make dinner.

During times of war, women were also out in the field helping hay, Richardson added.

“There were no guys, they were all at war,” he said. “And you had to feed your livestock. It was a chore putting it up back then. Not like now. We’ll probably put up more hay in 15 minutes now than they used to put up in a day back then.”

[{"type":"text","text":"There also used to be many more little ranches, Boles added. "}]

“It’s 50, 60 head of cows,” he said. “Now all them little places are gone. The big outfits have bought them out, so all of them little places are history … when I was a kid, I suppose they delivered mail to probably 40 people out there. Now my wife runs the mail and she delivers mail to seven people.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Why They Stayed"}]

Many of the people who live in Elk Mountain today can trace their ancestry to the original homesteaders, and say they’ve never thought about leaving.

“I had chances to go elsewhere, and I always came back,” Jones said. 

“It’d be hard to leave, I guess, now,” Boles said. “I wouldn’t know how to act anyplace else.“

What Karstoft has always liked about Elk Mountain is the “small town” living. 

“Everybody knew each other, everybody helped each other,” she said. “Of course there was disagreements, too. There always are. But it was a beautiful place to settle.”

Richardson knows he could retire somewhere else — Florida, California, Arizona.

“I’m going to stay here,” he said. “I don’t know how much longer I’ll be here, but anyway, I’ll be here till it’s done.”

Through the years, what Richardson has seen is there’s always just enough to keep the town going. 

“There will always be an Elk Mountain,” he said. “I’m sure of that.”

Thanks to the legacy film project, there will always be stories of the people who made it so, from the tie hacks and ranch families to the children on horseback and the neighbors who helped each other not only survive, but thrive.

Contact Renee Jean at renee@cowboystatedaily.com

Elk Mountain history Powd Boles 8 16 26

<title>Elk Mountain Old-Timers Keep Remote Town’s Wild History Alive One Story At A Time | Cowboy State Daily</title>

To preserve the town's legacy, old-timers in remote Elk Mountain, Wyoming, are sharing their tales for a film project. The blizzards were so bad, they say, you had to trust your horse to get home.

Elk Mountain Old-Timers Keep Remote Town’s Wild History Alive One Story At A Time

Employee kate meadows cropped

Kate Meadows

Tourism

The parking lot was mostly empty when a group of volunteers from Zion Lutheran Church in Rapid City rolled into Blessed Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Sturgis, South Dakota, at 7 a.m.

Fog hung from the tops of the pine trees like a delicate tablecloth. The air was cool and fresh.

It had rained hard the previous night — an unusual turn during a record-breaking hot and dry summer in the Black Hills — and the motorcycles were slower than usual to begin pulling into the church parking lot for breakfast.

But that morning, like every other morning for the past five days, the core volunteers were ready.

For more than 15 years, the church has opened its doors, its kitchens (first one and then two) and its hard-charging weeklong ministry to bikers looking for a hearty breakfast or dinner. 

As an estimated half-million bikers worldwide descend on the otherwise tranquil town of about 7,000 over 10 days, the devoted volunteers at Blessed Emmanuel work tirelessly to cook made-to-order breakfasts for free-will donations.

[{"type":"text","text":"The week of work funds the bulk of the church’s annual budget."}]

Soon after 7, the first customers arrived. A lone biker wearing a black T-shirt and faded black jeans placed his breakfast order with church member LuAnn Grossman, who greeted customers beneath an awning outside the church.

Most of the rest of his crew was still back at the campground, he explained, sleeping off the previous night.

[{"type":"text","text":"“Some of them are in rough shape,” he said."}]

Grossman smiled, handed the biker a number and gave his order to a runner. 

That runner, a middle schooler who will start school next week, made the rounds: First to the outdoor kitchen for eggs, hashbrowns and French toast according to what the order sheet specified, then to the indoor kitchen for bacon, sausage, biscuits and gravy and toast.

A full plate of hot food would soon land in front of the biker to accompany his cup of hot black coffee — a godsend in the morning’s cool and cloudy weather.

By the time the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally is in full swing, Blessed Emmanuel Lutheran Church has become something of a second home for many rallygoers.

Eggs and omelets are cooked to order. Biscuits and gravy. Waffles, bacon, sausage, ham, toast and fruit.

There are tables beneath awnings in the church yard, where bikers can sit outside and swap stories. There is a dining room inside. Volunteers are everywhere – cooking, serving, busing, scraping plates, washing dishes, wiping down tables, visiting with rallygoers.

[{"type":"text","text":"And there is plenty of coffee."}]

But the ministry that now feels like a Sturgis institution began with a much humbler purpose.

[{"type":"text","text":"It started because Blessed Emmanuel needed the money."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"From 'Takers' To Givers"}]

Blessed Emmanuel began as a church plant in 2000, a new congregation that relied heavily on financial support from sister churches in the area.

[{"type":"text","text":"The congregation eventually needed to find a way to support itself."}]

“For a long time, we were takers,” said Kari Kannenberg, a longtime member of Blessed Emmanuel who has been involved with the breakfast ministry since it started in 2010.

[{"type":"text","text":"Church members began talking about ways to raise money."}]

Several saw opportunity in the rally. How could the church serve the scores of strangers who rumble in and out of its little town during one week every year?

In 2010, the congregation began serving meals during rally week, on a wing and a prayer.

The first breakfasts were prepared in the church kitchen, a cramped room about the size of three cubicles.

Volunteers cooked eggs, bacon, sausage, waffles, biscuits and gravy and toast in that tiny space.

[{"type":"text","text":"A lot of food in a small room."}]

But the idea caught on. At first, roughly 50 people showed up throughout the week. Then 100 a day. Then 150.

The weeklong fundraiser brought in money the congregation needed. More importantly, it eventually became something bigger than a fundraiser.

Today, proceeds help fund much of Blessed Emmanuel's annual budget, while some of the money is shared with other Lutheran congregations in the area.

“Our parish would not exist without this ministry,” said Pastor Robert Hinckley, who also serves as pastor at Grace Lutheran in Deadwood. “It really puts us on the map.”

The church that once needed supported from other congregations now has something to give.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Well-Oiled Breakfast Machine"}]

By rally week, the operation at Blessed Emmanuel resembles a small restaurant with a remarkably large volunteer staff. A food inspector from the South Dakota Department of Health examines the property the first day to ensure operations are sanitary.

Volunteers serve breakfast every day from Saturday through Saturday and dinner Monday through Friday. The dinners – one homemade menu item each night – draw a crowd, but the breakfast is where the ministry really shines.

Bikers put in their order with Grossman under the awning just outside the church’s entrance. When someone orders a waffle, Grossman presses a button, which dings in the church kitchen, notifying the volunteer there to pour batter so the waffle is ready when the plate comes.

An entire wall of the dining room is lined with drinks and condiments where customers can help themselves.

The church’s yard is covered with awnings beneath which are scores of folding tables and folding chairs.

After placing an order, each customer receives a number. A volunteer runner then shepherds the order from one kitchen station to the next.

[{"type":"text","text":"Outside, six cooks work oversized grills."}]

Once that part of the order is fulfilled, the runner brings the plate (washable, not disposable) to the inside kitchen, where servers further pile on waffles, toast, biscuits and gravy and/or fruit.

“You should have seen our waffle makers the other day,” longtime church member and volunteer Bill Denke said while eating his own breakfast before the Thursday rush. “They got so behind in making waffles.”

The volunteer cooking waffles heard the “ding” so many times the sound followed him home.

“When he got home that day and his doorbell rang, he got up to go make a waffle,” Denke said.

[{"type":"text","text":"There are plenty of stories like that."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Week Of Vacation, Cooking Eggs"}]

The ministry requires roughly 10 to 15 volunteers each day, in addition to about 10 core volunteers who show up every day.

Many of those core volunteers are in their 60s and 70s. Some are retired. Others take vacation from their regular jobs.

Denke, a stout man with a weathered face who braids his long beard and always wears a bandanna or cap snug against his scalp, has been cooking eggs and omelets at the rally breakfast for 16 years.

Every August, he takes a week of vacation from his job as an elevator shaft operator at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in nearby Lead.

He trades his regular work clothes for an apron and he spends the week cracking eggs over an oversized griddle.

Kannenberg's husband, Denny, wears an old pair of shoes while working in the outdoor kitchen because, as she puts it, he knows he's going to get eggs all over them.

Quinten Glass, a pharmacist from Rapid City, was on his second day of cooking bacon.

“I'm pretty sure I'll sweat bacon grease the rest of the day,” he said.

[{"type":"text","text":"But the volunteers don't seem to mind."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"They keep coming back."}]

One day this week, members of the quilt club from Peace Lutheran Church in Rapid City joined them.

[{"type":"text","text":"One volunteer was 90."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Another was 100."}]

The 100-year-old volunteer sat on a stool for hours scraping dirty plates.

[{"type":"text","text":"“Don't talk so loud!” she would say. “My hearing aids are new!”"}]

The ministry even attracts volunteers who aren't affiliated with the church.

Every once in a while, bikers themselves trade a day on the open road for an apron and spatula.

[{"type":"text","text":"“They see the mission,” Kannenberg said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Bikers Know Where To Find Them"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"In the early years, the church had to work to get the word out."}]

Kannenberg's husband walked through Sturgis neighborhoods, knocking on doors of homes where motorcycles were parked in the driveway.

[{"type":"text","text":"Volunteers distributed flyers at campgrounds."}]

Today, the church puts up large signs around town advertising its free-will-donation meals, and Kannenberg shares information about the breakfasts in biker Facebook groups.

But mostly, the church’s breakfast reputation has spread by word of mouth.

“The biker community knows our church,” Hinckley said, adding that the breakfast ministry has become part of the congregation's identity.

[{"type":"text","text":"“One guy brings his own tea from England,” Kannenberg said."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Earlier in the week, a Portuguese-speaking couple arrived at the church."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"They didn't speak English."}]

Volunteers pulled out an online translation app, explained the menu and helped the couple place their order.

On Thursday, a handful of members of the Redrum Motorcycle Club came through.

The club, an Indigenous motorcycle organization founded in 2006, emphasizes brotherhood, motorcycling, community, respect, responsibility, fundraising and family.

[{"type":"text","text":"Then there was Bill Douglas."}]

Douglas, 83, sat with his daughter, Ashley. The duo had trailered their bikes from Connecticut to Sturgis for Bill’s 25th rally. They got a late start, because Bill had been down and out with a tooth infection.

[{"type":"text","text":"“We rallied, got some antibiotics and hit the road,” Ashley said."}]

This is the fifth year they’ve come to Blessed Emmanuel for breakfast – and dinner.

[{"type":"text","text":"“We eat every meal here,” Bill said."}]

The Douglases learned about the church breakfasts and dinners from an employee at the Hog Heaven campground, where they always stay.

Trying to beat the rain, they drove through the Black Hills in their truck on one of the rainy days.

[{"type":"text","text":"“The people who ride bikes only are hard-core,” Ashley said."}]

Bill told the story of his first motorcycle experience, in Vermont. Every now and then, he’d swat at a fly with a surprising flash of anger.

“There was a crotchety old guy named Curly who owned a farm. We go there and he has this Indian (motorcycle), (dismantled) in a basket of parts.

Well,” Bill said, “we bought the thing. I was in my 20s. We take it home. We (put it together and) got the thing started at one a.m.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Bill said he rode the motorcycle up and down the driveway."}]

“The pipe was this long so it had a hell of a noise,” he said, holding his hands out as if measuring the size of a fish.

[{"type":"text","text":"Ashley looked across the table at her father."}]

“I can’t believe you took a basket of parts and figured out to put it together,” she said. She had a few bites of French toast to finish.

She had been pulled over two nights in a row – for having a tail light out. The first incident made her and her dad late for the Lynard Skynard concert at the Sturgis Buffalo Chip.

“You hoofed it,” Ashley told her dad, explaining how they had a heck of a walk from the parking lot to the concert venue – once they finally got there. “You were doing better out there than a lot of 60-year-olds.”

Bill smiled, almost shyly. “It's been a good life,” he said. “I don't want to stop.”

Sturgis breakfast inset 8 15 26

<title>Thousands Of Hungry Sturgis Bikers Boost Churches With Made-To-Order Breakfasts | Cowboy State Daily</title>

For 16 years, a small Sturgis church that needed to raise money has welcomed motorcycle rallygoers with hot, made-to-order breakfasts. “Our parish would not exist without this ministry,” says the pastor for Blessed Emmanuel Lutheran Church.

Thousands Of Hungry Sturgis Bikers Boost Churches With Made-To-Order Breakfasts

Jen Kocher - Headshot CSD

Jen Kocher

Around Wyoming

For the Haux sisters, the enduring mystery of their father’s fate still crystallizes around one stark image: His truck, abandoned in the Red Desert, an image taken from a newspaper article.

Clifford “Russ” Haux of Mills vanished on Nov. 26, 2003, near Wamsutter in south-central Wyoming where he worked as an oil-rig driller. The 42-year-old husband and father of three had gone out with a co-worker to free a stuck vehicle and never returned.

The last image of him is his fading headlights as he drove off into a winter night trying to find a place to cross a ditch.

One minute he was there, the next, he was gone — last seen driving his pickup into a ditch, looking for a place to cross.

For two years, extensive searches turned up nothing. Then a hunter found his purple Ford Ranger less than six miles from where he was last seen. Its front tires were stuck in a washed-out riverbed, with evidence suggesting he’d tried to free them.

Nearly 23 years after Clifford “Russ” Haux vanished in the Red Desert near Wamsutter, his daughters are still haunted. The 42-year-old husband and father of three had gone out with a co-worker to free a stuck vehicle and never returned.

Steve Inman: Wednesday, February 18, 2026

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