Booms and busts best describe Wyoming’s long cycles of economic development. And it looks like we are in the midst of another boom. Yay!
The poster child for this latest boom is the announcement that a $66 billion development is on the drawing board for an isolated area of eastern Fremont County near Lost Cabin.
Earlier this year, another data center project, with a projected cost of $26 billion, was announced near the border of Platte and Goshen counties. At the time, I speculated that it might be the biggest project ever planned for Wyoming.
Now comes this Lost Cabin project, which dwarfs even that one. Amazing!
By comparison, the gigantic new nuclear power plant planned near Kemmerer, with much of its backing coming from billionaire Bill Gates, is valued at about $4 billion.
These are staggering numbers for a state with fewer than 600,000 people.
Series Of Booms And Busts
Historian Phil Roberts has documented 14 Wyoming booms and busts through the 1980s, drawing on his work as one of our state’s foremost keepers of historical facts. Roberts is somebody we can trust to know his history.
Since then, we have experienced the boom of 2002-2012, and now we appear to be entering another one. Does that make this our 16th documented boom? Probably, although keeping score of Wyoming’s economic cycles is not an exact science.
When you live in a commodity state like Wyoming, you learn to live with a boom-and-bust mentality. When things are good, they can be truly wonderful. When things are bad, they can be just horrible.
And we have seen both extremes.
One More Boom?
The most famous bumper sticker in Wyoming history probably read: “Lord, Please Give Me One More Boom. This Time I Promise Not To Piss It Away.”
That sentiment pretty well sums up our state’s economic history.
It is also important to remember that most of our recent booms have been relatively short-lived, often lasting only five to 10 years. One bust I lived through lasted 20 years, from 1982 to 2002. That was a long, painful dry spell.
You cannot write about Wyoming booms without writing about the busts.
Former Gov. Ed Herschler always said my hometown of Lander was the hardest-hit town in Wyoming during that long downturn. I remember one time when we had 600 homes in foreclosure.
Lander lost 550 high-paying jobs at the U.S. Steel mine on South Pass, about 35 miles away. Fremont County also lost 2,000 uranium-mining jobs in the Jeffrey City and Gas Hills areas.
Those losses devastated families, businesses and entire communities.
Today, Lander is a prosperous, tourism-oriented town with virtually no sign of its former mining economy. Newcomers sometimes refuse to believe that Lander and the surrounding area were once such important mining centers.
But they were. And then, alas, they were not.
The Rocky Mountain News, the Denver-based newspaper that was once among the largest between Chicago and Los Angeles, did a front-page feature in its Sunday edition showing a deserted Main Street in Lander.
The headline was two words: “Modern Ghost Town.”
That was then. This is now.
Energy Breadbasket Of America
If you read Cowboy State Daily over the past year, you have seen a steady parade of stories about huge projects being proposed, developed or expanded all over Wyoming. They involve all sorts of energy industries, along with the new technology that requires enormous amounts of electricity.
Our traditional industries of coal, oil, natural gas, trona and uranium continue to produce. But a whole new cast of players is joining the show.
One of the biggest developments is the approximately $4 billion TerraPower nuclear power plant being built in Kemmerer. The project, backed by billionaire Bill Gates, represents a major new chapter in Wyoming’s energy story.
The possibility of smaller nuclear plants being built in Wyoming also gained attention when L&H Industrial in Gillette became involved with one of the nation’s major developers of small nuclear power technology.
Then there are those enormous data center projects near Lost Cabin and along the Platte-Goshen county line.
Facebook parent company Meta also has plans for a multibillion-dollar enterprise data center project near Cheyenne.
These facilities require vast amounts of electricity, and Wyoming has something increasingly valuable to offer: energy resources, open spaces and room to grow.
Meanwhile, more computer centers may find their way to Wyoming, attracted by our open spaces, relatively low humidity and access to energy resources. Solar farms and major wind-energy projects continue to move from drawing boards toward reality.
Put all these developments together, and the beginning of the second quarter of the 21st century looks like one of the most promising periods in Wyoming history.
Our longtime claim that Wyoming is the “Energy Breadbasket of America” is sounding more genuine all the time.
Who Will Benefit?
There is one potential downside for those of us who want to see Wyoming prosper.
Many of these enormous projects are financed by out-of-state investors and international companies. The money, ownership and eventual profits may come from somewhere else, even if the projects are built in our backyard.
That raises some important questions. How many jobs will these developments create for Wyoming residents? How much tax revenue will remain here? Will local businesses benefit? And will our communities be better off for having them?
Those are questions worth asking, even as we celebrate the possibilities.
Still, it is exciting to see the outside world discovering the Cowboy State. Investors from across the country and around the globe are looking at Wyoming in a new way.
After all those years of busts, empty storefronts and abandoned mining towns, it is hard not to get excited about the prospect of another boom.
So, Lord, how about giving us one more?
This time, let's see if we can make it last.
Bill can be reached at Bill@CowboyStateDaily.com
