It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Monday, July 6th. I’m Mac Watson
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Instead of selling the century-old 140-acre Flat Creek Ranch for millions, a Jackson couple gave the property to its longtime managers. Cowboy State Daily’s Kate Meadows reports owners Joe Albright and Marcia Kunstel say they didn't want it to fall in the hands of someone “who would destroy the land, the wildlife or the buildings.”
“Ray Sharp told me that they are going to keep up with the infrastructure, and that there's always maintenance that needs to be done. This is 100-plus-year-old property, and keeping the cabins in good shape, while still having that sort of historic feel, is kind of a nonstop job. So that's really their focus now, and just continuing to offer bespoke experiences for their visitors, so whatever their visitors want to do when they come and visit, the owners will do their best to curate that experience for them.”
For Albright and Kunstel, both retired foreign correspondents, the decision was about conservation as much as succession. The couple spent 27 years restoring and preserving the ranch after buying it back from the Jackson Hole Land Trust in 1998. Read the full story HERE.
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Military tanks spent an hour crushing cars Friday as an enthusiastic crowd cheered to celebrate America’s 250th at the National Museum of Military Vehicles in Dubois. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that owner Dan Starks says, “What’s more American than machine guns and tanks crushing cars?”
“It's a huge museum, world-class museum, world's largest private collection of military vehicles in DuBois, of all places. And then, after lunch, right after lunch, when everybody's there at the canteen, anyway, they had some little lectures, told us some, you know, history stories and things like that too. I would say applause, people were applauding, so you know they're happily listening to these lectures after they've watched some tanks crush some cars. It was a great day.”
Starks didn’t get any disagreement from the huge crowds turning out for the daylong event devoted to America. More than 500 people showed up in the first hour, which offered two chances to see the tanks in action.
Read the full story HERE.
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With no veterinary clinics or animal shelters, roaming dogs are a problem on the Wind River Indian Reservation. Cowboy State Daily’s Kerry Drake reports that a Cheyenne clinic 300 miles away has rescued thousands of stray pets from the reservation since 2017.
“The reservation had a huge problem with feral and prairie dogs, so she kind of switched the focus of the foundation, or the program that she runs, and just working, beginning with the reservation, she's kind of expanded to spay and neuter clinics. Basically, she has captured 3,000 dogs and cats from the reservation since 2017 largely through donations, it's all volunteer.”
JM Marschner, who opened the clinic in 2017, tells Cowboy State Daily she and her volunteers have worked with other rescue groups to find more than 3,000 dogs and cats on the reservation.
Read the full story HERE.
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The Haitian truck driver who killed one Rawlins EMT and severely injured another in a catastrophic I-80 crash more than three years ago is asking the Wyoming Supreme Court to overturn his convictions. Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore reports that the driver claims prosecutors never proved he was “reckless.”
“Savoie St. Jean's attorney contends that there wasn't enough evidence to convict him of aggravated homicide and aggravated assault and battery. The crash occurred on December 1 of 2022 when Saint Jean's semi truck slammed into an EMT and killed the driver on Interstate-80 near Green River. Last fall. He was sentenced to 12-to-14 years in prison. He's now asking the Wyoming Supreme Court to erase the convictions.”
For the Wyoming Supreme Court, the question is whether the evidence presented to jurors was legally sufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Saint Jean acted recklessly.
Read the full story HERE.
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I’ll have more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.
Cowboy State Daily News continues now….
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It’s been 44 years since a young Casper woman was found dead in the North Platte River with a rock tied around her neck. Cowboy State Daily’s Jen Kocher reports the murder has never stopped haunting her older sister Rebecca.
“She had been 20 years old, and she was found two to six days later dead in the North Platte River, with a rock tied around her neck, and she had been strangled. It has never been solved to date. In fact, there has been no news coverage of it since 1982 that I could find. So it was a case that got kind of lost in the decades, but not for law enforcement. Law enforcement and the investigators are taking it seriously. They said they really want somebody to come forward.”
Belynda May Grantham was a 20-year-old single mother when her partially clothed body was recovered from the bottom of the North Platte River outside of Glenrock, in August 1982. It would take nearly a month and a newspaper sketch before anyone could identify her. Her murder has never been solved.
Read the full story HERE.
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A Montana rancher who lives more than 100 miles from grizzly territory says a bear mauled her quarter horse. Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports that grizzlies aren't deliberately being reintroduced to prairie country. Instead, they’re moving back into those areas on their own.
“She surmises that it probably got attacked by a grizzly bear, and she says that because this is an area where they've been seeing an increasing amount of bears, and also to her knowledge, one of her, I think it's she said one of her neighbors spotted a bear crossing the road toward her ranch just a couple of days prior, so she went ahead and called out, she called out an inspector from the USDA Wildlife Services. He said, ‘There's no bite up on the withers or right on the top of the back of the horse,’ and typically when bears do attack a larger animal, they do try to get up on the back and bite it, and then the bear will use its just its weight and its, overwhelming strength to just pull the animal down that it's trying to kill for prey.”
Danny Kinka, senior wildlife restoration manager for American Prairie, tells Cowboy State Daily there are ways to balance ranchers’ concerns with bear conservation. One effective way is to “put a human presence on the landscape.”
Read the full story HERE.
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The Wyoming Board of Equalization was set for a July 6 hearing to fight against having to enforce a 4% cap on annual property tax increases, which it calls unconstitutional. But Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports the board has agreed to honor the cap during its lawsuit challenging it.
“They were set for a July 6 hearing to determine whether the board would have to enforce that cap pretty much against its will and wishes throughout the lawsuit, and while that hearing was on track to unfold, and the judge on track to consider that argument. The board went ahead and agreed. Okay, we'll follow the law until there's a further order of this court, or until the case is over.”
Gov. Mark Gordon, through the Wyoming Attorney General’s Office, filed a court challenge June 16 in Laramie County District Court, urging the court to make the board follow the law and to declare the law constitutional.
Read the full story HERE.
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The only way to get to the rest of Wyoming (outside of riding a horse or hiking over the mountain) is a 20-mile drive through Idaho and over Teton Pass. Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck reports that residents of remote Alta, Wyoming, say they don't feel disconnected.
“It's a farm country, they grow alfalfa and hay and things like that, there, but all kinds of other people live there. I talked to a man that works in Jackson, and so there's commuters for Jackson that actually drive from there into Jackson. It's about 40 miles to do that, or maybe a little more, but over the past in the winter, they told me that that gentleman told me that doing it in the wintertime now is not as bad as it used to be when he was a kid. It's got all the great beauty without all the people that are on the national park side of things, of the mountains, and they just say, hey, this is all we've ever known. But you get up in the morning, and there's the Grand Tetons.”
The 429-resident community sits in the Teton Valley along the road to Grand Targhee Resort ski area. There are no bumper-to-bumper traffic lines that back up as tourists vie for views of a bison in Grand Teton National Park or the mountain scenes around Jackson Hole.
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.
