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

Renée Jean

It’s often said that a picture is worth a thousand words, but it’s worth more than that at the Bone Daddy Outlaw Bar and Grill in Dubois, which has undergone a dramatic transformation since it was purchased last year by Ben Barto and his wife, Sherry.

Hanging in one corner of the bar is a picture that says it all, even if few might guess at all the layers of meaning it holds for its owner.

It is a photo of motorcycle handlebars looking out at a scenic vista. The words say simply, “Life Behind Bars.”

“I was in junior high when I had my first motorcycle,” Barto told Cowboy State Daily. “And I had a neighbor with a faster motorcycle. He always used to brag about how he would outrun the cops when he was speeding.”

The brag turned out to be just that — as Barto soon discovered.

“We were riding together one time and we decided we were going to take off and see who was faster,” he said. “No sooner did we get started than there was a highway patrolman coming at us.”

The patrolman flipped his lights on, and the neighbor who loved to brag about outrunning the law meekly pulled over to the side. 

Barto, who’d never made such a claim, kept right on going.

“So the cop chased me for a while, and I couldn’t take a corner very well,” he recalled. “I had to lay the bike over and he caught up to me.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"'He Was A Friend Of Mine'"}]

Barto knew this was bad in every possible way, but he didn’t know just how bad until he got a look at the officer’s face.

“He was a friend of mine,” Barto admitted.

It was a friend who was shocked to see just who he’d been chasing.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"It grew worse as the night went on."}]

“My uncle, who also happened to be a policeman and lived right across the street from me, was at the jailhouse that night,” Barto said. “And my folks were on vacation.”

While his uncle was disappointed in Barto, he decided not to throw the youth in jail, saying he knew his dad too well. He knew what would happen to Barto when his father found out his son had been arrested.

“He did issue me a ticket,” Barto said.

When Barto’s dad did come home, it didn’t take him long to hear through the grapevine what his son had been up to while he was away. 

“He took me to the jail and had my uncle take me downstairs to the jail,” Barto said. “He had me put in the jail and shut the door.”

For a moment, all was silent but for the echoing clang of the heavy door closing.

Then his uncle said words Barto has never forgotten.

“The way you’re going, you’re going to spend a lot of time behind bars,” he told him. 

And then he left Barto there to think it over for a while.

Barto decided then the only bars he ever wanted to live behind were the right kind — his motorcycle bars or, in this case, the bar he’s purchased in Dubois and is restoring. 

The photo is his reminder every day that he chooses the life he wants to live. That includes staying away from the wrong kinds of bars. 

“I haven’t outrun any cops since then,” Barto said with a chuckle.

Decades after that lesson in “life behind bars,” Barto has traded the threat of steel jail doors for steel blades married to custom-carved antler bone handles — a business he calls Bone Daddy Knives. 

The business has quietly been putting Dubois on the map for almost three decades, starting with a contract he picked up after a Montana gift rep died, leaving a shopkeeper with a demand and no knives.

Today, 2 miles inside the Wind River Indian Reservation, Barto buys about 25,000 pounds of antlers a year from local “shed heads,” or antler hunters. The best of the pieces become Bone Daddy knife handles, while the rest become part of the booming antler dog-chew trade.

He and his small crew turn out a couple thousand knives a year, each one a custom job, which sell well across the West.

Barto also at one time carved ornaments from bone antlers, as well as hat pins and figurines, which were sold at gift shops in Yellowstone National Park, Gardiner, West Yellowstone, Sturgis, as well as to larger chains such as Cabela’s, Sportsman’s Warehouse and Bass Pro Shops.

Barto jokes, like a lot of craftsmen, that making knives was something he once liked — back when it was still a hobby.

“Now it’s a business,” he said with a chuckle. “But when you’ve got a business that provides you the funds necessary to keep going in whatever adventure you want to go off into, I guess you still have to keep doing it.”

It’s all about the kind of bars Barto wants to live behind.

The knife business is bankrolling his transformation of the Outlaw Bar from a dive — where 

 in Cowboy State Daily noted people might be concerned for their safety — to an establishment where the opposite is true.

When he and Sherry bought the bar it was, to say the least, not exactly turnkey.

“This was just a dump when we bought it,” Barto said. “But they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

Barto could immediately see the potential. His wife took a little more sweet-talking.

“She was going crazy,” Barto admitted. “She’s like, ‘At your age, you want to start another project?!’”

Barto took it slow. He’d take his wife to the bar now and again for drinks. And just about every time the occasion presented just the right moment to say something like, “Oh look dear, you know what we could do with this part of the building?” Or, “Could you imagine if we did this in this room?”

Barto held up the mirror often enough that his wife finally gave in and said, “Yeah, let’s go ahead and do it.”

The bar’s biggest potential, he realized, wasn’t just what he could do with an artist’s eye and aesthetic inside. It was its position on a main highway to Yellowstone and the Tetons, a high-traffic strip where lots of tourists, sportsmen and bikers are roaring through town looking for their next adventure.

Its other big advantage is a deep lot, stretching far enough behind the bar to create a parking lot. 

“There is no parking anywhere else in town,” Barto said. “All of the Outlaw’s customers have been complaining about it for years.”

So Barto started his work in the back of the bar, carving out what he hopes will become a signature beer garden and games yard, with expanded parking, turf, fencing and, eventually, a raised stage for large outdoor events.

“We still have room to go back another 100 feet and still have a space for a possible stage up on top for a big venue,” he said. 

Inside, the transformation is further along, and personal. 

He’s hung up some of his and his wife’s work, tracing the arc of their lives from the early Bartolo Collectibles days to the present Bone Daddy Knife days, as well as wildlife mounts from hunting trips and, of course, the poster that captures his life’s motto to live his life behind only the bars he chooses.

There is still much dirt yet to move and asphalt to pour, but Barto is already thinking big for this bar, five to 10 years down the road.

“We want to be the best cowboy biker sportsman bar in Wyoming,” he said. “And from what we’ve been hearing from all of the locals lately, this new makeover has created a vibe all its own. That’s what they’re calling it. They say this place has vibe now.”

The “vibe” was on full display during the Fourth of July weekend, Barto added, when the bar hosted the band Second Ride. 

“I have never seen the bar that busy in my entire life,” he said. “It was standing-room-only Friday night.”

During Dubois’ famous tank parade, announcers even gave Barto a shoutout for cleaning up and reinventing the bar.

Barto is clear that, aside from aesthetics, he’s also made it a priority to clear out questionable clientele.

On his first night as an owner, he spotted a drug dealer working the room and said he “86’d” her on the spot. 

“My main focus, other than cleaning that bar up, was cleaning up the reputation,” he said. “If there was somebody in there who was always raising hell, we 86’d them.”

Signs at every entrance now warn potential troublemakers that a new sheriff owns the bar. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Bone Daddy Needed A Bar"}]

If Bone Daddy Knives is the financial engine behind the bar, the Bone Daddy persona is its soul.

It was developed over a 20-some year period, when Barto served as mascot for the Beartooth Rally’s Iron Horse Rodeo in Red Lodge, Montana.

At first, his costume was simple: The widest brim black cowboy hat he could find and a mask. The next year he added an air-brushed skeleton T-shirt and pants. 

Of course, then, cool costume and all, Bone Daddy needed a more appropriate ride.

The $65,000 custom bike he built includes his own screaming Bone Daddy moon logo as well as other artwork. 

“That was quite the undertaking,” he admitted. “But it is a masterpiece of artwork.”

When Barto retired from the Ironhorse Circuit after a couple of decades, he brought his Bone Daddy logo with him. The rearing motorcycle with its cowboy skeletal rider happened to be an almost-perfect match for the rearing horse logo at the Outlaw, a similarity that wasn’t lost on Barto.

“So I just added Bone Daddy to the back of the horse,” he said. “That’s all I did to change their logo.”

Barto, in addition to all the other hats he wears, is also president of the Professional Biker Rodeo Association, which he plans to start revving up next year as he’s completing renovations.

“Bone Daddy had to have a bar,” he said with a chuckle. “Now the trick is to make it the kind of place people remember for the right reasons.”

Bone Daddy Outlaw Saloon 7 12 26

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

<title>Longtime Knifemaker Transforming Dubois' Outlaw Bar From Dive Into Destination | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Dubois craftsman Ben Barto owns Bone Daddy Knives, a hobby turned big business that’s now bankrolling a transformation of Dubois' Outlaw Bar and giving the once-seedy watering hole a new vibe. “This was just a dump when we bought it,” Barto said.

Longtime Knifemaker Transforming Dubois' Outlaw Bar From Dive Into Destination

Tourism

On a cold winter’s night in the 1950s, a young Marine named Wayne Schell found himself in a desperate scramble under the hood of his 1950 Oldsmobile on a lonely stretch of Route 66. 

A tiny pinhole had developed in the radiator, and Schell was trying to figure out how to fix it so he could get home — without forking over his hard-earned money for a motel room.

“When you’re a young Marine, you can’t really afford a motel or anything,” Schell said with a chuckle. “You drive nonstop.”

The Marine riding with him to share expenses came up with a bright idea. Or so it seemed at 1 a.m.

“Well, maybe I can put this pencil tip in it to block it,” Schell recalled him saying. 

But the radiator was so rotten, the pencil just busted open an even larger hole.

The road trip home was over. At least for that night. 

Schell and his riding buddy had no choice but to rent a motel room for the night, one of the only times he would ever stay in a motel room along Route 66 back when it was an actual American highway. 

Schell, who is 90 — almost as old as the 100-year-old highway itself — recalls sharing the motel room with a significantly chastened pal. 

“I wasn’t mad at him,” Schell said in a soft voice, memories crowding in. “He tried to help me, and it just didn’t work out.”

The next morning, the two Marines found a radiator shop to fix the problem.

“He wouldn’t guarantee the work because we were out of town,” Schell said. “And he charged me like $20.”

It was half a week’s pay for the average male worker at the time. A small fortune — especially for work that had no guarantee.

“But I ended up using it for three more years,” Schell added. “So it worked. I got through. I made it home.”

The memory is just one in a million that Schell has of driving America’s Mother Road, Route 66, a name synonymous with America and legendary road trips. 

Schell, who joined the Marine Corps in 1956, is among the dwindling number of Americans alive today who has driven the entirety of Route 66 from Navy Pier in Chicago to Santa Monica Pier in California, a roughly 2,400-mile trip. 

He didn’t just drive it once, either. It was a regular trip home for the young Marine. 

“I lived in Illinois, about 100 miles southwest of Chicago,” he said. “I went to bootcamp in California, and then got stationed at 29 Palms in California.”

He made the drive home as often as he could in a 1950 Olds with a 1956 Olds engine and three Stormberg 97 two-barrel carburetors, usually in one long 40- to 45-hour sleepless trip.

The thing he likes to remind people who have never driven the route when it was an actual highway is that there was no such thing as a freeway then.

“Route 66 went through every little town along the way,” he said. “You had to stop at stoplights and stop signs. There was traffic, which wasn’t bad then.”

Some towns had posted limits of 30 mph, too, and friendly police to remind those who weren’t paying attention to their speed. 

U.S. Route 66 doesn’t officially exist anymore. The federal government decertified it in 1985, a year after the last interstate highway bypass was completed in Williams, Arizona, wiping it off the map as a U.S. highway — at least on paper.

But that didn’t kill the route. The Mother Road lives on in the heart and the imagination, which has made it feel more alive than ever. 

“It’s a road for God’s sake,” Route 66 historian John Hinckley of Arizona told Cowboy State Daily. “But it literally has an international fan club. There are Route 66 associations in Japan, Germany, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Italy — and they organize events and publish books.”

A 2018 Route 66 Festival in Europe where Hinckley was invited to speak brought more than 20,000 people from 10 countries to celebrate America and its legendary Route 66.

“It has evolved to represent the quintessential American experience,” Hinckley said. “It truly is the entire American story made manifest. It’s in any chapter of our history — even our prehistory. You have villages in New Mexico along Route 66, like Laguna Pueblo, and the chapel there was built in 1699. The village is 100 years older than that.”

Portions of Route 66 were laid on top of the Santa Fe Trail and the Buell Wagon Road, Hinckley added. 

“The Buell Wagon Road was laid on top of a 1,000-year-old Native American trade route,” he said. “And then you have the world’s first electric vehicle museum being established on Route 66. So it’s the entire story of America, and the story of our immigrants is all peppered through Route 66.”

Hinckley has been traveling Route 66 since 1959 and has been watching its transformation with fascination ever since, including how it’s become woven into the fabric of American legend.

The story that illustrates this best to him is the conversation he had with a gentleman who had grown up behind the Iron Curtain listening to Radio Free America.

“He knew that song about getting your kicks on Route 66,” Hinckley said. “He grew up watching bootleg copies of Easy Rider. And he said the American road trip, specifically Route 66, came to symbolize freedom for his generation, like the Statue of Liberty did for a previous generation.”

Americans, meanwhile, are finding ways to live out their dreams on Route 66 all up and down the route — freedom of another kind.

For example, in Stroud, Oklahoma, a young couple has restored the old Skyliner Motel. Elsewhere, retirees have brought back neon-lit motor courts. Multi-generation cafes, founded by penniless immigrants, have family members who are keeping the dream alive that their grandfathers began. 

That’s made Route 66 into a kind of 2,400-mile, small-town neighborhood, Hinckley said. 

“It’s America’s longest small town,” he said. “It’s evolved into this linear community.”

On any given night, you can find yourself at a place like the Roadrunner Lodge in Tucumcari, New Mexico, roasting marshmallows around a fire pit with a couple from Germany and a traveler from Scotland who is playing “The Star Spangled Banner” on bagpipes. 

Hinckley once ran into a caravan of strangers who spontaneously decided to convoy together to the Midpoint Cafe in Adrian, Texas, for a slice of “ugly crust” pie, so named because the cafe’s legendary pastry chef, Joann Andrews, famously cared more about the rich flavor and flaky texture of her pies than making a perfect crimped edge.

Midpoint Cafe, meanwhile, gets its name because it is exactly 1,139 miles from Chicago and 1,139 miles from Santa Monica, which makes the cafe a must for the ultimate Route 66 experience.

“You find inspiration all along the route,” he said. “The magic is the people.”

Route 66 wasn’t the first coast-to-coast highway, although it’s frequently portrayed that way. That honor actually belongs to 

, which goes right through the middle of Wyoming.

“This is another challenge with Route 66,” Hinckley said. “As with Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox, it’s become such a legend that separating fact from fiction is a real challenge.”

From its earliest days, Route 66 benefitted from what Hinckley calls the best press and publicity any road has ever had.

“Cyrus Avery was a pioneer in a lot of these early highways,” Hinckley said. “And he and a bunch of visionaries got together and created the U.S. Highway 66 Association. The idea was to petition and lobby to have the road paved from end to end, and to promote the road — a kind of quasi Chamber of Commerce.”

The group hit the ground running with their publicity campaign — literally. 

“There was a sports promoter trying to get backing for a transcontinental foot race,” Hinckley said. “So they jumped on board and said they’d sponsor it as long as he would agree to do it on Route 66.”

The purse for the 1928 race was $20,000, a phenomenal amount of money for the time. The average American family earned less than $1,500 per year. A purse of that size could purchase multiple homes outright. 

Runners from all over the world, from amateur to professional, came to vie for this huge Route 66 purse.

“A 19-year-old Cherokee boy from Oklahoma entered the race,” Hinckley said. “Total amateur from some little farming community. By the time they got to the end of Oklahoma, he was leading the pack and he eventually won the race.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"It was a huge, international media frenzy."}]

There would be more smart media campaigns after that. The Highway 66 Association partnered with the Olympics, for example, to advertise Route 66 as the scenic way to get to the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles.

“Then you had the ‘Grapes of Wrath,’ and you had the song, ‘Get Your Kicks on Route 66,’ which has turned into one of the most recorded songs in history,” Hinckley said. "The 'I Love Lucy'television show even got in on the act with a four-part episode of Desi and Lucy going on a Route 66 trip with the Mertzes to California.

Finally, in 1960, came the “Route 66” television series starring Martin Milner and George Maharis as two young men traveling across the country in a Chevrolet Corvette. A heady list of guest stars included Robert Redford, Lon Chaney Jr., Boris Karloff, Robert Duvall, Walter Matthau and William Shatner, among dozens of others.

The series ended in 1964 after 116 episodes and two Primetime Emmy Award nominations.

Route 66 itself ultimately became a victim of the interstate highway system — I-10, I-15, I-40, I-44 and I-55 — which rendered it obsolete and diverted traffic from its businesses.

Schell might not have been a tourist when he was driving Route 66, but he made plenty of great memories along the way.

“My 1950s Oldsmobile was all fancied up,” he said with a chuckle. “You know, like a young kid does. I had been keeping this at my parents’ house in Illinois. So that first time, I flew back home on an airplane, but when I got off leave, I drove the Oldsmobile back to 29 Palms.”

The sights along the way were incredible to a “young kid” as Schell referred to himself. 

“They used to have Tipis along Route 66 and the rattlesnakes,” he said. “I was seeing rattlesnakes and all kinds of things.”

There was no Cadillac Ranch yet, but there was a little diner on the west end of Albuquerque, where he stopped to have an innocent cup of life-saving coffee.

“There was an old Mexican fella eating a bowl of chili and I thought, ‘You know, that looks pretty good,’” Schell said. “So I ordered a bowl, and it was the hottest chili I’d ever eaten in my life. I had tears coming out of my eyes, and I never got sleepy anymore that night. That’s for sure.”

There was also a restaurant somewhere near Amarillo that offered a 32- or 36-ounce steak for free — if you could eat it all in one sitting.

“I think they still have that one today,” he said. “But I never tried it. I knew better. I wasn’t going to be able to eat that much.”

Schell still drives over portions of Route 66 to this day. Last year, he drove it to a family reunion in Illinois. 

“I’ve got a new Corvette now, and I’m driving a Lucid all-electric car,” he said. “I’ve had it a couple of years and it has 86,000 miles on it. I like to drive.”

Schell usually works in a stop at a resort he owns near Tucson, Arizona, which takes him on a lot of backroads the rest of the way to Illinois.

“It’s really amazing,” he said. “You get to see all these little towns off the beaten path where Route 66 used to go. You can still do that on rural roads, and these are pretty nice roads.”

His favorite of these towns is one in the southwest corner of Kansas, which is full of old Victorian homes overlooking a river.

“It’s a beautiful city, and no one ever talks about it,” he said. “It’s one of the nicest cities in the country. So, you discover things, you know? It’s neat to be able to discover these hidden gems, tucked away, that nobody even knows about.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Inspiring New Legends"}]

The Route 66 shield is one of the most recognizable in the world, Hinckley said. He’s read claims from some experts that it’s even more recognizable than the Coca-Cola logo. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"He believes it. "}]

He’s seen the signs tacked onto barns in the remotest corners of Poland and Ukraine, as well as themed diners in Spain, not to mention bars and roadside cafes across America, both on and off of Route 66. 

“Route 66 has always been the route of dreams,” Hinckley said. “And every day the road is inspiring people to do amazing things.”

Like the people trying to rollerblade the entire Route 66. Or the Irish ultra-cyclist riding his bike from Santa Monica Pier in California to Navy Pier in Chicago in 10 days — a world record, set just a few weeks ago.

“I met a World War II veteran and the short version of this is when he got out of the Navy in 1946 in Norfolk, Virginia, him and his wife, newly married, went to California and they drove Route 66 most of the trip,” he said. “They did it on a 1940 Harley in a sidecar, because that was all they could afford at the time.”

In the early 2000s, they decided to celebrate their wedding anniversary by recreating the trip. 

“They restored a 1940 Harley Davidson sidecar and they lived in Florida, so their plan was to drive to Oklahoma and continue to California,” Hinckley said. “Well, she got sick and passed away before they could make the trip. And he was diagnosed with lung cancer.”

Doctors took out one lung and part of his other lung, but that didn’t mean the trip was off.

“He told the doctor, ‘I promised my wife I’m taking her to California,’” Hinckley said. “So he rigged up his side car with his oxygen tanks and equipment and he put his wife’s ashes in the side car and went from Sarasota, Florida to the Santa Monica Pier on a 1940 Harley Davidson in a sidecar.”

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Walk the Santa Monica Pier today, and it’s a microcosm of Route 66 mythology, caught up in one single place.

Chinese protestors march the pier, pleading to be saved from the “evil CCP,” while evangelists try desperately to save the souls of the beaded and bangled tourists walking by. Some are wearing thong swimsuits and T-shirts and little else, while others are swathed in Puritan-style clothing, buttoned up to the neck.

At the end of the pier, a man in a somehow spotless white suit sings “What a Wonderful World” with such conviction it’s impossible not to believe it in that moment. 

It is a wonderful world, even when it sometimes isn’t. 

Somewhere along that same boardwalk is a shop that claims to be the official last stop for Route 66, selling souvenirs — affordable, if tiny, pieces of the road’s magic.

Technically, Hinckley said, that shop isn’t located at the actual end of Route 66. That’s at Olympic and Lincoln in Santa Monica.

But technicalities don’t overcome emotion in such a moment. Of course, the tourist who has arrived at the end of Route 66 is going to take a little stroll on the famous Santa Monica Pier that’s just two blocks away and find that last little Route 66 stop. 

Wayne Schell Route 66 Inset Arizona Nicholas Klein via Alamy 7 12 26

<title>America’s Longest Small Town: Why Route 66 Is The Quintessential American Experience | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Historic U.S. Route 66 is America's longest small town — a 2,400-mile neighborhood that one historian calls the "quintessential American experience." 90-year-old Wayne Schell has driven the entire route dozens of times and continues to drive it today.

America’s Longest Small Town: Why Route 66 Is The Quintessential American Experience

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Jackie Dorothy.

Jackie Dorothy

Former Yellowstone National Park Ranger Carl Dunrud was no stranger to danger when he came up against four boys in the wilderness of Wyoming. 

 and rode a buffalo for a Wild West show stunt before buying a dude ranch at the height of the Great Depression. 

He had paid $2.50 an acre for the former Kerwin mining claim to serve as the starting point of his pack trips into the Absaroka Range for his Double Dee Dude Ranch, and was focused on making a living, not tracking fugitives.

However, the many guests Dunrud and his wife, Vera, were expecting didn’t come. 

As they struggled to feed their family and survive the monotony, Dunrud got the urgent call from the warden at the Wyoming Industrial Institute in Worland, now called the Wyoming Boys' School, about four teen inmates on the run. 

Despite his misgivings, Dunrud agreed to help, although he knew this task might prove more dangerous that lassoing a walrus.

“I was reluctant to stop breaking sod since I had just taken the rough edge off four young horses, but the pay was quoted at the unheard-of price of a dollar an hour, and I could keep my own time,” Dunrud wrote years later in his autobiography, “85 Years of Adventure.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Boy Called Sunshine"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"It was after midnight in 1932 when the telephone rang at the Double Dee. "}]

The warden explained that four teens had escaped two days earlier, and no one had seen them since. Their tracks had just been discovered on Gooseberry Creek, about 20 miles southeast of Meeteetse.

Their leader was Sunshine, and it was his tracks that helped them identify the teens. He was wearing cowboy boots with steel plates on his heels. One heel was worn to a sharp point, so there was no mistaking who it was.

“We think they are heading across the mountain for Dubois,” the warden said. “Will you go and see if you can intercept them?”

The warden offered to send a trustee to Dunrud who was Sunshine's friend, and who the warden hoped would be a help

in apprehending Sunshine. The boys were traveling slowly, and the warden said there was no doubt they were tired and hungry.

Except, they were now armed. The boys had been tracked to Clarence Dollar's sheep wagon. They had robbed it of groceries, a .30-30 rifle and ammunition.

“Now remember, Sunshine is dangerous. He's young, but he's a pretty tough hombre,” the warden said. “The other boys are just kids.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Industrial School"}]

, the Wyoming Legislature passed a law in 1911 that established a “Reform Institution” to serve and house young male felons like Sunshine. The Wyoming Industrial Institute opened its doors in 1915 and by the time Sunshine and his boy gang were housed there, the institution was self-sustaining.

The school maintained a productive farming operation manned by inmates and was considered a model of self-sufficiency, especially during the Great Depression. The idea was that the wards, boys ages16 to 25, would learn life skills and a useful trade.

Sunshine would have been expected to help with the chores related to fattening the Hereford cattle for market, milking the dairy cows and caring for the sheep, hogs and chickens. Gardens and large fields of sugar beets were also planted and the boys were employed in a small, on-site cannery.

According to State Archives records the sale from the excess products equaled $86,700 for the 1928-1930 biennium, which is equivalent to $1.1 million today. By the time Sunshine was working in the fields, the institute was making an average of $700,000 in today’s dollars per year.

Sunshine obviously had enough of forced labor and escaped, taking with him three other boys.

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The snow still lay deep on the mountains between the Double Dee and Dubois, so Dunrud took along old “Agony and Torture,” the hickory skis he had used on patrol in Yellowstone.

Although young, "Sunshine" was already a dangerous inmate at an institute in Worland. When hand three others escaped, a legendary former Yellowstone ranger was called to hunt Sunshine down. "He's young, but he's a pretty tough hombre,” the warden said.

Dennis Jones, 73