It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Monday, May 18th. I’m Mac Watson.
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Fremont County Fire Chief Ron Wempen tells Cowboy State Daily the Wind River Canyon fire was started by a “mechanical issue” on a BNSF train. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that the fire leaped from the train, into the canyon, and quickly spread.
“It was confirmed that the fire was caused by some kind of mechanical malfunction on a locomotive that was going through the Wind River Canyon. We don't know the exact nature of that malfunction, but it seems like it was something with the motor. It grew to around 140 acres, but from what I understand, it's either nearly out or completely out as of Sunday, so not a serious fire, but one that a lot of people notice, as it was sending flames up the western slopes of the Wind River Canyon all day Saturday.”
Several agencies sprang into action to battle the fire in the Wind River Canyon, including a Sikorsky CH-54B Tarhe, famously known as the “Sky Crane” helicopter, that flew in from Central Wyoming Regional Airport to make water drops.
Read the full story HERE.
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Speaking of fire, a fire ripped through the 134-year-old Cheyenne Pumphouse on Saturday, raising questions about whether the historic building can still be saved. Cowboy State Daily’s Greg Johnson reports that one local preservationist says watching the structure burn “was like witnessing a death, for sure.”
“A lot of the historic old, old hardwoods that was used for the roof and for some of the inside parts was pretty much were burned, but the guts of the place, the bones of it is all stone. It's stone, it's mason work, it's brick, and so the hope is that that stuff wasn't damaged too badly, because the roof burned a lot of it caved in. However, the preservation plans were calling for replacing the roof anyway. And so when I talked to them, they said, ‘Yeah, it was just devastating.’”
The city’s historic 1892 brick and stone pumphouse building was spared a date with the wrecking ball by the Cheyenne City Council back in December. Fire officials say their active investigation is ongoing.
Read the full story HERE.
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A hiker from Colorado hit the wildlife watcher’s jackpot last weekend coming within just yards of one of about 15 wolverines estimated to live in Wyoming. Outdoors Reporter Mark Heinz reports that wolverines are so rarely seen that his photos and video are considered to be once-in-a-lifetime.
“They're very rarely seen, and when people do get photos of them, as we've reported before, it's usually very blurry photos from a distance. But a literal rocket scientist got some great pictures and crystal-clear pictures and video of it. The wolverine, you can see in the pictures, he's wearing a radio tracking collar. Still, trying to determine whether it was a Wyoming Game and Fish department collar, but again, this guy, he said he had just enough time to get his camera out of his bag and shot some good photos and some good video of the animal, and then it turned and took off, and that was that. But it's just, it's kind of one of those one-in-a-million stories.”
The hiker, Zach Shifrel, captured footage of the wolverine near Squaretop Mountain in Sublette County nearing the end of his hike.
Read the full story HERE.
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The author of Wyoming’s Food Freedom Act says recent decisions by the state Dept. of Agriculture to shut down sales of locally produced food are government overreach. Cowboy State Daily’s Kate Meadows reports that Tyler Lindholm, the state director for Americans for Prosperity and the author of the Food Freedom Act, spoke at a rally in Cheyenne on Saturday, saying the government has found their way around our laws and intent.”
“The first was in March when the Wyoming Department of Agriculture banned Wy Fresh Farm in Cheyenne from selling certain meats. The second one happened in April up in Cody with Hippie Cow Creamery, when the Department of Ag said they could no longer sell their lattes because they were using raw milk in the lattes. When he's learning that there's this growing pressure and there's these things happening now, across the state, that's causing him to say we need to rewrite this law, we need to make it absolutely unambiguous.”
The law signed in 2015 allows producers to sell almost any type of homemade or farm-raised food directly to consumers without state licensure, permitting, certification or inspection requirements.
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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A Cheyenne attorney and his father, a former Wyoming attorney general, saw what they described as a huge, super-bright UFO while driving on Highway 59 in 1991. Now, 35 years later, Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck reports that Richard Barrett says he’s still trying to figure out what they saw.
“It appears right over their vehicle as they're headed south on Highway 59. He said he rolled down his window and put his head out and looked up at it, and to his estimation, he thought it was like 10 stories tall, two discs went upon another, and at the top there was these windows, he said, at the apex there was these windows, and these two discs were like together. It wasn't like they were two separate discs, and there was no noise at all. He said this huge thing that's hovering, that's above them, it's rotating with rotating lights, but the light is so bright that it makes the nighttime day no noise at all.”
Barrett tells Cowboy State Daily that he and his dad waited until the next day to see if it was in the newspaper, radio or television. When they didn’t see anything, both men decided not to tell anyone for fear people would say “they were off their rockers.”
Read the full story HERE.
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Wyoming’s federal judges on Friday dismissed nine felony-level criminal cases, including one first-degree murder case against interim U.S. Attorney nominee Darin Smith. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that Smith was accused of making “inflammatory and inappropriate” comments to a grand jury.
“Shortly after, the judges issued their order, saying this was misconduct, the defense attorneys fired back and said ‘We didn't get a chance to respond to the government's argument A and B. We think that these cases should be dismissed with prejudice permanently, because that's the tendency in misconduct cases like these.’ So that's a motion for consideration that was pending before the court as of Friday.”
The judges are pausing their dismissal order until Wednesday at 5 p.m. to give the federal government the chance to appeal if it wishes. If the government doesn’t want to appeal, the order will go into effect immediately, so says the order.
Read the full story HERE.
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Thor Stephenson Jr. thought he was going to die after a shotgun blast destroyed his leg during a pheasant hunt in 2013. Not so. Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore reports that he still gets outdoors on a custom brown and gold Bucking Horse prosthetic he says symbolizes being cowboy tough.
“People stop him all the time at his full-time job. He works at the Home Depot in Rock Springs, and he says that the prosthesis has become a part of his personality, it's not just a tool, it's a way that he can connect with people and talk about his love of the Cowboys. Stephenson says he's grateful to the Casper doctor, Camille Lamont, who was able to fit him with this new prosthesis, and the last handful of years he's really been able to learn to trust it more. He's been elk hunting, he's been fishing, he carries logs over his shoulder, and he works full time, something that he knows is only possible because of this prosthesis.”
Stephenson walks into work wearing a custom $68,000 University of Wyoming prosthetic leg wrapped in brown-and-gold swagger and the famous bucking horse logo.
Read the full story HERE.
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Wyoming’s world-famous Fossil Cabin was built from more than 6,000 dinosaur bones, weighs 52 tons and was a target for vandals along U.S. Highway 30. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that it made a nail-biting, 7-mile crawl this week to a new permanent home at the Medicine Bow Museum.
“It weighs 100 and I think 15,000 pounds. It's like 52 tons. So they did several things to move this. They placed like a foundation, a movable foundation underneath it. They had to dig out around it and build that underneath it. They shored up the walls, both inside and out, you know, kind of framing it up so that the the walls are held tight, and then they shrink wrap the whole thing, just plastic all around it, you know, and then to get this on a trailer and move it slowly.”
Wyoming’s Fossil Cabin was once featured by Ripley’s Believe It Or Not as the “World’s Oldest Cabin" because of its building materials, some 6,000 dinosaur bones mortared together by Thomas Boylan in 1932 to create a unique roadside attraction for his gas station along U.S. Highway 30 near Como Bluff.
Read the full story HERE.
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.
