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

Renée Jean

Business & Tourism

Raymond Felix brought a brand-new bike to Sturgis this year. New to him, that is.

“We bought it about two weeks ago,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “I traded my Sporty in. I said, ‘We’re going to Sturgis, so I want a better bike.’”

The bike is a 2017 Softail Slim FLS with 5,000 miles on it, “practically new” for what was Felix’s first trip to Sturgis. He went with his family — his mom and dad, Leon and Alisa, and his girlfriend, Yessenia Marenco. 

The four were among hordes of bikers — literally thousands — riding the Devils Tower loop for a Sturgis Rally tradition called Wyoming Wednesday. 

Sundance’s claim to fame on Wyoming Wednesday is a burnout contest that’s been going on for more than half a century in front of the historic Dime Horseshoe Bar.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Legend Of The Burnout"}]

Local legends say the Dime Horseshoe Bar’s burnout actually started inside the establishment, which takes its name from a horseshoe pattern inlaid into the bar top with dimes.

The story goes that a bar patron decided to do a burnout inside the bar and the owner chased him out.

Other riders joined the fun, putting on their own spontaneous burnout event on the street in front of the bar.

It started a tradition that has continued ever since, though these days it’s more of a planned thing, complete with bike mechanics who swap used tires for new, saving the bikers’ good tires for their return trip to either the Sturgis Rally or home. 

The bar has since also built a stage for the bikes, elevating them above the crowd so everyone can see. That also helps keep the smoke over everyone’s heads. 

A set of fans blows the clouds of acrid, billowing smoke away from the bikers. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Big Father-Son Moment"}]

Felix had a dream for his first Sturgis, and watching the Dime Horseshoe Bar’s Burnout in Sundance was it.

But he didn’t just watch the burnout as he’d planned.

Jess Jones, owner of the Dime Horseshoe Bar along with her husband, Casey, is persuasive that way. 

She kept calling for entries, and Felix’s dad, Leon, kept urging Raymond to enter.

“They talked me into it,” he said. “I was like, ‘All right, let’s do it. I’m down for it.’”

Felix’s parents have been coming to Sturgis — and to Sundance’s burnout — since 2011. But until this year, Raymond couldn’t join them. All four work for the same delivery-driving business, which makes planning time off together tricky.

“It’s hard for all of us to take vacation at the same time,” Leon said. “This is the first year we got to do it.”

A friend showed Leon and Alisa all the cool places to go, including Sundance. 

“We love it,” Alisa said. “It’s amazing. Seriously, every year we look forward to coming.”

For Leon, finally sharing Sundance with his son — and seeing him compete so well in the burnout — was not just a great memory. It is a father-son milestone he cherishes. 

“It’s like a father’s dream to have your kid come ride with you,” he said. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Hitting Sixth Gear"}]

Felix had been told he probably wouldn’t be able to cycle his engine past fourth gear. 

But when he hit four without signs of strain, he kicked it up to five and then six. 

Smoke, he explained, is the whole point of a burnout. 

“The bigger the cloud of smoke is, the better,” he said. “So you go through first, second, third. You want to keep the gears shifting. But so it handled six just fine.”

Family and friends replayed the moment he hit sixth gear, and Raymond’s eyes lit up.

“Check this out,” he exclaimed. “The sixth-gear pin! I was in sixth gear!”

That ultimately earned him enough crowd appreciation that he took third place, along with a $250 cash prize. 

First place, and the $750 in prize money, went to Bill Snider, a regular from Michigan who said he will put the money back into his bike.

Snider was in Sundance hanging out with his daughter, Erica Goble, and her fiancé.

Goble drove to Sundance from Colorado to be with her dad, and said she thought the event was “pretty cool.”

Snider told Cowboy State Daily he spends little time at the Sturgis Rally itself, preferring to spend his rally time in tiny Sundance and Hulett in Wyoming.

“We go over there, but we go over there once, buy a T-shirt and leave,” he said.

In Wyoming, he said, he has found people are welcoming and treat you like family — and that’s what keeps him coming back.

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

<title>Why Sturgis Riders Have Packed Sundance, Wyoming, For 50 Years Of Its Annual Burnout | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Sturgis Motorcycle Rally riders have packed Sundance, Wyoming, for its annual burnout for more than 50 years. Legend has it the burnout started inside the Dime Horseshoe Bar. “The bigger the cloud of smoke is, the better,” says one rider.

Why Sturgis Riders Have Packed Sundance, Wyoming, For 50 Years Of Its Annual Burnout

There is just something about the Elk Mountain Hotel that inspires devotion.

Peter Thieriot, for example, was warned that the Elk Mountain Hotel was nothing more than a money pit. 

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

Locals joked that the hotel required a tetanus shot before walking in.

No one was laughing once Thieriot finished restoring it. 

He took the hotel back to its studs, then rebuilt it room by room by room.

Nine layers of wallpaper were stripped from the dining room. Samples of each layer still decorate a wall just outside the dining room, even though Thieriot no longer owns the hotel.

Christine Neel is the hotel’s present-day owner. 

She did what a lot of small-town Wyoming kids wind up doing — leaving Wyoming. 

Her folks packed up and moved to Texas before Neel graduated from high school. She went to Texas A&M, becoming an “Aggie,” with a major in nursing and business.

But when the 120-year-old Elk Mountain Hotel went up for sale in January 2020, she leapt at the chance to take over the tiny boutique hotel in little Elk Mountain, where the elevation of 7,264 feet far exceeds its population of 146 people. 

“I’ve been in love with the hotel since childhood,” Neel told Cowboy State Daily. “I grew up not too far from there on a ranch … I remember going to brunches over there, attending weddings over there, before and after the renovation.”

When she heard the owners had decided to get out of the hotel business, something clicked. 

She suddenly knew she wanted to own that hotel.

“I think it just has a charm like no place else has,” she said. “I’ve always just loved it. So I couldn’t say no when the opportunity came up.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Reborn From Ashes"}]

Neel says many travelers find the Elk Mountain Hotel by surprise when they’re traveling to Yellowstone National Park along Interstate 80. 

It’s a pleasant surprise for most. Tripadvisor shows a 4.8 out of 5-bubble rating, and it’s easy to see why.

At first sight, it’s like gazing into another time and place, and then melting into it with each step toward the hotel. None of the rooms have televisions, which deepens the effect.

There are no air conditioners humming, either.  

Tiny refrigerators and microwaves are the only nod to the modern world — and they do not bother. They’re quiet.

The hotel sits at the base of Elk Mountain, in the same spot where the Overland Trail once had its stage stop, just east of the Medicine Bow River.

The establishment was then known as The Crossing. 

After Union Pacific finished the Transcontinental Railroad, The Crossing fell into disrepair and burned down in 1905.

A man from Wales named John Evans built a new hotel on top of the ashes, naming it Mountain View Hotel. It was white with green trim then, and it’s white with green trim now.

No one knows exactly how or why Evans came to Wyoming. What is known about him is that he was adopted by the Jones family and worked for a time at the Evan's Bro’s Store in Carbon, now an abandoned coal town southwest of Medicine Bow.

Eventually, Evans married his adoptive sister, Mary Ann Jones.

The couple had 10 children, seven of whom died very young. Some of those children are buried at the old Carbon Cemetery.

When the couple moved from Carbon to Elk Mountain to work for J.S. Jones, they had two living children, Joseph and Aubrey. John ran the bar and Mary was the cook. 

They bought The Crossing from Jones in 1903. Two years later, after their son William was born, The Crossing burned down.

The couple borrowed money from Mary’s sister Catherine to rebuild the hotel. 

They had 16 bedrooms upstairs and a bar and dance hall downstairs. It had indoor plumbing and Elk Mountain’s first power plant. In addition to itself, the hotel’s coal-fired plant supplied power to neighbors as well. 

The dance hall quickly became a community gathering spot for dances, parties, political rallies and town meetings.

In the 1920s, John Evans and his boys built an open-air dance pavilion.

Many famous people would come to play at the Garden Spot Pavilion, including Lawrence Welk and Louis Armstrong.

The hotel’s 12 rooms echo some of that history. 

Two are named for both Welk and Armstrong. Others are devoted to famous Wyoming figures Jim Bridger, Esther Hobart Morris and Eliza Swain. 

Another honors someone infamous: “Big Nose” George Parrot.

Each room leans into its historic namesake, with relevant photographs, artwork, and history hanging on the walls. 

The hotel is framed by mature trees and a profusion of pink hollyhocks — perfect for the Victorian architecture.

Inside, the vintage charm continues with a warm mixture of leather, wood, and posh upholstery alongside photos of historical Elk Mountain figures that help tell the hotel’s unique story. 

The restaurant serves steaks and pasta, along with homemade desserts and cocktails. Reservations are required.

Stay there once, and it’s easy to understand why people keep coming back. Because there’s just something about the Elk Mountain Hotel. 

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<title>How Wyoming’s Elk Mountain Hotel Went From Money Pit To Historic Showplace | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Built 120 years ago when an Overland Trail stage stop burned down, many warned its previous owner it would be a money pit to restore. He did it anyway, and now the Elk Mountain Hotel has become a showplace on the National Register of Historic Places.

How Wyoming’s Elk Mountain Hotel Went From Money Pit To Historic Showplace

Welsch mug

Jeff Welsch

Their Links of Dreams unfolded in every way they imagined: The long drive past cornfields on a lonely dirt road, a massive American flag and windsock fluttering over a clubhouse perched atop a knoll on the endless undulating terrain of northeast Nebraska, and the first religious glimpse of the No. 1 tee, fairways and greens unlike any others.

For Sheridan’s Josh Gardner and Jared Stiver, a moment coveted by golfers worldwide — but rarely experienced — was, at long last, at hand.

To secure a tee time at the Landmand Golf Club outside of Homer, Nebraska, 

Some 11,000 slots are made available each New Year’s Eve for the novel 4-year-old course; they’re gone in less than an hour.

Now here Gardner and Stiver were the first week of August, two regular guys from Wyoming, somehow entered to play Landmand in the inaugural The Heartbeat tournament, a Golf Channel creation, after Gardner took a Plan B New Year's Eve stab on the course's website. 

Soon they would be pitted against pairs from all 50 states over four days, a fortuitous practice round and three days of competition.

“Everything about it was cool,” Stiver told Cowboy State Daily less than a week after their return home. “You’re on top of a hill from start to finish, and you see forever and it’s all golf around you, and it’s all awesome.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Then the golf happens."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Course Unlike Any Other"}]

Gardner and Stiver have played courses of all shapes and sizes, in all types of environments, foreign and domestic.

[{"type":"text","text":"Nothing could prepare them for Landmand."}]

“We got there and I was just excited to be there,” Gardner recalled with a chuckle. “It didn’t really matter what was in front of us. Like, this is awesome. But by the time we got to the fourth or fifth green, I thought, ‘I don’t know if I can do this four days in a row.’

“I wasn’t prepared for how massive it all was. The scale is hard to describe.”

Landmand was carved out of the treeless Loess Hills, and at nearly 600 acres is roughly four times the size of typical 18-hole courses. Fairways are the width of football fields. Gaping bunkers swallow golfers whole.

[{"type":"text","text":"Only the tee boxes offer any semblance of flatness."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"And then ... those greens."}]

On average, they sprawl to more than double the size of typical American greens. Some are four to six times larger. At three-quarters of an acre, the 17th green ranks as one of the world’s largest, in the same league as the revered Old Course at St. Andrews in Scotland.

[{"type":"text","text":"Gradients rose to 25%."}]

“You could put seven Powder Horn greens in one there,” Stiver said of their home course in Sheridan. “Monster greens.”

Echoed Gardner: “Greens the size of Walmart. If that golf course was here (Sheridan) I’d take my kids sledding on it and they’d need a helmet. They’d be like the blue runs on a ski hill. In some spots where they placed the flag you couldn’t even see it.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Howling Wyoming-esque Winds"}]

The greens sport windsocks instead of flags, a nod to visibility and a notorious local climate. 

Winds can be so ferocious and unpredictable the course has two handicaps dedicated to them on the scorecard, one for gales howling from the southwest and the other for the nor’easters.

[{"type":"text","text":"Gardner and Stiver got a gritty taste of both."}]

“You’d think Wyoming boys would be good in a wind, but us Sheridan boys … not so good,” Gardner mused.

Agreed Stiver: “Guys from Evanston and Rock Springs, and the Casper Country Club boys, would be a better fit.”

It’s this enormity of challenge, the scale of the course, and its vistas — not to mention the modest $175 greens fees — that has golfers nationwide poised like expectant parents with their fingers hovering over their keyboards every New Year’s Eve.

[{"type":"text","text":"Then reality bites for those lucky enough to score a round."}]

But, unlike all other golfers except the locals who have the luxury of pouncing last-minute on a rare cancellation, Gardner and Stiver had four full days in the belly of this manicured beast.

Entering the final round, they were in 32nd place out of 52 teams. Five birdies and 18 holes later, they walked off their final monster green in 19th.

“The final round, I did feel better about it,” Stiver said. “I kind of knew how I could go and knock it out. By then I still didn’t know exactly where to go on the greens, but it definitely helped.”

[{"type":"text","text":"“Being in the top 20 was respectable for sure,\" added Gardner."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Giving A Wyoming-Style Gift"}]

The golf was the centerpiece of the adventure, but the experience didn’t end there.

Owner Will Andersen, Golf Channel host Gary Williams and the course’s architects were on hand to explain the Landmand concept and history. Their passion and detail gave Gardner and Stiver an entirely different perspective as they plied the course on days three and four.

Stiver also was struck by Andersen’s graciousness, and that he’d remember his name each time they’d bump into each other amid the throngs of golfers, staffers, media and spectators.

Small wonder: The duo made an impression when they presented Andersen with a spur with hearts cut into it made by renowned Sheridan craftsman Tom Balding. They also gave Andersen a copper shot glass from their hometown Mint Bar.

“Fifty thousand people have played golf here and nobody’s brought me anything,” Stiver recalls a touched Andersen telling them.

[{"type":"text","text":"“We just wanted to take a piece of Wyoming,” Gardner explained."}]

When it was over and they’d walked off the Walmart parking lot that was their 18th green for the final time, filmed by The Golf Channel shaking hands with their partners for the round, Gardner and Stiver said they both felt a palpable sense of relief.

[{"type":"text","text":"Their immediate reaction: Never again."}]

A week later, they are still nursing the bruises to their golf egos from what Gardner says is the toughest course he’s ever played. But they’re also certain their links version of PTSD will subside.

“There will be a day,” Stiver said with a chuckle, “when we’re ready to get hurt again.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Gardner agreed."}]

“The event itself was exceptional,” he said of a tournament where their $7,000 team entry fee covered everything from meals and drinks to their 10 daily range balls. “It was better than what I expected. Then to spend 10 hours each way with a buddy and a truck and no distractions and just hang out — it was just a great week.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Golf Envy Back Home"}]

They’re enjoying their few minutes of golf-envy fame back home, too, though a torn rotator cuff suffered at the Powder Horn member-guest event has sidelined Gardner from the duo’s mission of playing every Wyoming course over the next few summers.

[{"type":"text","text":"Landmand Is all anybody in their Sheridan circles wants to talk about."}]

Do they have advice should any of their golfing buddies somehow win the lottery on New Year’s Eve and land a tee time on this Links of Dreams in the Loess Hills?

“Just experience it,” Gardner said with a laugh, “because you’re not going to walk away going ‘I’m a really good golfer.’”

Contact Jeff Welsch at jeff@cowboystatedaily.com

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<title>Sheridan Golfers Finally Get To Play Toughest Place To Book A Tee Time In The U.S. | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Two golfers from Sheridan won the lottery on New Year's Eve when they were selected to play at the toughest place to book a tee time in the U.S. All 11,000 tee times were booked in one hour and they played last week. "It's all awesome," Jared Stiver said.

Sheridan Golfers Finally Get To Play Toughest Place To Book A Tee Time In The U.S.

Jen Kocher - Headshot CSD

Jen Kocher

For the Haux sisters, the enduring mystery of their father’s fate still crystallizes around one stark image: His truck, abandoned in the Red Desert, an image taken from a newspaper article.

Clifford “Russ” Haux of Mills vanished on Nov. 26, 2003, near Wamsutter in south-central Wyoming where he worked as an oil-rig driller. The 42-year-old husband and father of three had gone out with a co-worker to free a stuck vehicle and never returned.

The last image of him is his fading headlights as he drove off into a winter night trying to find a place to cross a ditch.

One minute he was there, the next, he was gone — last seen driving his pickup into a ditch, looking for a place to cross.

For two years, extensive searches turned up nothing. Then a hunter found his purple Ford Ranger less than six miles from where he was last seen. Its front tires were stuck in a washed-out riverbed, with evidence suggesting he’d tried to free them.

His children – Lois, Justy and Chancy – grew up on memories and secondhand stories, left to wonder what had happened to their father.

The story doesn’t add up based on their recollections of their dad: A guy they describe as a “driller through and through” and seasoned “mountain man” who was also a skilled outdoorsman.

“I don’t know what happened out there or the trauma he had to go through,” Justy told Cowboy State Daily. “Anything could have happened.”

The Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office likewise can’t speculate about what might have happened to Haux after he left the vehicle. But there’s no evidence to date to suggest Haux was a victim, said Jason Mower, public information officer with the department.

“Based on the evidence available, including what was found when Haux’s vehicle was later located, the disappearance has been considered accidental rather than the result of foul play,” Mower wrote in an email to Cowboy State Daily.

More than two decades later, Mower said the case remains active and unresolved with no new leads they can publicly release at this time.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Disappearing Headlights"}]

His daughters have many questions about what transpired the night their father disappeared and how his vehicle went overlooked for two years, given the extensive search efforts described in the documentation shared by the sheriff’s office.

All they know is that Haux and his friend and co-worker left the oil rig the night of Nov. 26 to retrieve his Suburban that they’d gotten stuck in a mud bog on Nov. 18.

In the early morning hours of Nov. 19, Haux’s rig mates returned to camp, Mower said. Haux apparently stayed with the vehicle and was rescued on Nov. 20. The sheriff’s office did not specify how Haux was recovered, though his daughters were told it was by a search plane.

It was this vehicle that Haux and his rig mate were going to retrieve the night he disappeared.

The man named in the report was driving the forklift they’d borrowed from the rig to dig out the vehicle. Cowboy State Daily is not identifying him, as law enforcement has not labeled him a person of interest in Haux’s disappearance.

It’s not clear if they were successfully able to free the vehicle, but when Haux tried to cross a ditch in his pickup, he was unable to do so. The co-worker tried “to knock down the bank of the ditch” that was blocking Haux from crossing but couldn’t, according to the sheriff’s report.

[{"type":"text","text":"Instead, Haux headed south along the ditch, looking for a passable route."}]

The co-worker watched Haux’s headlights fade into the night. That was the last time anyone saw him alive.

When nobody could locate him, Haux was officially reported missing two days later to the Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office, which launched a 10-day search effort complete with four-wheelers and vehicles, said the report.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Frantic Search"}]

Lois, then 5 and the daughter of Haux’s second wife, Laquana, remembers how frantic her mother was when they got the call that Haux was missing.

Justy, who was 15, learned about it when she tried to call her father to wish him a happy Thanksgiving. She and her brother, Chancy, then 18, lived with their mother in Worland.

The sisters recall the family wanted to help look for him but were told by rescuers to stay put for their safety, given the dangerous terrain.

Meanwhile, the sisters said, Haux’s brother hired a pilot and attempted to search by airplane.  

The temperature the night Haux disappeared plunged from a high of 27 down to 10 degrees with no precipitation, according to historical weather data for Rock Springs from the National Weather Service.

Their dad was a tough man, Lois said, and an avid outdoorsman who they believe would have known how to handle himself safely in the elements. He was also a big guy at over 6 feet tall and just under 200 pounds.

“Our dad was outdoor smart,” she said. “He knew how to start a fire to keep warm and knew not to leave your shelter in a snowstorm or 20-degree weather or colder.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Remaining Questions"}]

This is just one of the details that doesn’t make sense to the sisters as they continue questioning the narrative, including whether the co-worker was thoroughly questioned after Haux’s disappearance.

Lois said her mother was told the co-worker had been acting like a “chicken with its head cut off” and was acting strangely when questioned.

They have never met the man nor had the chance to ask what he remembered, Justy clarified, nor are they blaming him. But they do wonder if he provided a full accounting of the night in question.

Mower said that the record indicates any interview with him “was fairly cursory.”

“I do not see documentation indicating that he was considered a person of interest in Haux’s disappearance,” he stated in an email.

The siblings also questioned the thoroughness of the search, especially since their father’s truck was found 6 miles from his last known location—  two years after he vanished.

Mower affirmed that extensive ground and air searches were conducted across more than 1,000 miles of remote and isolated terrain, efforts formally suspended on December 7, 2003.

When Haux’s pickup was discovered with its front wheels mired in a collapsed riverbank 

, they found a broken shovel and pieces of wood jammed beneath the tires — signs he had attempted to free the vehicle.

A red suitcase with Haux’s clothes was also found inside the unlocked cab.

Though additional searches took place after the truck was located in 2005, Mower stated there have been no further operations in the 20 years since.

He added that nothing at the scene indicated violence or criminal encounter. Nor was there evidence of meth labs or other hazards Haux might have stumbled into while seeking help.

“Given the remoteness and terrain, that scenario does not appear probable based on what we know,” Mower said.

Nearly 23 years after Clifford “Russ” Haux vanished in the Red Desert near Wamsutter, his daughters are still haunted. The 42-year-old husband and father of three had gone out with a co-worker to free a stuck vehicle and never returned.

Linda Louise McAffee, 80