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Kolby fedore

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Government & Politics

Politics

Wyoming U.S. House Rep. Harriet Hageman was one of 22 Republicans to vote against making daylight saving time permanent as the House passed the Sunshine Protection Act on Tuesday.

For Wyomingites tired of changing their clocks every spring and fall, the vote was a big step toward ending the twice-yearly ritual that has been a divisive issue in the Cowboy State and across the nation.

The 308-117 vote advances the act to the Senate, which if approved would make daylight saving time permanent.

Most Americans would stop changing their clocks twice a year and instead remain on daylight saving time year-round, although states could choose to observe permanent standard time instead.

Hageman told Cowboy State Daily in a statement that her vote was made with Wyoming in mind.

"The Sunshine Protection Act robs Wyoming farmers and ranchers of precious sunlight and ensures the first hours of a student's day is in darkness,” she said. "The government isn't funded, our elections aren't secure, and Wyoming's legacy industries need help. 

"I will not vote for a time-wasting bill that puts Wyoming in the dark."

If enacted, the legislation would mean later winter sunsets but also later winter sunrises, giving people more daylight in the evening while making mornings darker.

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

[{"type":"text","text":"Wyoming has been preparing for this possibility for years."}]

In 2020, the Wyoming Legislature approved a trigger law authorizing the state to adopt permanent daylight saving time if Congress first changes federal law and neighboring Mountain Time states enact similar laws.

As a result, Tuesday's House vote alone would not change anything for Wyoming.

Even if the bill ultimately becomes law, Wyoming would continue changing its clocks until the conditions outlined in state law are met.

Former state Rep. Dan Laursen, R-Powell, sponsored Wyoming's trigger law and spent years advocating for permanent daylight saving time.

When the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a similar version of the Sunshine Protection Act in 2022, Laursen

he hoped Americans had changed their clocks for the last time that November.

Instead, the proposal stalled in the House before reaching then-President Joe Biden.

[{"type":"text","text":"Now, four years later, Laursen believes Congress has another opportunity."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"It's fantastic news,\" he said Tuesday. \"I'm feeling hopeful.\""}]

Laursen said he hopes the Senate can "get something figured out" after unanimously approving a similar bill four years ago.

Asked what message he would send senators, Laursen said, "Let's do it," he said. "Trump wants it. I want it."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Long-Running Debate"}]

Supporters of the legislation argue ending the twice-yearly clock changes would eliminate an unnecessary disruption while giving Americans more usable daylight after work and school.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Kentucky, said permanent daylight saving time would improve traffic safety, strengthen the economy and give people "more time to exercise outside, visit family, attend concerts and sporting events."

"It also means more sunlight at the end of the day so Americans can return safely from work and children can return safely from school," Guthrie said.

[{"type":"text","text":"Not everyone agrees."}]

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine supports ending the twice-yearly clock changes but argues that Congress should instead adopt permanent standard time, saying it better aligns with the body's natural circadian rhythms and promotes healthier sleep.

If daylight saving time became permanent, Wyoming would experience later winter sunrises and later sunsets, leaving many children and commuters traveling before sunrise while extending daylight later into the evening.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Senate Faces Familiar Decision"}]

The legislation now heads to the Senate, which unanimously approved a similar version of the Sunshine Protection Act in 2022 before it stalled in the House.

[{"type":"text","text":"Its prospects this time are uncertain."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Wyoming's congressional delegation is split on the issue."}]

While Hageman voted against the House bill, Sen. Cynthia Lummis has 

backed making daylight saving time permanent, calling the twice-yearly clock changes "an unnecessary disruption" and saying advances in technology have made the original reasons for changing clocks obsolete.

[{"type":"text","text":"Sen. John Barrasso has taken a more cautious position."}]

Last spring he told Cowboy State Daily, "Every time we have to change the clocks, I hear about this issue at home in Wyoming. 

"While it would certainly be easier to not have to change our clocks, there are some real concerns with sending our kids to school in the dark. Congress must thoroughly debate all of the potential impacts before taking any action to change daylight saving time on the national level."

Asked Tuesday about the bill's chances in the Senate, Barrasso 

, "We'll see. You know, we had passed something like that once before, and then the House hit the snooze alarm on it, and we'll see what happens when it gets here."

Even if the Senate approves the bill and Trump signs it into law, Wyoming would not immediately stop changing its clocks. 

The state's trigger law requires not only congressional approval, but also neighboring Mountain Time states to adopt permanent daylight saving time before Wyoming could make the switch.

Cowboy State Daily reached out to Barrasso's office Tuesday for additional comment on the House-passed legislation but did not receive a response before publication.

Hageman clock tower 2 7 14 26

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

<title>House Passes Permanent Daylight Saving Time Bill, Hageman Votes Against | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The U.S. House passed a bill Tuesday to make daylight saving time permanent, but Rep. Harriet Hageman was one of only 22 Republicans who voted against it, arguing it would put schoolchildren in the dark and take morning sunlight from farmers and ranchers.

House Passes Permanent Daylight Saving Time Bill, Hageman Votes Against

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

Renée Jean

Wyoming Life

Note: Gold Rush Days was held on July 11 - 12, 2026

On a hot July afternoon, the boom of an anvil blast rolls through South Pass City like distant thunder. The windows rattle, the chests shake, and a nervous border collie scrambles for cover under the knees of a kind stranger from Ireland, who has stumbled on this scene completely by accident.

Tom Murphy was just looking for a cooler spot in Wyoming to be than the 103 degrees forecast elsewhere. 

South Pass won at 87 degrees, and soon it had won his heart as well. He was loving what he saw. A place where history does not sit quietly behind glass. It explodes, it snorts, and it clanks, too. 

Sometimes, it even bolts — which almost happened when one gentleman’s hat blew under Randy Melton’s period-correct stagecoach, which was being pulled by four jet-black mules.

“Whoa up!” Melton said firmly, pulling back on the reins, urging the mules to stand still so the hat could be retrieved untrammeled. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"The mules weren’t having it, though. "}]

The owner of the wayward hat had to wait for the stagecoach to leave the area before he could retrieve his hat.

Fortunately, it was only slightly battered and dusty for the escapade. It was back in place before the clatter of mule hooves on hardpan had quite faded away. 

The people on the streets returned to their chatter, and Murphy marveled at the full-on sensory experience that chance had lured him to. He’d had no idea when he set out that he was about to visit one of the West’s best-preserved Gold Rush towns. 

A young woman named Elizabeth Isenhart was soon floating across the dusty street toward Murphy and the stagecoach area, wearing a satiny green ballgown and hoop skirt that rippled in the breeze. 

It was as if she’d stepped from a daguerreotype into the 21st century right before his eyes.

History was alive on the streets of South Pass City, a place of gold dust and dreams — though never enough gold to satisfy all those fevered dreams. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"History That You Can See And Touch"}]

Isenhart more typically avoids standing out, but South Pass City’s Gold Rush Days is an exception to the rule. It’s the one day of the year where she takes out her cloak of history and time travels to another era.

In a crowd full of cavalry uniforms and calico, her satiny mint green ball gown made her an instant celebrity.

Children asked if she was a princess. Strangers complimented her dress and asked for selfies. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Isenhart, normally shy, eagerly complied."}]

The dress was a graduation gift from her mother to a high schooler obsessed with history. 

“I have always wanted an old-fashioned, hoop skirt — poofy dress,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “So that was her graduation present to me, making me one of those.”

Isenhart learned to love history in South Pass City as a fourth-grade girl. The first time her mother brought her, there was gold-panning by the riverside.

“She didn’t want to stop doing that,” her mother recalled with a chuckle. 

But there was so much more to do and see in South Pass City. 

“They had all this stuff going on,” she said. “Everyone’s dressed up. There were demonstrations.”

And there were exhibits, lots of exhibits, which started an endless stream of questions for her mother to answer.

“I’d be like, ‘Mom, why is this? Why is that?’ And she just explained to me how things were different back then.”

Teeny, tiny beds, for example, that two people would share. And stoves that sat so low to the floor, they were barely up to her waist. 

“It’s different than history class,” she said. “It’s being there, looking at it, and then having her say, ‘Yeah, this is how it all works. This is how it was.’”

In South Pass City, the “old days” aren’t some phrase in a textbook. They’re something Isenhart and other children like her could see and smell and touch.

She has loved history ever since, and South Pass City in particular.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"South Pass And The Story Of Our Nation"}]

People were coming to the South Pass region long before gold was discovered because it was a major western migration route.

“This is the convergence of the Rocky Mountains, the Continental Divide,” North Platte Bridge Company Commander Nick Salicky told Cowboy State Daily. “This is the one place where you can cross through without going over the mountains.”

Salicky brought a company of 24 reenactors to South Pass for Gold Rush Days, to help escort supply wagons and civilians, as well as help chase would-be robbers out of town — all roles that the military would have played when South Pass City was young.

Long before the cannon booms and stagecoaches of Gold Rush Days, thousands of emigrants crossed this same ground on the Oregon, Mormon and California trails. They were chasing dreams and hoping for fortune in a new land as they passed through its wide gentle gap — never realizing a literal fortune in gold lay under their feet.

When that gold was finally discovered, it may have been little more than a flash in the pan, but it still helped spur the new territory’s economy. It was also part of what helped bring people to Wyoming, to eventually create a state. 

“This is our story as a nation,” Salicky said. “You can’t put a price tag on this land. You can’t put a price tag on the stories of the people, these visitors walking around, learning how to do things the traditional way. 

“In a world where everything’s for sale, you’ve gotta have a place where that’s not the case. And historical places like this are significant for that right there.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Almost Wyoming’s Capital City"}]

South Pass City popped up nearly overnight in the summer of 1867, after a group of prospectors out of Fort Bridger located a massive, rich vein of gold-bearing quartz along the Willow Creek — not far from where visitors pan for gold today. They called it the Cariso lode, though early records spelled it different ways — Carisso or Carissa. Some say it was named for a miner’s sweetheart, but no one knows for sure now.

The air here might have been thin, the winters brutal, and food scarce. And the risk of conflict with Shoshone and Arapaho people was real. But nothing was going to stop thousands of men and women from surging into the area. By 1868, South Pass City stretched for a mile, with more than 300 buildings and nearly 3,000 people. 

It was barely contained chaos. Hotels, boarding houses, and saloons crowded together along the same kinds of dusty streets visitors walk today, and a simple pound of flour might cost more than a single day’s wages.

Just imagine the celebrations in this town, once considered for territorial capital, each time a rich pocket of gold was found. The overflow of cash and celebration washed through every South Pass saloon.

People had placed a bet on their future in South Pass City, and every gold strike seemed to prove them right. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"But the glory days wouldn’t last long."}]

By the early 1870s, deeper workings at the Carissa had hit hard rock, groundwater, and more chemically complex ore. 

Veins pinched out, capital grew skittish, and people began to drift away to other opportunities. 

By 1884, South Pass had lost its status as the county’s seat to Lander and fell into what some locals have called a “long sleep” — a slow fade from gold capital to near ghost town.

A few families stayed, scratching out a living on small placer claims or on nearby ranches. Others, like the Sherlock family, became the town’s quiet stewards, running a hotel, store, and post office for decades.

They were protective of South Pass and its old buildings. They’re why so many of them survived as long as they did.

But South Pass was slowly but surely coming apart. By the time Wyoming bought the core of the town in 1966 as a 75th anniversary present for the state’s citizens, its buildings were “leaning with the wind,” as South Pass City piano man John Mionczynski puts it. 

Instead of building a Wild West theme park, preservationists opted for authenticity as they preserved and restored the town. 

Wallpaper in the Sherlock Hotel was recreated from surviving fragments, for example. The blacksmith shop was restocked with tools that matched old photographs.

Today, the 1890s Dance Hall serves as an information center with introductory videos and exhibits, but it still looks just like the log community hall it once was. 

The Smith-Sherlock Co. Store, built in 1896 of logs salvaged from the 1870 Episcopal Church again functions as a general store, with a tiny post office tucked inside. 

Across the street from it, the South Pass Hotel and Restaurant, opened in 1868 and later run by the widowed mother of five, Janet Sherlock, shows what frontier hospitality at 8,000 feet looked like.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Lessons Of The Past For The Future"}]

All of that could make South pass feel like a static museum. But events like Gold Rush Days makes sure that the history lives.

Back behind the saloon, where Mionczynski is playing tune after 1800s tune, cannon man Tom Broadbent is loading black powder into a 5/8-scale Civil War-era gun he built himself. 

Throughout the day, he brings in re-enactors and other volunteers to fire off a round, teaching them how a crew of five would have done it in days gone by, so that they could fire three rounds every minute.

After that, the cannon had to rest, otherwise it gets too hot to load with more black powder. 

“The boom,” Broadbent says, is what he loves most. “When you get that percussion, it just goes and hits your body. It never gets old. Never gets old.”

Down by Willow Creek, it is standing room only in the creek as old-timers teach the art of gold panning. On the hill above them, canvas tents belonging to Salicky’s North Platte Bridge Company ripple in the wind — Sibley tents, A-frames, cavalry lines and cook flies, where they have spent the night as if they are truly the cavalry of old.

Most of the 24 reenactors are teenagers, who are sleeping shoulder-to-shoulder on bedrolls, eating chicken noodle soup with biscuits, and enjoying the time of their lives, drilling with each other, running children’s games of old, and helping stage Pony Express rides and robberies.

The youths had to research every stitch on their clothing and every tool they have with them, to ensure authenticity in every aspect.

“History, especially in our generation is starting to go away,” Libby Salicky told Cowboy State Daily. She and her friends, Emi and Helen, and her younger sister Lily glide from camp to saloon in their long skirts, playing frontier school teachers, dying theatrically in staged robberies, and singing old-fashioned songs in the saloon.

And then there are wild cards like Elizabeth, who arrived in a green dress to walk the streets of South Pass City with all the bearing of an 1800s princess.

For many visitors that day, she was the moment everything clicked. She was their bridge between past, present, and a future selfie they would always remember. 

She walked a street where Esther Hobart Morris, Wyoming’s first judge, once walked alongside other characters of the 1870s gold rush like Jane Sherlock, Calamity Jane, William H. Bright, and more.

“Once a year I get to wear my hoop skirt,” she said with a giggle. “Gold Rush Days is the day to go and visit. It’s like the best.”

As the day drifts by, another cannon blast rolls across the city, echoing off the hills and through the wooden buildings.

People in the stream stand shoulder to shoulder, swirling sediment and hope together in a quest for gold that’s as old as the city itself. 

Sometimes, it’s hard to tell just where the past ends and the present begins at South Pass City. Look the right way and it might actually be 1870 once again.

Gold Rush Days 20260711 134718 7 14 26

<title>Gold Dust, Hoop Skirts And Cannon Booms: Gold Rush Days In South Pass City, Wyoming | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Once a roaring gold capital, South Pass City, Wyoming, comes to life for one summer weekend every year for Gold Rush Days. There's cannon fire, gold panning, and guests who look the part in one of the West’s best-preserved Gold Rush towns. 

Gold Dust, Hoop Skirts And Cannon Booms: Gold Rush Days In South Pass City, Wyoming

Employee kate meadows cropped

Kate Meadows

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's general assignment reporter, Clair McFarland.

Clair McFarland

Executive

Cheyenne’s Board of Public Utilities will not move forward with a press conference this week to discuss details surrounding the contamination of the city's wastewater reuse system by a Meta data center contractor, despite publicly saying last week that it would.

Frank Strong, BOPU’s engineering and water resource division manager, told Cowboy State Daily in a phone call Tuesday that the board is “not able to” do the information event as initially planned. 

[{"type":"text","text":"He said he's unable to discuss why."}]

Instead, BOPU is putting together a list of questions it has received from media and members of the public and is working on drafting concise answers.

“We’ve received a lot of questions, a lot of inquiries,” Strong said, adding that he hopes the document would be publicly released Wednesday or Thursday. 

The public upswell over the contamination has built for weeks after the BOPU made the contamination public months after it happened.

On July 2, the BOPU  announced that Goat Systems LLC, the corporate entity Meta uses during construction of its nearly 800,000-square-foot data center campus, was in "significant noncompliance" with the city's industrial pretreatment regulations after discharging wastewater contaminated with Cupriavidus gilardii bacteria into Cheyenne's municipal reuse water system. 

The board had issued a public notice June 26 that laboratory staff identified the contaminant in a February sampling from Meta’s closed-loop cooling system.

Meta would not comment publicly on the BOPU’s decision, nor would it comment on whether closed-loop cooling systems are safe and reliable for limiting water consumption from its data centers, whether it would publicly share the results of its own water quality tests and whether it plans any sort of community outreach in the wake of the incident.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Hageman And Meta"}]

sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg

, asking pointed questions about the contamination and asking the company to release all information it has about the Cupriavidus gilardii bacterium that had been discharged into the city’s wastewater system.

Hageman's strongly-worded letter had demanded answers of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. 

For example, she asked why the public announcement about the contamination came more than four months after the Meta contractor disrupted the city’s reclaimed wastewater system with the rare bacterial contaminant.

Meta called Hageman’s office within 24 hours, the representative said in a Tuesday phone interview with Cowboy State Daily.

“First of all, I want to commend them. They called us immediately,” said Hageman. 

That first phone call was between Meta personnel and Hageman staffers, she said. She took to X.com to call that first call “productive.” 

Hageman said Meta’s stance was essentially that, “We want to be a good neighbor, be responsive, we recognize this is something that’s been announced (as coming) from our facility and we’re doing the investigation to find out what happened and address it.”

Hageman said she joined a second call with Meta officials Tuesday afternoon in which the tech officials said they are working with the Board of Public Utilities to “figure out what happened here.”

The representative said she sees her approach to this issue less as a federal lawmaker and more as an advocate for Wyoming.

“One of the things I’ve encouraged them, and other people either wanting to come to Wyoming or who are in Wyoming bringing ... different types of businesses expanding our workforce is,  you need to work with the communities where you intend to go,” she said. 

“Talk with city leaders. Have public meetings. Talk about what you intend to do. Make sure you’re doing that public outreach so people can engage with you and understand what it is you intend to do in the state of Wyoming,” Hageman added.

Hageman said she has not been in touch with the BOPU on why it isn’t planning to have a press conference this week and doesn’t have insight there, but believes that the entity should engage with the public also.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Priced Out Of Transparency"}]

Despite promising a press conference this week to address the Meta data center contamination of Cheyenne’s wastewater system, the Board of Public Utilities now says it won’t, opting instead to release a statement addressing questions.