It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Tuesday, September 8th. I’m Mac Watson.
This newscast is brought to you by Google. This Wednesday, September 9th, Google invites you to a free community meeting at 5pm at the Metropolitan Downtown in Cheyenne. Come learn more about Project Tembo, ask questions, and meet your Wyoming Google team.
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A side-by-side rolled Sunday afternoon in the remote country between Casper and Muddy mountains, triggering a major emergency response. Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore reports that dispatch radio traffic carried a grim report from the scene: There was no pulse.
“Dispatch traffic confirmed that a woman was laying on top of the side-by-side and was no longer breathing when they called for a Life Flight service. The Natrona County Coroner's Office said they have identified next of kin, but did not confirm how many fatalities there were, and is not releasing any more information at this time. One witness who said they were camping at Bear Trap confirmed that they saw the fatal side by side wreck and that they had never heard so many sirens before.”
As of Monday, the Wyoming Department of Transportation's 2026 fatal-crash map showed two fatal ATV crashes elsewhere in the state. The Casper Mountain rollover was not displayed in the database.
Read the full story HERE.
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Two teen girls from rural Crook County in a month have been targets of alleged sex predators. Cowboy State Daily’s Jen Kocher reports that authorities say it’s troubling how girls from small Wyoming towns are meeting older men online — and terrifying that the men turn up in person to meet them.
“What authorities find so frightening is the fact that these predators are so easily targeting teen girls in Wyoming and elsewhere. A lot of ways this is happening is through video games. So when you're playing a video game, there's also an easy way to go into chat rooms. Discord, the app, is one of those such servers where you can go and have private conversations. So this is how at least one of these incidents took place. The 36-year-old man got the 15-year-old girl to a chat room, and then the grooming begins. As a result of this manipulation, the 15-year-old believes this is her boyfriend, and believes it's perfectly normal and healthy to have a 36-year-old boyfriend.”
Terri Markham, executive director and co-founder of the Sheridan-based anti-human trafficking nonprofit Uprising, describes grooming as the deliberate process of building trust and an emotional connection with a child or vulnerable person for the purposes of manipulation, control, exploitation, or abuse.
Read the full story HERE.
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When Mike Gilmore bought a liquor store in Pinedale, his pursuit of premium spirits labels ballooned into searching for the perfect barrel. Cowboy State Daily’s Kate Meadows reports now his premium label, "Roaming Roads," has gone global, and recently found on shelves in Dublin, Ireland.
“Gilmore went down the rabbit hole of making his own liquor, learned the ins and outs of doing it, what all is required, and fast forward, his liquor spirits are being sold in places like Ireland, Barbados, Italy, you name it. Thomas Sutton is the manager of Corkscrew Spirits in Dublin, and told us that it intrigued him straight away, and the liquid was so good it sealed the deal. That's what he said after Gilmore had approached him about the potential of selling the spirits in his liquor store in Dublin.”
When Gilmore moved to Pinedale in 2007, he was far from dreaming about international spirits distribution. He was simply looking for a change as he had been working in law enforcement in central California and wanted to decompress and start something new.
Read the full story HERE.
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A Casper pastor and mechanic faces a long recovery after getting into a crash on I-25 that nearly killed him. Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore reports that Roger Davis says that he was crushed when his car “folded like an accordion.”
“Davis was driving an SUV on I-25 near Hat Six [viaduct], and he was passing under the viaduct when all of a sudden a car appeared in the left lane. He did not have enough time to stop, and the next thing he says he remembers is the dashboard coming at his face. When he came to, he woke up and realized he was unable to get out of the vehicle. So emergency response crews came and used the jaws of life to get him out and to the hospital. Davis sustained multiple broken bones. Essentially, his entire body was crushed. He broke his neck, his ribs, and leg. His hip and almost all of his teeth were knocked out. Davis believes that the other car had hit a deer, although that has not been confirmed by Wyoming Highway Patrol as of yet.”
The 59-year old tells Cowboy State Daily that he still faces multiple surgeries, rehabilitation and a recovery that is expected to take months.”
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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Mule deer populations are “languishing” in parts of Wyoming, but with archery season underway, hunters say record trophy bucks are still out there. Outdoors Reporter Mark Heinz reports that after an unusually mild 2025-2026 winter, many deer stayed fat and growing larger antler racks.
“The Green River region, the Sheridan region, and the Lander region are kind of the regions where the mule deer are looking the worst, quote unquote, where you know they're struggling the most. I talked to hunters from each of those regions, and one of them, Zach Key. He hunts the Wyoming Range a lot. And he said, yeah, there's fewer deer, but we're starting to see after that massive winter kill of 22-23, We're starting to see the return of some significantly huge bucks. So there might not be that many deer running around. just from what guys are seeing out scouting, that's looking pretty good.”
Hunting seasons for 2026 are similar to the previous year. Antler point restrictions are in place for 2026 in some hunt areas. Hunters should expect difficult access to private lands and some overcrowding on accessible public lands, according to Game and Fish.
Read the full story HERE.
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Warm Spring Geyser is a pool of brilliantly blue thermal water hidden in a cavern near Dubois, described by a frequent visitor as "like something you find down in the Caribbean.” Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports the trick is finding it and whether to risk descending down into it.
“I'm not going to tell you how to get to Warm Spring Geyser. In fact, a lot of people on the internet won't tell you. But if you know where to look, you can find the directions, and any business owner in Dubois will be able to point you in the right direction. But it is a really cool place to go. It's a cavern with a pool of natural thermal water sitting at the bottom, it's not a hot spring. The water tends to be around 80 degrees. The water is a pristine blue. There's a wonderful juniper growing right above it. It's a super cool spot, well worth the trip to anybody who's daring enough to head out there. And again, I won't tell you where it is, but there are plenty of people who can point you in the right direction.”
Even in a state with more geysers, hot springs, and thermal features than any land mass in the world, Warm Spring Geyser stands out. It’s a pristine pool of thermal water at the bottom of an open cavern and accessible to anyone intrepid enough to find and descend into it.
Read the full story HERE.
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A dying Worland man’s desire to have his ashes placed on a 5-foot exact model of the USS Constitution and then put aflame onto Boysen Reservoir didn’t happen. Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck reports now the model — with every detail crafted by his own hands — is in a museum for everyone to see.
“It's the only ship that kind of a Renaissance man in Worland built, and then he developed cancer, and he wanted his friend, his name is Carl Benz. He wanted his friend Cal Fulfer to put his ashes on that ship and basically send it out into a reservoir, Boyson Reservoir, and burn it down. His friend didn't want to do that. Cal wanted to put it into a museum. And after his friend died, that happened this year when the Whirling Museum was willing to take the ship. And the hope is that this ship, which is a model of the USS Constitution, a perfect model of the USS Constitution, including furniture in the captain's cabin in the back. His hope is that it's going to be able to be shared at other museums. It's really a fantastic piece of art.”
The intricately detailed 1/4-inch-to-1-foot-scaled ship includes cannon balls on the brass monkey, nautical knots in ropes laid on the deck, and furniture in the captain’s cabin. It is made of oak, just like the real ship that was constructed in 1797 and remains the oldest U.S. Navy vessel still afloat, docked in the Charlestown Navy Yard in Massachusetts.
Read the full story HERE.
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A 95-year-old Cheyenne woman was going through keepsakes when she rediscovered an extortion letter threatening to kill her husband, the president of a Cheyenne bank, and kidnap her family. Cowboy State Daily’s Zak Sonntag reports that the note was dated July 1, 1972, and addressed to her husband, Bill Allen, then president of Cheyenne National Bank.
“He gets a letter at work that says ‘you need to deliver $2,000 to the Albany Hotel by 10 a.m. on July 3, or your family will be kidnapped and I will kill you myself.’ It's a handwritten letter. It's in cursive, and he gets it. The story goes that he calls his wife and he says, ‘Keep the kids inside. Don't go near the windows. I'll deal with this.’ And the way he dealt with it was by coming up with fake money that looked like real money. He cut up sectioned paper that looked like an envelope of cash, and he delivered it to the Albany Hotel.”
Archival newspaper accounts and court records identify the culprit as Bernard Frank Sewell, a 51-year-old drifter with a long criminal history. By the end of that same week, Sewell turned himself in to authorities — for a separate crime.
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.
