CSD Staff

Daily Smile

Dog loves playing with his ball by the sea and catching because he thinks the sea will steal the ball from him.....

Smile 4 25 26

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

<title>Daily Smile: Saturday, April 25, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Daily Smile: Saturday, April 25, 2026

 Dog loves playing with his ball by the sea and catching because he thinks the sea will steal the ball from him.....

Coy Knobel

Don Day Weather

Partly sunny in Wyoming on Monday. Breezy, with afternoon chance of rain in some areas. Partly to mostly cloudy overnight. Highs in the 70s and 80s. Lows in the 40s and 50s.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":" "}]

Slight chance of rain after 2 p.m., gradually becoming sunny today with a high near 85 and wind gusts as high as 25 mph. Partly cloudy and breezy overnight with a low near 55 and wind gusts as high as 25 mph.

Mostly sunny today with a high near 85 and wind gusts as high as 25 mph. Cloudy and breezy overnight with a low near 54 and wind gusts as high as 25 mph.

 Mostly sunny today with a high near 83 and mostly cloudy overnight with a low near 55 and wind gusts as high as 25 mph.

 Partly sunny today with a high near 73 and wind gusts as high as 32 mph. Mostly cloudy overnight with patchy blowing dust before midnight and a low near 48.

  Partly sunny today with a high near 80 and wind gusts as high as 22 mph. Cloudy overnight with a low near 52.

Partly sunny and breezy today with a high near 73 and wind gusts as high as 30 mph. Cloudy and breezy overnight with a low near 46 and wind gusts as high as 25 mph.

Mostly cloudy and breezy today with a high near 70 and wind gusts as high as 28 mph. Cloudy overnight with a slight chance of rain after 5 a.m., a low near 41 and wind gusts as high as 24 mph.

 Mostly cloudy today with a high near 75 and wind gusts as high as 21 mph. Cloudy overnight with a chance of rain after 5 a.m., a low near 43 and wind gusts as high as 21 mph.

  Partly sunny and breezy today with a high near 73 and wind gusts as high as 30 mph. Cloudy and breezy overnight with a low near 42 and wind gusts as high as 26 mph.

 Partly sunny and breezy today with a high near 69 and wind gusts as high as 28 mph. Mostly cloudy overnight with a slight chance of rain after 5 a.m., a low near 42 and wind gusts as high as 26 mph.

  Partly sunny today with a high near 73 and wind gusts as high as 24 mph. Mostly cloudy overnight with a chance of rain, a low near 41 and wind gusts as high as 24 mph.

Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park

:  Partly sunny today with a high near 62 and wind gusts as high as 23 mph. Rain likely mainly after 5 a.m. overnight with a low near 35 and wind gusts as high as 21 mph.

Mostly sunny today with a high near 85 and wind gusts as high as 22 mph. Mostly cloudy overnight with a low near 56.

:  Gradually becoming sunny today with a high near 78 and wind gusts as high as 26 mph. Cloudy overnight with a low near 55 and wind gusts as high as 23 mph.

  Becoming sunny today with a high near 84 and wind gusts as high as 20 mph. Mostly cloudy overnight with a low near 54 and wind gusts as high as 20 mph.

  Mostly sunny and breezy today with a high near 79 and wind gusts as high as 32 mph. Mostly cloudy overnight with a low near 55 and wind gusts as high as 23 mph.

  Mostly sunny today with a high near 79 and mostly cloudy overnight with a low near 49.

:  Increasing clouds today with a high near 83 and mostly cloudy overnight with a low near 53.

Slight chance of rain after noon, otherwise mostly sunny today with a high near 81 and wind gusts as high as 25 mph. Partly cloudy and breezy overnight with a low near 54 and wind gusts as high as 32 mph.

  Slight chance of rain after noon, increasing clouds today with a high near 78 and wind gusts as high as 24 mph. Increasing clouds overnight with a low near 59 and wind gusts as high as 26 mph.

:  Slight chance of rain after noon, otherwise mostly sunny today with a high near 77 and wind gusts as high as 18 mph. Partly cloudy overnight with a low near 56 and wind gusts as high as 22 mph.

  Chance of rain after noon (some storms could be severe), otherwise mostly sunny today with a high near 86 and wind gusts as high as 25 mph. Partly cloudy overnight with a slight chance of rain before midnight, a low near 60 and wind gusts as high as 25 mph.

  Slight chance of rain after noon (some storms could be severe), otherwise mostly sunny and breezy today with a high near 83 and afternoon wind from 15-20 mph. Mostly cloudy and breezy overnight with a low near 53 and wind gusts as high as 30 mph.

  Slight chance of rain after 4 p.m., gradually becoming sunny today with a high near 83 and wind gusts as high as 24 mph. Breezy, gradually becoming mostly clear overnight with a low near 52 and wind gusts as high as 24 mph.

  Chance of rain mainly after 3 p.m. (some storms could be severe), otherwise mostly sunny today with a high near 81 and partly cloudy overnight with a low near 54.

  Slight chance of rain after 3 p.m., otherwise mostly sunny and breezy today with a high near 78 and wind gusts as high as 30 mph. Partly cloudy and breezy overnight with a low near 47 and wind gusts as high as 30 mph.

  Chance of rain after noon (some storms could be severe), otherwise mostly sunny and breezy today with a high near 81 and wind gusts as high as 30 mph. Partly cloudy and breezy overnight with a low near 56 and wind gusts as high as 30 mph.

  Mostly sunny and breezy today with a high near 80 and wind gusts as high as 35 mph. Mostly cloudy and breezy overnight with a low near 53 and wind gusts as high as 35 mph.

  Mostly sunny and breezy today with a high near 81 and wind gusts as high as 35 mph. Partly cloudy and breezy overnight with a low near 50 and wind gusts as high as 30 mph.

  Mostly sunny and breezy today with a high near 78 and wind gusts as high as 29 mph. Mostly cloudy and breezy overnight with a low near 49 and wind gusts as high as 26 mph.

Daycap small 6 8 26

<title>Don Day's Wyoming Weather Forecast: Monday, June 8, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Don Day's Wyoming Weather Forecast: Monday, June 8, 2026

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Jackie Dorothy.

Jackie Dorothy

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

Bessemer Bend, a true Wyoming ghost town, has been claimed back by nature and alfalfa fields. 

Before its demise, Bessemer was where Wyoming’s oldest cabin was built by desperate fur traders with the Pacific Fur Co. 

Decades later, Bessemer became part of the Oregon, California, Mormon, Pony Express, and Overland trails that all crossed at Red Buttes/Bessemer Bend.

Later, the famous Goose Egg was built on the spot. This extravagant stone mansion is said by some say to have inspired scenes in Owen Wister’s “The Virginian.” 

Today, Bessemer Bend is a broad loop of the North Platte River southwest of Casper that shows no signs of the failed city. 

The landscape is dominated by irrigated fields, ranchland, cottonwoods along the river, and the red hills and buttes that explorers and Oregon Trail emigrants knew as Red Buttes. 

The town of Bessemer, now long gone, had gained a reputation as the “Queen City of the Plains.” Her founders believed that their city would one day be the grandest in Wyoming. 

Their hopes were dashed by a rigged election and the railroad. 

Ultimately, Casper “stole” the honor from them when it became the seat of Natrona County instead and, one by one, the residents of Bessemer hauled their homes over to Casper.  

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Fur Traders "}]

Bessemer first appeared in written record in the 1812 diary of fur trader Robert Stuart. 

Stuart had been hired in 1810 by John Jacob Astor to work for the Pacific Fur Co. and was on the company ship, the Tonquin, when he became marooned at Fort Astoria.  

The crew had sailed first to the Falkland Islands and then around Cape Horn and up the western coast of North America, reaching what is now Astoria, Oregon in May 1811. There, they established Fort Astoria.

When the crew sailed farther north, to Vancouver Island, an interaction with Native Americans resulted in many deaths and the destruction of the ship. 

It was left to Stuart and a small group of men to return eastward overland. The party left Astoria on June 29, 1812, bound for St. Louis. With Stuart were Ramsay Crooks, John Day, Benjamin Jones, François LeClerc, Robert McClellan, and André Vallé.

They started up the Columbia River in canoes. Before they were out many days,  John Day became “demented" and was sent back to Astoria in the care of some friendly Indians. 

In a few days, they came across some men who had been separated from another party and gave them provisions. 

A man named Miller joined Stuart in Day's place according to Molker. 

The group headed east, through what is now Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Wyoming, traveling on what would later become the Oregon Trail. 

Highlights of their journey that Stuart detailed in his diary included paddling down the Snake River, crossing Teton Pass and seeing Jackson Hole, and discovering the South Pass.

By the time they reached Bessemer, the seven men were starving and weak, desperate to rest. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Refuge"}]

Described as “footsore, hungry, and utterly weary,” fur trader Robert Stuart wrote in his diary that he and his six companions had been following a river (the North Platte) for two days but had to find a place to stop and recuperate. 

The cabin they were soon to build would become the oldest recorded cabin in Wyoming. 

It was November 1812 when Stuart described how they had found a low point of land on a bend in the river and had selected it for their winter camp. 

There were cottonwoods and willows there for building materials and firewood and the area had plenty of wildlife to sustain them. 

The men had already seen the Grand Canyon and discovered the passage through South Pass. They had their horses stolen by the Crow and were on foot. 

Weakened by their trek, they had started missing shots and were starving when they had finally succeeded on killing an injured bull buffalo. 

Though tempted to eat the meat raw, Stuart had fed the men broth to regain their strength. 

Stuart describes their cabin at Bessemer as eight feet wide and 18 feet long. The walls were six feet high and the whole was covered with buffalo skins. 

The fireplace was in the center and the smoke found its way out through a hole in the roof.

“As the slaughter of so many buffaloes had provided the party with beef for the winter, in case they met with no further supply, they now set to work, heart and hand, to build a comfortable wigwam,” Stuart wrote. “In a little while, the woody promontory rang with the unwonted sound of the axe.”

He said that by the second evening, the cabin was complete. 

They rested and recuperated from the exertion and hunger they had suffered. They had been in their little cabin for five weeks when a small band of Arapahoe Indians visited them for a few days. Although the Arapahos did not harm them, Stuart was concerned that they might return in “another mood.” 

He packed up his men and some provisions and moved on toward the east, leaving behind their home on Bessemer Bend. When Stuart’s party arrived at Saint Louis they had shortened the route of Lewis and Clark, had discovered the Sweetwater and North Platte rivers and had discovered the most important gateway through the Rockies, South Pass.

Mary Lou Pence and Lola Homsher in their book, “The Ghost Towns of Wyoming,” said that some pioneers claimed the cabin stood for many years while others said the Indians immediately swooped down and burned it. 

Whichever the case, the cabin has long been gone when the Oregon Trail followed part of the same route first made by the small party of fur traders. 

The Goose Egg, or the Searight House, was built on Bessemer Bend and by 1888, a town had been planned, adopting the name of Bessemer. 

The founders had high hopes of being a metropolis. A sawmill and brick plant were brought in and homes and businesses sprung up quickly. 

When a brewery and liquor house were brought in by Max Jaensch, the residents of Bessemer saw a bright future.

“For as one citizen put it,” Pence and Homsher wrote. “Here the consumption of distilled waters was far above the average in American communities.”

In 1888 to 1889, the town promoters laid out 49 blocks and reserved land for what they hoped would become Wyoming's future capitol building. Bessemer grew quickly and attracted settlers, ranchers, and businesses. 

As Wyoming was preparing for statehood, Bessemer entered the race to become the county seat of the proposed Natrona County.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"However, it was not to be. "}]

According to Pence and Homsher, just as Bessemerites were sitting back “gloating” over the meager 304 pollings cast in Casper as compared to their 667 count, it was announced that some “skullduggery” had been perpetrated. 

The investigators ruled that Bessemer had cheated and had more votes than residents. Their count was thrown out and Casper became the county seat in 1890. 

Residents of Bessemer were still angry when they spoke to historians Pence and Homsher in the 1950s. 

“They say we cheated and voted every man, woman and kid,” one old-timer told Pence and Homsher. “Well, I know one of their men who voted three times. But they don’t tell about that!” 

The following year, the printing press for the Bessemer Journal was seized and moved to Casper to become the Natrona Tribune. 

The railroad selected Casper as the regional rail terminal and the end of Bessemer was official.

Many of the buildings were moved to Casper until only the Goose Egg and a few others remained. Eventually, even the stone mansion was torn down and Bessemer quietly faded into the past. 

“When they said the Goose Egg was no more, you could hear that awesome hush,” Pence and Homsher wrote. “You could almost see Chalkeye and Fingers and Honey Wiggin and Baldy and Missou wipe away a tear.”

Bessemer is now returned to pasture and agricultural land. However, the memory of the ghost town and the first cabin from 1812 remain. 

“You can rip a house to pieces, ’til it ain’t no more, but you can’t tear up the things that happened there,” an old-timer told Pence and Homsher in remembrance of his beloved Bessemer and the people that once lived there.

Bessemer Bend and inset 6 7 26

<title>Wyoming History: Once A Bustling City On Oregon Trail, Bessemer Now A Ghost Town | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Bessemer Bend, now peaceful ranchland, was once a stop on the Oregon Trail and a bustling city known as the “Queen City of the Plains.” Now it’s a true Wyoming ghost town that disappeared when Casper was picked as the county seat. 

Wyoming History: Once A Bustling City On Oregon Trail, Bessemer Now A Ghost Town

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Dave Nutter looks back on a life in broadcasting with stories to tell.

The 74-year-old who spent much of his working career talking into microphones and turning dials has to stop periodically to cough as he fights idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a disease doctors say will eventually claim his life.

His working resume covers call letters of radio stations from Casper to eastern Nebraska, Rawlins and even short stint in Portland, Oregon, before returning home for a long stint at K2 Radio and Television. 

Along the way, he collected broadcasting equipment and memorabilia that represents Wyoming’s golden-era airwave history.

But how a 13-year-old got on the air and parlayed his teen years into gigs at Casper radio stations in the 1960s and early 1970s seems a Top 40 tale worth spinning again. 

It all began with a fifth-grade trip to the K2 TV station where he was a member of the choir singing Christmas carols. 

He noticed the guys behind the big cameras pointing the lens at him and others.

“It just really looked enticing to me,” Nutter said. “I decided I wanted to be a TV cameraman.”

From that point on he also started paying attention to radio and made it a point when he learned that a Casper radio station was doing a remote broadcast to drop in and hang around. 

He got to know the players, talked with those at the controls and behind the mic, and became a “radio pest.”

Mostly, KVOC, a country station, did the remotes and Nutter recalls being at the annual Casper summer parade downtown in 1964 when he was 13 and standing by the live broadcast guys who included Dave “Woody” Woodside, the program director, at the microphone and the new station owner’s son who was manning the broadcast board controls.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"First Gig"}]

The station owner’s son and Woodside got into an argument and the son walked off. Woodside, who had gotten to know Nutter, looked at him and asked if he could do the job.

“I said, ‘Sure,’” Nutter recalled. “So, that was my very first day probably 1964, I don’t remember exactly, but it was summertime and I ran the controls and helped pack up the equipment. 

"They didn’t give me any pay, but that that’s how I started working at KVOC at 13.”

That impromptu introduction to the board led to more opportunities on remotes that summer and the next where he would ride his bike or hitch a ride with the station crew to the remote location and help set up microphones, the board, and landlines to the station for a remote broadcast.

Because he had no broadcast license, he could not work inside the station, but at 15 that changed. He studied for the third-class FCC license, the minimum requirement, that would allow him to work inside a station with broadcast equipment and the transmitter.

He convinced his parents that he could pass the test and the nearest place to take it was Denver. His family took a vacation with a swing through Denver and at 15 he joined the 20- and 30-year-olds looking for their ticket to a broadcast career by taking the multiple-choice and more than an hour-long exam.

After finishing the test, he rejoined his family and went on the rest of their vacation.

“I came home from vacation and my license was in the mailbox,” Nutter said. “I immediately got on my bicycle and rode to the radio station with the license. It was like my graduation.”

Woodside and the owner were at the station, saw the license, and told him he could go to work the next Sunday. 

It was July 1967. He operated the two turntables, cart machines for ads, reel-to-reel recorders and the broadcast board that controlled which machine sent content on the air.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Blue-Light Specials"}]

Sundays involved playing 15-inch records from the Salvation Army and other church-related programs that were serialized. 

It also meant going to church locations and setting up remote broadcasts. The station alternated churches during the month, so it might be a Baptist congregation one week and Pentecostal the next.

Nutter said when Kmart came to town in the fall of 1965, the city’s first box store paid to have a three-hour live afternoon broadcast every Sunday from the store. 

It was the first time a store was open on Sundays and lines would form outside the doors before it opened at noon. He and the announcer would go to the store and set up for a 12:30 p.m. start. 

Nutter initially just ran the controls with the on-air personality who called himself the “Deacon Speakin’.”

But then the “deacon” got fired because Kmart did not like the job he was doing. His replacements also got fired. 

Woodside asked Nutter if he thought he could do the announcing part of the broadcast. It involved playing music on the turntable at the store and reading a stack of “blue light” and other specials over the airwaves to bring Sunday shoppers to Kmart doors.

Nutter said the store occasionally did a “99-cent special” that involved putting a small 99-cent sticker on an expensive item such as a barbecue or even a washer or dryer. The draw was no one knew where or what it was.

“People would literally tear up the store looking for those 99-cent specials,” he said.

Nutter told his boss he would try the role. And store management was pleased with the results.

Nutter said he found out that Kmart paid KVOC about $1,200 a month for the broadcasts, which represented the biggest advertising account the station had at the time.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"KATI Calls"}]

While doing the Kmart show he was noticed by a competitor at KATI in town. The station’s program director asked him to come in and talk. 

He was offered a job and took it. His first shift running the board from midnight to 6 a.m. at the Top 40-centered station was June 5, 1968.

“That was the date that Bobby Kennedy got shot in California,” Nutter said. “CBS maintained a network alert system and we got the CBS network alert signal.”

For the next few hours he played instrumental music between CBS News bulletins updating listeners on Kennedy’s fate.

It was also at KATI that the program director told him he could not use his real name and gave him three options of monikers to choose from. 

The one that kind of had a nice ring was “Don Steele.” He chose it.

And as the “Real Don Steele” soon realized, there was another one on the air.

When he went back to the school in the fall, he remembers a girl asking him if he was “this guy?” She pointed to a fan magazine that said a Don Steele was the number one rated disc jockey in the country — he worked at a station in Los Angeles.

“This guy was the real Don Steele and I learned later he came from Portland, Oregon and Omaha,” Nutter said. “So I’m assuming (his program director) gave me three names of three big disc jockeys someplace else in the world.”

Nutter’s time at KATI also involved continuing the Kmart show. When he left KVOC, he brought the account over with him.

Following high school graduation, Nutter’s career took him to Rawlins and then for a stint in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, and then back to KVOC. 

He spent a few years traveling the country in a good-paying job installing kitchen equipment for McDonald’s Restaurants before returning to Casper as a McDonald’s store manager.

A K2 radio salesman convinced him to check out a Sunday radio gig opportunity and lured him back. 

“I started full time at K2 on Jan. 15, 1980 and for all intents and purposes that was the last radio stop,” he said. “That was my last place of employment.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Personality Role"}]

He spent the next 25 years until 1994 working for K2 in various roles, including as a radio personality, and program and music director. 

He later founded and operated the Wyoming News Network for five years, a radio service that offered radio stations in Wyoming and South Dakota news, special events, sports, and weather.

Nutter said his on-air shows were more a “personality broadcast” where he offered little features and sometimes did interviews of various people.

“I tried a lot of different things that seemed to work,” he said. “I remember my ratings were better than anybody else in town for that time period, even though we never really ever worked for ratings, they were there.”

In addition to on-air work, Nutter fascination with the broadcast equipment led him into a collection of broadcast gear headed for dumpsters at an early age. 

He remembers one day at KVOC when the station engineer called him and said they were taking a bunch of equipment to the dump.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Collecting Artifacts"}]

Nutter went to the station and gathered the first microphone he ever spoke in as well as the remote radio board that he used at 13 and some cart machines. 

During his K2 career, he remembers coming back from Laramie after a football game broadcast and finding a bunch of old equipment in the dumpster behind the station.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"He rescued it."}]

Among  the items was the first studio camera used at K2 TV in 1957 that weighed nearly 140 pounds.

After being diagnosed with his illness, he knew his collection of things was going to end up back in a dumpster unless he could find a place that wanted it. 

He contacted the Texas Broadcast and Communications Museum and ended up taking two trips down to deliver the 1,400 items he had collected over the years.

The K2 camera was something unique among the other 109 cameras in the museum’s collection. Instead of storing in a corner or closet they put it on the floor in their main lobby, Nutter said.

“I’m proud to say that it is within 15 feet of the TV camera that covered the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald in the basement of the Dallas Police Department,” he said.

Much of Nutter’s present day involves trips to doctors and procedures to help prolong his life. His pulmonary fibrosis continues to harden his lung tissues making breathing more difficult.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"But he keeps pressing on."}]

“They’ve got a couple of medications out there that prolong you breathing,” he said. “But the only real cure is a lung transplant.”

Dave Nutter Inset David Nutter 1967 Age 15 KVOC edit 6 7 26

<title>Attention Kmart Shoppers: Casper's Dave Nutter Reflects On 45 Years On The Radio | Cowboy State Daily</title>

For 45 years, Dave Nutter was a familiar voice on Casper radio. Now, fighting for his life, Nutter reflects on his unique experiences in radio, including broadcasting blue light specials from Kmart. He most recently donated 1,400 radio items to a museum.

Attention Kmart Shoppers: Casper's Dave Nutter Reflects On 45 Years On The Radio

A woman born in Casper and raised on a ranch near Riverton, along with her young son, were among the more than 900 people who died at Jonestown, Guyana, in November 1978, when self-styled pastor turned messianic figure Jim Jones infamously commanded them to drink a poisoned potion.

Wanda Shirley Swinney moved to Jones’ People's Temple compound in Guyana in August 1977, reuniting with her husband and son. 

How Swinney’s life went from her Wyoming beginnings to ending with the command of a cult leader in Jonestown is a tale of family tragedy, an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, a father’s introduction, and years of brainwashing from the cult’s exalted leader.

The bottom line is Swinney was devoted to Jones. 

In a letter to him written in Guyana, she thanked her “precious Father” for providing their life in Guyana.

“There is no limit to what we can do if we follow your teachings and put them into practice,” she wrote. “Thank you Father for the privilege of being here with you.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"When It Came Tumbling Down"}]

A California congressman, along with journalists, flew to the jungle community in November 1978 to check on his constituents and other Americans who were at Jones’ compound, dubbed “Jonestown."

U.S. Rep. Leo Ryan had heard that people wanted to leave, but were not allowed.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"There was no heavenly outcome."}]

Headlines and history record 918 deaths in Guyana that included Ryan’s assassination and the murder of journalists who accompanied him at the hands of Jones’ deluded followers. Of those, 909 died by drinking the “potion."

Jones died by either self-inflicted gunshot or at the hands of an obedient assistant. Some followers slit their throats, but most of his congregants drank a cyanide-laced potion at his command.

In his now-infamous “Death Tape,” Jones tells his followers “how much” he loved them and tried to give them “the good life.” 

, he characterized Ryan’s visit as a betrayal by “a handful” of sect members “who have made our life impossible.”

Ryan and his party were to fly out with some cult members and children that Jones characterized as “stolen” from Jonestown. 

Jones said the actions of angry sect members at the airport to get their children back using weapons meant the only solution for the rest of the congregation was not to “commit suicide,” but to “take the potion as a revolutionary act.”

He quoted scripture “that no man takes my life from me, I lay it down” and then referred to himself as a communist.

“We can’t go back and they won’t leave us alone,” Jones said. “The best testimony we can make is to leave this (profanity) world.”

Born in Casper as Wanda Shirley Werner on Aug. 20, 1947, she was raised in the early part of her life on a ranch outside Riverton.

A woman born in Casper and raised on a ranch near Riverton, along with her young son, were among the more than 900 people who died at Jonestown, Guyana, in November 1978, when self-styled pastor Jim Jones infamously commanded them to drink poison.

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Daily Smile: Saturday, April 25, 2026

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