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

Renée Jean

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's managing editor, Greg Johnson.

Greg Johnson

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

Andrew Rossi

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Coy Knobel

Don Day Weather

Mostly sunny in Wyoming on Monday with chance of rain in west and central Wyoming. Chance of rain overnight. Hot with highs mainly in the 80s and 90s. Lows from the mid 40s to mid 60s.

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

Patchy smoke after 1 p.m., partly sunny today with a high near 91 and wind gusts as high as 20 mph. Breezy, cloudy then gradually becoming partly cloudy overnight with a low near 60 and wind gusts as high as 25 mph.

Chance of rain mainly after 5 p.m., patchy smoke after noon, partly sunny today with a high near 92 and wind gusts as high as 24 mph. Partly cloudy and breezy overnight with a slight chance of rain before 8 p.m., a low near 59 and wind gusts as high as 30 mph.

 Slight chance of rain after 5 p.m., patchy smoke, partly sunny today with a high near 93 and wind gusts as high as 24 mph. Partly cloudy and breezy overnight with a slight chance of rain before 11 p.m., a low near 60 and wind gusts as high as 29 mph.

 Chance of rain mainly after 3 p.m., mostly cloudy today with a high near 85 and mostly cloudy overnight with a slight chance of rain before midnight and a low near 49.

  Slight chance of rain after 5 p.m., patchy smoke, partly sunny and breezy today with a high near 90 and wind gusts as high as 20 mph. Mostly cloudy overnight with a slight chance of rain before 8 p.m. and a low near 56.

Patchy smoke before 10 a.m., chance of rain, otherwise partly sunny today with a high near 85 and mostly cloudy overnight with a slight chance of rain mainly after 2 a.m. and a low near 50.

Chance of rain mainly after 2 p.m., mostly cloudy today with a high near 82 and wind gusts as high as 22 mph. Cloudy then becoming partly cloudy late overnight with a chance of rain and a low near 48.

 Chance of rain, mostly cloudy today with a high near 86 and mostly cloudy overnight with a chance of rain and a low near 51.

  Patchy smoke before 11 a.m., chance of rain mainly after 2 p.m., mostly cloudy today with a high near 84 and wind gusts as high as 21 mph. Cloudy then becoming partly cloudy late overnight with a chance of rain and a low near 47.

 Rain likely, mostly cloudy today with a high near 78 and wind gusts as high as 20 mph. Mostly cloudy overnight with a chance of rain and a low near 49.

  Chance of rain mainly after 3 p.m., mostly cloudy today with a high near 86 and wind gusts as high as 20 mph. Cloudy then gradually becoming partly cloudy overnight with a chance of rain and a low near 52.

Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park

:  Chance of rain, mostly cloudy today with a high near 78 and wind gusts as high as 21 mph. Mostly cloudy overnight with a chance of rain mainly before midnight and a low near 44.

Chance of rain mainly after 5 p.m., otherwise partly sunny today with a high near 92 and wind gusts as high as 20 mph. Mostly cloudy and breezy overnight with a chance of rain mainly before 11 p.m., a low near 60 and wind gusts as high as 21 mph.

:  Chance of rain, otherwise partly sunny and breezy today with a high near 81 and wind gusts as high as 23 mph. Mostly cloudy overnight with a chance of rain and a low near 59.

  Chance of rain mainly after 2 p.m., increasing clouds today with a high near 83 and wind gusts as high as 22 mph. Mostly cloudy overnight with a chance of rain, a low near 57 and wind gusts as high as 20 mph.

  Chance of rain mainly after 3 p.m., otherwise partly sunny today with a high near 84 and mostly cloudy overnight with a chance of rain before 1 a.m., a low near 61 and wind gusts as high as 20 mph.

  Slight chance of rain after 4 p.m., otherwise partly sunny today with a high near 88 and mostly cloudy overnight with a chance of rain and a low near 59.

:  Slight chance of rain after 4 p.m., otherwise partly sunny today with a high near 86 and wind from 11-16 mph. Mostly cloudy overnight with a chance of rain and a low near 58.

Partly sunny today with a high near 91 and wind gusts as high as 28 mph. Mostly cloudy overnight with a chance of rain before midnight, a low near 61 and wind gusts as high as 25 mph.

  Slight chance of rain after 3 p.m., otherwise mostly sunny today with a high near 94 and wind gusts as high as 20 mph. Mostly cloudy overnight with a slight chance of rain, a low near 66 and wind gusts as high as 25 mph.

:  Mostly sunny today with a high near 95 and wind gusts as high as 24 mph. Mostly cloudy overnight with a chance of rain before midnight, a low near 63 and wind gusts as high as 22 mph.

  Mostly sunny and hot today with a high near 99 and becoming mostly clear overnight with a low near 65.

  Mostly sunny and hot today with a high near 92 and mostly cloudy overnight with a low near 60 and wind gusts as high as 25 mph.

  Patchy smoke after 3 p.m., slight chance of rain after 5 p.m., otherwise mostly sunny today with a high near 90 mostly cloudy overnight with a slight chance of rain before 11 p.m., a low near 59 and wind gusts as high as 22 mph.

  Mostly sunny and hot today with a high near 92 and partly cloudy overnight with a low near 59.

  Partly sunny today with a high near 86 and gradually becoming mostly clear overnight with a low near 54.

  Partly sunny and hot today with a high near 90 and becoming mostly clear overnight with a low near 53.

  Partly sunny today with a high near 89 and gradually becoming mostly clear overnight with a low near 56.

  Partly sunny and hot today with a high near 90 and partly cloudy overnight with a low near 54.

  Partly sunny today with a high near 88 and gradually becoming mostly clear overnight with a low near 54.

Daycap no play 7 6 26

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

<title>Don Day's Wyoming Weather Forecast: Monday, July 6, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Don Day's Wyoming Weather Forecast: Monday, July 6, 2026

Mac Watson

Daily Video News

It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Monday, July 6th.  I’m Mac Watson

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"–"}]

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. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"},{"type":"italic"}],"text":"–"}]

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. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"– "}]

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.

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. 

I’ll have more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.

Cowboy State Daily News continues now….

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.

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.”

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, 

 June 16 in Laramie County District Court, urging the court to make the board follow the law and to declare the law constitutional.

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.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"—"}]

And that’s today’s news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on 

 - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our 

 channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app.  Thanks for watching - I’m Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.

News image v2 7 6 26

<title>Cowboy State Daily Video Newscast: Monday, July 6, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Monday's headlines include:
* Rampant Feral Dogs
* Prairie Grizzlies On The Move
* Jackson Couple Gives Away Ranch

Cowboy State Daily Video Newscast: Monday, July 6, 2026

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

DUBOIS — When Marion Taylor talks about America, there’s a little catch in her voice that she just can’t help any more than she can help how her eyes start misting over.

That was doubly true Saturday on a flag-lined main street in a tiny Wyoming mountain town, where thousands gathered to celebrate America’s 250th birthday by watching one of the nation’s most unique parades. 

Each year, Dubois fields something few towns or cities of any size could manage — a parade of roughly two dozen military tanks and other vehicles, hand-picked by National Museum of Military Vehicles founder Dan Starks to tell a sweeping story of American freedom.

“This means something to me because I wasn’t a natural born U.S. citizen,” Taylor told Cowboy State Daily. “I immigrated from Canada as a child and we were so — I can almost cry, thinking about it.”

The memory that came flooding back was a much smaller, quieter parade when she was being sworn in as a U.S. citizen at 19 years old.

“I was living in Missouri back then, and we went to St. Louis to the big courthouse,” she said.

Taylor said she remembers Wold War veterans at the courthouse as a color guard for the ceremony.

Taylor’s eyes light up when she talks about how Dubois celebrates the Fourth of July. 

“Last year we had 3,000 people here winding the streets for the parade,” she said. “And this year, I think it’ll be the same, or maybe more. Everybody wants to come to the Dubois parade because we have the military vehicles. 

"It’s the most unique parade in America.”

That uniqueness doesn’t come without logistical headaches. Shutting down a state highway, even for a short time, takes serious coordination with the Wyoming Department of Transportation. 

“They give us a set amount of time to close the road and get the parade through,” she said. “But we still get it done.”

Last year, Mother Nature stepped in with her own deadline, splashing onlookers with a sudden storm that came blowing down the mountain. 

“The wind was blowing dirt in our eyes and taking people’s hats and chairs and everything,” she said. 

People came back anyway, she added with a proud smile. 

It’s the tanks, she acknowledges. They are just irresistible.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Rolling History Lesson "}]

For the crowd lining both sides of U.S. Highway 26 through Dubois, also known as Ramshorn Highway, the tank parade is pure spectacle — and they love it. 

The roar of the engines rumbling down the streets and echoing off the Wind River Mountains as they belch diesel smoke is what it’s all about.  

For Starks, though, the spectacle is actually a carefully chosen curation of American military history.  

“On the lineup of vehicles, the first thing I like to have is an array,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “And each year I like to include vehicles that people haven’t seen before.”

Among this year’s standouts was an M110 self-propelled Howitzer, a hulking piece of bristling Cold War history to send rolling down the street.

“It’s the biggest howitzer, the largest diameter howitzer,” Starks said. “They’re firing the largest shell of any howitzer in the U.S. military inventory, and it was capable of firing a nuclear projectile.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"\"So, that’s pretty cool.”"}]

Not all the vehicles are about shock and awe. 

Starks wants the convoy to tell a coherent story, one that teases people and encourages them to want to learn more. 

This year’s biggest teaser was a World War II halftrack named Krystyna, with a special story pulled from the shadow world of espionage.

Krystyna was “a daring Polish aristocrat,” Starks said. 

“She was Winston Churchill’s favorite World War II spy,” he said. “This halftrack was restored over in Europe by a group that had particular connections with the Polish military and knew the story of this Polish spy … and decided to name this halftrack after her.”

Dubois has but one hour for its big military tank parade. It’s an hour that turns the pages of history, with vehicles normally only seen behind museum ropes. 

Bringing them out to an American main street in a small town like Dubois is something Starks believes happens nowhere else in the country. 

“It’s not that nobody else has a military vehicle in a parade,” he said. “I’m sure there are plenty of military vehicles here and there, but nothing like this.”

It’s the depth and breadth of those military vehicles, spanning 80 years of history, that’s unmatched. 

“I haven’t verified it, but I’ve been around a long time and I’ve worked with lots and lots of people,” he said. “And I consistently hear nobody else does this.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Big Flag For Big Birthday"}]

The people who come to watch Dubois Fourth of July tank parade are just as varied as the military convoy itself. 

One family from Riverton, for example, stood out from the crowd for the unusual flag they were waving around. 

It was not just large, but also proclaimed America 250. 

Matt Burrell found the flag when he was searching around online for something special to mark the occasion. 

“I didn’t know what yet, but then I saw that right off the bat on Amazon,” he said. “And I said, ‘That’s it.’”

Burrell showed up in Dubois last year on a whim with his two young children. This year, it was not just a plan, but a full-blown getaway.

They stayed in the KOA campground, which impressed them with its indoor swimming pool, as well as activities like gold mining for the kids.

“You buy a bag of dirt and you can run it through the water and do the whole process,” he said with a chuckle. “I don’t know if you ever find anything like gold.”

But fun was the real gold he was looking for.

Not everyone in the crowd was feeling their best. 

A woman from Casper admitted she’d been sick for two weeks and was still on a mostly “bland cracker diet.”

The thought of staying home for America’s 250th, though, was unimaginable.

“I’m old enough that I can remember the 200th anniversary in 1976 and how special it was and how lucky I felt, even back then, at a child’s age, just to celebrate,” she said. “And here we are again. 

"I know America’s not perfect. I know we have our problems. But it’s still the absolute best place in the world. And Wyoming is the only place I ever want to live.”

Most years, she and her family go to Cody’s famous Stampede Parade for the Fourth of July, but this year they made a deliberate pivot to Dubois to see the tanks.

“We wanted to experience the tanks and the military display, honestly,” she said. “Dubois is absolutely just outstanding. So beautiful.”

On one corner of main street Dubois, a man named Steve Burgess offered a simple card table draped in red, white, and blue and piled with free flags, whirligigs, and mints.

“I love this country,” he told Cowboy State Daily, gesturing to the table. “This country has been good to me and my family, and I like to celebrate along with everybody else and give out flags and whirlybirds and mints and just enjoy the day.”

This was the third year Burgess offered patriotic accessories set out on what looked like a handmade, crocheted tablecloth.

“I did not make it,” he admitted. “I bought it at the Op Shop — Opportunity Shop. St. Thomas Episcopal Church runs it.”

Burgess had gone there specifically to find a tablecloth, but wasn’t expecting to find something quite so perfect. 

America’s 250th is special to Burgess because the miracle still persists, despite all the tensions and challenges.

“We’ve got a great country in spite of some of the differences we share,” he said. “Long story short, it’s the greatest country in the world and it’s survived 250 years. History says our nation should not be here, that it should have run its course in about 200 years. 

“Well, we’re 50 years over what the expectancy is throughout history. So that’s a win, and it means that a lot of people sacrificed for the freedom that we enjoy to this day, and I do not take that lightly.”

For Kevin and Josh Gentile of Casper — father and son, Navy and Marine Corps service, respectively — America’s 250th birthday is something they feel deeply. 

“Both of us have served our country,” Kevin said. “He did four years in the Marine Corps, and I did four years in the Navy. I felt it was important to serve my country if I’m going to enjoy its freedoms.”

Kevin remembers America’s 200th birthday in 1976, and seeing another one with his son is beyond special. 

The National Museum of Military Vehicles, meanwhile, is “mind-boggling.” 

“The freedom, the country … this is the greatest country in the world, as far as I’m concerned,” Kevin said. “And this (parade) is just a great event to celebrate that.”

Kevin loved what he saw in Dubois — people from all walks of life coming together.

“You hear about all the controversies that are going on,” he said. “But here we are, and people are happy, people are friendly. It’s a really great thing. It makes you feel good to be here.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The 'Genius' Of America "}]

For Taylor, who has watched both America 200 and now America 250, the real strength she sees in the country isn’t that everyone agrees all the time. It’s that they don’t, and yet still find ways to work together. 

“If you love this country, you’re going to come together,” she said. “I used to work for a lady who was very left, and we were great friends.”

Taylor’s friend made great homemade sourdough bread, while Taylor made all the fillings. 

“We never got in each other’s way,” Taylor said. “I had her do the salads and she made the bread. I made the sandwiches, and the special, and I baked the desserts. 

"We got along so well, and we were different political realms completely. I was right, she was left, but we didn’t care. We’re still friends.”

Her takeaway from that as an American is simple.

“You don’t have to get mad at people because they’re a different affiliation,” she said. “Just agree to disagree, that’s it.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Disagreement Built America"}]

Disagreement, Starks said, is part of what built the country that America is now. 

Though today, the Founding Fathers are often referred to as though they were of one mind and one body, the truth is they were men who had vehement disagreements with each other over a range of divisive issues, from slavery to federalism, he said.

Their “genius,” Starks said, was working together in spite of that and creating a new country where the principal remains all men are created equal.

“People think, ‘Oh the country is going to hell because look at all the divisiveness,'” Starks said. “But that’s just typical. That’s what happens in a country like us, that has as many different people, with so many different life experiences, different backgrounds, different values. 

"What we hold in common is the value of being Americans and the value of finding a way to thread the needle and get an acceptable path through all these differences. That’s what we’re celebrating today.”

And that’s what Starks saw on full display as he drove one of his own military vehicles in the small-town parade that shuts down a state highway every year so history and freedom can roll down a main street in America and celebrate everything that makes it great. 

It’s a spectacle that tells a story in steel and diesel and thousands of human voices, like the immigrant who still cries when she remembers a World War color guard escort when she became a citizen. 

Or a woman too sick to eat much more than crackers but who can’t miss America’s 250th birthday. Or the veterans who gathered to cheer tanks rolling down the streets of town for a country they loved enough to serve in the military.

This 250th Fourth of July, one thin slice of America in Dubois, Wyoming, offered a larger glimpse of a nation that can still come together and celebrate when it really matters.

Dubois Fourth of July 20260704 1500340 7 4 26

<title>Dubois’ One-Of-A-Kind Military Tank Parade Celebrates America's 250th | Cowboy State Daily</title>

On America’s 250th, Dubois did something few towns in America can do — fielding a parade with more than two dozen military tanks and vehicles spanning 80 years of U.S. history. "It’s the most unique parade in America,” said one patriotic-feeling parade-goer.

Dubois’ One-Of-A-Kind Military Tank Parade Celebrates America's 250th

Energy

Jeffrey City is best known for uranium and near abandonment after the yellowcake market crashed in the 1980s. 

But things are looking up for the near-ghost town in the central desert region of Fremont County. 

And that’s not because of Wyoming’s renewed uranium rush or Visionary Metals’ new nickel project nearby. 

Jeffrey City, which has about 60 residents after boasting around 4,000 during its uranium heyday, could be poised for a brand-new industry thanks to a Canadian geologist named Jean-Pierre Jutras, who said he’s on the verge of finding significant new sources of both ornamental and gem-quality jade.

“Wyoming jade is legendary in the circles of jade carvers,” Jutras told Cowboy State Daily. “Production has been curtailed for a long time, and everything’s been looked at quite a bit and picked over, but when I looked at Wyoming as a geologist, what struck me was that there was barely any information at all on the geology.”

Jutras’ company, Jade Leader, is taking a similar tack to that of 

, which is using new geological knowledge and new technology to uncover deeper veins of gold in the South Pass area and other Wyoming locations.

“We just decided to take a hard look and see if the sources of a lot of the surface material that was collected from the '30s all the way to the '70s could be identified and if we could understand if there was any significant potential for renewed production.”

At one time, Wyoming had so much jade laying around on the surface people could walk around and pluck it straight from the sagebrush.

That supported roughly 868 tons of jade production from the 1930s to the 1970s. There was even a company devoted to jewelry production that was sending 18 tons of materials into the world annually, to Taiwan, New Zealand, Europe, and Far Eastern countries.

But as the easy jade became rarer and rarer, the state could no longer support the scale anymore. 

Wyoming’s decline happened about the same time as the Canadian jade industry was starting to rise.

How A Canadian Became A ‘Jade-aholic’

Growing up in Canada, Jutras was interested in rocks and geology from a young age. A career as a geologist only seemed logical. 

In the 1980s, he was gifted some jade from a mine he was allowed to visit, which honed his interest in this semiprecious stone formed by intense environmental conditions found deep underground. 

“I took that home and I’ve been cutting and carving jade and other gemstones ever since then, alongside my geological career,” he said. “So I kind of became a jade-aholic very quickly, very early.”

It wasn’t until he was invited to a jade-carving competition in China, though, that he realized just how interesting — and valuable — jade is.

“To me, jade was like the little souvenirs and tourist shop pieces,” he said. “Once in a while there’s a historical piece that’s really nice. So I went to this festival not knowing what to expect.”

When he arrived at the Zi Gang Bei Festival in Suzhou, he witnessed a spectacle unlike any he’d never seen.

There were 550 competing jade carvers who had brought more than 1,100 pieces for judging. 

During the three-day event, more than 90,000 visitors streamed in to admire the pieces entered in the competition, as well as to buy jade. 

“I was so impressed, first, because of the quality of the carvings that were there, valued in the millions of dollars per piece,” Jutras said. “And we saw jades of all qualities. We saw carvings from Guatemala, New Zealand, Germany, Canada, the U.S., and, of course, China. And I looked at all of this and went, ‘I’m missing something here. How did I not know about this?’”

Known for uranium and then near-abandonment, Jeffrey City is getting a second look from a Canadian geologist who says new science — and evolving markets — could turn Wyoming’s deposits of jade into a new industry for the tiny almost-ghost town.

CSD Staff

Latest from CSD Staff

Steve Inman: Tuesday, October 8, 2024

Bonus Video 1: Tuesday, October 8, 2024

Bonus Video 2: Tuesday, October 8, 2024

One More For The Road: Tuesday, October 8, 2024

Daily Cartoon: Tuesday, October 8, 2024

You Still Here? Tuesday, October 8, 2024

Wyoming Through The Lens: Tuesday, October 8, 2024

Daily Darwin: Tuesday, October 8, 2024

Letter To The Editor: Wind Turbines Are Destroying Wyoming

Daily Darwin: Monday, October 7, 2024

Today In Politics: Monday, October 7, 2024

Your Wyoming Sunrise: Monday, October 7, 2024

Other Authors

You Still Here? Monday, October 7, 2024

Today In Sports: Monday, October 7, 2024

Bonus Video 1: Monday, October 7, 2024

Cooking With Clair: Monday, October 7, 2024

Daily Smile: Monday, October 7, 2024

One More For The Road: Monday, October 7, 2024

Daily Cartoon 2: Monday, October 7, 2024

Daily Cartoon: Monday, October 7, 2024

Steve Inman: Monday, October 7, 2024