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Daily Smile: Wednesday, May 6, 2026

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Sometimes it's hard to find a good place to sleep.....

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Andrew Rossi

Around Wyoming

[{"type":"text","text":"After 152 million years, Big Al is back."}]

The Wild West Dino Den will officially open in the Historic Red Shell Schoolhouse in Shell on July 27. The centerpiece exhibit is an exact skeletal replica of “Big Al,” a local icon and one of the most famous dinosaurs ever found.

 found near Shell in 1991. Now, 35 years after its discovery, 

 has brought the famous dinosaur back to its old stomping grounds.

“Big Al’s a big deal for us,” said Erik Kvale, president of the Wild West Dino Den. “Bringing this particular dinosaur back is going to put us on a lot of people’s radars before too long.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Best Of The Best"}]

While countless children and dinosaur enthusiasts know dinosaurs by their scientific names, many people know Big Al on a first-name basis. That’s because this dinosaur’s story is one of the most famous in paleontological history.

The fossilized skeleton of Big Al was found by Swiss paleontologist Kirby Siber in 1991. Because it was on federal land, the specimen was excavated by paleontologists from the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana, the University of Wyoming Geological Museum, and the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Alberta, Canada.

Big Al’s skeleton was 95% complete, making it one of the most complete dinosaur specimens ever found.

The specimen became even more notable when a 2002 paper revealed 19 distinct skeletal injuries and diseases preserved in Big Al’s fossils.  Those afflictions include several fractured ribs, a torn-up hand, and a massive bone infection on the right middle toe.

Big Al was 17 years old when he died and still wasn’t a fully-grown adult. The still-unprecedented number of injuries revealed that this dinosaur was a survivor, despite the pain and debilitating life it would inevitably have endured before its demise.

“Big Al (is famous) because of the record of its life and times in its bones,” John Scannella, the John R. Horner curator of paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies, 

. “The more studies we can apply to this particular dinosaur, applying different techniques and analyses, the more we can learn about that animal’s life and the world around it.”

Big Al’s story was so compelling that it was featured in the 2000 BBC documentary, “Walking with Dinosaurs: The Ballad of Big Al.” The half-hour special, narrated by legendary Shakespearean actor Kenneth Branagh, won two Emmy Awards and made Big Al an international celebrity.

“It is the most famous dinosaur from our area,” Kvale said. “Now, he’s back on his home turf for the first time in 150 million years.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Bring ‘Em Home"}]

The actual fossils of Big Al are in the permanent collections at the Museum of the Rockies, which is a repository for fossils from federal lands. A replica of the finished specimen still stands at the UW Geological Museum.

Big Al returned to Shell in a massive shipping crate last week. It will be officially unveiled to the public when the Wild West Dino Den officially opens Saturday.

“Our non-profit is registered as the Big Horn Basin Dinosaur and Geoscience Center, but we found that name was way too cumbersome,” Kvale said. “The world will know us as The Wild West Dino Den.”

Big Al will hang out in the Shell Schoolhouse for the discernible future, but not forever. Kvale’s goal is to open a permanent 4,000-square-foot museum in Greybull, where Big Al will be joined by replicas of other famous dinosaur specimens from the area.

“This is a big deal for us, but what people will see in Shell is a postage-stamp view of what we hope our larger museum will be like,” he said.

When the Wild West Dino Den opens June 27, people will get to see replicas of two other significant fossil finds from the area.

“Baby Toni” was acquired with a grant from the Big Horn Rural Electric Company. The 5-foot-long baby sauropod was found in the famous Howe-Stephens Quarry, a stone’s throw away from Big Al’s final resting place.

[{"type":"text","text":"“It’s the world's most complete baby sauropod,” Kvale said."}]

The other display is a nest of Allosaurus eggs. The only Allosaurus nest ever found was excavated by the Smithsonian Institution between Greybull and Shell.

“We have casts of 24 reconstructed Allosaurus eggs,” Kvale said. “The other 24 are on display in the Smithsonian’s dinosaur hall.”

Kvale said the museum already has the funds to acquire a replica of another exceptional dinosaur found near Shell. “Sophie,” the world’s most complete Stegosaurus, is on display in the Natural History Museum of London.

“We don’t have room to fit another dinosaur in the Shell Schoolhouse,” Kvale said. “Once we get a bigger museum, Sophie will be right down the pike.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Hometown Hero"}]

On Friday, Kvale and several Wild West Dino Den board members gathered in Shell to assemble Big Al’s skeleton.

The 1:1 replica was purchased from Research Casting International in Ontario, Canada. It’s one of the most renowned companies in the world for skeletal replicas of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals.

“They were very excited about Big Al coming home,” Kvale said. “They said they’d share the link to our museum on their website, so they’ll be giving us international attention.”

Everyone who helped assemble Big Al felt that they were participating in a historic moment.

“It felt like an honor,” said paleontologist Jessica Lippincott, author of “Wyoming’s Dinosaur Discoveries. “It felt historic. We were able to bring Big Al back to the place where he lived, died, and was discovered. It was awesome.”

Meanwhile, news of Big Al’s return has already gotten locals excited. Many remember the international media frenzy that descended on Shell surrounding the dinosaur's excavation.

“I spoke to someone who remembered going out to see Big Al being excavated when he was a kid,” Kvale said. “He’s in his 40s now, and he’s thrilled that Big Al is back.”

Kirby Siber, the man who discovered Big Al, went on to build 

. One of Europe's largest dinosaur museum, Sieber filled it with dozens of spectacularly well-preserved dinosaurs from Shell, including Baby Toni and “Big Al 2,” a similarly injured Allosaurus.

Kvale got an email from Siber, who said he was proud to call the Wild West Dino Den “our sister museum.”

The Wild West Dino Den will officially open to the public between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.  June 27. From there, Kvale hopes they’ll have the schoolhouse open to the public “most days of the week” this summer.

Meanwhile, the museum’s board is working with the town of Greybull to pursue funding for Big Al’s permanent home.

“At the rate we’re progressing, that’ll be three to four years down the road,” he said. “The agreement we have is that the town of Greybull will pursue the funding for the building, and we’ll acquire the dinosaurs to put inside.”

Big Al isn’t the largest dinosaur intended for the museum, but it carries the most significance for Kvale and his board. It’s like an international celebrity making a triumphant homecoming after 152 million years.

“I feel like we’re getting the ball rolling,” Kvale said. “The world knows Big Al, and locals know Big Al. It’s a famous fossil and a very big deal for us.”

Contact Andrew Rossi at andrew@cowboystatedaily.com

Big Al IMG 0472 6 28 26

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

<title>After 35 Years, 152-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur 'Big Al' Returns Home To Wyoming | Cowboy State Daily</title>

“Big Al,” a world-famous 152-million-year-old dinosaur found near Shell in 1991, is back home in Shell, Wyoming. Big Al’s skeleton is 95% complete, making it one of the most complete dinosaur specimens ever found.

After 35 Years, 152-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur 'Big Al' Returns Home To Wyoming

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

Renée Jean

Business & Tourism

Business

Chugwater is not the place where most people would expect to find high fashion.

But that is exactly what they’ll find along the tiny town’s main drag — a new vintage Western clothing shop, run by a woman with roots in the high-powered fashion worlds of Italy and New York. 

In a town better known for its annual chili cook-off than haute couture, the BB West Vintage boutique joins a growing number of historic buildings turned destination businesses pulling tourists off Interstate 25 and keeping a rural main street alive.

Claudia Borchardt is her name, and she’s married to a Wyoming rancher just outside of Chugwater. But her fashion story starts a world away.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Beginning Of A Dream"}]

At first, Claudia didn’t dare dream of starting a clothing store about as far off the beaten path as a person can get — in a town of less than 200 people in the least-populated state in the U.S. 

She’d owned a boutique in Brooklyn, New York, and knew just how difficult retail could be, even in a more populous community. 

“When I moved here, my career obviously didn’t exist,” she said. 

That had her asking herself what kind of work she could do from home to keep the creative muscles working and feel more a part of the community. 

She tried a few things. First, she leaned into her marketing experience, working with The Historic Plains Hotel in Cheyenne to sell tourist packages and such. 

But there’s just something about the fashion industry that refuses to be quiet in her head.

“So, about eight years ago I started an Etsy business,” she said. “And I was selling vintage Western wear — kids and adults — and it really took off. I found that there’s a market for what we take for granted, for what everyone probably already has in their closet from grandma.”

Turns out, people in big cities and even other countries just love Western fashion, especially now with popular television shows like Taylor Sheridan’s “Yellowstone”. 

“So I started online and I’ve been working out of my house for eight years, growing and growing,” she said.

Before long, dozens of orders were shipping to customers across the country and even overseas, all from a basement in rural Platte County. 

One day the growing towers of totes in the basement could no longer escape the notice of her husband. 

“Whoa,” he said. “You have so much stuff, you could open a store.”

And so, that’s just what she decided to do, right there in tiny Chugwater, population 175.

“I was just getting tired of having to go to the basement every time I had a sale,” Borchardt admitted. “And I was wishing I could just hang it all up and work with it a little more.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Following The Lead"}]

For Chugwater, BB West means one more cute shop on a slowly but surely growing main drag. It’s something else to help draw tourists off Interstate 25, too, bringing new dollars into a town that would otherwise go the way of so many other small communities.

Borchardt found good role models in Chugwater’s 

 owner Josh Hopkins, Soda Fountain owner Jill Winger, and Stampede owners Lily and Lance Nilson.

All have bought distressed properties and/or businesses to revive them and found ways to succeed in spite of the lack of population. Their efforts have injected new vitality into the community, to keep the town from dying out altogether, while also helping preserve pieces of Wyoming history. 

The Soda Fountain, for example, is the state’s oldest operating soda fountain. It opened in 1914, and still serves old-fashioned malts.

Winger initially thought her path to viability was to keep things simple, so she leaned into a burger and malt concept. That was popular, and drew people from all over the state for ranch-raised burgers and a huge selection of flavored malts.

But real success didn’t come until she leaned further into her true vision for the place — fancy dinners.

Now she has a supper club experience every month or so she calls 

, which has been selling out regularly and drawing people from Cheyenne and beyond.

“We all just want the town to have more,” Borchardt said. “We want to kind of collaborate together and make it so when you come to town, there’s more things to do than just grab a milkshake.” 

So Borchardt will be working in tandem with Winger for the next Supper at the Fountain, set for July 17 and 18. 

“She has two seatings, and sometimes people are trickling out the door or waiting on the sidewalk, because that’s a small space,” Borchardt said. “So I said, ‘What if I open and we collaborate and you send people over as they’re waiting for their table?’”

It was the perfect solution to support both businesses in creating an experience that can draw people into Chugwater not just once, but over and over.

“There’s also a rodeo on Saturday,” Borchardt added. “So obviously, I’m going to be open then, too, because there are going to be people, and I just don’t like driving through a town and seeing everything closed or run down.”

Borchardt, in talking with Hopkins about the Tri-County Mercantile and how he’s made that work, learned that he and his partners, Jesse and Arden Miller, had long wanted to do something productive with the Standard Station.

“It’s very expensive to make it a gas station,” Borchardt said. “To really make that a gas station the right way would probably be, I mean, a million dollars.”

The Standard Station has served as event headquarters for the car show held in conjunction with the Chugwater Chili Cook-off each year, playing off its vintage Standard Station vibe.

It’s a tiny space, Borchardt said, but the more she thought about it the more she realized it was perfect.

“I just needed more of an office/showroom space to work out of,” she said. “And, as my daughter is getting older, I’m also the high school volleyball coach, so I’m constantly going into town.”

Moving her towering totes into town made a lot of sense, she decided. It would let her display her items better for photography, as well as create a storefront for the “high season” — her way of describing summer, when tourism foot traffic starts pattering through Wyoming.

Hopkins and his partners agreed that if Borchardt and her husband would fix up the Standard Station, they would pro-rate the rent. Borchardt had to keep the station historic, which was fine for her, considering her business is a vintage Western clothing boutique.

“I made the gas pumps into a garden and kept the aesthetic, the color scheme,” she said. “I had to match the perfect Standard Station red, and things like that.”

She also hand-made her signs, fitting them into an aesthetic she’s seen at other businesses in town, which also have hand-painted signs.

Her opening day was Chugwater Chili Cook-off day — just barely. 

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

 now. The reason, Borchardt believes, is due to something her father always talked about when she was growing up in a fashion-forward family.

“My dad always taught me quality over quantity,” she said. “You can have a suit hand-stitched in Italy that your grandpa can pass down, even after it’s been dry-cleaned 300 times.”

That’s ultimately a better value than buying a suit needing replacement within a year or two. While the better-made, classic suit will cost more, the cost per wearing is much less than for a cheaply made garment that won’t survive many washings.

“I got made fun of as a kid, because people would joke, ‘Oh, your dad sells silk socks for $100',” Borchardt recalled. “But there’s always someone who will pay for quality, if they understand its value.”

That makes the hand-me-down side of her vintage clothing business particularly special. 

“As a kid, I wanted to just look like everybody else,” she said. “But now I appreciate what he was trying to teach me. You don’t have to buy a lot, but you buy classic staples. You can have a leather jacket for your whole life if you buy the right one.”

Inside her Standard Station store, the classics range from worn-in, pearl-snap shirts and tooled leather belts to fringed jackets and well-made wool suits. All are one-of-a-kind pieces sourced from ranch closets, estate sales, and small-town thrift shops across the region.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Here’s Your Sign"}]

Borchardt’s first day, with the Chugwater Chili Cook-off in town, went well.

People from Wheatland, Cheyenne, Denver, Texas, and other places who had come for the cook-off were finding items they just could not live without. 

The real test, she realized, is now that the cook-off has left town and all the 

“I didn’t open Sunday because it was Father’s Day,” she said. “But Monday morning I said, ‘You know what, I’ve put my hours up and I’ve got to stick to it. So I went in at 11, because right now my hours are saying 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day.”

And something pretty cool happened that has her confident this idea is actually going to work.

“I was sitting there thinking no one from Chugwater Town is going to be my bread and butter,” she said. “They’ll love that I’m here, and they’ll come to visit, but I don’t know if they’re going to be buying stuff they maybe already have or that’s not unique to them.”

But right about then, an 80-year-old local man from Third Street came rolling up on his bicycle and stopped to look around.

“He bought a fringe leather moto jacket and a belt buckle,” Borchardt said. “And he’s like, ‘I had that jacket in the 1980s, and I always wanted another. I don’t have a motorcycle anymore, but I’ve got my bike.”

And now he has a high-quality, 1980s leather jacket that’s channeling all the nostalgia he was seeking. 

“That was my first big local customer,” Borchardt said. 

In that moment, all the pieces felt like they were coming together. She might be a city girl who married a rancher from Chugwater, but she’s finding the way to keep her creative sparks alive and bloom right where she’s been planted.

With her vintage Western boutique in an old Standard Station, she’s part of a new wave of pioneers betting that history and hospitality will keep Chugwater’s main street from going dark. 

And she’s proud to be in the midst of this revival of a tiny American town whose residents refuse to let it dwindle away and die.

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<title>Italian-Trained Fashion Stylist Opens Vintage Western Boutique In Chugwater | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A woman who grew up in the high-powered fashion industry in Italy and New York has decided to open a vintage Western boutique out of a former Standard gas station in Chugwater. She’d owned a boutique in Brooklyn so she knows how difficult retail can be.

Italian-Trained Fashion Stylist Opens Vintage Western Boutique In Chugwater

Many relics from the age of the steam engine in Wyoming remain. Some are grandiose, like 

One of these relics is the Lusk Water Tower, a point of pride in eastern Wyoming. It’s one of the few structures of its kind remaining in the United States, still standing strong 140 years after it was built.

“It's pretty important and iconic to the community,” said Leslie Stewart, a volunteer at 

. “I think there would be a drive to save it again if we needed to.”

It's also significant as one of only six surviving redwood water towers in the United States, according to the Niobrara County Historical Society.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Built Better"}]

In 1886, the Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Railway was establishing a line to connect Douglas and Chadron, South Dakota. This necessitated new depots and water towers along the route to ensure the steam engines kept running.

Lusk was chosen because it had, at the time, the only post office along the intended route.

Stewart, who’s also a commissioner for Wyoming State Parks and Cultural Resources, said the establishment of this railway was an important development for the newly incorporated town.

“The railroads were coming this way to transport livestock, grain, mining equipment, and coal, but they also provided ready access for ranchers, farmers, and homesteaders coming to settle this area,” he said.

Water towers were essential for steam engines, but the Lusk Water Tower was built to be better. That’s reflected in the specifics of its design.

“It’s mostly made of Douglas fir, but the tank is four-inch planks of redwood,” Stewart said. “It wasn’t an aesthetic choice. They wanted something that would expand with water and hold the thing together tightly when it was wet.”

According to Stewart, adjustability was essential. The circular tank is 25 feet in diameter and equally as tall, but the redwood allowed it to expand and contract as needed.

“It was built like a barrel with metal bands around the outside,” she said. “When the tank was empty, they could tighten the bands. When it was full, they could loosen them up and expand the tank while keeping a tight fit.”

A windmill was used to move water 25 feet up into the tank. At full capacity, it could hold around 44,000 gallons of water.

In a certain sense, the Lusk Water Tower was ahead of its time in design and construction.

The tower and the railway were built by the Wyoming Central Railway, a subsidiary of the Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Railway. The director of the subsidiary was Frank Lusk, for whom the town is named.

The Wyoming Central Railway was established specifically to ensure that a Wyoming company would build the line and all its infrastructure.

“That was one of the requirements for the railway,” Stewart said. “They had to have a Wyoming company do the construction.”

There’s another way the Lusk Water Tower happened to be ahead of its time: It was deemed worth saving before it was too late.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Standing Strong"}]

When the original Lusk train depot was destroyed by fire, the water tower was moved from the center of town to the eastern edge, where it stands today. The tower continued to service steam locomotives until diesels took over.

The railway, which is still in service, changed hands multiple times over the next several decades. However, there were concerns that the Lusk Water Tower might be destroyed by the very railway it had been built to service.

“The Chicago and North Western Transportation Company was moving a lot of heavy coal traffic past the tower,” Stewart said. “The Niobrara County Historical Society was concerned that the vibrations from the trains would destroy the tower.”

In 1971, the Niobrara County Historical Society purchased the Lusk Water Tower. A campaign was immediately started to raise money to restore and repair it.

By 1982, enough was raised for Gillette LNT Fabrication and Construction to do a thorough restoration.

“A lot of different organizations helped fund that restoration, including the Wyoming Legislature and the Chicago and North Western Transportation Company,” Stewart said. “I don't think the railroad had any interest in saving it, although they did help in the end.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Lusk’s Own"}]

In 1991, the Lusk Water Tower was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Rheba Massey, the historian who submitted the form for its consideration, said the tower was “one small part of that great expansion” that had “a major effect on the settlement history of the area.”

“The Lusk Water Tower represents this early development of rail transportation, including steam locomotion from the period of 1886 to World War II,” she wrote. “Massive water towers and windmills were regular features of station sites during the age of steam, (and) the Lusk Water Tower is Wyoming's only surviving railroad structure of its type.”

The railway is currently owned by Union Pacific, which still sends plenty of freight past the iconic tower.

As of 2026, the only other tower of its type that’s easy to track down is the Gerlach Water Tower, built in 1909 in Gerlach, Nevada.

Stewart wasn’t sure how many redwood water towers were built or how many remain. She’s content that the Lusk Water Tower isn’t going anywhere.

“We still get people asking about the tower,” she said. “Alumni come home and say they had to swing by the tower to make sure it was still there.”

She also applauded everyone who recognized the tower’s historic significance and organized the successful effort to save it, at a time when historical preservation wasn’t as popular as it would become.

“If those historically astute people hadn’t recognized that, I’m not sure it would have been saved,” she said.

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<title>Lusk's Redwood Water Tower, One Of 6 Left In US, Still Standing After 140 Years | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The redwood water tower in Lusk was built in 1886 to keep steam engines running between Wyoming and South Dakota. While the engines are gone, the tower endures 140 years after it was built and is one of six such relics still standing in the United States.

Lusk's Redwood Water Tower, One Of 6 Left In US, Still Standing After 140 Years

Wyoming Life

In a modern West where history is increasingly paved over or fenced in, Wyoming’s notorious Hole in the Wall outlaw hideout stands out as one of few places that remains just as wild as it was more than a century ago. 

In a modern West where history is increasingly paved over, Wyoming’s notorious Hole in the Wall outlaw hideout remains just as wild as it was more than a century ago. Here, a towering red rock wall rises 400 feet and stretches for 35 miles. 