CSD Staff

One More For The Road

[{"type":"text","text":"Maybe a fork lift with a Corvette 427 is overkill…."}]

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

<title>One More For The Road: Tuesday, May 12, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Maybe a fork lift with a Corvette 427 is overkill….

One More For The Road: Tuesday, May 12, 2026

 Maybe a fork lift with a Corvette 427 is overkill….

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

A corrupt Cheyenne mayor and his chief of police ran a protection racket in 1944 that extorted money from black bar owners and encouraged prostitution, leading to their own criminal convictions.  

A new book about how their criminal operation unraveled because of a sting operation is coming out soon.

While working at the University of Wyoming’s American Heritage Center as its associate director, now-retired Rick Ewig remembers longtime Laramie County Attorney Byron Hirst mentioning his prosecution of Cheyenne’s former mayor in 1944.

Hirst, who served as county prosecutor from 1943 to 1947, was filing his papers with the American Heritage Center around 2000 or 2001 and Ewig helped him with the project. 

The topic about the mayor came up more than once.

“I thought, that’s really kind of interesting,” Ewig said. “I thought, when I retire, I should write something on that.”

After retiring in 2016, the historian came back to the idea around the time of the pandemic and, once he started digging into the story, found that there was a “lot more to it than just corruption.”

Four years later he is coming out with his book titled “We Are In Charge Now, The Story of Corruption & Intrigue in World War II Cheyenne.” 

The 200-page history delves into the election of Ira L. Hanna and how after arriving in office, along with his police chief and two officers, they attempted to extort “protection money” from black businesses in the city.

Ewig’s research sent him into Hirst’s papers that were at the American Heritage Center and the Old West Museum in Cheyenne as well as through the daily newspapers to get the context of wartime Cheyenne in 1943 and 1944.

“It turns out that Cheyenne was segregated at that time,” Ewig said. "If you were African American, you lived on the west side and that’s where Lola West ran the Black and Tan Club (Cafe), and there was another African American bar owner, Pop Grimes.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"“He ran the Porters and Waiters Club.”"}]

Hirst had kept the information he compiled for his prosecution case, although there was not a trial transcript, Ewig said.

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

Hanna, who had served as the Laramie County treasurer and then was elected as the county assessor, ran for the mayoral office in 1944. 

After becoming mayor he appointed Jesse Ekdall to be his police chief.

Shortly after coming to power, he and Ekdall approached the two black club owners to sell them protection as well as encourage prostitution, gambling, and illegal liquor sales, Ewig said. 

They were told they would be protected from the Cheyenne Police Department and the military police at Fort F.E. Warren.

“Hirst had kept all those documents related to that,” Ewig said.

The “most fascinating” one he found was related to West and Grimes going to Hirst after being instructed by the mayor and police chief to “not tell anybody” about his protection offer. 

A sting operation was set up between Hirst, two federal IRS agents, and the club owners.

Hirst and the feds were able to obtain a dictaphone device and place a microphone under Pop Grimes’ desk at the Porters and Waiters Club and recorded a meeting between the two black club owners, Hannah, Ekdall, and the two officers in his department.

During the hours-long meeting, Hanna and Ekdall were recorded saying that: “This is what we are going to do. We are in charge now. You have to pay us. If you don’t pay us we are going to shut down your business,” Ewig said.

Ewig said there is no evidence showing that the mayor or police chief attempted to strong arm any white business in town. 

Due to the war and the soldiers at Fort Warren in addition to the other war-support efforts that brought workers to town, prostitution was an issue.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Money Changed Hands"}]

Newspaper trial accounts show money was paid by West and Grimes to the mayor and police and the serial numbers of the bills were recorded.

Fort Warren was putting pressure on the city to get rid of all prostitution due to issues with venereal disease among the troops that hampered training, Ewig said.

But Ewig said the mayor and new police chief were trying to “open up” the city to more prostitution and illegal money to bring in funds despite the city’s stance against it.

His research found newspaper ads from Hanna as he ran for office that promised voters “good, clean government.”

Although all he had was the old newspapers to go by, Ewig did not find any evidence of any election manipulation that may have brought Hanna to power. 

Hanna’s record of public service to that point as the county assessor appeared above board.

“I didn’t find anything that really explained why after 20 years of not any issues at all, all of a sudden, he sees an opportunity to extort money from a certain group in Cheyenne,” Ewig said. 

“In the last part of the book, I do provide answers to what other people thought, but I never found anything that explained it directly,” he said.

During the trial of the quartet, the Casper Tribune-Herald reported on May 5, 1944, that Hanna testified that the money collected were “fines” for illegal activities and were destined for the city’s park and recreation fund.

Hanna said he and Ekdall decided to make the black business owners “pay fines” if the Fort Warren military police allowed prostitution, gambling, and the sale of liquor in the businesses, the newspaper reported. 

Hanna testified he received $340 from his police chief and put it in an envelope with other funds collected and a list of “from whom for what.”

Hanna testified he was found with three $5 bills that had been paid by West on his person because he wanted to “get a $5 bill to contribute to the Red Cross.” 

He exchanged a $20 bill for four fives that were in the envelope, he said.

West’s daughter testified at the trial and said she paid $100 on two different dates to police for protection. 

One of the officers on trial told her that if she received a phone call and “told us to wash our necks, there was going to be a raid,” the newspaper said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Ewig said all four men were convicted."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Sentenced And Commutation"}]

The Casper Herald-Tribune reported on May 7, 1944, that both Hanna and Ekdall were sentenced to not less than seven or more than 10 years in prison on charges of soliciting and accepting a bribe. 

The officers and E.K. Violette received a sentence of two to three years, and officer G.J. Morris a one to two years.

However, on Oct. 4, 1945, the Casper Tribune-Herald reported that both Hanna’s and Ekdall’s sentences had been commuted by a state board of pardons and they would be eligible for parole on Dec. 15, 1945, and discharged from parole on Dec. 15, 1946.

The newspaper reported the board of pardons had received more than 200 letters encouraging the commutation of their sentences. 

While in prison, both men quickly obtained trustee status with Hanna keeping the books for prisoner accounts at the prison and Ekdall serving as a caretaker for the governor’s mansion.

Ewig said his research did not corroborate something that Hirst had told him a couple of decades ago about mafia from Denver and Chicago being involved with criminal activities as well. 

He said there is a chapter devoted to one individual who may have had ties to the mafia, but he could not prove it.

The book is about more than the corruption of the mayor. 

Ewig said he tried to portray the whole atmosphere of Cheyenne during that time in the war.

“I’ve done a lot of Wyoming history, and this one was so Cheyenne specific that it was fascinating about life in World War II Cheyenne,” he said. “It’s not only the story about Ira Hanna and Lola West, I also look at what Cheyenne was like during World War II. 

"It was a boomtown, and there was a housing shortage, and all these issues come up.”

The book, Ewig’s third, is published by WordsWorth Publishing of Cody and will be available in bookstores in the next week or two, he said. It can be ordered now from 

A bonus from his research led to a friendship with Lola West’s grandson, Leon Reed of Cheyenne, Ewig said.

“He allowed me to use some of the family photographs in the book,” he said. “I’m going to sit with Mr. Reed and do and oral history with him because he would like the story of the African American community in Cheyenne to be better known, and to be explored more. So, that is going to come out of this research as well.”

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<title>Wyoming History: Cheyenne's Mayor, Police Chief Convicted Of Extorting Black Bar Owners | Cowboy State Daily</title>

It was 80 years ago that Cheyenne’s mayor and police chief were convicted of running a protection racket and extorting black bar owners. "You have to pay us. If you don’t pay us we are going to shut down your business,” federal agents recorded them saying.

Wyoming History: Cheyenne's Mayor, Police Chief Convicted Of Extorting Black Bar Owners

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Outdoors

Wildlife

A rare all-white pronghorn made a brief appearance in Goshen County, much to the delight of a couple of local wildlife watcher. But whether the animal is an actual albino remains a mystery.

Matthew Pancake and his wife, Maricela, make a regular habit of taking walks to admire wildlife, including small local herds of pronghorn, commonly called antelope.

“We’re old people, we like to get our exercise by walking,” he quipped during a telephone interview with Cowboy State Daily.

They were out on Memorial Day when they spotted a buck pronghorn with two does, and one of the does was completely white.

“I said, ‘That sucker’s white. Is that an albino?’” he said.

Albinism occurs in humans and numerous animal species. It’s essentially a complete lack of pigmentation, wildlife biologist Rich Guenzel told Cowboy State Daily.

In some animals, including pronghorn, a recessive gene can also cause a few rare individuals to have all-white hair or fur. But they’re not actual albinos, said Guenzel, who worked for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department from 1986-2011 and has a special interest in pronghorn.

It’s most likely that the Goshen County doe has the recessive gene, but isn’t an albino, he said.

Pancake said the antelope in his area seem to be a bit sparse. He wonders if herds are still trying to recover from an especially harsh winter a few years ago.

The white doe he saw on Memorial Day and the other two antelope with her all looked lively and healthy, Pancake said.

“She looked at us for a little while and then started running,” typical of what antelope do when humans are near, he said.

He’d never seen the white doe before. On Wednesday, he said he hasn’t seen her since.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Answer Is In The Eyes"}]

True albino animals have strange-looking eyes. In pronghorn, an albino’s eyes will be “reddish-pinkish,” Guenzel said.

Pancake said he "didn’t get close enough to see the eyeballs of that antelope,” so he can’t be sure whether she had that tell-tale feature.

Pronghorn rely heavily upon their vision, and albinism not only makes the eyes strange colors, it can sometimes affect an animal’s vision.

That’s more reason to think that the Goshen County doe is a recessive gene white specimen, he said.

“That’s an adult that’s survived at least one winter,” Pancake said.

He added that he’s seen only “one specimen” of an albino pronghorn, but has never seen such an animal in the wild.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Air Force Base Buck"}]

Guenzel has seen white, nonalbino pronghorn in a few places in Wyoming, including in the Shirley Basin and the Buffalo area.

“They’re neat to see, they’re a rare animal,” he said.

In the early 2000s, an all-white pronghorn buck that hung out around F.E. Warren Air Force Base near Cheyenne became something of a local wildlife celebrity, Guenzel said.

Sadly, that buck was struck and killed by a vehicle, he said.

The recessive gene that causes all-white fur apparently doesn’t directly manifest from one generation to the next, Guenzel said.

So, if the Goshen County doe ever has fawns, odds are good they’ll have normal-colored fur, white in the belly area, and tannish on the back and flanks, he said.

That pattern has served pronghorn well over the ages, causing them to “blend in” with the landscapes they inhabit.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Evading Predators"}]

An all-white pronghorn might be easier for predators to spot. But since she’s a full-grown doe, good luck catching her, Guenzel said.

Pronghorn fawns might be vulnerable. The adults can run at roughly 55 miles per hour for extended periods. They developed that speediness ages ago, when their ancestors had to evade 

But those lightning-fast cats, which weren’t actually cheetahs, are long since extinct. And nothing else alive today with teeth, claws and a taste for meat can keep up with pronghorn.

And pronghorn also have exceptional vision, said to be about as good as a human looking through a powerful set of binoculars.

Pronghorn are designed to deal with predation. Once they get to be a yearling or above, their survival rate is pretty good, because they can out-run everything and out-see everything, Guenzel said.

All-white bison are also head-turners, and are regarded as sacred by Native Americans.

 born in Yellowstone in June 2024 caused a stir as many visitors rushed to catch a glimpse of the rare animal.

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<title>‘Extremely Rare’ All-White Antelope Captured On Video In Goshen County | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Wildlife watchers in Goshen County got a rare treat on Memorial Day — a brief encounter captured on video of an all-white pronghorn. Such animals are “extremely rare," but usually not actual albinos, a biologist said.

‘Extremely Rare’ All-White Antelope Captured On Video In Goshen County

Employee kate meadows cropped

Kate Meadows

BLACK HAWK, S.D. — Six years after a massive sinkhole opened in a residential neighborhood in the South Dakota Black Hills about 55 miles from the Wyoming border, homeowners are still living in financial limbo.

The 85-foot-deep sinkhole — and roughly 100 feet wide and 650 feet long — revealed a sprawling abandoned underground gypsum mine beneath the Hideaway Hills subdivision near Black Hawk, South Dakota.

In the years since, dozens of homes have sat abandoned and deteriorating while property owners wait for answers, compensation and accountability.

Their homes are essentially worthless. Many families are still making mortgage payments on houses they can’t safely live in while a lawsuit over who bears responsibility inches through the court system.

A pending South Dakota Supreme Court decision could determine whether affected residents have any path forward financially.

“We do not yet have an opinion from the Supreme Court,” said Kathy Barrow, an attorney with national law firm Fox Rothschild, who represents the homeowners in the case.

“There is no timeline, unfortunately,” she added. “It could be six months, next year sometime.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"What Lies Beneath Hideaway Hills"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"The disaster traces back decades."}]

For more than 50 years, gypsum mining operations carved a network of underground tunnels beneath the area. ‘

In the mid-1980s, the state of South Dakota bought land there for gypsum mining activities connected to a nearby cement plant.

The state later reclaimed roughly 16 acres of mined land and reseeded it for rangeland use before selling the property to a developer in 1994. The land was eventually sold again to other developers, who built the Hideaway Hills subdivision in the early 2000s.

[{"type":"text","text":"Residents began moving into the neighborhood around 2005."}]

Just a few years later, homeowners started noticing cracks in foundations and shifting ground.

[{"type":"text","text":"Then in April 2020, the earth gave way."}]

The sinkhole opened near where resident Albert Reitz had been mowing his lawn.

Authorities initially evacuated residents from 13 homes because of concerns about ground instability.

Subsequent testing revealed the problem was far more extensive than initially believed.

Studies later determined all 153 homes in the subdivision were uninhabitable because of underground instability tied to the abandoned mine workings.

A study led by geological engineering professor Mohammad Sadeghi of Montana Technological University found additional underground tunnels beneath the subdivision and warned of continuing geologic risk. 

Researchers also raised concerns that mine workings could extend beneath Interstate 90.

[{"type":"text","text":"Meanwhile, property values collapsed."}]

“The ground is continuing to deteriorate,” Barrow told Cowboy State Daily.

She said the instability reaches far deeper than anything tied to subdivision construction.

“What the developers did was not the cause,” Barrow said. “The ground instability goes deeper than any ground the developers would have touched.”

In 2024, Hideaway Hills homeowners filed a class-action lawsuit against the state of South Dakota seeking more than $60 million in damages.

The lawsuit argues the state bears responsibility because of its mining activities and because homeowners were never informed about the risks lurking underground.

Barrow argued the land was originally intended for pasture use — not residential development — and said residents had no warning about the underground dangers.

[{"type":"text","text":"The state disputes those claims."}]

South Dakota argues it is not liable because it did not conduct underground mining operations at the site and says the mine collapse would have happened regardless of the state’s activities.

South Dakota Circuit Court Judge Eric Stawn ruled in favor of the state in September 2024, finding the state immune from tort liability claims.

Barrow argues the case was never framed as a tort claim in the first place.

A year after the circuit court ruling, victims asked the South Dakota Supreme Court to hold the state accountable. That decision is pending.

[{"type":"text","text":"Meanwhile, the subdivision remains largely frozen in time."}]

A chain link fences surrounds the sink hole. The concrete is cracked and pale with weeds growing up in the cracks. Uncut grass is brown and long.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Why Wyoming Is Different"}]

The Hideaway Hills disaster highlights a major difference between South Dakota and Wyoming when it comes to abandoned mine reclamation.

Wyoming participates in the federal Abandoned Mine Land program, an initiative designed to protect public health, safety and the environment by identifying, reclaiming and restoring lands and waters degraded by historic mining practices.

The program is funded by fees collected from every kind of coal that is produced, according to Keith Guille, outreach manager for the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality. 

Wyoming, a coal-producing state, maintains a state-administered Abandoned Mine Land program through its Department of Environmental Quality.  

Because South Dakota is not a coal-producing state, it does not administer such a program, according to the South Dakota Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

Guille said Wyoming’s abandoned mine reclamation work is funded through fees collected from current coal production.

“Obviously it’s about public health and safety,” Guille said. “That’s why we do abandoned mines.”

Wyoming’s AML division routinely performs underground reclamation work by grouting abandoned mine tunnels with concrete slurry to stabilize the ground above them.

Some of those abandoned mines lie hundreds of feet beneath existing communities, Guille said.

Rock Springs is one example where underground mine reclamation has continued for years. Similar abandoned mine concerns also exist beneath parts of Gillette and the Hanna area, Guille said.

Because abandoned mines predate 1977, before modern mining regulations existed, maps are often incomplete or inaccurate, making underground reclamation especially difficult.

“It’s a moving target when you talk about underground abandoned mines,” Guille said. “It’s a long work in progress.”

Wyoming residents also have access to the Wyoming Mine Subsidence Insurance Program, which allows homeowners to purchase insurance coverage against ground collapse caused by abandoned underground mines.

South Dakota has no comparable state-administered abandoned mine land program because the federal AML system is funded through coal production fees, and South Dakota is not a coal-producing state.

For Hideaway Hills residents, that distinction has become painfully clear.

Six years after the sinkhole opened, many are still waiting to learn whether anyone will ultimately be held responsible for the ground beneath their homes giving way.

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<title>Six Years Later, Black Hills Sinkhole Victims Still Waiting For Relief | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Six years after a massive 85-foot-deep sinkhole opened in a residential neighborhood in the Black Hills, homeowners live in financial limbo. Dozens of homes have sat abandoned and deteriorating while property owners wait for answers, compensation and accountability.

Six Years Later, Black Hills Sinkhole Victims Still Waiting For Relief

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

Renée Jean

Fifty years ago, the cameras rolled on “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” beneath the soaring columns of Devils Tower.

Locals are still talking about the summer when Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi vision transformed their corner of Wyoming into a cinematic landmark.

It all started in May 1976 after a quiet handshake between a young, then-unknown Spielberg and Crook County rancher Jesse Thomas Driskill. It would go on to completely reshape tourism in northeast Wyoming, though no one knew it at the time.

For the movie’s legions of fans, this anniversary will mark the making of a cult classic, which was released in 1977 by Columbia Pictures more than a year after filming its defining scenes of making first contact in Wyoming. 

For people who live and work in the shadow of Devils Tower, this 50th anniversary marks the moment just before everything changed.

Thanks to the film, Devils Tower went from a curious landmark as the nation’s first national monument to a bucket-list stop for movie lovers — and believers in extraterrestrial life — from around the world.

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

When Spielberg first showed up, though, the land around the monument’s boundary was just another hay meadow.

Since then, visitation has continued to grow. 

Devils Tower hosts upward of 100,000 visitors per month in the peak months of July and August. It has seen as many as 509,000 visitors in a single summer. 

The influx supports tens of millions in visitor spending in the surrounding communities, according to National Park Service and Wyoming Office of Tourism.

"'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' didn’t just film in Wyoming, it left a legacy behind," said Domenic Bravo, executive director of the Wyoming Office of Tourism. "Decades later, people still chase that feeling: the mystery, the landscape, the sense that something bigger exists around Devils Tower. That’s the power of cinema."

Crook County rancher Ogden Driskill, who is also a state senator, was a junior in high school at the time his family and Spielberg struck their bargain.

“They took the hay meadows at the entrance to Devils Tower and turned them into the decontamination base and the main base where the movie would be filmed,” Driskill told Cowboy State Daily. “And he swore us to secrecy at the time. 

"He was determined that the world didn’t know about Devils Tower, and he wanted to keep it that way until the film happened.”

The Driskill family agreed to keep the secret, though they were sure Spielberg was wrong about all that. Surely everyone already knew about Devils Tower.

When the film finally came out in 1977, though, Spielberg’s instincts proved to be right on the money; it was a box office smash hit,

The first sight of the tower in the movie was mind-blowing for audiences, many of whom couldn’t fathom that such an unusual geologic feature existed in America. They had to go see it for themselves.

“That basically doubled tourism visitors,” Driskill said. “The movie really elevated Devils Tower to the next level. We are truly a nationally known destination at this point.”

Dreyfuss Vs. John Wayne And Mashed Potatoes

While Driskill watched his family’s hayfield turn into both a “Decontamination Unit” and the film’s headquarters, Barbara Wilson-Sowerwine was watching Hollywood drift in and out of her parents’ country store a few miles down the road.

No one had any idea that the movie was going to be a blockbuster. 

Financial writer William Flanagan, in fact, predicted the movie would be a flop. Spielberg and George Lucas, meanwhile, decided to hedge their bets after visiting each other’s sets. 

Fifty years ago, the cameras rolled on “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” at Devils Tower after a handshake between a then-unknown Steven Spielberg and rancher Jesse Thomas Driskill. It would go on to completely reshape tourism in northeast Wyoming.

One More For The Road: Tuesday, May 12, 2026

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CSD Staff

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One More For The Road: Tuesday, May 12, 2026

In case you missed it

Authors

CSD Staff

Writer

More in One More For The Road

One More For The Road: Monday, June 1, 2026

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