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

Renée Jean

Business & Tourism

Business

Twelve miles shy of the Teton County line on a 40-acre slice of Fremont County with five mountain springs and a creek, Dubois resident Gary Engman is building a 9,000-square-foot, off-grid mansion from reclaimed antique wood that he’s calling the Cowboy Starship.

The property, which has just listed with luxury real estate brokerage Engel and Volkers for $7.95 million, is surrounded by the Absaroka and Wind River mountain ranges. Construction is expected to finish sometime in August.

Real estate broker Jo Gathercole said the home has already had a number of international callers expressing interest, and it’s not even finished yet. 

“It’s got solar, it has diesel generators,” she said. “If you wanted internet, you’d put in a Starlink. It’s completely off-grid luxury.”

Off-grid cabins are not unheard of, especially in Wyoming, Gathercole added. But an off-grid mansion?

“It’s unusual. When I first saw it, it was kind of stunning to think he was doing this. He’s more than a builder. I think of him as an artist,” she said about what Engman’s building. "He’s actually creating art with this home, which makes it very unique in my mind.”

Why Pay $40 Million To Be In Teton County?

Engman has chosen his canvas for the home with care. 

“This is just a spectacular location,” he told Cowboy State Daily, gesturing toward Ramshorn Mountain. “And I think the house looks like a starship that’s landed on top of a Wyoming mountain.”

It’s not the first luxury home Engman, a former seafood magnate, has built, and isn’t likely to be the last. 

Engman is betting he can expand the luxury market to this slice of Fremont County with homes priced more favorably when compared to ultra-wealthy Jackson Hole.

Based on his research, Engman believes this is the first large-scale, ultra-luxury spec home built in Fremont County. 

The home, Engman said, is comparable to some of the $40 million homes sold in Teton County. 

“One of the houses I’m involved with in Jackson is going on the market for $40 million, and it’s the same size as this,” Engman said. “It’s on 15 acres, and not as nice a lot as this 40 acres. 

"To me, that house is very nice, but not as nice as this one.”

He gestured toward the corner of a fence line about 1,000 feet from the house and said he’d seen a grizzly bear momma with two cubs eating grass there while he was having lunch Wednesday. 

He’s also seen elk, deer, and antelope browsing through the property's surrounding pastures.

“I have more wildlife on my ranch than there is in Yellowstone,” he said with a chuckle. “This is going to, I know this will sell quickly. 

"When you look at all the traffic and congestion in Jackson now, and you can buy, for under $10 million, a 40-acre property with a 9,000-square-foot house an hour from the Jackson airport or 20 minutes from the Dubois airport, where you can land any private jet and you save $30 million?”

In his mind, that $30 million covers a private jet and then some, making his property a much more logical deal for those who want to be in or near Jackson Hole. 

His company located in Dubois also supplied the reclaimed, antique lumber that 

 near Saratoga used to built The Farm, Engman said. 

Restoration Lumber Co. produces 2 million to 3 million board feet of reclaimed antique lumber annually and employs 30-40 people.

For the Cowboy Starship, he’s using redwood planks sourced from Napa Valley’s enormous wine vats for the deck, giving their surface a patina of old purples and reddish brown. 

Overhead, vintage 1910 heavy trusses salvaged from Bumble Bee’s salmon cannery in Washington span the ceilings, tying the mansion to a working waterfront that no longer exists. 

“Everything here has a story, a history,” he said. “It has provenance.”

Not only do they tell a story, they are massively strong. They’ll hold a snow load up to 200 pounds per square foot, Engman said.

The front door, a massive dark brown, is made from old-growth redwood planks transported to the Sea of Cortez more than 150 years ago. They were salvaged from an Indonesian shipwreck.

The double doors to either side are salvaged Yosemite Pine cut to build booming mine towns in California and date to around 1860.

Gold mines, saw mills, cannery operations — Engman only buys wood from places he is sure can’t be saved or that have no historical value. 

Dismantling is done surgically, cataloguing each beam, which will later be custom cut to size for its new home.

Inside the Cowboy Starship, he’s bringing special reclaimed items for the interior, including an ornate bar from the old Wyoming bar in Lander, built in 1890. He sees that as a particular centerpiece with its ornately carved wood and mirrored face. 

Beyond the bar are picture windows framed with more antique wood, which in turn frame up Ramshorn Mountain like art in a museum. To get to the breathtaking view, Engman wants people to know they’re not just crossing a room. They’re crossing centuries of history.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"For The Love Of History"}]

Engman’s obsession with history tracks back to an old saw mill he bought to reclaim its wood after he decided to pivot from a business selling log cabin kits to buyers in Japan.

“It had a lot of spirit to it,” Engman said. “Something about the spirit of that 150-year-old wood somehow got into my psyche. A lot of these saw mills and salmon canneries were all going out of business. So these huge buildings, built in the 1800s, became available. 

“I started buying any of them that I could. I’ve bought enough buildings and antique wood to probably build 1,000 homes of this size.”

Still, he has a code about which buildings he will buy for salvage.

“If a structure can be saved and has any historical value, I will not take it down,” he said. “I very much believe in living history. For instance, if somebody came to me and said, ‘I’ve got this big barn in North Dakota, will you purchase it or I’ll give it to you if y ou take it down?’ I’ve never taken down a barn because I feel that would be destroying our heritage.”

If they still wanted to sell or give it away, he’d work with the owner to put together an organization to raise money to save the barn rather than destroy it. 

“I’ve done that probably a dozen times,” he said. “There’ll be a big barn or something that really can be saved, I’ll donate all the material to save it.”

It’s important for future generations to see the past in full living color, Engman said.

“To see and understand what the pioneers and the Native American people went through, just to survive in this country,” he said. “You destroy all the beautiful antique structures and replace them with trailer parks, what is an 18-year-old going to learn from that?”

Engman’s obsession with history doesn’t stop at salvaged timbers. He sits on the board for Fremont County’s museum foundation. 

Once the Cowboy Starship is complete, he plans to host a party there as a fundraiser where he expects to raise around $100,000 by donating a weeklong charter on his 110-foot super yacht. He’s also considering a historical display of recent artifacts he found while traveling through Arizona.

It’s also important to Engman to build new structures that can become one-of-a-kind legacies, like the Cowboy Starship near Dubois.

That one is actually the second of the “starships.” The first was a 20,000-square-foot mansion Sun Valley at a ski resort in Idaho.

Sun Valley, Engman said, is “probably the most popular ski resort in the United States,” and offers a different kind of setting. There’s world-class skiing, a celebrity cachet, and a market that’s used to ultra-luxury builds. 

The success of that project helped set the template for what he’s now doing in Fremont County, but this time he’s betting on something a little different than a crowded ski town.

“That was my last house,” Engman said. “It took me a year and half to finish that one. And then I bought the ranch here (near Dubois) with the idea of building a spec house. 

“I don’t need to sell it. Maybe I won’t sell it,” he added, staring down at the corner where the grizzly momma played with her cubs the day before. 

Then he flashed a smile and said, “But I probably will, and then I’ll just build another one.”

Cowboy Starship 20260716 135719 7 19 26

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

<title>Inside The ‘Cowboy Starship,’ A $7.95 Million Off-Grid Mansion In Remote Wyoming | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Dubois man is betting a remote 9,000-square-foot, $7.95 million off-grid mansion made from reclaimed wood can lure Jackson Hole-level buyers across the Teton County line to Fremont County. “I have more wildlife on my ranch than Yellowstone,” he said.

Inside The ‘Cowboy Starship,’ A $7.95 Million Off-Grid Mansion In Remote Wyoming

Outdoors

Public Lands

The moment a hiker or biker walks into the Atlantic City Mercantile on a hot July summer day, Carl Freeman can instantly tell which ones are coming in from Wyoming’s Red Desert on the Continental Divide Trail.

“They are so happy to be here,” Freeman told Cowboy State Daily. “There’s no water out there. No trees for a hundred miles.”

Ice cream is a popular choice for the hikers and mountainbikers coming in from the Red Desert. But they’re also buying lots of high-protein, high-calorie foodlike burgers and fries to fuel up for the next leg of the trail. And copious amounts of their favorite fluids.

“It’s put Atlantic City on the map in that community,” Freeman said of those who travel the trail. “We’ve become known. They’ve told us that it’s within their community. 

“Apparently, they have some type of apps that they all communicate with.”

On that app, he’s been told there are dozens of reviews advising fellow hikers and bikers, “You’ve got to stop for a burger at the Merc.”

The traffic from that rave review is hit and miss, Freeman said. 

But every bit helps a small restaurant located in a community that has roughly 60 people in it. 

“We’re also in a book of 1,000 places to see before you die,” Freeman added with a chuckle. “It’s a good customer base. They come through and they’re looking for a lot of fish, a lot of chicken, a lot of liquid. They tank up and then they’re gone.”

Trail Towns Are Lifelines For Hikers, Bikers

Atlantic City isn’t the only community along the trail’s 510 miles through Wyoming that’s getting a big boost from Continental Divide hikers and bikers. 

Farther south, trail towns like Encampment, Riverside, and Rawlins have quietly become lifelines for hikers and mountain bike riders — aka bikepackers — moving along the Continental Divide Trail and the parallel Great Divide bike route.

Long distance hikers will typically spend $8,000 to $9,000 over the course of a through-hike, Wyoming Pathways Executive Director Mike Kusiek told Cowboy State Daily. 

A big chunk of that change lands in smaller Wyoming towns, where it’s spent on food, gear, lodging, and the occasional celebratory splurge.

A recent CDT Trail Coalition Survey that included 200 business owners along the entire 3,028-mile trail from the U.S.-Mexico border in New Mexico to the border with Canada in Montana found that 88% of communities along the trail report significant business growth the last five years thanks to the Continental Divide Trail. 

And 58% also said the trail had directly grown their businesses. 

Kusiek said he's not surprised Atlantic City is seeing the benefits. 

“Atlantic City was one of the early adopters for both the cyclists and the hikers,” he said. “They are aggressively marketing for those folks to stop, and they’re accommodating them with lodging, mail delivery, showers, and meals. 

"And they really try to go out of their way, too, because some of (the hikers and bikers) are heading into the Red Desert.”

Pinedale and Lander, too, have embraced the Continental Divide trekkers, whether on foot or bicycle.

That welcoming attitude is something Kusiek believes can make a difference for towns along the way.

“When you’re known as a community that endorses the trip, you’re telling the hikers we look forward to you coming to town,” he said. “We’re going to make it easy for you. We’re going to accommodate you.”

Kusiek knows of people who have hitchhiked into town specifically to go to the Wild Iris to buy new shoes and other gear that’s worn out on the trail.

“There’s some pretty neat statistics on how many pairs of shoes the CDT hikers go through,” he said. “They’re going through roughly five to seven pairs of shoes per hiker, and those shoes they’re buying are typically $140 to $180 a pair. So that’s $700 to $1,000 in footwear per hiker.”

The Laundromat That’s Like A Living Room

In Lander, one of the most beloved trail stops isn’t a bar or a gear shop, but a laundromat.

Sophel Thompson’s On Site Laundry has become an unofficial living room for Continental Divide hikers and Great Divide bikepackers rolling through town. 

Inside, weary travelers can wash away a week’s worth of trail dust from their clothes, grab a hot shower while they wait, and access WiFi to message family and friends with a beer or a boba tea, as well as finger foods like gyoza or shrimp tempura.

“To have a shower-laundry place is spectacular for us,” Haleigh Swabowicz told Cowboy State Daily as she munched on a plate of chicken fingers and fries. 

Swabowicz and her trail friend, Willie Hammond, found the laundromat on an app that lists water sources, good camping sites, and other helpful resources for people doing the Continental Divide Trail. 

“I saw quite a few comments about this place,” Swabowicz said. “Because hikers are stinky. We go along time in between laundry and shower. So I was in need of that. And there were a bunch of comments about this place. 

"Super convenient. You can get coffee, you can get ice cream, chips and salsa, and also do shower and laundry for a pretty reasonable price, which we love.”

Hammond said it was the first time he’d seen a place like the laundromat, where so many needs are met all in one place.

“Boba, beer, food, sugar — everything,” he said. 

“We went to a bunch of laundromats, but it’s just your typical boring laundromat,” Swabowicz added. “This is really cool. We’re having fun hanging out here. The showers were really nice, too.

“Usually, if you’re paying for a shower somewhere it’s kind of gross, but this was clean and there was soap, shampoo and conditioner, and towels. Everything you need.”

Atlantic City didn’t have many resupply options, Hammond added, so that’s one reason the duo decided to skip that town in favor of Lander.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Meet Me Halfway In Rawlins"}]

If Atlantic City and Lander show what happens when individual businesses have embraced Divide hikers and bikepackers, Rawlins shows what happens when an entire town does.

Rawlins sits on what local boosters call “the X” — a rare crossroads where the transcontinental rail corridor, the Lincoln Highway, the old transcontinental airmail route, the Continental Divide Trail and the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route all converge in one place.

It’s an incredible intersection of history and recreation, Rawlins tourism officials have previously told Cowboy State Daily. It’s a place where people can follow old rail and highway stories while hikers and cyclists can trace the spine of the continent.

It’s other claim to fame along the trail is that it’s the halfway point, which lends itself to celebration for these adventurers.

“There’s only three towns that the Continental Divide Trail goes through a downtown, and of those three, we are the halfway point,” Rawlins Downtown Development Director Pam Thayer told Cowboy State Daily. “So, it’s a pretty amazing intersection.”

For decades, that fact has been mostly trivia, but Thayer sees a tourism strategy written all over it. 

“I remember as a kid going to the Four Corners, which was four states at the same time,” she said. “I had one foot on each, and so this is kind of that same feeling.”

She said she hopes people will be attracted to the quirky nature of standing in a community with so many crossroads and plan to make Rawlins a stop — whether they’re hiking or biking the Continental Divide or passing through on Interstate 80. 

Kusiek sees these kind of efforts, from downtown Rawlins’ planning to Atlatnic City’s burgers and ice cream to Lander’s showers, as pieces of the same larger puzzle. 

Gateway communities that have embraced the trail are seeing more benefits than those keeping it at arm’s length. Even relatively modest investments, like Lander allowing free camping in the park, can pay dividends to a community’s businesses.

Trails, Kusiek added, are an investment that gives back for decades without requiring much in the way of expensive maintenance.

“There’s no electricity. There’s no staffing. There’s no infrastructure,” he said. "So, it’s a tremendous investment. The communities that choose to invest in trails build it and pay for it once, and it just keeps bringing people back, year after year, decade after decade.”

Lander’s experience with outdoor recreation, meanwhile, shows how things can snowball. 

Over time, climbers drawn to the nearby cliffs in Lander didn’t just visit. They moved there, started restaurants and coffee shops and other small businesses. 

Continental Divide hikers and Great Divide bikepackers are a new layer on top of that, and they’re helping to fill tables and barstools. 

Some of them might even, at some point, decide Lander’s the place they want to be in the world and build more new businesses.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Slow Travel, Big Spending"}]

Back in Atlantic City, none of the big-picture economics are on the minds of a hiker or biker whose just left the Red Desert sunburned, dust-caked, and thinking mostly about burgers and ice cream.

“We come hungry,” bikepacker Ryan Van Duzer told Cowboy State Daily. “We burn a lot of calories every day when we’re riding our bikes 75 to 100 miles. And when we get into these towns, we spend a lot of money. We’re buying meals. We’re staying at hotels or campsites.”

Duzer hit the trail on his mountain bike because he loves slow travel.

“You get to see the world in a different way, a slower way,” he said. “You get to interact with the people in a way that’s different when you’re in a car just flying by. 

"It’s just a beautiful way to be connected to nature, connected to local communities, and connected to myself.”

Hiker Max Goto stopped for three nights in Lander to spend time with his fiancée, Alexis Gokey. He'son his third long-distance hike after finishing both the Appalachian and Pacific Crest trails. 

He told Cowboy State Daily he’ll spend at least $1,000 a month on his trip. 

In Encampment, one of his first Wyoming stops, he hit the 307 restaurant for breakfast and lunch, resupplied his food at a local gas station, and camped at a donation-based tent area in town. 

In Rawlins, he tried a Thai buffet before pushing on to Atlantic City, South Pass, and Lander.

“I’m already on my fourth pair of shoes,” he said, adding that Lander is where a lot of hikers plan to refresh gear before heading to Pinedale, Dubois, and Yellowstone. 

“I went to two outdoor stores here, Wild Iris and then Wind River Range Outdoors,” Goto added. "I was able to get bug protection and I was also able to get bear spray and a food container to bolster my protection against bears.”

He’s got 1,300 miles to go before he reaches the Canada border and the end of the Continental Divide Trail.

“The CDT is rugged and beautiful, but brutal in a lot of ways,” he said. "It’s the least hiked of all three premier national scenic trails, so there’s a lot of isolation and a lot of really rugged wilderness you’re traversing.”

That makes each of the small Wyoming towns along the way huge, both mentally and physically.

“There’s definitely some times you have a conversation with a marmot or a lizard,” he said. “It’s been challenging. I’m not going to sugarcoat that, but it’s been beautiful.”

Contact Renee Jean at renee@cowboystatedaily.com

Continental Divide Trail 1 7 16 23 7 19 26

<title>Small Wyoming Towns Get Huge Economic Boost From Continental Divide Hikers | Cowboy State Daily</title>

From burgers and ice cream in Atlantic City to showers in Lander to Thai food in Rawlins, hikers on the Continental Divide Trail are giving small Wyoming towns a big economic boost. “It’s put Atlantic City on the map,” said one local business owner.

Small Wyoming Towns Get Huge Economic Boost From Continental Divide Hikers

Zakary Sonntag

Jen Kocher - Headshot CSD

Jen Kocher

Crime & Courts

FREMONT LAKE — High up on the western flank of the Wind River Range in a pontoon boat at an elevation of 7,400 feet, Bill Dohse is searching for dead bodies encased in old barrels on the stark black bottom of the state's deepest lake.

He’s got top technology, a determined team — and a fat chance.

Dohse, president of the nonprofit Organized Search and Rescue (OSAR), is looking for the bodies of Virginia Uden and her two sons — Richard, 11, and Reagan, 10 — who were murdered in 1980 by her ex-husband, Gerald Uden.

Uden claims he put their corpses in barrels and sank them here at Fremont Lake. The problem is he’s claimed a lot of things, and they haven't all added up.

“A lot of people say Uden’s full of BS, and he's just playing games,” said Dohse, a sun-browned man with a buzzcut, looking out on the glassy morning surface of Fremont Lake this past week.

“But our new technology is superior, and I’m hopeful we'll find what we’re after,” he added.

It’s day one of a privately funded mission dubbed Operation Cold Current, the first major search effort for the Uden bodies in more than a decade. Depending who you ask, it may be the biggest fool’s errand in as many years, too.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘I Think I’ve Got Something Here'"}]

Previous searches produced nothing save major costs and frustrations as dark as the lake itself, which with a maximum depth of 610 feet is known by locals as “The Deep.” 

Officials were certain the killer had put them on a goose chase. But Dohse’s intuition has been blaring like a smoke detector that won’t shut off. 

Lo and behold, it suddenly looks as though that gut feeling is dead on.

“Guys, I think I’ve got something here,” said Carter Sinclair, the mission’s drone operator, eyeing a blip on the sonar readout coming from a remote operated vehicle (ROV) on the lakebed below. “It’s about the right size. Let’s go take a look.”

There it is, 388 feet deep: a ribbed and rusted oil drum.

Dohse’s face went slack when he saw the image on the ROV’s controller screen.

Short of breath, sounding both amazed and afraid, his response seemed to channel nearly half a century of wondering.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"“You're f***ing shitting me,” he said."}]

Within the hour, members of Sublette County Sheriff’s Office Tip Top Search and Rescue (TTSAR) were racing across the lake. 

Just like that, a decades-old missing persons case was shocked back to life. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"What Happened In 1980?"}]

The murders of Virginia, Richard and Reagan went unsolved for more than three decades until investigators finally got the lead they needed in 2013. 

Uden testified that he shot his ex-wife and adopted children in their heads with a rifle on Sept. 12, 1980, at a rural crossroads near Pavilion, Wyoming, where he’d lured them under the pretext of going on a hunting trip.

“Richard was standing beside the tailgate of the station wagon, and I shot him behind the ear,” Uden confessed in court in 2013, adding that he shot 10-year-old Reagan behind the ear as well, Cowboy State Daily 

"That took approximately 10 seconds. Reagan saw what was happening, and he ran, and he tripped and he fell in the ditch,” he added.

His reasons for the killings were that Virginia and the boys had become a nuisance in his subsequent marriage to Alice Uden, a woman of kindredly morbid regard. Alice was later found guilty for the murder of her previous husband, Ron Holtz, who she’d killed before meeting Uden. 

Uden said he concealed the bodies of Virginia and the boys in a nearby mine until postmortem gasses dissipated. 

Triple-murderer Gerald Uden says he put the bodies of his 1980 murder victims in barrels and sunk them in Fremont Lake, Wyoming's deepest. Officials were skeptical — until they found a barrel 388-feet deep last week. “You're shi**ing me!” a searcher said.