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[{"type":"text","text":"Top 10 things that sound cool when voiced by James Earl Jones......"}]

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<title>🚧 Today In Top 10s: Tuesday, February 10, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Top 10 things that sound cool when voiced by James Earl Jones......

Today In Top 10s: Tuesday, February 10, 2026

 Top 10 things that sound cool when voiced by James Earl Jones......

David Madison

Business & Tourism

Tourism

It's the kind of place Charles Kuralt would have stopped and profiled for his hit CBS series "On the Road," which explored the curious corners of this country and the characters who live there. 

It’s a ranch along Montana's storied Big Hole River, where a new golf course soon will be officially ready for play.

It's built around a structure known as the Mistress Cabin because that's where a previous owner lived part-time with his mistress and second family. 

There’s a restored schoolhouse, lots of wildlife and blue-ribbon trout waters flowing through the property.

It’s not the kind of place those traveling the local gravel ranch road expect to encounter.

As visitors arrive from the nearby town of Twin Bridges, they crest a rise in the road and see unfurled before them Scottish-style links with pin flags waving in the breeze. 

When construction on the course began last summer, some locals raised concerns about losing the agricultural character of the community and how much water the course might guzzle. 

Others argued the golf course violated the original vision of a previous owner — Charles Kuralt.

Fans of the famed journalist learned after his death in 1997 that the Mistress Cabin on the Big Hole River actually belonged to Kuralt, and he had built it in the style of mountain cabins found in his home state of North Carolina. 

The truth about Kuralt's double life emerged in court documents and news reports following his death.

"For 29 years … he apparently kept a mistress and maintained a second family,” According to a 1999 Salon magazine story. “While his wife remained at their home in the concrete canyons of New York City, he nurtured his secret life along a rushing trout stream in Montana."

Now, after more than a year of custom shaping and engineering, the course appears ready to play, with cliff swallows flicking around in the evening light and sandhill cranes calling from the river bottom.

The property is a dream come true for new owner Buzz Warner, who has gradually won over initial skeptics. 

The golf course-ranch is now a bird preserve, and Warner is emerging as a pitch-in-for-the-community kind of guy.

This week, while offering an update about his private course, Warner told Cowboy State Daily that, "We are nearing completion. A couple more weeks."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Wyoming Connection"}]

In 2019, the Wyoming Game & Fish Department named the Warner family Landowners of the Year for their work at Sage Creek Ranch in southeastern Uinta County.

According to the department, Warner "has worked to make it one of the most wildlife-friendly landscapes in Wyoming."

The department noted that, “The amount of time, money and effort Mr. Warner has given to the wildlife of Wyoming in just 10 years far exceeds what most people do in a lifetime." 

Warner replaced "nearly every fence on the ranch with wildlife-friendly fencing" and limited livestock grazing to just 80 pairs on the entire 6,100-acre ranch.

Those good vibes were conspicuously absent in July 2024, when KXLF TV in Butte broke the story about the new course, with critics sounding the alarm about transforming Montana ranchland into something inspired by the great links of Scotland.

But Pedro Marques, executive director of the Big Hole Watershed Committee, has watched opinions soften since then. 

"The folks that were making a stink about how awful it's going to be seemed to quiet down quite a bit" after Warner showed them around and explained his conservation efforts, Marques told Cowboy State Daily. 

Warner approached Marques with his plans early in the process. 

"This golf course is happening and all the laws regarding stream discharge and water rights are all being followed," Marques said. "Given the irrigation that was happening on the land, that is now being converted to golf, it's looking like there's going to be a net conservation of water from this new use."

In fact, said Marques, "Warner closed an irrigation intake ditch and now there are 3 million gallons of water a day remaining in the river and not used for ag irrigation."

Warner's conservation-minded approach extends beyond water savings. 

"I'm huge on wildlife, fish, conservation, then golf," Warner said in 2024.

He kept the golf course "totally away from the river" and left the entire riparian area undeveloped.

"We could have built some really, really neat golf holes down there," Warner said. "But we didn't."

This conservation focus represents a stark contrast to another previous owner of the property: former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. 

Warner said Rumsfeld "tried to engineer a hot spring by drawing 95-degree water out of the ground on the ranch." 

When Warner bought the property from Rumsfeld, he plugged the hot water flow "because it was the obvious thing to do to protect a river already battling high temperatures."

Warner continues contributing to local conservation efforts. 

"At every step, he's just very generous. He offers up his guys and his equipment and downed trees that he has on his property to use for some check dams," Marques said. Warner is helping with "a sediment project, a big gully that's dumping sediment out into the river.

"He's been very much trying to fall into kind of the community and a partnership based way that we do things in the Big Hole.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Trucks To Turf"}]

Warner's path to golf course development began after his family sold Warner Truck Centers in Utah to Penske Automotive Group in 2019. 

"I was out cutting hay one day in that spot and thought, 'Man, we are wasting a ton of water to continue to flood irrigate this,'" Warner recalled in 2024. "There's a lack of golf in Madison County. So easy decision."

The course is designed to be walkable only, which allows for fescue grass that requires 30% to 40% less water than bluegrass. Warner hired lead designer Kye Goalby, whose father won the Masters in the 1960s, to create a Scottish-style links course comparable to Brora in Scotland.

For the first year, Warner said locals will play for free one day a week. He's even floated the idea of hosting the Montana High School golf championships.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Different Course"}]

Warner's community-focused approach stands in contrast to another Montana golf course project embroiled in legal controversy. 

The Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation filed a complaint for injunctive relief and civil penalties against CMR Ranch Owner LLC on July 11, alleging the ranch irrigated about 35.25 acres of golf course turf without proper water rights.

According to the complaint, CMR "constructed conveyance facilities that expanded impoundment capacities to Rock Creek that were not authorized by the Department" and "appropriated water without Department approval since June 2024." 

The case involves potential fines of up to $1,000 per day for each violation. 

CMR stands for Crazy Mountain Ranch, and is owned by the Lone Mountain Land Company (LMLC), which is a subsidiary of CrossHarbor Capital Partners. It also owns the ultra-exclusive Yellowstone Club. 

LMLC bought the ranch in 2021 from the Philip Morris Corp., which had owned and operated it as a guest ranch for about 22 years to reward loyal Marlboro cigarette customers. 

Visitors could save Marlboro coupons to earn invitations as part of promotional campaigns. The ranch featured many authentic Western-themed activities and buildings, creating a unique guest experience tied to the Marlboro Man image from Philip Morris advertising.

Like the Marlboro Ranch, cowboy boots are recommended at Warner’s new Scottish-style course on the Big Hole River. Anyone scampering around the grounds is advised about rattlesnakes, as the course cuts through prime snake habitat. 

Warner has heard the idea pitched that it might make sense for players to wear a new kind of hybrid footwear — something with the snake-bite protection of a cowboy boot and the spikes of a golf shoe.

This kind of Americana mashup of shoe styles is another detail Kuralt would have relished.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":" "}]

Mistress cabin course CAP1 The Mistress Cabin and course 7 26 25

<title>🚧 Wyoming Landowner Builds Golf Course Around Charles Kuralt’s ‘Mistress Cabin’ | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Buzz Warner, a former Wyoming Landowner of the Year, is close to opening his new golf course in Montana. It’s a monument to conservation that’s built around former owner Charles Kuralt’s infamous “Mistress Cabin.”

Wyoming Landowner Builds Golf Course Around Charles Kuralt’s ‘Mistress Cabin’

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Jackie Dorothy.

Jackie Dorothy

The American West

Just before the long, harsh winter of 1887 set in, the last mail delivery to the residents of the northern Wyoming Territory settlements of Bonanza and Paint Rock contained alarming news: A volcanic explosion had sunk the island of Cuba into the ocean.

They were horrified by the news, which would be the last from the outside world they would receive for nearly six months. 

At the time, there were only four homesteads on the Paint Rock, according to H.S. Ridgley in the Northern Wyoming Herald of September 1911. 

On these remote ranches, only three women and a girl lived in this wilderness: Mrs. “Tude” Nelson, Mrs. Wood, Mrs. Long, and her daughter Mamie.

These families were isolated from the rest of the world and clung to any news that came their way, especially since that winter was a particularly hard and lonely one, according to Ridgley. 

“The story of Cuba was a dainty morsel of discussion throughout the long winter,” Willis J. Booth, one of the residents, told Ridgely. 

They fed on this fragment of news, often discussing how Cuba was gone — sunk out of sight in the ocean. They must have counted themselves fortunate in their remote home, far away from the dangers of volcanoes. 

The people living on Paint Rock received no mail from November until the next spring. That was when they learned that the story had been a fabrication and that they had spent the long winter months discussing a fable. 

The joke was on them, but as Booth pointed out, it kept them entertained during that first winter in Wyoming’s remote territory of the Bighorn Basin. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Battling The Isolation"}]

Those who homesteaded Paint Rock, Medicine Lodge and Bonanza in 1887 were isolated and lived lonely lives. As a result, most were extremely hospitable to travelers in exchange for news from the outside world. 

One of these families well-known for hospitality was the McDermotts. A reporter known simply as J.C.W. wrote in the Big Horn Sentinel of August 1888 that he had enjoyed his stay at the home of James McDermott about 4 miles north of Bonanza.

“We fully appreciated the fresh milk, butter and quantities of vegetables of which we had been deprived,” the reporter said. “Mr. M. has as fine a garden as can be found even in the old-settled portions of the eastern states.”

Unknown at the time, McDermott was also a thief and would often take advantage of his guests, laughing at them the entire time.

While they enjoyed his hospitality, his wife later told the courts that he would steal from them as well.

The well-regarded rancher was really the head of a gang of outlaws, according to Ridgley in his remembrances two decades later. 

McDermott dealt the home builders of Bonanza and Paint Rock all kinds of misery and grief, Ridgely said. 

“McDermott was a wily chieftain,” Ridgley said. “His criminal craft and cunning was laid bare to the community in which he was at one time held with the greatest respect.”

His crimes, which greatly amused him, were only known from confessions of his wife after he and his followers were captured by the law for horse and cattle stealing.

She stated that one crime occurred when they played host to a mail carrier who had stopped at their place for the night.

While the courier slept, McDermott filed the ends of the staple that held the lock and opened the sack without harming the lock.

He took from the registered mail several hundred dollars, slipped the staple back into place, riveted it shut, and submerged it in a strong solution of salt water.

This gave it an old and rusty appearance. The carrier went on his way the next morning without detecting anything, little dreaming that he had been the victim of a skillful robbery.

His wife also confessed that her husband and his followers robbed one of the storekeepers at Bonanza of a lot of clothing, groceries and canned goods, then prepared a great feast and invited the victim to dine with them. 

At the dinner, they wore no clothing except the stolen property of their guest and placed nothing upon the table to eat except that which they had stolen from him.

At the dinner that night, they laughed and giggled with ghoulish glee at the joke they were perpetrating.

McDermott was never charged with these crimes since his wife’s statements could not be used in a court of law against him.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Rattlesnake Trap"}]

At other times, news from Bonanza was carried by their guests back to civilization who marveled at the ingenuity of these remote ranchers who apparently had extra time on their hands to be creative. 

In 1888, Bill Barlow’s Budget of Fremont County, Wyoming, told a story from Paint Rock. 

Dr. Amos Barber had just been on a six-week vacation in the Bighorn Basin and shared a method of killing game that he said the sporting world would be interested in that he had learned from the rancher. 

“He secures a dozen or more rattlesnakes, and then a pool of water is enclosed by a strong thorn fence, so arranged that the game coming to drink must pass through a narrow lane,” he told the paper.

Barber then said the snakes, which are fastened by a hole bored through the tail and placed near this opening, bite the animals as they attempt to pass.

In this way, the innovative rancher has a supply of game that is always obtainable without the trouble of hunting. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Prayers Needed"}]

Just to reach the remote area in the Bighorn Basin, travelers had to rely on their wits and plenty of prayer, according to reporter J.W.C. of the Big Horn Sentinel in 1888. 

The road from Buffalo to Paint Rock was well-known to nearly all residents, he said. Although most of the wagon road was easy enough to maneuver, he claimed that one needed a colorful vocabulary to make it over one particular long hill.

“For this haul, one needs to be fully prepared,” the reporter said. “Take the drive early in the morning — Monday morning preferred — and then only after due preparation of fasting and prayer on the Sabbath.”

He went on to say that this was where he had his celebrated fight with the road. This fight was well-known in the town of Buffalo.

“We were modern Pilgrims on a veritable ‘Hill of Difficulty,’ and our fight was a joint one with a wagon,” J.W.C. told his Buffalo, Wyoming, readers. “The wagon coming off victorious, and the new slang dictionary, not yet published, with our stock of prayer books, guidebooks, etc., were unfortunately left behind.”

Thanks to his new curses, made up on the spot, he said he and his fellow travelers were able to make the trip to Paint Rock and visit the remote ranches along the way. 

The people were hungry for news of the outside world and the reporter was happy to oblige. Although his stories were more likely to be of the local gossip rather than of faraway islands sinking into the ocean. 

Regardless of the stories he shared, the isolated pioneers, eking out a living in the Bighorn Basin, would have been grateful for any entertainment to break the monotony of daily life.

Cowboys cook tent 7 26 25

<title>🚧 Wyoming History: Cowboys Were Tough, Determined And Could Gossip Up A Storm | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Surviving in the remote settlements of the Wyoming Territory in the late 1880s took grit, determination and getting into everyone’s business. Cowboys were tough, and also could gossip up a storm to combat loneliness and hard living.

Wyoming History: Cowboys Were Tough, Determined And Could Gossip Up A Storm

Wolfson leo 2

Leo Wolfson

Crime & Courts

Courts

Former Laramie City Council candidate Paul Montoya

to Cowboy State Daily on Monday despite pleading no contest to disabling Wyoming Public Radio’s transmitters late last month.

“I felt that it was not worth the time and expense to proceed to a hearing to defend my case,” Montoya said. “A plea agreement was best for me and my family.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Light Sentence"}]

After originally being charged with two felonies for allegedly disabling Wyoming Public Radio’s transmitters and their remote access while he worked at the station in 2022, Montoya received a much lower punishment at his sentencing Nov. 18.

One of the felonies Montoya was facing was dropped shortly after the case began and the other was reduced to a misdemeanor charge of computer trespassing on Nov. 11.

Montoya walked away with a relative slap on the wrist compared to his initial charges, ending up with a year of unsupervised probation, no fine and $370 in court fees after pleading no contest to the charge. 

Montoya was able to make this plea under Wyoming’s first offender statute, which allows someone to be found guilty by a court while avoiding a conviction on their record. 

represents a much lower sentence than the up to three years in prison and $3,000 in fines he could have received under the felony he was facing for committing crimes against computer users.

According to a University of Wyoming Police affidavit, Montoya had been “severely angry with WPR in the past, been subject to many complaints and had a deteriorating relationship with WPR administration at the time of the incident.”

Montoya had been Wyoming Public Media’s director of engineering and a radio host on WPR’s “Wyoming Sounds” at the time of the crime, the former a job he held from 2015 to 2023, according to his LinkedIn profile. He also was the owner and general manager of KJJL and KWY radio in Cheyenne from 1994 to 2005, which included

He was accused of remotely logging into a computer that operates Wyoming Public Radio’s transmissions, “including radio towers, broadcasting technology and equipment, and other Wyoming Public Radio related functions” and disabling them in October 2022.

Eight days later Montoya allegedly struck again, entering Wyoming Public Radio’s radio tower east of Laramie at Pilot Hill and disabling the tower and access to it.

Montoya said the accusations made against him were based on a personal feud between he and a former supervisor at the University of Wyoming, where the station is located, and were only presented to the UW police department to harm his reputation.  

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Election Impact"}]

Montoya believes the ongoing case did impact his run for city council this fall despite getting enough votes in the primary election to qualify for the general. 

“I feel that did cast a shadow of suspicion with anyone going to the polls, so it naturally fulfilled the goal of my accusers,” he said.

In the general election, Montoya finished third out of four candidates for Ward 1 in the city council race, edged out for a seat by second place finisher William Bowling, who beat Montoya by 291 votes.

But Montoya still got 1,746 people to vote for him despite his ongoing felony case, more people than voted for Albany County GOP Chair Roxie Hensley. 

Laramie resident Brett Glass, who unsuccessfully ran in Ward 2, said he believes the case brought against Montoya did have some impact on the election result.

A big factor in the race, Glass said, were partisan influencers who he said tried to exploit the criminal charges against Montoya and his Republican affiliation to help their preferred candidates beat him in the nonpartisan race. 

“Various people were treating him like he was guilty because he was aligned with the Republican Party,” Glass said. “They were treating him like he was guilty before he had the actual trial. I thought that was unfair.”

Glass, who works in internet services, said he doesn’t believe Montoya committed the crimes he was accused of. Even amateur hackers, Glass said, would know to cover up their tracks to hide the IP address they are hacking from, a step Montoya didn’t take.

Montoya had said he wasn’t trying to hack into or hinder Public Radio’s operations and was merely doing the day-to-day duties of his job.

“It didn’t seem like someone as tech savvy as Paul wouldn’t know to cover up their tracks,” Glass said.

Montoya’s felony was reduced to a misdemeanor two days after the election.

If Montoya had been elected and found guilty of the felony charge, it would have created a difficult situation where he would have had to be removed from the council shortly after being elected. In Wyoming, people convicted of a felony cannot hold office.

Paul Montoya and Laramie City Hall 8 8 24

<title>🚧 Former Laramie Council Hopeful Pleads To Sabotaging Wyoming Public Radio Equipment | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Former Laramie City Council candidate Paul Montoya has pleaded no contest to sabotaging Wyoming Public Radio equipment. He maintains his innocence, telling Cowboy State Daily on Monday the charges weren’t “worth the time and expense” to bring.

Today In Top 10s: Tuesday, February 10, 2026

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