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Yeah, that's right. It's a pyramid made of hamburger meat.....

Cooking 9 1 25

Today In Cooking: Monday, September 1, 2025

"Lack of beers was the primary problem. We only saw the cart girl a couple times on the front nine....."

Sports 8 31 25

Today In Sports: Sunday, August 31, 2025

Jeopardy host Ken Jennings asked if he ever thought, "this contestant doesn't know #!?$"

Jeopardy 8 31 25

Today In Jeopardy: Sunday, August 31, 2025

"When I asked you for your keys, you picked up a leaf...."

Law enforcement 8 31 25

Today In Law Enforcement: Sunday, August 31, 2025

Condor escapes at hockey game, chaos ensues.....

Bonus vid 2 8 31 25

Bonus Video 2: Sunday, August 31, 2025

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Bonus Video 1: Sunday, August 31, 2025

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You Still Here? Sunday, August 31, 2025

She just needed some Zeus Juice, as narrated by MMA announcer Steve Inman.....

Inman 8 31 25

Steve Inman: Sunday, August 31, 2025

"They hauled me in to HR because I'm not a team player. Well, the team sucks, Susie...."

Bonus vid 2 8 30 25

Bonus Video 2: Saturday, August 30, 2025

Ice Cube, Kevin Hart And Conan Help A Student Driver.....

Today in student drivers 8 30 25

Today In Student Drivers: Saturday, August 30, 2025

End of an era. Lee Corso's last show is on Saturday.....

Sports 8 30 25

Today In Sports: Saturday, August 30, 2025

Bonus vid 1 8 30 25

Bonus Video 1: Saturday, August 30, 2025

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Jackie Dorothy.

Jackie Dorothy

Around Wyoming

 overnight in the Wyoming Territory with canvas tents, sectional housing and buildings on wheels. It was July 1868 and the town “bred by the devil” was ready for business.

“There are perhaps, three thousand people in and around Benton,” brothers Legh and Fred Freeman wrote in the Aug. 11, 1868, Frontier Index newspaper. “To give an idea of the on-wheels movement we will mention that the office of Wells, Fargo & Co., torn down at Laramie three days before, had its sectioned shingle roof on, and stage business resumed in it that night.”

The Frontier Index, known as the “Press on Wheels,” was also a 

 business that published its paper in these overnight towns.

“Business was so lively that we telegraphed the Laramie editor of our paper, to wheel on at once to Benton,” the Freeman brothers wrote. “We since learn that our new power press is threshing out the work there.”

Benton was an end-of-track town on the construction front of the Union Pacific Railroad, about 12 miles east of present-day Rawlins and just west of present-day Fort Fred Steele.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Baddest Reputation"}]

 the worst of these Hell’s Tent Towns, with claims that 100 men had been murdered there in its short lifetime. Their reputation as a home to “bawdy women and swindlers” was earned when visitors passed through and were shocked by what they saw.

According to historians Mary Lou Pence and Lola M. Homsher, co-authors of “The Ghost Towns of Wyoming,” one 

 that portrayed Benton’s devilishness had been a misunderstanding.

Water for this new town was one of its most valuable commodities. It had to be carted by team and tank from the North Platte River two miles away. The water hauler charged an exorbitant 

Seeing a new way to advertise, a whiskey distiller paid the hauler to paste large billboards on each side of his tank that read "Tanglefoot Whisky."

A Mormon woman soon arrived by train and was waiting for a stagecoach for the next leg of her trip to Brigham's Temple. When she saw the poster-plastered wagon and women rushing from their doors with pails in hands, Pence and Homsher said she became  indignant.

 woman said. “They're buying whisky by the bucketsful!"

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Grant & Buffalo Bill Campaign"}]

To add to Benton’s reputation, even future presidents visited the tent town. Ulyssis S. Grant arrived with Buffalo Bill Cody. The Republican candidate was said to have given a stump speech at Benton to an eclectic group of people, ranging from gentlemen to railroad laborers. 

The Freeman brothers were heavily Democratic and former Confederate soldiers so the story they ran in the Aug.11, 1868, Frontier Index was a satirical attack on Grant and Buffalo Bill.

“When Useless Slaughter Grant was at Benton the other night, Buffalo Bill mounted a dry goods box at a street corner and returned thanks to the people for the splendid ovation (that was not) given the military commander in chief,” they wrote.

The editors claimed Buffalo Bill then auctioned off an old watch to pay for Grant's expenses on his campaign in Wyoming. Otherwise, Grant would be forced to “bum” his way back to Washington, D.C.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Mundane Shootings"}]

In the same paper, when the Freeman brothers shared the local gossip, usually reserved for such tidbits as who had arrived in town or who was engaging in business, the story was about the latest shootings. This time Brownsville, a construction camp not far from Benton, was the scene of several murders.   

— a criminal offense involving at least two people —

 occurred on the streets between two men employed in Creighton's telegraph outfit, the Freeman brothers reported. 

[{"type":"text","text":"As the story goes:"}]

“They had been throwing dice for a pistol, when they became dissatisfied, and the person who owned the pistol — James Williams — refused to give up the money received, which led to a difficulty in which he was shot and supposed mortally wounded. The murderer has escaped.

"A man, named John Wood, accidentally shot himself on Sunday morning while drawing his pistol to shoot a man in a gambling house. He is now in the hospital and is doing well.

"Mike Meehan was shot by a ranchman near Reynolds & Dowling's grading camp, about eight miles from Brownsville. 

"The cause of the affair was, the graders were on a strike, and passed an order amongst themselves that any ranchman who would interfere with their strike or sell liquor to drunken men, they would clean out, and after giving them warning, they still sold liquor to the men, when the graders turned out and demolished some fourteen saloons. 

"During the row, Michael Meehan was shot and instantly killed. The ranchman delivered himself up to the military authorities at Fort Steele."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Rise and Fall of Benton"}]

During its short existence, 200 framed tents and portable buildings had been erected, lots sold to the highest bidder, from $800 to $1,000, and dusty streets laid out. Benton was plotted into five wards and a mayor and one alderman from each ward had been appointed.

might become a more permanent town. A forwarding house was even established to take advantage of the active business taking place.

The most prominent building was described by Pence and Homsher as an immense canvas tent lit by imported chandeliers.

“An immense plate-glass mirror behind the corner bar reflected a strange hubbub of humanity,” Pence and Homsher wrote. “Pistol-packing mamas; lace-gowned and French-heeled dancing damsels; plaid-vested and fob-twisting come-on spielers; campaign-uniformed Indian fighters; corduroyed and buckskinned freighters; bow-tied and velvet-coated dude dandies — all taking chances with fate.”

The historians claimed  more than once during his night shift an overworked barkeep would have to change into another clean white coat to be rid of spatters of beer, bullets or blood.

By September 1868, the railroad had moved on, and so did nearly everyone else. 

The depot was moved east three miles to Fort Steele and Rawlins was designated a rail terminal. Pence and Homsher said that as tents were erected in the new town of Rawlins, former Benton residents were hesitant to buy lots and be fooled again into spending money on real estate that would not last.

Benton only existed for three months before the town was dismantled and it became one of Wyoming’s most infamous ghost towns.

Benton 1 Benton A C Hull Photo 7 5 26

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

<title>Wyoming History: 100 Murders In 3 Months, Lawless Benton Was ‘Bred By The Devil’ | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Of the Wyoming Territory towns that arrived on wheels along the Union Pacific Railroad, none were as tawdry, bawdry and lawless as Benton, which witnessed as many as 100 murders in its three-month lifespan. Benton, it was said, was "bred by the devil."

Wyoming History: 100 Murders In 3 Months, Lawless Benton Was ‘Bred By The Devil’

Kerry Drake

Toa, a puppy on the Wind River Indian Reservation, didn’t have a name yet when he was recently rescued by a family in Ethete, which found him with a fishing line tied to his right front leg.

Some children were reportedly seen swinging him around by the line, severely injuring the leg. But thanks to the family that found Toa, his leg was not only eventually amputated he also helped find the 14 brothers, sisters and cousins from whom he had strayed.

It was a dramatic rescue, but one of many made possible by Yola’s Pet Rescue in Cheyenne, which focuses on getting stray and feral dogs wandering the reservation spayed and neutered, then finding people who will adopt them.

JM Marschner, who opened the clinic in 2017, told 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.

Marschner said she started working there because there are so many stray and feral dogs, and the reservation doesn’t have a veterinarian or animal shelter. The closest vets are in Lander and Riverton.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Two Large Litters"}]

When Toa was found, a call went to Yola’s Pet Rescue late on a Saturday night. Marschner dispatched one of her volunteers to the scene to meet the woman who rescued Toa, and together they discovered 18 other puppies from two litters. 

Four later died, and Marschner said while “it was touch and go” for the three smallest pups, 14 survived and were sent to the Laramie Animal Welfare Society.

Toa didn’t make that trip because a veterinarian had to perform an emergency amputation. After some recovery time, he joined the rest of his puppy pals in Laramie. 

That’s where he got his name, plus much love and attention from the staff and volunteers.

Corina Slyman of LAWS said dogs brought to the clinic can’t be adopted until they’ve been spayed or neutered, had their vaccinations, and been microchipped. LAWS works to arrange for foster homes, but doesn’t have enough space to keep rescued dogs.

“We mainly take care of puppies who come in, and many need to be bottle-fed and have special care,” Slyman said. “We work with other animal clinics in the region to get them adopted once they can be.”

Slyman said Toa looks is a strong candidate for adoption. 

“The tough little guy is doing really well,” she said. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Problem On The Reservation"}]

The Wind River Indian Reservation, like many others in North America, has had a large dog population for generations. Many of these “rez dogs” run loose, with no owners.

Without a clinic like Yola’s, the numbers won’t decrease. Even with the clinic and animal lovers like Marschner and a half-dozen volunteers, it’s a constant and expensive challenge.

“A lot of the houses on the reservation don’t have fences, so the dogs aren’t contained,” Marschner said. “So that’s part of the problem. If we find a dog we think may be lost, we post them on Pet Finder.”

Another huge factor is unwanted animals being abandoned, though Marschner is quick to note that people in Riverton and Lander turn their dogs loose on the reservation, too. 

“It’s not just a tribal problem,” she said.

Kisandra Roberts of Kinnear has been a Yola’s volunteer for about four years, after leaving a Lander animal hospital where she’d worked for 14 years. 

Roberts said often people don’t own the animals in their neighborhood, but they feel badly and want to help if dogs have puppies under their porch or in their sheds.

 "Before they know it, people can have 10 or 20 dogs,” she said. “And each female can have about 20 puppies a year. Kids will bring home a puppy and say they want to keep it when it’s young and cute. But when they’re no longer in the puppy stage, they’ll just kind of leave it to fend for itself.”

Roberts, who owns a rescued rez dog, said abandoned dogs “pack up” because they instinctively want to be with other like-minded dogs. She said a lot of feral dogs “absolutely won’t let us come anywhere near them.” 

Marschner said it’s a never-ending battle. 

“Mothers tend to have big litters, then they continue to have puppies,” she said. “It’s hard to find and catch many of these dogs so we can take them to a clinic and have them fixed.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Spay & Neuter Cruiser"}]

Marschner’s rescue organization has a mobile unit dubbed the “Spay & Neuter Cruiser” for clinics, but she said it’s usually more efficient to find a place in the community they’re serving.

Yola’s next mobile clinic is set for the Casper Health Fair on July 11-12. Spay and neuter clinics will also be conducted in Wheatland and also on the reservation later this month.

“Once we made the announcement in Casper, we were sold out in about an hour,” Marschner said. “That shows what the need is. We have a waiting list, but I don’t think we’ll be able to accommodate them.

“We set up like a ‘M*A*S*H*’ unit, with all of the medical supplies and equipment,” she explained. 

The equipment alone cost about $40,000, and Marschner said each clinic costs between $4,000 to $5,000.

The group largely depends on donations from individuals and grants from groups or companies. Marschner said she does her work for free.

“The critical piece to running the clinics is finding a vet and a vet tech,” she said. “That’s our biggest challenge. I think we’ll see more vets willing to participate.”

All spay and neuter operations on the reservation are free. In other places Yola’s helps subsidize the cost and negotiates a lower fee with veterinarians who agree to do the work so it’s more affordable for dog owners.

Yola’s makes monthly trips to the reservation to deliver dog food, and has also brought dog houses with straw for outdoor pets.

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

The clinic has an annual budget between $60,000 and $70,000, Marschner said. The majority is spent on veterinary services, and the remainder is mostly used for dog food and spay and neuter clinic supplies.

“The money can go quickly,” she added. Toa’s amputation cost $900. If a rez dog has an encounter with a porcupine, which happens frequently, the medical bill can top $1,000.

“A lot of dogs will follow the river, and the super curious ones will go after the porcupines,” Roberts said. 

The subsequent fights never go well for the canines. Vets must anesthetize the dogs to remove quills, a process that can take hours and might need to be done multiple times.

“People can’t afford to take them to the vet, and if they don’t get care, they starve to death because they can’t eat,” Marschner said. “We always want to help with emergency care, like Toa’s amputation, but it does add up.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Rez Dogs Are Popular"}]

Roberts said many people want to adopt rez dogs and are willing to drive several hundred miles to do so, for several reasons.

“I transported three the other day clear down to Utah,” she said. “They get adopted pretty quick. People feel bad about what they’ve been through.”

But the dogs’ tough lives seeking food and shelter are part of what makes people satisfied when they adopt one. 

“They are very resilient,” Roberts said. “They’ve gone through so much, and just evolved over time to be able to withstand extreme heat, extreme cold. Things like rattlesnake bites don’t seem to phase them that much.”

She said her niece had a rez dog that ate about 10 pounds of chocolate, which is usually lethal to dogs.

“Her dog got into a platter of chocolate, ate it and was fine,” Roberts recalled. “That’s so crazy and unheard of. But these dogs build up a tolerance that most of your purebreds aren’t going to have. Reservation dogs have a tendency to outlive them, too.”

The dogs Marschner and her volunteers find on the reservation are mixed breeds. 

“We typically see Australian shepherd cattle dogs, mixed with a little Husky, German shepherd; that’s probably the most common mix,” she said. “Probably some pit too. They’re smart dogs.”

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

Marschner said the work takes an emotional toll on her and the other volunteers. 

“It’s hard, no one wants to say no to puppies, or euthanize puppies, but there are just a lot of them all over,” she said. "There are days, especially when you see the starving dogs and animals we try to save. That happens a lot. We had a Bullmastiff, starved and skin and bones. She weighed 52 pounds, and now she’s up to 120.”

Marschner said a dog named Willow also “touched a lot of hearts.” She weighed 22 pounds, about half normal weight. Willow had mange, so no fur or hair.

“It took us two to three weeks to find her after the initial sighting,” she said, adding that she's healthy now after being adopted by a Cheyenne Realtor.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"It Started With Yola"}]

Marschner had been a volunteer at her local animal shelter for 25 years, but her personal mission to help rescue dogs began in 2017, when she met the clinic’s namesake, a 5-year-old beagle-shepherd mix named Yola.

Military veteran John White was Yola’s owner. He adopted the once-stray dog from a Wyoming shelter, but when White was diagnosed with terminal cancer he needed a new caretaker for his pet.

“He posted on Craigslist a plea for a home for his dog written in (Yula’s) voice,” Marschner said.

The post went viral, leading to more than 1,000 people applying to take Yola. Like the others, Marschner wrote a brief essay, and White chose her to be Yola’s new owner. 

When Marschner picked up her new dog, White was too sick to see her. One of his friends asked her if she’d also consider giving White’s other dog, a bulldog-boxer mix named Boogy, a new home.

“How could I possibly say no?” Marschner said, so the pair came to live with her. They had many happy years together before Yola died from cancer. Boogy, who later lived with Marschner’s mother, died two years ago.

Yola lives on through the rescue clinic that bears her name. For puppies like Toa and others that desperately need help, Marschner said the clinic will continue its work to see that “no unwanted puppy is left behind.”

Kerry Drake can be reached at Kerry@CowboyStateDaily.com

Wind River and dog surgery 7 5 26

<title>Cheyenne Clinic 300 Miles Away Has Rescued 3,000 Wyoming Roaming Reservation Dogs | Cowboy State Daily</title>

With no veterinary clinics or animal shelters, roaming dogs are a problem on the Wind River Indian Reservation. A Cheyenne clinic 300 miles away has rescued 3,000 stray pets from the reservation since 2017.

Cheyenne Clinic 300 Miles Away Has Rescued 3,000 Wyoming Roaming Reservation Dogs

Employee kate meadows cropped

Kate Meadows

Business & Tourism

Business

[{"type":"text","text":"Trey Scharp received the phone call of a lifetime on his birthday."}]

It was December 2025, and the owners of the historic Flat Creek Ranch northeast of Jackson, Joe Albright and Marcia Kunstel, were calling with an unexpected question.

Would Trey and his wife, Shelby, like to own the ranch they had managed for more than two decades?

Albright and Kunstel, longtime journalists whose careers were built on documenting history, weren’t offering to sell the ranch.

[{"type":"text","text":"They wanted to give it away."}]

“It was truly an amazing birthday phone call,” Shelby Scharp told Cowboy State Daily.

Seven months later, the Scharps are settling into their first season not just as managers but as owners of a 140-acre guest ranch tucked beneath the iconic Sleeping Indian in the Gros Ventre Mountains. 

In a valley where ranches routinely sell for tens of millions of dollars and development pressure never lets up, Albright and Kunstel chose a different path.

"We didn't want it to fall in the hands of someone who would destroy the land, the wildlife or the buildings," Kunstel told Cowboy State Daily. "It deserves to be maintained."

The couple explained their motivation in a newspaper advertisement announcing the transfer: “Why are we doing all this? To keep our 103-year-old Ranch from falling into the wake of Jackson’s rush to develop mega-mansions and hulking hotels.”

As part of the gift, the Scharps agreed not to sell the ranch for at least 10 years and pledged to preserve its historic cabins, off-grid infrastructure and operation as a guest ranch.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"More Than Real Estate"}]

For Albright and Kunstel, both retired foreign correspondents, the decision was about conservation as much as succession.

"We felt that giving this land to people with the talents and background that Trey and Shelby have was the best way to keep this ranch going for another 100 years," Albright told Cowboy State Daily.

The couple spent 27 years restoring and preserving the ranch after buying it back from the Jackson Hole Land Trust in 1998. By then, many of the 1920s-era cabins had fallen into disrepair.

An extensive restoration project returned the historic buildings to life while modernizing the ranch behind the scenes. Today it operates entirely off solar power with a custom-designed water system. The property was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2001 and reopened as a guest ranch that same year.

Its history stretches back even further. A timeline on the ranch’s website is full of gems – characters and moments that have cemented the ranch’s place in time.

[{"type":"text","text":"“There are a million stories within the big story,” Shelby said."}]

In the summer of 1900, cowboy Enoch “Cal” Carrington camped on the land for a few days while working as a cook on a hunting expedition. Carrington returned the following summer, staked his claim and built a small cabin.

In 1917, Cal met Eleanor “Cissy” Patterson – Albright’s great aunt – at the Bar BC Ranch, where Patterson was staying as a guest. Carrington was the head hunting guide.

Carrington obtained a patent for a homestead in 1922 and sold the property to Patterson a year later, for $5,000. Patterson was an heiress to the Chicago Tribune.

Later, her niece and Albright’s mother, Josephine Patteron, would own the property.

In 1928, Cissy Patterson hired a man named Farney Cole to be caretaker. Cole famously beat a black bear to death with a waterlogged aspen limb in 1944. He had been using the limb to break up a beaver dam on the property when the bear, which had two cubs with her, attacked him.

Cissy longed to host Saturday night dances in the lodge at the ranch, and she made that dream come true in 1929, when she had a grand piano shipped to the ranch from Chicago. The instrument was hauled up the primitive bumpy road on an ox cart. It is still in use today.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Jackson Gambling Scene"}]

For a few weeks, Flat Creek Ranch was party to a thriving gambling scene in Jackson in the 1950s, As gambling raids swept through Jackson, hotel staff drove their guests out to the ranch, where a casino room was set up.

In 1986, Josephine Albright donated Flat Creek Ranch to the Jackson Hole Land Trust to guarantee the land’s permanent protection. She ensured that her heirs would have the first option to buy back the ranch at an appraised price upon her death.

Albright and Kunstel had not intended to buy the ranch in 1998, but they fell in love with Jackson and were ready to retire from longtime journalism careers.

The 1920s-era cabins remained on the land but were in desperate need of maintenance and restoration.

Contractor Porgy McClelland headed an ambitious restoration project that lasted four years. Cabins were moved and some were taken apart and put back on new foundations.

During the process, McClelland found old newspapers stuffed between logs for chinking.

, “He opened up one and found a box score for a baseball game in which Babe Ruth hit two home runs. It disintegrated into dust before he could share it too widely.” -

When the ranch was turning 100, Shelby suggested Albright and Kunstel write a book chronicling the history of the ranch.

“They jumped in with both feet and did this incredible coffee table book,” Shelby said.

 during the writing of the book, Flat Creek Ranch: Cissy and Cal Launch a Rip-Roaring Jackson Hole Saga. Newspapers on the platform date to 1911 for the city of Jackson. They also searched land records that told traces of stories.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"An Unexpected Opportunity"}]

The Scharps’ connection to Albright and Kunstel happened unexpectedly, in the early 2000s. The Scharps were managing a fly fishing lodge in Patagonia, Chile, when guests Joan and Huntley Baldwin mentioned friends in Jackson who were looking for ranch managers.

When Trey heard the name "Flat Creek Ranch," he wasn't immediately interested.

Instead of selling the century-old 140-acre Flat Creek Ranch for millions, a Jackson couple gave the property to its longtime managers. "We didn't want it to fall in the hands of someone who would destroy the land, the wildlife or the buildings," they said.