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

<title>Steve Inman: Monday, February 23, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Steve Inman: Monday, February 23, 2026

 "At first glance you would think the bike would take out these cars," as narrated by MMA announcer, Steve Inman.....

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

Andrew Rossi

Sports

Lindsay Woods had an experience she’ll never forget, for good and bad reasons, during the 2026 Mongol Derby.

 in Inner Mongolia, crossed the finish line, but not as a competitor. She was eliminated before the end of the race due to a serious illness and heat stroke that left her unconscious in a river.

“I originally sat down in the water thinking it was just going to be a few minutes, and then I lost consciousness,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “I don't remember a whole lot after that.”

Woods has since recovered and is making her way back to Jackson, discouraged but holding her head high after her ordeal on the Mongolian Steppe.

“The Mongol Derby is every bit as difficult as people say, and then some,” she said. “The hardest part for me has been that part of me thinks that I really could have done it. I really could have won it. Obviously, that's not what Mongolia had in store for me.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Hospitality To Heaving"}]

Woods was one of 43 riders in the 2026 Mongol Derby. The Jackson horse trainer proved herself from the start, using her equestrian and strategic skills to become one of the frontrunners in 

the highly competitive, grueling endurance race

“I was feeling really strong,” she said. “I had been riding with Rangna Roux (South Africa) for about three days, and it felt like we were closing in on the finish. Both of us were getting to the point where we were like, ‘Holy shit. Like, we might win the Mongol Derby.’”

By Day Six, Woods was one of the top three riders. Another two days of riding, and she might have finished first.

On the night of Day 6, Woods stayed with a Mongolian family who offered her a meal and a bed without question. The hospitality of the Mongolians is a unique aspect of the Mongol Derby.

“They don't speak a lick of English, (so) we had these translation cards that said, ‘Hey, we're riding a horse race. Can we stay with you?’, and the answer's always yes,” she said. “They took us in, fed us, and took care of our horses for us. They were so kind.”

The bill of fare that night was mutton soup. Woods accepted the free meal, despite some misgivings.

“When we rolled up to this family's ger to ask them if we could camp there, they were actively slaughtering a goat,” she said. “We sat down in our gear, and they immediately gave us a bowl of mutton soup. I'm not sure how sanitary the exchange was, but I tried to keep an open mind. Unfortunately, that did not work for me.”

Woods had a severe bout of food poisoning that night. Despite the long night of gastrointestinal distress and sweltering heat the next day, Woods resolved to keep riding.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Full-Blown Heat Stroke"}]

After riding 3.5 legs that day, Woods was starting to feel the effects of heatstroke. She and Roux were determined to get to the next horse station, but Woods’ condition worsened.

“The whole derby was hot, but this day was especially hot,” she said. “I rode that day with almost no water in my body. I started swaying side to side on this horse, and that is not normal. And at that point, I was like, ‘I think I need to sit in some water for a few minutes.’”

Woods activated the SOS button on her Garmin navigation device and sat down in a stream. That’s when her memory starts to get spotty.

“I know Rangna rode ahead,” she said. “Rosie Bathurst, the event manager, found me first. She was an angel (and) did everything that she could to get my body temperature back down.”

Bathurst found Woods unconscious in the stream where she’d laid down. She stayed with Woods until medics arrived and transported her to the start camp.

“One of the medics stayed up with me all night, monitoring my vitals,” Woods said. “She was incredible, but they took really, really good care of me.”

However, Woods said everyone made it clear “in no uncertain terms” that she was not going to ride again. Her Mongol Derby was over.

“That was obviously really gutting, especially when I felt like I was sort of closing in on the end,” she said. “If they don't think that you're going to be able to ride out safely, they're not going to let you, and that was not an option for me.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Best Ride"}]

Woods spent three days recovering at the start camp. That’s when she grasped the seriousness of the situation.

“It snuck up on me,” she said. “The food poisoning did not end with heatstroke. I went through every single symptom. I couldn’t even walk for two days afterward.”

[{"type":"text","text":"The “scariest thing” was seeing her fellow riders' reactions."}]

“A bunch of other beaten and bruised riders were waiting at camp, and everyone looked at me like I was dead. Seeing everyone else's reactions made me realize something crazy really did happen to me.”

On Day 9, Laura Van Laar of the Netherlands won the 2026 Mongol Derby. Woods was in a three-way tie with her and Roux until she was eliminated due to her illness.

[{"type":"text","text":"Roux, who had been accompanying Woods, came in fourth."}]

On Day 10, Woods and a few other riders were cleared to cross the finish line. They were no longer competing, but the Mongol Derby organizers bused them out to Horse Station 28 so they could experience the end of the endurance race.

“My best friend, Jarissa Sabal, was in that group, as well as some other gals that I had met along the way,” she said. “One of the poor girls had stress fractures all the way down from her knee to her foot. She could only walk and just barely sit the trot.”

Going “at a snail’s pace,” the riders rode the final leg. Despite her disappointment, Woods said the final ride was the most enjoyable of the entire experience.

“I got to experience a lot of things that I had missed out on earlier on because I took it so seriously,” she said. “I wasn't worried about our pace or navigation or anything. I was on a trail ride with my friends. Being able to end that way was really, really special to me.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Lessons Learned"}]

As Woods was packing her things and heading toward Chinggis Khaan International Airport in Ulaanbaatar for the journey home, she had enough hindsight to reflect on her experience.

Overall, she felt she had what it took to finish first and might have done so.

“I definitely surprised myself,” she said. “Figuring out the strategy was pretty fun, and you get into the rhythm of it. They tell you that it’s a long day. What they don't tell you is that it's just 11 hours of trotting. Anyone who rides horses knows that is absolutely exhausting.”

Riders change horses every 25 miles, which amounts to 25 horses for the entire race. They can only ride 11 hours a day, or they incur penalties that affect their time and place.

For Woods, the horses were the most memorable part of the Mongol Derby. Figuring out each horse's rhythm and how to get the best out of all of them during each ride was “right up my alley.”

“I’m going to remember the horses forever,” she said. “They are absolutely unlike any horse I've ever seen before. It's almost like they're a different species. They're so uniquely adapted to their environment. Surviving there requires that they travel for food and water, so they've got these rock-hard feet and rock-hard stomachs, and they can do absolutely anything.”

Meanwhile, she felt right at home on the Mongolian Steppe. The terrain was so similar to southern Wyoming that she felt it “absolutely gave me an advantage” in terms of navigation.

Many others, including the Mongol Derby’s organizers, noted she had successfully strategized and navigated her way to the front of the race within a few days. Had she been able to continue, she might have crossed the finish line with Van Laar on Day Nine.

“I think I confirmed that my strategy works pretty darn well,” she said. “I was pacing and treating the horses while trying to track the leaders, became friends with the leaders, and just tried to keep an eye on them. In terms of strategy, I'd probably try exactly the same thing.”

Her downfall was due to factors she couldn’t anticipate. Woods believes she could have avoided heatstroke if she hadn’t been battling food poisoning at the same time.

“I trained for the heat,” she said. “We had a hot summer in Jackson, and I would wait for the middle of the day to go out and go for a run. The unfortunate thing is that we just aren't adapted to eat many of the things they eat on the steppe.”

Woods praised the Mongolians as “wonderful and hospitable,” and doesn’t blame them for her illness. She recognized they were freely giving what little they had to strangers.

“Oftentimes, they don't have a lot of food for themselves, and they're offering what they have to you,” she said. “The issue with the food poisoning is that you have to eat a lot of food to sustain yourself if you're going to ride for 12 hours. You have to eat the mutton soup.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'I Could Have Done It'"}]

Woods left Mongolia with a memorable souvenir: a tattoo of a Mongolian horse she got on the steppe.

Besides the horses, what stuck with her most were her fellow riders. She wasn’t prepared for the emotional ride that she’d spent months mentally and physically preparing for.

“It's pretty indescribable to anyone that hasn't experienced it themselves,” she said. “I ended up caring a lot more about everyone that I met, and just being really touched by their stories in a way that really surprised me.”

Woods said she would already be signed up for the 2027 Mongol Derby “if money wasn’t an issue.”  The entry fee is around $19,000, and she’s “already feeling a whole lot of guilt” about the family and friends who helped her fundraise the amount needed for the entry fee, gear, and travel to Mongolia, only to be stopped before the finish.

If she were to try again, Woods would be “a bit more cautious gastrointestinally” and pack some extra protein powder but doesn’t think she’d do much else differently. She’s happy to be coming home to Jackson but is confident she had and has what it takes to win the Mongol Derby.

“I’m really upset that (heatstroke and food poisoning) were the things that took me out,” she said. “I’m really bummed, but I feel I did my work. Maybe one day I will try again. I'll be a little bit more cautious when I'm eating the mutton soup, but I proved to myself that I could have done it.”

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<title>Wyoming Woman's 620-Mile Mongol Derby Quest Ends Unconscious In A River | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Lindsay Woods of Jackson was poised to win the grueling 620-mile Mongol Derby but heatstroke and food poisoning left her unconscious in a river, ending her bid on the remote Mongolian Steppe, "I really could have won it," she says.

Wyoming Woman's 620-Mile Mongol Derby Quest Ends Unconscious In A River

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Wyoming Life

Seven years in prison beginning at 19 for putting a club into the head of a Swiss miner was followed by a couple of decades as a preacher and labor movement orator.

His personal reformation rewarded him with a Wyoming state role enforcing children and animal welfare.

But after just months on the state job, allegations of “white slavery” involving two teenage Casper girls in 1924 meant Baptiste John Minort needed to resign his state position and pulpit role. 

Those charges were eventually dropped and he was back filling a pulpit in Torrington when a “disturbing the peace” charge in 1926 was filed, alleging he had been in a rooming house with a woman in Nebraska he claimed was his wife under an assumed name.

An old character that many believed was buried and destroyed for the 42-year-old Torrington grain store manager and police court judge suddenly had resurfaced.

“Torrington Pastor Slays Family, Suicides,” the Casper Daily Tribune reported on Nov. 15, 1926. “Wife and Four Children Dead as Climax to Late Scandal.”

Newspapers across the country carried the headlines that an Associated Press reporter wrote likely were caused by “wagging tongues” and “domestic difficulties.”

Minort was born Feb. 20, 1884, in France and emigrated to the U.S. in 1892 to Missouri.

In 1901, at 17, he married Luisa Elizabeth Huber and they had five children, including Baptiste John Jr. in 1902, sons Carl, David and Clarence in 1912, 1915, and 1917, and daughter, La Von in 1922.

When he was 19, Minort was charged and convicted for killing a Swiss miner, Vincent Gaffney, at a coal camp in Riverton, Missouri, in March 1903 after a dispute about missing money from Gaffney’s room. Gaffney boarded with the Minort family.

“Minort claimed that Gaffney drew a revolver on him, then, in order to protect himself, he struck Gaffney twice on the head with a club, knocking him against a barbed wire fence, after which he choked him,” the Henry County Democrat reported on March 26, 1903. “Gaffney died as a result of his injuries.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Second-Degree Murder"}]

After his conviction on a second-degree murder charge, Minort was sentenced to 10 years in prison but was released after seven.

Newspaper accounts state that while in prison he started reading the Bible and when he got out moved to Nebraska. Whether he pursued formal religious training is not known.

 In May 1914, he took a role as a pastor at a Sterling, Nebraska, church and also had a role as the chairman and clerk of a Sunday school convention.

The Sterling Sun reported he was helping at a revival meeting in Falls City, Nebraska. His efforts in evangelism and teaching grew his church by 200 people, according to a report in the Norfolk Daily News.

By 1922, he was serving as a pastor in a church in Alliance, Nebraska, and was the main speaker at a Labor Day gathering in Casper.

The Casper Daily Tribune on Sept. 5, 1922, reported that Minort delivered an “inspirational address” that promoted the idea of trade unions and how they eliminated “classes” in society. Hundreds gathered to hear him.

“America has no class from which it is impossible to emerge,” he said. “America is distinguished throughout the world by the high standard of living which the masses of her people enjoy.”

By 1924, he had moved to Torrington and taken the pastorate of a Baptist church. He was appointed by Gov. William B. Ross to be the state commissioner of child and animal protection on July 22. Minort embraced the role by bringing charges against 22 boys and girls involved in a wild Cheyenne party in October of that year at the YWCA and Pine Cove. 

He blamed the parents for allowing their children to be at the party.

He also made headlines by uncovering a plot of a stepson to accuse his stepfather of choking an old man to death so he could inherit his mother’s property.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Mann Act Violation"}]

But on Nov. 8, he was accused by a federal grand jury of transporting two juvenile delinquent girls across the state line to Nebraska for immoral purposes under the Mann Act. Minort had taken the pair from their uncle in Casper and was supposed to take them back to a Cheyenne facility.

“The girls told police and federal authorities that Minort, instead of going to Cheyenne, stopped in Mitchell, Nebraska, where he is alleged to have mistreated them,” the Grand Island Independent newspaper reported on Nov. 12, 1924.

Minort responded that the charges were false and he had taken the girls there to be under the care of an aunt. Still, he resigned from his role as the state commissioner and stepped down from the pulpit. The Torrington community rallied around him and a fund was set up for his defense.

Those charges were eventually dropped by the federal district court in April 1926 because the girls could not be located to testify.

Meanwhile, Minort worked for the Cheyenne Police Department supervising chain gangs and then got a job managing the Torrington grain elevator. When the charges were dropped, he was named as a police court judge in Torrington and he resumed preaching at a church in the city.

On Nov. 7, 1926, Minort was caught by Bayard, Nebraska, police in a rooming house with a woman from Torrington who was not his wife. He had registered under the name of “Joe Lander and wife.”

A man from Torrington saw him and remarked he looked like Minort. The town’s marshal investigated and called Minort’s wife in Torrington at 3 a.m. on Monday, Nov. 8.

“Minort, after admitting his identity, asserted that he had been the victim of a ‘frame-up’ and that he had been forced at the point of a gun at Bayard (by men) to get into the automobile with the woman and had been intimidated into registering with her as husband and wife,” The Wyoming State Tribune reported on Nov. 15, 1926.

The newspaper reported that the landlady of the rooming house did not confirm his story. Minort was fined $25 and ordered to pay costs of $15.

On Saturday, Nov. 13, Minort resigned his post as a police judge for Torrington.

Early on Nov. 14 Minort, who had prepared a sermon he called “Breaking the Alabaster Box” for church that morning, took a 12-gauge shotgun and shot his wife in the head as she lay sleeping in a bed with their young daughter, 4. He then used a .22-caliber rifle to shoot his daughter twice in the head.

Two sons, who lay in their beds, were killed with one bullet to the head from a .32-caliber revolver. His second-oldest son was killed as he entered his mom’s bedroom with a shot to the head. He was dressed and, according to the Wyoming State Tribune on Nov. 15, had been working for another family in the country and likely returned home for church before being shot.

Minort took time to write letters to the sheriff, his surviving son at a college in Missouri, and to the public as well as to a religious rival in Casper.

Then he called the local undertaker just after 9 a.m. and told him he needed him at the house.

When the undertaker arrived, he could see Minort on the kitchen floor, gasping for air before he died, the Wyoming State Tribune reported. Police were summoned and found a mirror on the kitchen table that he apparently set up so he could shoot himself in the head.

They then discovered the breadth of Minort’s actions in eliminating his family.

In his letter to the public, Minort asserted that he had been framed in the incident with the Torrington woman in Bayard. In his note to the sheriff, he gave his son’s address at college in Missouri.

In a letter to his son, he explained that his mother had told him she would kill herself if he brought shame to the family again. Minort wrote he was going to save her from “spiritual torment” by killing her.

“I killed her and the rest of them rather than have the shadow of the past upon them,” he wrote. “Mother and children are in heaven and I suffer my own fate through the hands of destiny.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"No Caskets, One Grave"}]

Minor told Baptiste John Jr. to just dig a hole and bury the family in one grave to save on burial costs and that he could sell a box of shells he had at the grain elevator for $20 to get some money to help with costs.

“Well my son, I must hasten, as the gun beckons to me and I must hurry before I have lost my nerve,” he wrote, adding that the rest of his son’s life was his own. “So, do the best that you can.”

A coroner’s grand jury ruled that the murders and suicide were all the responsibility of Minort. The family members were buried in Valley View Cemetery in Torrington.

Minort’s surviving son was a sophomore at William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri, and learned of the shootings from the college dean as he wrote a letter to his father during the afternoon on Tuesday, Nov. 16, according to the Daily Standard newspaper in Excelsior, Missouri on Nov. 17, 1926.

John Minort along with Minort’s brother, Louis, the mayor of Lexington, Missouri, attended the funeral, which was packed with mourners from the Torrington community. All the slain were in caskets, Minort’s exhortation to his son ignored.

The community bore the costs of the funeral and burials, the newspaper reported.

The Western Nebraska Observer reported on Nov. 25, 1926, that the son “bore up bravely” to the tragedy.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Forgiving Mourners"}]

“It was remarked that the crowd seemingly were forgiving and even sorrowful in their attitude toward the dead man,” the newspaper reported. “Many were seen to pause beside his casket and drop a tear. … Torrington people, heard to comment on the affair after the funeral, declared that Minort had not been himself, to all appearances for several weeks past.”

Three years after the tragedy, the young Minort returned to Torrington and visited old friends. 

The Scottsbluff Daily Star-Herald reprinted a story from the Torrington paper on June 16, 1929, that stated that Baptiste John Jr. had been involved in a cafe business and had to quit college due to lack of funds.

“He has enjoyed a fair success and will continue in the cafe business,” the newspaper reported. “His friends in Torrington are glad to learn that he is pleasantly located and making a success of his efforts.”

Minort went on to marry twice, once in 1934 in Missouri. The marriage lasted a year. He married his second wife in 1945 and became a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. 

Baptiste John Minort Jr. lived his last years in Utah and died on Aug. 16, 1970. 

Heworked as cook for most of his life and is buried in Price City, Utah.

Pastor killed family Valley View Thermopolis 8 9 26

<title>Wyoming History: Disgraced Pastor Shocked State By Killing Family, Self In 1926 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Shocking headlines from 100 years ago after a pastor from Torrington gunned down his wife and four of his five children, then himself. He wrote he had brought shame to them when caught with a woman in a rooming house in Nebraska under an assumed name.

Wyoming History: Disgraced Pastor Shocked State By Killing Family, Self In 1926

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

Renée Jean

Business

Kelli Tracy feels like she’s “living in a Hallmark movie.” She and her husband just closed on their own brick-and-mortar store in downtown Sheridan, and she’s now celebrating her 10th year in business. 

These days, her Lil Bee’s Bohemian clothing line ships all over the world, and the business brings in a comfortable $600,000 to $700,000 a year in sales. 

But, like any Hallmark movie, getting to “happily ever after” wasn’t an easy task. 

The journey started when she was unexpectedly laid off from a big corporate job in Florida as a quality assurance compliance manager. It was scary.

“I had just moved in with my now husband but, at the time, my boyfriend,” Tracy recalled. “And he was like, ‘Well you need to get a job. You need to maybe go back to bartending or go back to doing something so you have money coming in.’” 

Tracy had done plenty of bartending in college and had no intention of going back to it. She had a completely different idea, one people told her was crazy at the time.  

“The next day I started my own boutique with clothing out of my closet,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “That’s when Instagram first started. Like it was just coming out and the algorithms were great. Everything was great.”

She propped a mannequin she bought from California — a model she named Lola — in front of her phone, dressed it in her own clothes, and opened a Shopify account. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Lil Bee’s Bohemian was born."}]

Starting out, her biggest problem wasn’t finding customers. She had plenty of people clamoring for the outfits she was styling. 

Her trouble was finding inventory priced low enough that she could resell it with a healthy profit margin. 

“I didn’t know there were places like Fashion Go or like Marketplaces and all the things,” she said. “You can go to Dallas Market and like find all your vendors.”

Initially, to get inventory, she’d go to places like Ross and Marshalls to buy items for the outfits she was promoting on Instagram. It was rare, but if the outfits didn’t sell, she’d just return them.

That strategy wasn’t going to work long-term, she realized. She had to figure out something else.

“Then I met a lady named Holly who owns Baja Ranch and she’s the one who helped me,” Tracy said. “I was buying a bunch of her stuff off eBay, because it was really cheap, to resell. And so she asked me like, ‘What are you buying all this stuff for?’”

When Tracy explained she was starting a boutique and needed inventory, Holly explained where she could go to find wholesale items to resell. 

“I mean, you can buy from me,” she said. “But you can get all of this stuff here.”

And the prices would be much less expensive. Wholesale pricing, Holly explained, would let Tracy keep her margins, without relying on returns.

Tracy, meanwhile, helped Holly figure out how to start Instagram and Shopify accounts so she could improve her business model.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A $12,000 Surprise"}]

Once she had reliable wholesale sources, sales were booming. But there was a big problem. Somehow, despite making many, many sales, the money wasn’t adding up. 

“I was like, ‘Man, where is all the money?’ Like I know I didn’t spend all this money,” she said. 

Eventually she figured out that many of the purchases were landing in her business’ PayPal account. She thought that money would transfer to her bank account automatically, but it was sitting there, quietly waiting for her to go in and authorize its transfer.

“I was almost to the point of bagging it,” Tracy said. “I was like, ‘I don’t think I can do this. I can’t really afford more stuff.’ And then I wound up with all this extra money.”

The business was saved, and Tracy realized she had to get more organized. The scare pushed her to tighten up her books and treat Lil Bee’s less like an experiment and more like the real business it was becoming.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"One Closet Wasn’t Enough"}]

As the business grew, so did its footprint inside the couple’s home. 

It was no longer just her own closet. It was every closet in the house. She put racks in the spare bedroom, the living room, and even one hallway.

“It was just taking over the house,” Tracy said. “It was bad. I remember looking over at my husband and his two kids and the dog and they all looked at me like I was crazy.”

Finally, one day her husband said, “Hey, if you go get a place like a studio or like an office, this whole entire closet here could be your personal closet.”

Tracy heard what he was really saying. It was time for Lil Bee’s to grow wings and fly. 

“I had the keys to a showroom the next day,” she said. “Within 24 hours.”

The business doubled in size and quickly outgrew the showroom. She moved it next to a big warehouse, and just kept upgrading from there. 

“At one point, I think I had two, maybe three warehouses,” she said. “It just kept getting bigger and bigger.”

The growth looked impressive on paper. At peak, Lil Bee’s was doing more than $1.4 million a year in sales.

But the pace was grueling, the overhead relentless, and she was working all the time. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Right-Sizing Her Business"}]

By year eight, she made some decisions that shape the business as it is today. 

First, she decided to start making her own clothing designs instead of just buying and reselling other people’s ideas.

That would also allow her to boost the quality. No more thin, disposable stuff. She wanted pieces that people could keep and love forever.

She also decided just how big she wanted Lil Bee’s to be. 

“It just got to bee too much,” Tracy said. “It was just more, more, more.”

She realized that if she downsized her business, she’d still remain profitable and she would have more time to focus on her own designs.

That turned out to be a fortuitous move. Her ‘70s-inspired clothes caught the eye of a rising country star — Lainey Wilson.

Wilson, then an artist in Nashville, was a regular customer. 

“She bought bell bottoms from me and she called it ‘Balling on a budget,’” Tracy said with a chuckle. “She even spoke about Lil Bee’s on the Bobby Bones podcast.”

Eventually, Wilson and Tracy teamed up on a collaborative clothing line built around flared jeans and boho blouses. 

“We created four items together,” Tracy said. “It was a really cool, button-down top, a pair of jeans, like acid-washed black jeans, a bandana, and striped bell bottoms.”

As Wilson’s career took off, however, the partnership became more complicated. New managers stepped in, and access to the star tightened. 

“I couldn’t just call her up anymore,” Tracy said. “I didn’t take it personally though. She’s a wonderful person, and she’s the same way in person as she is on stage.”

The Lainey Wilson chapter was a fun, unexpected part of her business journey, but it’s not the one Tracy likes best. 

That's the one she’s in right now, designing her own clothes and selling wholesale to 146 stores across America as well as stores in Canada. She also ships orders direct around the world and has a loyal following in Australia. 

The boutique shop she just closed on in Sheridan exactly 10 years after starting her business is a full-circle moment. 

The store is just 800 square feet. But it feels just right for now.

“It’s packed so full of just amazing beautiful stuff,” she said. “I’ve got my entire line in there — all my blouses, and jewelry.”

There are sweaters, jackets, dresses, tallow makeup, bags and a hat bar, too. 

“When you get in there, it’s like a time capsule back into the '70s,” she said. “It’s groovy, and there’s not one thing that’s plain. It’s like a maximalist dream.”

It’s a dream that’s also planted in the one place in the world she’s decided she likes the best of every place she’s ever roamed — Sheridan. She got to know the town after visiting some friends, and just decided it’s where she’s always belonged.

“It’s just marvelous,” she said. “This last Christmas we had the Holiday Stroll and it snowed. I mean, it snowed so much that night, it was just marvelous. Everyone was out there with hot chocolate and their scarves and I was like this is nuts. Like I’m living in a Hallmark movie.”

Lil Bees and Kelly Tracy 8 16 26

<title>How A Sheridan Woman Turned Her Closet Into A Funky Worldwide Fashion Business | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Laid off from a corporate job, Kelli Tracy started selling clothes out of her closet on Instagram. Ten years later, she owns Sheridan’s Lil Bee’s Bohemian and ships her '70s-inspired designs to people all over the world from her Wyoming storefront.

Steve Inman: Monday, February 23, 2026

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