Cowboy State Daily Video News: Monday, July 15, 2024

It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming, for Monday, July 13th. I’m Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - brought to you by Wyoming Senior Olympics, reminding you that this year's Summer Olympics start July 31st in Cheyenne and volunteers are needed, become a volunteer today at Wyoming senior Olympics dot org.

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Immediately after news broke that former President Donald Trump had been shot at a Pennsylvania rally, Wyoming’s congressional delegation sent out prayers for Trump.

Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland followed the story after what has been determined to be a failed assassination attempt.

“Their statements at first were pretty much one sentence, just offering prayers. Nobody knew what was going on. There were a couple of bloody videos out there of Trump kind of getting shot, hitting the ground, coming up raising his fist. But as the media was able to confirm more and more on the ground, like, you know, the shooter was killed. This is an assassination attempt. All of these things, then Wyoming's congressional delegates issued more thorough, more thoughtful statements - and the governor.”

Trump issued a statement to Truth Social a few hours after the shooting, thanking the Secret Service and other law enforcement, and extending condolences to the deceased attendee’s family, and to the other attendee who was injured.

Read the full story HERE.

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Outrage over a Daniel resident reportedly running a wolf down with a snowmobile continues to reverberate with an anticipated bipartisan U.S. House bill aimed at banning such acts.

The Snowmobiles Aren’t Weapons Act would ban using snowmobiles or other vehicles to directly pursue or run over wildlife on federal land in all 50 states, according to outdoors reporter Mark Heinz.

“It could be significant. A lot of Wyoming is federal land, and that would be no more pursuit of predators on snowmobiles anywhere in Wyoming that is Forest Service land, or BLM land. I got from a retired US Fish and Wildlife Service person yesterday, that practice is already forbidden on US Fish and Wildlife lands in Wyoming. And that's a pretty significant chunk of territory. “

Whether the practice would remain legal on private property and state lands in Wyoming would remain up to the state Legislature.

Read the full story HERE.

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Bootmaker Scott Wayne Emmerich in Cody has made some of the world’s most legendary boots.

He’s got a client list that reads like a Who’s Who of the rich and famous, ranging from his first customers — Dustin Hoffman and Sharon Stone — to more recent clients like Reba McEntire and Kevin Costner. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that Emmerich’s work is so intricate, a pair actually ended up in the Smithsonian Institute.

“They're called the Mexican. And to make those boots, Emmerich used these rare silver and gold coins dating back to 1500, on up to the Mexican Revolution. And then he designed like historical pictures around each coin that related to the time period, when that coin was used… But they got photographed so much, and they achieved so much notoriety that this guy bought them for $79,000 and then turned around and donated them to the Smithsonian.” 

All of Emmerich’s boots have been labors of love these past 45 years, in a career that has taken him to places he never dreamed possible. From Florida to Texas to Los Angeles, and, finally to Cody, his home of choice.

Read the full story HERE.

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In today’s dating climate dominated by apps, social media profiles and dating sites, single people often go on dates or enter into tentative relationships without much information about who they're meeting.

So, determining there’s safety in numbers, one Wyoming woman began a Facebook page dedicated to helping women determine if the man they’re interested in is really who he seems to be. Cowboy State Daily’s Jen Kocher checked out the group, “Are We Dating the Same Guy 307.”

“Some guys will just … be on Tinder, which is one of the dating apps, under a different profile. And somebody will say, hey, that's so and so he's married, his name is actually this. So I was shocked by, actually how much that happens… The purpose, as the organizer told me, is to be a support for other women. And, you know, to help them prevent the missteps they had with certain men… There's a male page too. So the guys are not exempt from this.”

But Kocher reports that the point of the sites are to provide a forum for people to stay safe and avoid dating disasters - not to bash others for sport.

Read the full story HERE.

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To get to Adobe Town, take the Point of Rocks exit off Interstate 80 west of Rock Springs, hit the gravel roads and keep going. And going and going.

Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz and Bill Sniffin took a day trip out to the remote geological formation.

“It was actually formed by ash and lava deposits in the last eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano, 600 and some 1000 years ago, they managed to spit that stuff all the way from Yellowstone, down into what is now south of Rawlins. And the sandstone formations are just crazy, because you get those deposits of lava and condensed volcanic ash that turns into sandstone, and then of course, the wind and the erosion goes to work on them. And just, it's hard for me to put into words what it's like being there and seeing all these different formations, and it's out in the middle of nowhere.”

The day’s visit culminated with a stop at a place called Skull Creek Rim, which, in Mark’s view, rivals the grandeur of the Grand Canyon.  

Read the full story HERE.

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In late 2021, the federal government had so much taxpayer money in its overstuffed wallet that it made it available to every state when the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act got signed into law.

So Wyoming and other states made a wish list of projects they’d really like to do - and on that list was a tunnel that would make the problematic Teton Pass road obsolete. But Cowboy State Daily’s Pat Maio spoke with then-director of the Wyoming Department of Transportation, Luke Reiner, who said the project just wasn’t feasible.

“In 2021, the were estimating the tunnel to bore through the Teton mountains up in the Teton pass, would cost roughly $750 million. Although in today's dollars, it's going to be about $870 million. So it's rising, and it's not gonna go down.”

With the recent landslide that took out Highway 22 over Teton Pass, plans now are for WYDOT to rebuild the mountain and the road on its original spot. It will be a massive undertaking, but WYDOT won’t be considering a tunnel as a long-term solution.

Read the full story HERE.

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A 20-acre piece of private Laramie Valley ranch land with an artesian spring contains hundreds of artifacts tying the spot to an 1860s stagecoach stop and, centuries before that, a place where native tribes established annual camps.

Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck reports that the site is called Willow Springs, and Wyoming State Archaeologist Spencer Pelton said the Albany County site appears to have been occupied as early as 2500 years ago by ancestors of the Pawnee, Pueblo and Kiowa peoples.

2:01 7/1 “His evidence that he's uncovered during his time digging, since 2021, is that he’s seen evidence of people living there from like, 500 AD, up through historic times in the 1860s, when there was a battle that took place between the US military and the Plains Indians.”

Initial work with ground radar and digging this year have found three sites where archaeologists believe more significant artifacts and clues lie beneath the ground, just waiting to be unearthed.

Read the full story HERE.

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Wyoming is getting closer to accepting digital driver’s licenses - which are driver’s licenses stored on a person’s phone or watch, rather than on a card in a wallet.. 

But it won’t happen this year, according to Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland.

“Wyoming Legislature authorized its Department of Transportation to start using them way back in 2020. So the law specifies it’s optional, but it says that digital driver's licenses can be accepted in Wyoming. The reason that we don't have them yet is because the Wyoming Department of Transportation is updating its driver's services computer system, so that it can accommodate these. They expect to have this in like a year or two.” 

Currently, 11 states offer digital driver’s licenses. Louisiana was the first, in 2018, Gov. Jared Polis in neighboring Colorado made digital ID legal identification by an executive order in 2019.

Read the full story HERE.

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Wyomingites aren’t afraid to roll up their sleeves and do what needs to be done, which is why four Cowboy State students are among the latest round of work ethic scholarship winners from the mikeroweWORKS Foundation.

Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that Mike Rowe, the host of the popular Discovery Channel series “Dirty Jobs,” established the scholarship in 2020 to promote apprentice programs and trade schools, filling what he calls a "critical skill gap" in careers like plumbing, carpentry and other trades.

“They got money that's going to be crucial for them pursuing their degrees and certificates, because they're working in what Mike Rowe considers critical fields in skilled trades that are in one of the statistics on their site. For every five people that are retiring in these fields, only two are hiring on, are starting out in it. So he wants to foster this.”

Rowe is distributing $2.4 million dollars nationwide to continue the mission he has said is important on a fundamental level for the United States.

Read the full story HERE.

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 In Wyoming, generally, people can bury their loved ones on their property and receive a property tax break for having a “cemetery” – but the process is not without its regulatory hurdle, reports Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland.

“For the most part, if you're out in the county proper, and you've got enough land, you have to survey the site that you want to be the burial grounds and get it platted with the county and get it recorded. And then I had one lawyer who works with a lot of land use stuff, say, you should also get a covenant for that area, so it can't be used for anything other than cemetery uses. That's just a huge heads up to the assessor like, Hey, you're not taxing this. It's a cemetery.” 

No state law prevents someone from burying his loved ones on his private property, , although cities may have varying ordinances about doing so, and counties might have differing policies.

Read the full story HERE.

And that’s today’s news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel. 

I’m Wendy Corr, for Cowboy State Daily.