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[{"type":"text","text":"Proving to my wife that being a stay-at-home parent is easy....."}]

Parenting 8 16 26

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

<title>Today In Parenting: Sunday, August 16, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Proving to my wife that being a stay-at-home parent is easy.....

Today In Parenting: Sunday, August 16, 2026

 Proving to my wife that being a stay-at-home parent is easy.....

Bill Sniffin

Opinion

CSD Columnists

Today is Sunday, Aug. 16. With Election Day just 48 hours away, it is time to put on my prognosticator’s hat and try to figure out who will win Tuesday’s political races.

All the political excitement is in the Wyoming Republican primary. We are a one-party state, so everything happens in the primary.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Predictions And Favorites"}]

Cowboy State Daily columnists have some interesting points of view.

 Eric Barlow for governor and Kevin Christensen for U.S. House.

 Eric Barlow for governor and Steve Friess for U.S. House.

 Brent Bien for governor and Chuck Gray for U.S. House.

 Megan Degenfelder for governor and Chuck Gray for U.S. House.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Here is how I see these races:"}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"U.S. House"}]

A gambling man would probably pick Secretary of State Chuck Gray of Casper to win the race for U.S. House.

Nobody else in this race has his network of followers, and he has been consistent. Considered a lightning rod, Gray has always been in the news. Gray seems to enjoy “just being Chuck.”

For example, how many state officials in history have been invited outside during a heated discussion by a sitting governor who is known to be somewhat mild-mannered? Probably not many.

Longtime political writer Joan Barron calls Gray an “obnoxious grandstander.”

After thoroughly analyzing this campaign, based on my 56 years of watching politics in Wyoming, I came to the conclusion recently that Steve Friess of Jackson might pull off a last-minute upset over Gray.

A lot of Friess’ boosters claim that not since Wyoming sent first-termers Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney to Congress have we had the chance to send someone who can make a big difference like Steve Friess can.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"That argument may very well be true."}]

But there are seven other Republicans in the race, and unless large numbers of their supporters bail out and move over to Friess, this race should go to Chuck.

Those candidates are Jillian Balow of Cheyenne, Bob Biteman of Ranchester, Reid Rasner, Kevin Christensen, and Keith Goodenough of Casper, David Giralt of Mills and Richard Dodson of Sundance.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"It will be close."}]

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

Like Gray, State Sen. Eric Barlow of Gillette has been the leader in his race from Day One. He has put together a tremendous team statewide and has boatloads of support.

As a former Speaker of the House, he was obviously well-liked, based on the number of legislators helping him. Has he heard of the “Speaker’s Curse?”

For some reason, Wyoming voters have not elected a House speaker or Senate president as governor in 50 years.

Megan Degenfelder of Cheyenne is young, at age 37, but has an amazing machine working for her. She has President Donald Trump working hard for her. She can honestly say that she will have the president’s ear if elected.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Folks, this is huge."}]

Her team has spent more than a million dollars attacking Barlow’s record. Based on all the TV ads and fliers, you would almost wonder why he is not in jail.

Barlow has not fired back much, which is commendable, but probably a bad tactic in these crazy political days.

The sleeper is retired Marine Col. Brent Bien of Cody. He has worked very hard and has a huge personal following. He lost the primary to Gov. Mark Gordon four years ago, receiving 48,572 votes.

If those same people vote for him, he just might win.

Despite a huge late surge by Degenfelder, I have a hunch Barlow will hold on and emerge victorious.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"U.S. Senate"}]

You would think this race would be a big deal. There are only 100 men and women in the U.S. Senate.

Current U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman has done an excellent job and has President Donald Trump’s endorsement.

Her biggest rival is 37-year-old Sam Mead of the well-connected Mead family from Jackson. His uncle Matt was governor, and his grandmother Mary Mead ran for governor.

He has worked hard and generated quite a bit of support.

Harriet will win and will do a great job as our next U.S. senator.

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

Longtime Casper State Rep. Steve Harshman should cruise to an easy win in the contest for state superintendent of public instruction. He is a longtime teacher and coach and has been a consistent leader in the state Legislature.

This is a case of one candidate having much better name recognition than the others, Chad Auer of Cheyenne and Tom Kelly of Sheridan.

The secretary of state’s race has been somewhat underwhelming. It is hard to find issues for the candidates to fight about.

Robert Short of Douglas appears to be the front-runner, although Rachel Williams of Cody has the Freedom Caucus folks working hard for her.

CJ Young of Cheyenne and Qwenton Oviatt of Hudson will finish out of the running.

State Treasurer Curt Meier of La Grange should have no trouble defeating challenger Scott Smith of Lingle.

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

Originally, I thought this election would have a small turnout.

Now I have changed my mind totally. We could easily have 130,000 to 150,000 total Republican votes.

The record was four years ago when 172,000 voted. Other recent years have seen turnout as low as 117,000.

The bigger turnout will favor Degenfelder and Friess, in my opinion.

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

These are just my predictions as a columnist. What do you think?

We want to hear what you have to say. Cowboy State Daily will be running an election quiz, and you can see if you can top our staff. It will be in the Monday morning newsletter.

Managing Editor Greg Johnson won our last quiz two years ago, and Jen Kocher, one of our writers from Gillette, won it four years ago. Six years ago, Tom Lacock of Cheyenne won it.

That quiz will be in Cowboy State Daily Monday.

Sniffin headshot 7 2 25

<title>Bill Sniffin: Barlow, Friess, Hageman, Harshman, Short, Meier, Headed For Wins? | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Columnist Bill Sniffin writes: “Who is going to win? This primary election has so many variables. These are the folks I think will win on Tuesday.”

Bill Sniffin: Barlow, Friess, Hageman, Harshman, Short, Meier, Headed For Wins?

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

Around Wyoming

A slew of fantastic fossils from Earth’s earliest primates have been discovered in southwestern Wyoming, offering new insights into the evolution of humanity’s tiny, sap-sucking great-uncles and aunts.

A new study published in the Journal of Human Evolution reports on the tiny fossils of three prehistoric primates excavated at Smiley Draw, a sandstone site in the Wasatch Formation of the Eocene Period.

Among paleontologists, Wyoming is well known as one of the best places in the world to find 

. These discoveries add to that reputation while also showing how much remains to be found.

“We've made the picture of the early Eocene more complicated than what we once thought,” said Chris Beard, a Foundation Distinguished Professor at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. “There will be much more to learn about these fossils, especially from southern Wyoming. There's a reason we're working down there.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Fascinating And Frustrating"}]

Wyoming has been a hub of primitive primate paleontology since the 1880s. The first fossils of lemur-like primates, dating to around 55 million years ago, were discovered in the Bighorn Basin around that time.

“A whole lot of work happened in the late 20th Century in the Bighorn Basin, especially with respect to this animal called Tetonius,” Beard said.

Tetonius, named after the Tetons, is a “vaguely tarsier-like creature,” as Beard described it. It was around the size of a modern-day mouse lemur, less than a foot long and under 2.5 ounces, but its closest living relatives are modern tarsiers.

Tarsiers are tiny, tree-dwelling animals known as “dry-nosed” primates. Endangered populations of these tiny primates still exist in the rainforests of Southeast Asia.

In their study, Beard and his colleagues described a new species of Tetonius, T. varleyorum, from Smiley Draw, an Eocene site in the Great Divide Basin in Sweetwater County.

“In Wyoming, you typically find Eocene-aged fossils in mudstone that erodes very easily,” Beard said. “This particular site is very unusual, if not unique, as it’s a layer of sandstone chock full of fossils. It’s rare to find Eocene fossils in sandstone, so Smiley Draw is exactly the opposite of what we normally expect.”

According to Beard, the discovery of a new species of Tetonius, based on its age and anatomy, is highly significant.

“It’s obviously a different species because it’s younger than the Tetonius and its younger descendant, Pseudotetonius, from the Bighorn Basin,” he said. “The fossils we found in Sweetwater County occur after that whole lineage has gone extinct in the Bighorn Basin.”

The study also describes fossils of two rarely found anaptomorphines, another group of prehistoric primates. Arapahovius gazini and Anemorhysis savage have never been found in the Great Divide Basin, and only a handful of other specimens have been found.

What’s significant is that the fossils of these three primates were found at the same site, which means they coexisted at the same time and place. That just raises further questions about life in the early Eocene.

“We’re finding animals that lived together at Smiley Draw that never ever cohabitated in the Bighorn Basin,” Beard said. “Tetonius, Arapahovius, and Anemorhysis don’t coexist there, but we find them together here.”

That’s why Beard said it’s “frustrating,” from a paleontological perspective, to compare Smiley Draw with the well-researched discoveries in the Bighorn Basin.

“We have an idea that animals evolve, they go extinct, and other animals replace them,” he said. “What we're finding at Smiley Draw is the animals that we think are going extinct at a certain time in the Bighorn Basin probably aren't going extinct elsewhere.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Gradual And Parallel"}]

Tetonius, Arapahovius, and Anemorhysis are all omomyids, a family of early tarsier-like primates known from several Eocene sites worldwide.

Beard said Wyoming’s omomyids are excellent examples of gradual evolution, which is what Charles Darwin proposed in his landmark 1859 book “On the Origin of Species.”

“There was a huge debate in paleontology about how evolution proceeded,” he said. “Did it occur gradually, the way that Charles Darwin predicted, or did it conform more to a punctuated equilibrium model, which was made famous by Stephen Jay Gould and his collaborators?”

The fossils of Tetonius and Pseudotetonius from the Bighorn Basin are a textbook example of gradual evolution. While they are distinctly different animals, Beard said the fossil record shows “no break in the single lineage chain from primitive to advanced.”

The key observation is the significant changes in the lower jaws of these primates, which Beard and his colleagues observed in fossils from the Bighorn Basin and the Great Basin Divide.

“These animals start out with fairly long lower jaws and lots of teeth in between their back teeth, the molars, and their front teeth, the incisors,” he said. “Through time, their lower jaws get compacted from front to back. They lose some teeth and develop a rodent-like incisor that sticks out of the front of their jaw, getting bigger and stouter over time.”

The purpose of this overly large incisor remains a mystery. Beard said that if you asked three different paleontologists, you’d get three different answers.

“In my opinion, they're using that big front incisor to gouge the bark of trees,” he said. “A lot of modern animals do this to stimulate sap or gum or resin to come out of the tree.”

Tree sap contains a lot of sugar. For a tiny primate with a high metabolism, that sap would be a valuable source of energy and nutrition.

Is this change in jaw and dental anatomy driven by a change in diet, or were the omomyids perfecting the tools needed for millennia of the same diet? That’s another debated question, but Beard said the latter is the most likely answer.  

These questions are significant to the new discoveries from Smiley Draw because they show the same thing happening – the shortening of the jaw, loss of teeth, and larger incisor – in Tetonius, but not exactly the same as in the Tetonius from the Bighorn Basin.

“The T. varleyorum from Smiley Draw has shorter haws and fewer teeth, so it’s similar but not exactly the same as what we see in the Bighorn Basin,” Beard said. “These are two different lineages evolving in parallel to achieve the same result.”

Parallel evolution is a well-documented phenomenon in nature. The legendary finches Darwin collected in the Galápagos Islands are an excellent example, as the different but related birds had beaks shaped to suit their diets on their isolated islands.

It’s more evidence that something strange was going on in Sweetwater County 55 million years ago.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Hyperthermal Events"}]

Beard and his colleagues are studying all the mammal fossils recovered from Smiley Draw to see if they have the same story as the recently described omomyids. If they do, it would be further proof that different things were happening in different parts of Wyoming.

“It’s an interesting phenomenon,” he said. “We find animals living side-by-side at Smiley Draw that were already extinct or never lived side-by-side in the Bighorn Basin. They were only going extinct locally in the Bighorn Basin.”

Climate change might explain this discrepancy. The Eocene was a roller coaster of climate, which usually leads to extinction or adaptation for flora and fauna.

“We've got lots of iterations of what we call hyperthermal events in the Eocene, where the world warms up very rapidly and cools down again,” Beard said. “When the world warmed up, animals that were more tropically adapted spread northward, from Sweetwater County to Park County. When it cooled down, and they were no longer happy, the animals went back down. It's a very dynamic thing, and we're picking up a lot of these oscillations by looking at Smiley Draw.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Our Great Uncles"}]

This new study on prehistoric primates raised more questions than it answered. That’s not a bad thing, as it gives Beard and his colleagues more reasons to return to Smiley Draw.

Beard said his team was at the site collecting fossils in June. Some of those specimens are already being studied using a micro-CT scanner in North Carolina.

“I can tell you that we found additional fossils of early primates and primate-like creatures that are totally new just two months ago,” he said. “We’ll have a lot more to reveal from Smiley Draw.”

They’re not the only ones looking at overlooked spots in southern Wyoming. Paleontologists with the Duke Lemur Center Museum of Natural History at Duke University have been finding 

phenomenal Eocene fossils in Bridger Basin

, including the best specimens of the earliest known primate-like mammal in the fossil record, Plesiadapis.

“The Bridger Basin is the Madagascar of the Eocene,” curator Matthew Borths told Cowboy State Daily in December 2024. “We transition from a few primates on the landscape to a lot of diversity, hopping around in the rainforests of Wyoming.”

Borths’s dream was to find an omomyid in the Bridger Basin, as they’re humanity’s closest Eocene ancestor. There’s no shortage of omomyids in Smiley Draw, which is less than 200 miles northeast. 

Beard said Wyoming is “better than any other single place in the world, including Europe, Asia, and Africa” for paleontologists studying the origins and evolution of the earliest primates. That’s just from what’s been discovered, let alone what’s still out there, waiting to be found.

“Wyoming is incredibly fundamental to understanding the deep origins of humans,” he said. “None of these animals are the direct ancestors of humans. They're probably great-uncles and great-aunts, but that doesn't make them any less important. In fact, in my opinion, it probably makes them more important.”

That’ll keep Beard and his colleagues busy for decades. There’s a lot more to find, study, and understand – if that’s an excuse to get dirty in Wyoming, all the better.

“I love Wyoming, personally and scientifically,” Beard said. “We wish that we had a perfect fossil record, but we don’t. 

"What we have are snippets and glimpses; we try to piece together what it means. Wyoming has been overlooked for a while, to be honest, and we’re very fortunate to have such an amazing fossil record there.”

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<title>"Something Strange Going On": 55 Million-Year-Old Primate Fossils Found In SW Wyoming | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A slew of fossils from Earth's earliest primates have been discovered in southwestern Wyoming. Scientists say the tiny primate fossils, around the size of a mouse lemur, is evidence something strange was going on in Sweetwater County 55 million years ago.

"Something Strange Going On": 55 Million-Year-Old Primate Fossils Found In SW Wyoming

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

Renée Jean

Business & Tourism

There is just something about the Elk Mountain Hotel that inspires devotion.

Peter Thieriot, for example, was warned that the Elk Mountain Hotel was nothing more than a money pit. 

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

Locals joked that the hotel required a tetanus shot before walking in.

No one was laughing once Thieriot finished restoring it. 

He took the hotel back to its studs, then rebuilt it room by room by room.

Nine layers of wallpaper were stripped from the dining room. Samples of each layer still decorate a wall just outside the dining room, even though Thieriot no longer owns the hotel.

Christine Neel is the hotel’s present-day owner. 

She did what a lot of small-town Wyoming kids wind up doing — leaving Wyoming. 

Her folks packed up and moved to Texas before Neel graduated from high school. She went to Texas A&M, becoming an “Aggie,” with a major in nursing and business.

But when the 120-year-old Elk Mountain Hotel went up for sale in January 2020, she leapt at the chance to take over the tiny boutique hotel in little Elk Mountain, where the elevation of 7,264 feet far exceeds its population of 146 people. 

“I’ve been in love with the hotel since childhood,” Neel told Cowboy State Daily. “I grew up not too far from there on a ranch … I remember going to brunches over there, attending weddings over there, before and after the renovation.”

When she heard the owners had decided to get out of the hotel business, something clicked. 

She suddenly knew she wanted to own that hotel.

“I think it just has a charm like no place else has,” she said. “I’ve always just loved it. So I couldn’t say no when the opportunity came up.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Reborn From Ashes"}]

Neel says many travelers find the Elk Mountain Hotel by surprise when they’re traveling to Yellowstone National Park along Interstate 80. 

It’s a pleasant surprise for most. Tripadvisor shows a 4.8 out of 5-bubble rating, and it’s easy to see why.

At first sight, it’s like gazing into another time and place, and then melting into it with each step toward the hotel. None of the rooms have televisions, which deepens the effect.

There are no air conditioners humming, either.  

Tiny refrigerators and microwaves are the only nod to the modern world — and they do not bother. They’re quiet.

The hotel sits at the base of Elk Mountain, in the same spot where the Overland Trail once had its stage stop, just east of the Medicine Bow River.

The establishment was then known as The Crossing. 

After Union Pacific finished the Transcontinental Railroad, The Crossing fell into disrepair and burned down in 1905.

A man from Wales named John Evans built a new hotel on top of the ashes, naming it Mountain View Hotel. It was white with green trim then, and it’s white with green trim now.

No one knows exactly how or why Evans came to Wyoming. What is known about him is that he was adopted by the Jones family and worked for a time at the Evan's Bro’s Store in Carbon, now an abandoned coal town southwest of Medicine Bow.

Eventually, Evans married his adoptive sister, Mary Ann Jones.

The couple had 10 children, seven of whom died very young. Some of those children are buried at the old Carbon Cemetery.

When the couple moved from Carbon to Elk Mountain to work for J.S. Jones, they had two living children, Joseph and Aubrey. John ran the bar and Mary was the cook. 

They bought The Crossing from Jones in 1903. Two years later, after their son William was born, The Crossing burned down.

The couple borrowed money from Mary’s sister Catherine to rebuild the hotel. 

They had 16 bedrooms upstairs and a bar and dance hall downstairs. It had indoor plumbing and Elk Mountain’s first power plant. In addition to itself, the hotel’s coal-fired plant supplied power to neighbors as well. 

The dance hall quickly became a community gathering spot for dances, parties, political rallies and town meetings.

In the 1920s, John Evans and his boys built an open-air dance pavilion.

Many famous people would come to play at the Garden Spot Pavilion, including Lawrence Welk and Louis Armstrong.

The hotel’s 12 rooms echo some of that history. 

Two are named for both Welk and Armstrong. Others are devoted to famous Wyoming figures Jim Bridger, Esther Hobart Morris and Eliza Swain. 

Another honors someone infamous: “Big Nose” George Parrot.

Each room leans into its historic namesake, with relevant photographs, artwork, and history hanging on the walls. 

The hotel is framed by mature trees and a profusion of pink hollyhocks — perfect for the Victorian architecture.

Inside, the vintage charm continues with a warm mixture of leather, wood, and posh upholstery alongside photos of historical Elk Mountain figures that help tell the hotel’s unique story. 

The restaurant serves steaks and pasta, along with homemade desserts and cocktails. Reservations are required.

Stay there once, and it’s easy to understand why people keep coming back. Because there’s just something about the Elk Mountain Hotel. 

Elk Mountain Hotel 20260811 095626 8 15 26

<title>How Wyoming’s Elk Mountain Hotel Went From Money Pit To Historic Showplace | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Built 120 years ago when an Overland Trail stage stop burned down, many warned its previous owner it would be a money pit to restore. He did it anyway, and now the Elk Mountain Hotel has become a showplace on the National Register of Historic Places.

How Wyoming’s Elk Mountain Hotel Went From Money Pit To Historic Showplace

Jake nichols 720

Jake Nichols

Wyoming Life

Harvard University once claimed to possess up to three books in its libraries that were bound in human skin.

Thanks to relatively new technology, two of the works in question have been debunked, but not without leaving one proven authentic and opening a rabbit hole filled with questions.

[{"type":"text","text":"First, books bound in the largest organ of humans are a thing. "}]

[{"type":"text","text":"In fact, the practice was once more popular than one might think. "}]

Second, in response to binding books in human skin, Wyoming history says, “Hold my beer.”

The Cowboy State has an ashtray, a medicine bag and a pair of shoes all made from the remains of a notorious outlaw who met his demise at the end of a rope.

[{"type":"text","text":"Don’t Judge A Book By Its Cover"}]

Two decades ago, the internet was abuzz with hoax-or-real tales of literary works bound in human skin, particularly a few tomes reportedly owned by an Ivy League school.

It started in 2006 after an article appeared in the university publication “The Harvard Crimson.” 

Written by Samuel Jacobs, who was named editor-in-chief of Time Magazine three years ago, “The Skinny on Harvard’s Rare Book Collection” zeroed in on three unique books in the university’s 15 million-volume collection purportedly bound in human flesh.

Jacobs fleshes out the texts, ranging in content from medieval law to Roman poetry to French philosophy. A lawbook, for one, has been discredited in its claim to be skin-wrapped. It’s bound in flesh, but not human.

“Practicarum Quaestionum Circa Leges Regias Hispaniae” is a Spanish lawbook containing material dating back to 1605. It was bought for $42.50 from a New Orleans book dealer in 1946 and shelved in the Langdell Law Library at Harvard, according to the library’s curator, David Ferris.

Nothing about the book’s cover seems out of the ordinary, though it appears to have a hue suggestive of skin tone. It’s what is handwritten in purple ink on the book’s last page that sets one’s skin to crawling.

“[T]he bynding of this booke is all that remains of my dear friende Jonas Wright, who was flayed alive by the Wavuma on the Fourth Day of August, 1632.”

DNA tests performed in 1992 proved inconclusive. The tanning process was partially to blame, but truthfully, technology just wasn’t up to the task until more recent scientific advancements in what is known as peptide mass fingerprinting (PMF) made positive identification possible.

In-house testing performed by Harvard using the analytical technique for protein identification PMF proved conclusively that Wright’s remains do not bind the 400-year-old book, nor do any human’s. The cover is sheepskin.

Another book in question — a 1597 French translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses housed in the Countway Library’s Center for the History of Medicine — also was proven to be sheepskin even though a small penciled annotation appearing on the inside cover reads: “Bound in human skin.”

[{"type":"text","text":"The Hide That Binds"}]

The myth busting leaves Harvard with one final volume touted as epically epidermically bound.

This is the macabre story of a once-common practice of binding books with human skin — and how Wyoming did that one better by skinning notorious Wild West outlaw "Big Nose George" and making him into a pair of shoes. His skull was made into an ashtray.

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