It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Monday, April 20th. I’m Mac Watson.
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A high-risk special forces rescue of a U.S. fighter pilot in Iran was successful earlier this month. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that the rescue mission echoed war games training held in Wyoming in 2023, when the military turned a remote, windswept stretch of highway near Rawlins into a simulated rescue of a downed pilot.
“The concept in Wyoming was to take over a strip of highway and use that to land and see if that could, if that was workable, and that they actually did, it was kind of a stair step they did. They did that first, and then they came back to Wyoming and they did more stuff. You know, can we fuel up these planes? How much stuff can we do without an actual air base? And so we kind of got an inside glimpse into how the military prepares for some of these out of the box types of things.”
The exact operational details of the Iran mission remain classified, and Air Force spokesmen were careful not to comment beyond prepared statements when Cowboy State Daily called to ask about the training exercise.
Read the full story HERE.
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The Cheyenne attorney asking authorities to prosecute Chuck Gray for handing over voter information to the feds now says Gray lost attorney-client privacy by texting a news outlet. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that Gray calls the new allegation “more lunacy ... from a radical leftwing attorney.”
“The attorney George Powers, who has done public transparency projects like this before, he says, ‘Yeah, you texted a news outlet that the Ag approved the release of unredacted voter rolls to the feds, allegedly in violation of state law,’ whereas Secretary Gray says, ‘No, this is just a cooked up scheme. This is Leftist Lawfare.’ What Powers filed Monday is kind of like a police report, except in this case, the AG is the investigator. It's kind of like when you go to your local police station and you say, ‘Hey, I want to fill out a report something has happened.’ So he filed the supplement on Friday, because he got another batch of evidence, a public record, a text between Gray and a news outlet that he said, made his case stronger.”
Powers, who in 2024 won a pro-transparency case against the Wyoming Department of Education, has voiced doubt over the extent and content of Gray’s legal consultation, and has asserted that Gray has relied on it enough to waive attorney-client privilege.
Read the full story HERE.
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In their first interview Thursday since returning from a trip around the moon, the Artemis II astronauts credited their training at Wyoming-based NOLS for helping prepare for their mission. Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore reports that the National Outdoor Leadership School was singled out by Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman last Thursday during the crew’s first group interview after returning to Earth from it’s 10-day mission to the moon and back.
“NOLS leadership coach Rich Rochelle, said that this program is really about leadership and teamwork. They put these astronauts into expeditions where they are tested. They put them in stressful, isolating experiences meant to teach them to lean on each other and be better teammates and leaders. Upon returning back to Earth, astronaut Reid Wiseman said that NOLS allowed him to see that integrity isn’t a one or a zero, you either have it or you don't. NOLS instructors say that over 90% of current astronauts have taken at least one NOLS course in the program.”
Since 1999, NASA has worked with a variety of organizations and contracted NOLS for more than 45 wilderness expeditions designed to help astronauts prepare for the realities of long-duration spaceflight.
Read the full story HERE.
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In 1958, the Wyoming Governor's Mansion in Cheyenne hosted an underground fight club. Cowboy State Daily’s Zak Sonntag reports that the club’s promoter was also a frequent contender.
“So Paul Hickey, as an eight year old, is very inspired by the Friday night fights the Gillette Cavalcade fights. They watch him every weekend, and he gets the idea we could do something like this. We've got this great space to work with in our new mansion in the basement, and they set up this makeshift ring. It was invite-only. It was very secretive, and he was a promoter as well as a contender. He's eight years old at the time, and he's one of the younger, lighter people in the bunch, and he gets his butt kicked a handful of times. But his mother got word she didn't like it, and she said, Okay, that is enough. We are not having fights in the basement of our home, and they brought the ring down. That was the end of that.”
Hickey is one of the few remaining former tenants of the Historic Governor's Mansion at 300 E. 21st St., a Colonial Revival-style home made of molded brick, three story sandstone columns, and barrel windows that reflect the city’s early architectural ambitions.
Read the full story HERE.
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I’ll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.
Cowboy State Daily news continues now…
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This spring kicks off a race to build housing before a TerraPower nuclear power plant construction boom to keep as many of its long-term workers in Kemmerer as possible. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that’s key to capturing the growth potential for the small Wyoming town.
“Where that actual population is going to land. How big the population is matters because economics, you know, the more people you have, the more you can support the growth that needs to happen, the extra sewer and water services, you know, all of that you have more people putting into that pot, so it's less expensive overall for everyone, right? These population figures really do matter to the future of Kimmerer, and how much of that population are they going to capture? Well, it's going to depend on how much housing do you have? Where can you put these people? Kemmerer needs a lot more people.”
The nuclear plant will be one of the nation’s first advanced reactors and, at peak, TerraPower expects to bring as many as 1,600 workers to the site at once to build it.
Read the full story HERE.
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Dustin White, a guide for the Ugly Bug Fly Shop in Casper, was named the Orvis Fly Fishing Guide of the Year. Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports that the award is regarded in the industry as recognition of the best guide in the fly-fishing world. He said making people happy through his job is better than any award.
“That might not sound like a big deal to an outsider, to a lay person, but basically, this is essentially the premier Fly Fishing Association has named this guy as the best fly fishing guide in the world. So out of all the fly fishing guides in the world, this guy was picked to be the best. So that's a pretty huge deal. But I kind of asked him, why he got into this, why he's been in it, why he wants to stay in it. And he really said, it's the people. He said that the fishing is cool, but it's more about being out there with the people and making sure that they have the best day of their lives while they're out there.”
Orvis is a global organization, and fly-fishing is popular around the world. So, it essentially means that White has been named the world’s best fly-fishing guide, Ugly Bug Fly Shop owner Blake Jackson told Cowboy State Daily.
Read the full story HERE.
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Two Lander teen girls vanishing on Homecoming night in 1968 touched off a massive and desperate search. Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck reports that the discovery of their bodies four months later shook the city, as did the shocking trial of another teen convicted of their murders.
“There were stories about, you know, him talking about a perfect crime. That's what the senior class president told me. Apparently he just had some kind of thoughts about doing a crime. And there was testimony in the trial that was in old newspapers that that there was a girl that said that she was picked up by him and another guy taken to about the same spot, and apparently he tried to assault her, and they were able to escape that, but she overheard him talking about assaulting her and then throwing him in a ditch. So exactly the same thing that happened to the two girls.”
17-year-old Craig Sims Sims was a high school athlete and son of a prominent businessman in town. According to later court records and news accounts, he took the girls for a ride in his car, stabbed them to death, and dumped their bodies in ditches north of the city. Sims died in Salt Lake City in his forties under mysterious circumstances.
Read the full story HERE.
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A yellow boat dumped in the middle of the desert north of Rock Springs has one person scratching their head as to why. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that they could’ve taken it to the landfill and dumped it for free.
“The facts of the matter are that if you were to take a boat and dump it in that particular spot, it would have required a lot of effort. You would have had to have loaded that boat onto a trailer, secured it, taken it on the road, taking it out to that spot, then figured out how to get it off the trailer and down into the ravine, where eventually the Wyoming waste systems team went to collect it. If they went through all that effort to do that, they could have just as easily and free of charge, taken it to the local landfill in Rock Springs and gotten it disposed of that way.”
Michelle Foote, the waste site manager for the company’s Rock Springs office, tells Cowboy State Daily that some of her employees spotted the abandoned boat while exploring the area on side-by-sides.
Read the full story HERE.
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And that’s today’s news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app. Thanks for watching - I’m Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.
