There was a time when Gaspari “Gap” Pucci was noted for his Sicilian background. He was an oddity — an Italian from South Philly cowboying out West in Wyoming.
But he followed his dream. He built a highly respected big game hunting outfit in Jackson Hole and spent almost four decades doing what he loved from the back of a horse.
His office was the Gros Ventre Wilderness, an unspoiled section of Bridger-Teton backcountry where few tread even today. It’s a roadless and wild 250-square-mile chunk of forest as rugged and remote as it gets anywhere in the continental U.S.
Nowadays what makes this 88-year-old special is the fact that he still lives like he does — straight-up cowboy. No phone, no internet, no modern amenities. Not even a fancy hay fork with the composite handle.
Advertisement
His tack room looks like an episode of “Pickers: Little House on the Prairie” edition. The bunkhouse was built in 1930 by Howard Bellew. It holds a worn saddle Gap estimates has about 40,000 miles on it. There are halters, headstalls and horseshoes from the Eisenhower era. Saddle blankets are older than the average rodeo contestant.
He Is The Lifestyle
The longtime Wyoming outfitter makes his home 17 miles south of Jackson on a 5-acre ranchette squeezed between a state elk feedground, national forest land and aggressively approaching Jackson Hole buildout. He bought the place in the disco era. He’ll die there.
Every day he chores around the homestead, caring for the last handful of his once 40-head string of horses. He bucks hay, chops holes in an iced-over spring so his stock can drink and keeps a rifle ready at the back door when the wolves get too close.
Nights, the old-time hand relives what was, watching black-and-white Westerns in reruns. He remembers what was by writing down his escapades by hand and gathering them into memoirs.
Two books published and a third on the way offer a fascinating glimpse into a man and his family carving out a way of life in Western Wyoming that reads like exaggerated folklore.
Advertisement
Fighting bears, lost in a blizzard, horses plummeting from a cliff edge down into a raging river below. Gap Pucci somehow survived it all and lived to tell about it.
“I don’t know how I’m still here. The things I did. The way I lived,” Pucci says, slowly shaking another memory out of his head. “The good Lord and good horses are the only reasons I’m still breathing.”
Pucci is quite literally the last of his kind. His peers, as he often laments, are all gone. His way of life, outmoded and obsolete. Like him.
Coming To America
Pucci, the character, is summed up by tenacity, grit and any other adjective Louis L’Amour ever used in one of his pulp fiction Westerns. A living legend in the hunting world and a testament to the indefatigable human spirit.
The wiry Italian’s work ethic was instilled growing up an emigrant during the Depression. Like his father, and his father’s father, Pucci broke big rocks into smaller rocks with a 12-pound hammer all day long in a quarry.
Advertisement
The Puccis immigrated to the U.S. from Sciacca, Sicily, in the early 1900s. His ancestors were hunters and fishermen in the homeland. In America, the Puccis were reduced to little more than grunt work.
To keep out of trouble, Pucci took up competitive weightlifting and body building. He would later take a farrier course at Penn State University and pick up work at local harness racing tracks and area veterinarians.
Those jobs taught Pucci how to handle hotblooded stallions, a valuable lesson he would apply in his second life.
Still, through his teens and early 20s, Pucci had few aspirations beyond the quarry until the Vietnam War. If not for a stint in the Army, Pucci may never have left Black Horse, Pennsylvania, where he was born in 1935.
“Italians don’t leave their families,” Pucci shared.
Advertisement
Fearful of Soviet Union invasion during the Cold War period, the U.S. set up a strike force unit in Point Barrow, Alaska, where Pucci was stationed from 1958-59. It was a frigid remote mountain outpost.
Pucci never encountered any Russians, but he got his first look at wild and untamed land unlike anything back East. Plus, he learned firsthand how to survive in challenging conditions.
“My hands were frostbitten all the time. I went snow blind. It was tough,” Pucci remembered. “We often slept with the wolves howling outside.”
While the rest of his company couldn’t wait to get out, Pucci couldn’t wait to get back. He was hooked. He simply had to get out West and seek a new life.
On To Wyoming, Hello Wilderness
Pucci eventually made his way to Utah, where he hired on with a sheepherding outfit high in the Uinta Mountains. From there, Pucci discovered Jackson, Wyoming.
Advertisement
He met his wife, Peggy McClung, while working at Albert Feuz’s V-V Cattle and Dude Ranch in Bondurant. They were married in 1965.
It may have well been 1865 because that’s how the newlyweds lived.
Gap carried Peggy over the threshold of a drafty log cabin built in the early 1900s far from civilization up Granite Creek. There was no running water. That had to be hauled in 5-gallon cans from the creek. The only heat source was a woodstove.
No phone, no TV, no connection to the outside world. The only transportation in winter was an unreliable snowmobile. When it wasn’t running, which was often, it was a 10-mile snowshoe hike to the pickup parked out at the highway. From there, it was another 25 miles to the nearest grocery store in Jackson.
Their closest neighbors were frequent visits from elk, moose and myriad other wildlife.
Advertisement
The Puccis loved it.
Gap would eventually pen his first book in 2011 about the experience. Titled “We Married Adventure,” the autobiography includes firsthand accounts of the hardships the couple endured.
“It was a matter of rugged endurance just to make a living. You couldn’t have any quit in you,” Pucci said. “Of course, I loved my work. To me, it was an adventure, not an ordeal.”
The Puccis managed the hot springs for the Forest Service, charging a dollar for a soak. Other than chasing off a few hippies now and then who poached the hot spring pool in the dead of night, it was a lonesome existence.
“I owned that cabin for 25 years, with a special use permit from the Forest Service. I was the first to keep the hot springs open in the winter,” Pucci said.
Advertisement
When it came time to leave, Pucci asked the Forest Service to buy the old cabin from him. It wouldn’t.
“Even 500 bucks. Give me something for the damn thing,” Pucci said. “They said no, so I took that place down log by log, board by board. I wasn’t going to let them have it for nothing.”
Living The Dream
Pucci’s ultimate dream was to open his own outfitting business. He worked for a few area outfitters, guiding hunters until he had a chance to buy his own business in 1975.
It wasn’t long before Pucci acquired Red Buescher’s hunting business and a basecamp in Granite Creek from Larry Moore, as well several other hunt camps in the Gros Ventre Wilderness.
He slowly grew his horse herd, hauled hay and horses in a 1948 green Dodge stock truck to his basecamp in the Gros Ventre. The old log home there would one day be recognized on the National Registry of Historical Places (No. 287) as the old John Wort/Gap Pucci hunting cabin.
Advertisement
He eventually would build his business into one of the premier hunting outfits in Jackson Hole, internationally renowned with clientele from around the world.
Crystal Creek Outfitters took its name from a pristine stream in a remote region of the Gros Ventre where Pucci would help thousands of eager hunters bag their elk, moose, bighorn sheep or bear.
The Puccis moved into the house Gap still lives in today. It was a hardscrabble homestead even then in the 1970s. Built in 1910, it was known as the Startled Doe Ranch for years when Arthur Welch and his wife lived there.
The Puccis had to add water and electricity. Once indoor plumbing was installed, the Pucci girls made a playhouse out of the old outhouse.
It was rustic living, but nothing compared to the places Gap spent up to eight months a year living out of.
Advertisement
‘Fire Will Keep You Alive’
For most of a calendar year, Pucci hung his hat in various homesteader cabins with enough space between the logs to allow the snow to blow in. Even those were uptown living compared to the high-mountain hunt camps where a canvas tent was all that kept a sleeping body from a hungry bear.
“It was more than once I had a grizzly tear up a tent — claw right through a wall and shred it to pieces, knock everything in camp all over the place,” Pucci said.
And then there was many a night when Pucci never made it back to camp at all.
“In those early younger years there were times I was too far from camp, so I’d just build a fire, sleep on the mountain, and return the next day,” Pucci said.
A good mountain man is always prepared for just about anything. Pucci was no exception. He packed several emergency items in his saddle bags.
Advertisement
“I’ve got some rawhide in there in case you need to fix a bridle or something, you’ll need that. You always want to carry fire. I packed a little Sterno can for heat. And I never travel without a lighter. Fire will keep you alive,” Pucci said.
One thing Pucci never carried was a canteen of any kind.
“I never carried a water bottle in my entire life. It’s crazy how everyone hydrates today. You don’t need to drink every 15 to 20 minutes and neither do your horses,” Pucci claimed. “I would carry a little water cup and I knew where all the springs were.”
Before Gore-Tex made “Life Below Zero” bearable and North Face labeled anything done in a puffer as “Xtreme,” Pucci made a living outdoors and thought nothing of it. All in unpredictable mountain weather and surrounded by predators that wanted to make a big game kill as much as Pucci’s hunters.
On more than one occasion, grizzly bears scratched his canvas wall tent to pieces. Horses fell off sheer cliff walls into an icy river below. Autumn blizzards made finding the way back to camp impossible, so he hunkered down and rode it out buried in snow until it let up.
Advertisement
By his own account, Pucci should have been dead a few times over.
“I think back to some of those stories, the things I did and wrote about in my books. I must have been crazy,” Pucci said. “They are not embellished. I remember them clearly. And I can’t believe I am still alive after all that.”
A Bear Called Scarface
One particular encounter with a grizzly bear could have turned deadly. The massive bear was nicknamed Scarface for a nasty wound above its left eye. For years, Pucci pursued the wily bruin, but neither he nor his clients ever got a good shot off.
“We stalked and trailed him in all kinds of weather, dawn and dusk, but he got away every time. He learned to feed and travel only at night,” Pucci said. “That ol’ Scarface just kept on eating, hiding, and getting bigger and fatter. Making fools of us.”
Finally in spring 1983, with his hunters all gone, Gap set out for Scarface once and for all. Near dusk, he came upon the cagey adversary and got a good shot off from his pre-1964 .308-caliber Winchester. He heard the bullet thud into the bear’s side, but Scarface did not go down. He disappeared over a distant ridge.
Advertisement
“If the big bear was only wounded, I knew this could be a dangerous situation, especially in the dark with rain and snow soaking me through my rain gear, making it hard to move very quickly,” Pucci said. “Big bears don’t always immediately drop even when mortally wounded. Bears can take a lot of punishment, even with a heart and lung shot, they can go a long way before lying down.”
Pucci set his rifle aside, stripped off his heavy poncho for better mobility and followed the bear’s tracks with a flashlight and his trusty .44 Magnum revolver. For two hours he tracked the wounded bear in the pitch black.
“Every stump looked like a bear,” Pucci remembered about cautiously making his way through the heavy timber.
“Then, all hell broke loose! There was a loud growl and teeth-chomping splitting the night air,” he recalled. “It happened so quick I could hardly comprehend what was going on. I felt something reach out and hit me hard in the calf of my left leg, just above my high snowpack boots.
“The blow knocked me flying into the air. I still remember my hat and flashlight flying off into the night. I rolled over at least twice, trying to regain my footing.
Advertisement
“Getting to my knees, I instinctively pointed the barrel in the direction of the now-moving bear at about 10 feet away. I cocked the hammer and fired. A loud explosion rocked my arm. Two feet of fire came out of the barrel, lighting up the dark night.”
To find out how that encounter turned out you’ll have to buy the book, Pucci says.
“It gets my bristles up when people question whether my dad really did everything he claims,” daughter Teresa Pucci-Haas said. “These are real fact stories. I was there. I lived them with him.”
Off-grid With The Wilderness Family
Pucci’s hunt camps were in the middle of nowhere. Small clearings nested within a tangle of dark, thick woods few have ever penetrated. No hospital if someone were injured. No convenience store for a snack. No modern amenities whatsoever.
These are places so remote that Gap found out he was a first-time father only when a bush plane flew over low at hunt camp and dropped him a note.
Advertisement
Scrawled on yellow legal pad paper, it read: “Gap, you are the proud papa of a baby girl, 7#, born on Friday, 10-13-78. Mother and daughter are doing fine.”
Catherine was born first. Teresa followed two years later, also in October. The girls took to off-grid living with aplomb. They knew no other way.
“They would play Outfitter Barbie, attaching dolls to toy horses with rubber bands and head them off into the forest for an elk hunt,” Pucci said. “They grew up with the unspoiled Wyoming wilderness for a backyard. They would pull themselves up on the backs of our more patient Morgan horses when they were 3 years old and ride around the property.”
The girls’ babysitter was a German shepherd named Nino. Their closest friends were animals. The whole family were rugged individualists to the core.
“Wild animals were the first sights the girls saw as we held them up to the windows of the small log cabin. Our ranch horses and other animals would look right back into those windows, watching the little girls grow up,” Pucci remembered.
Advertisement
Catherine and Teresa played outside all day with any animal that could be suckered into it — including wild ones.
“The girls had no human playmates, so they played together with any animal that would play with them,” Pucci said. “I remember they played with a certain coyote who would run up and down the fence line as if to show off his speed. Their favorite playmate was a bighorn ram they named Amigo. They would run around the haystack chasing each other in a game of hide-and-seek.”
They Pucci family clan didn’t so much shun society, they just didn’t live anywhere near it.
Gap was gone from home much of the time, though. Up to eight months a year he would be out in the wilds hunting something, helping clients fill their tags.
“By the time they were about 7 I would bring one of the girls with me to camp for a 10-day hunt,” Pucci said. “The other would stay home and help mom. Then we would switch girls for the next hunt. They would do chores around camp just like my hired hands.”
Advertisement
Half museum, half living room Gap Pucci’s Wyoming home holds a million memories. (Jake Nichols, Cowboy State Daily)
Half museum, half living room, Gap Pucci’s home holds a million memories. (Jake Nichols, Cowboy State Daily)
These hands tell a thousand stories, left. At right, Pucci shows off his 20x hat, once his “going to church” hat. The one he’s wearing in this photo is his “good” one now. (Jake Nichols, Cowboy State Daily)
Retired And Reclusive
After his retirement in 2008, looking back, Pucci is quick to credit his hardworking mounts for the success of his business and his very life. He favored the Morgan breed almost exclusively for their smarts and endurance.
“They built my business and paid the bills. They were my friends. I learned to have more patience with my horses than I ever had with most humans,” Pucci said. “Horses saved my life more than once, and I learned to know and respect them. If treated well, they’ll give their life for you, especially in desperate situations.”
Pucci figures he rode about 1,000 miles a year horseback. He feels it these days in the hips. They’re shot. So are his shoulders. Recent heart scares and a bout with COVID-19 slowed the ol’ cowboy down as well, but he still completes his daily chores on the ranch.
A once majestic horse herd is now down to the last stallion, a mare and a gelding. The goats are gone, the chickens killed off by foxes and coyotes. The last dog he’ll ever own — Nina, another German shepherd — died last spring.
There are still about 20 or so peacocks on the property. They do surprisingly well in Wyoming, and Gap has always had them around to brighten up the place.
There is also a friendly badger Pucci calls Tuffy. He’s had to escort Tuffy out of the house more than once.
Advertisement
The lifelong devoted Catholic has become a bit of a St. Francis of Assisi in a way. His reverence for critters of all kinds runs deep.
Hungry elk, moose and sheep stop by almost every winter, and Pucci throws them what hay he can spare even if big game managers frown upon that sort of thing.
“I probably missed some ‘dos and don’ts’ somewhere in there,” Pucci said. “Look, I know these guys at Game and Fish are doing the best they can. But they have more book smarts than actually experience.
“I lived in [close harmony] with wildlife for 50-some-odd years. I’ve tracked them, killed them, studied them and rescued them. I know a thing or two about wildlife.”
In his living room, Pucci is surrounded by trophy mounts, his life’s work on display courtesy of skilled taxidermists.
Advertisement
Bear, elk, moose, deer, sheep and several ducks keep the timeworn hunter company. A coyote with a snowshoe hare in its mouth stands by the fireplace. A pine martin with an ermine in its mouth tells a story of revenge. Pucci trapped that ermine after it had killed one of his chickens.
The outfitter doesn’t have the heart to raise a rifle at an animal anymore. He’s come to view wildlife as worthy adversaries and one of God’s gifts to mankind.
The other day, a coyote let out a high-pitched howl from just outside the chicken coop where Pucci’s peacocks are boarded.
“I came out and he slunk away, almost looking guilty that he was caught snooping around,” Pucci said. “I called out, ‘Go on, git! I ain’t gonna shoot ya.’”
Every day is a blessing at this point, Pucci said. He adds that he is grateful he came out West just in time to meet and learn from some of the last of the great cowboys.
Advertisement
“I’ve lived a good life. Wish I could do it all over again,” Pucci said. “I will, in Heaven, with all the good horses I ever rode.”
Jake Nichols can be reached at Jake@CowboyStateDaily.com
Gap Pucci has authored two books, with another on the way. (Courtesy Photo)
County 17 publishes letters, cartoons and opinions as a public service. The content does not necessarily reflect the opinions of County 17 or its employees. Letters to the editor can be submitted by emailing editor@oilcity.news.
Dear Gillette,
I am writing this letter because I am fed up with being forced to make impossible decisions just to live and work in Gillette.
We are constantly told that Campbell County is a great place to build a life, but the reality on the ground is exhausting. We are facing a double penalty here: a dwindling, high-cost economy and an almost non-existent dating scene. I am tired of having to choose between paying outrageous rent for a basic apartment or moving away from friends and community because I cannot find a genuine, long-term partner.
Advertisement
The dating pool in Gillette feels more like a shallow puddle. Many of us are doing everything right — working hard, staying stable — yet we are coming up empty-handed due to limited public social spaces and transient culture that isn’t conducive to long-term relationships.
It is disheartening to see the “Wyoming Advantage” disappear while we are stuck in a dating desert. Rising costs and limited supply make housing a heavy burden, with residents struggling to find affordable options. Skyrocketing fuel, utility and grocery prices have put families under extreme financial pressure.
I am tired of sacrificing my personal happiness and financial stability to live here.
We need more than just industrial growth; we need quality of life that allows us to find love and build a future here, not just by a paycheck.
Kevin McNutt Gillette
Advertisement
Related
Advertisement
Serving Gillette, Wright, Rozet, Recluse, Little Powder, Savageton, and all of Campbell County with unbiased news – never behind a paywall.
More by County 17
Rich Renner always knew he had pretty good neighbors, but he found out just how good when his new rescue dog from California got himself lost in a Wyoming whiteout.
Renner had taken the goldendoodle named Charlie out ahead of this past week’s storm to relieve himself. There was some snow on the ground at the time, but Charlie wasn’t having a thing to do with that strange, cold, white stuff on the ground.
At least not at first.
“I had taken him out to the barn, but he was staying under the overhang,” Renner said. “He wouldn’t go out to the snow.”
Advertisement
Given the dog’s reluctance, Renner decided to shovel a path from the barn to the house to make it a little easier for the pooch to get around.
While Renner was doing that, the dog finally decided maybe the snow wasn’t so bad after all.
“He kind of got the zoomies,” Renner said. “So, he was running around and went around the corner, out of sight. I had boots on, so I followed after him.”
By the time Renner turned the corner, there was no sign of Charlie.
A dog named Charlie a Wyoming couple rescued from a California shelter running off with a whiteout blizzard on the way triggered a 24-hour search. It was a miracle, Charlie’s owners believe, that a newlywed couple in the middle of nowhere found him. (Courtesy Rich and Barb Renner)
A California Dog Meets His First Wyoming Whiteout
At first, Renner wasn’t too concerned. It wasn’t the first time the dog had done a little bit of exploring around the house.
Advertisement
Normally, he came back on his own.
But this time was different. There was a huge snowstorm expected later in the day, and the forecast was for temperatures in the range of 25 degrees.
Charlie is a rescue dog fresh from California, which means the goldendoodle didn’t have much in the way of fat stored in his body. Nor was he yet acclimated to the cold.
Renner followed his dog’s tracks down to a forested edge, and there saw what had captured Charlie’s attention.
“There were deer tracks all over,” Renner said. “Boom, he was gone.”
Advertisement
Renner was at first more worried about the deer than the dog.
He’d just put an AirTag on the dog’s newly arrived collar right before they went outside that morning. The collar also had the couple’s names and phone numbers.
“An hour later, that AirTag pinged at a neighbor’s house about a half mile away,” Renner said. “So I zoomed down there on a four-wheeler and I saw tracks, but no Charlie.”
Renner roamed around on his four-wheeler for about an hour, looking for and calling for Charlie. Then he had to go to work.
“My wife, Barb, stayed home all day and worked off and on and looked for him some, too,” he said.
Advertisement
A dog named Charlie a Wyoming couple rescued from a California shelter running off with a whiteout blizzard on the way triggered a 24-hour search. It was a miracle, Charlie’s owners believe, that a newlywed couple in the middle of nowhere found him. (Courtesy Rich and Barb Renner)
A Long, Cold Night
Once Renner returned home, he and his wife did more searching until about 10:15 p.m. that night using a headlamp to see.
“I thought I’d see his eyes somewhere with that headlamp,” Renner said. “But to no avail.”
By this time, a sick feeling was growing in the pit of his stomach.
He was thinking about how the dog had chased after an animal three times his own size and how sometimes deer had charged, unafraid, at the couple’s older husky.
Maybe Charlie had been hurt. And Wyoming’s famous winter winds were picking up.
Was his California pooch stuck somewhere outside in this Wyoming whiteout, where the temperature was just getting colder and colder?
Advertisement
“It had snowed all day,” Renner said. “It was just a lot of snow.”
That snow covered the dog’s tracks, making him impossible to track.
The AirTag was proving next to useless as well, suggesting the dog had gone somewhere very rugged, some place with little to no data to transmit a signal.
Tuesday night, Renner could barely sleep thinking about Charlie, lost in this heavy snowstorm, with temperatures forecast to get into the lower 20s that night.
“Since we didn’t find him, I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, he’s not going to survive the night,’” Renner said. “I kept waking up a lot and thinking about him. Like, ‘Oh my gosh, what’s he experiencing right now? Where’s he at? Did a mountain lion get him?’”
Advertisement
The next day, Renner and his wife were both exhausted but had not lost hope they would yet find Charlie.
They were looking, their neighbors were all looking. They even hired a drone company to come look for Charlie using an infrared camera.
A dog named Charlie a Wyoming couple rescued from a California shelter running off with a whiteout blizzard on the way triggered a 24-hour search. It was a miracle, Charlie’s owners believe, that a newlywed couple in the middle of nowhere found him. (Courtesy Rich and Barb Renner)
Neighbors Rally As Storm Deepens
The Renners had been putting messages out on Facebook and social media about Charlie, asking for the community’s help to find him.
Renner was amazed at how his neighborhood sprang into action.
It seemed that everyone he knew — and even some people he didn’t know yet — were looking for his pet, who he feared was too skinny to survive another night out in the cold, much less the cold, wet snowstorm that continued into Wednesday.
“Before, I lived in Cheyenne for a lot of years, and you didn’t even hardly know your neighbors,” he said. “You maybe said ‘hi,’ to them when there’s a snowstorm and you’re shoveling your snow at the same time.
Advertisement
“But other than that, we didn’t even know our neighbors.”
Mountain Meadows, though, proved to be a different kind of friendly — the kind that doesn’t smile and wave in passing; the kind that shows up on the doorstep and asks, “How can I help?”
“There were probably six different vehicles or side by sides at different times looking for him Tuesday night,” Renner said. “And then people were passing the word on through Facebook and emails and everything.
“And just everyone was praying for him. I mean the number of prayers that went up for Charlie is just amazing.”
A Blind Date, A Snowy Hike, And A Lost Dog
While a small army of neighbors continued to search for Charlie with drones and side-by-sides, a newlywed couple the Renners had never met were on a surprise date.
Advertisement
Jada, a Laramie native, and Collin Szymanski, from Utah, are newlyweds.
Since Collin is new to Wyoming, Jada has been making a point of showing him some of her favorite places.
That day, she’d decided on a literal blind date, complete with blindfold, to one of her favorite places in Curt Gowdy State Park — Hidden Falls.
The falls are a couple miles from where the Renners live as the crow flies, and maybe 10 miles or more away in twisting, winding, dog-chasing-a-deer miles.
By the time Jada and her husband arrived at the Hidden Falls Trail, snow was picking up speed and Jada was starting to question the idea of hiking that afternoon.
Advertisement
“There was, like, snow everywhere,” Jada said. “I was like, ‘Oh man, I thought it was going to be a little less snow than this.’
“So I unblindfolded him and I was like, ‘Should we still go?’”
The couple are young and in love, so of course the answer to that question was, “Yes!”
As they hiked into the thick carpet of new snow, they soon found themselves with a new-but-stand-offish friend.
“All of a sudden we see this little dog running around,” Jada said. “We’re thinking, ‘Oh well, his owners must have decided to go on a hike in the snow, too.’”
Advertisement
A dog named Charlie a Wyoming couple rescued from a California shelter running off with a whiteout blizzard on the way triggered a 24-hour search. It was a miracle, Charlie’s owners believe, that a newlywed couple in the middle of nowhere found him. (Courtesy Rich and Barb Renner)
The Sound Of Loneliness
When they got to the end of the trail, though, there were no owners around.
That was when Charlie began to howl, a haunting, lost sound.
“You could tell he was so sad,” Jada said. “So we were trying to get to him, but he was a little scared of us.”
Once Jada managed to get close enough to see Charlie’s collar, things changed. The second she said his name, the dog immediately calmed down and came over to them.
It was remarkable, given that Charlie had only had that name for about four weeks. But it clearly meant everything to the dog to hear that one word.
These were friends, Charlie decided, because somehow they knew his name.
Advertisement
An Answer To A Prayer
By noon, with no further sight or sign of Charlie, the Renners’ hopes were dwindling.
Their property backs up to some very rugged country with deep draws and thick timber. It’s a maze of places to get lost.
It’s also a maze full of obstacles and dangers much larger than Charlie — mountain lions, deer, moose. Then there are box canyons easier to get into than out.
Their skinny California dog, chasing a deer in a full Wyoming whiteout, could easily become lost, trapped, or hurt. More and more, it seemed like that’s what had happened.
Just as they were about to give up and call it a day, Renner got a phone call from a man he didn’t know.
Advertisement
“Hey, are you guys missing a dog?” the man asked.
Relief flooded through Renner at those words as the man told him he’d just found a golden-colored dog at Hidden Falls in the box canyon.
Thanks to the collar, which had the Renners’ number on it, he’d been able to immediately call from the canyon.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Renner said, noting that calls from the canyon are usually impossible to make.
It felt like a minor miracle.
Advertisement
Charlie had spent all day and night Tuesday in a snowstorm that got down to about 25 degrees, and had somehow managed to bump into what were the only other hikers on the Hidden Falls Trail, somehow none the worse for his adventures.
Soon, Renner and his wife were headed in their cars to go pick up Charlie from the Szymanskis, meeting halfway between their home and Hidden Falls.
For Rich, who describes himself as a person of faith, all these details add up to something bigger than coincidence.
“I know that God makes things happen,” he said.
Jada felt that as well, considering how things happened.
Advertisement
“Their whole neighborhood had been looking for him,” she said. “He told us he had just been praying so hard. We felt like we got to be the answers to those prayers.”
A dog named Charlie a Wyoming couple rescued from a California shelter running off with a whiteout blizzard on the way triggered a 24-hour search. It was a miracle, Charlie’s owners believe, that a newlywed couple in the middle of nowhere found him. (Courtesy Rich and Barb Renner)
Celebrity Life On A Leash
Back home, Charlie acts as if nothing miraculous has happened at all.
“He’s happy to be home for sure,” Renner said. “He spent yesterday in the barn, and he’s in the barn today.”
But he’s not going outside any more for a while without a leash, Renner said, as he remains just a little too fascinated with Wyoming wildlife, particularly moose, which are 100 times heavier than he is.
Renner is looking into electric fences to keep Charlie and his moxie corralled so that the pooch’s future adventures won’t be quite so harrowing.
“We’re chuckling now, because he’s like a celebrity,” Renner said.
Advertisement
For all the worry and all the searching, what’s really sticking with the Renners is how his Wyoming neighbors were there when needed, crawling the snowy hills in their trucks and side-by-sides, looking for a California pooch with no idea what a Wyoming whiteout really means.
“That’s the real story,” Renner said. “It’s the community, the neighborhood, how everyone just rallied behind this to help.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
CASPER — Discarded rocks thrown outside the geology department at an upstate New York college in the 1920s became gems in the eyes of the boy who picked them up.
They were also stepping stones to a career and life that led to 68 years of leading the growth of Wyoming’s — and America’s — mining industry.
Politics and philanthropy also helped John Wold earn accolades like Wyoming Man of the Year in 1968 and Oil/Gas and Mineral Man of the 20th Century in 1999.
But the longtime Casper resident left that century behind and kept going to work in his downtown office, pursuing new ideas and enterprises nearly until his death on Feb. 19, 2017, at age 100.
Advertisement
Peter Wold, 78, remembers his dad as a man who was “driven” and focused, but who always made time for his wife and children.
As he co-leads the oil and gas business started by his father back in 1950, Peter said his dad’s portrait on the wall reminds him of the principles and “purpose” that guided his life.
“I think that he motivated me, and I would say the same for my brother and my sister,” he said. “We’ve all tried to stay engaged in community activities and philanthropy and be good fathers and a mother.”
He not only contributed to the evolution of Wyoming’s energy industries, his financial generosity endowed a geology chair and two chairs of religion at Union College in Schenectady, New York.
He also endowed the Centennial Chair of Energy at the University of Wyoming and his lead 1994 donation to Casper College became the Wold Physical Science Center.
Advertisement
U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, who characterized Wold as a “legend” when he died in 2017, said even though nearly a decade has passed since then, his legacy is all over the Cowboy State — even if younger generations now don’t recognize his name.
“As a professional geologist, John’s contributions to the mining industry revolutionized the way our nation extracts minerals today,” Barrasso said. “Casper College students continue to benefit from John’s generosity and are reminded of him every time they walk through the Wold Physical Science Center.
“John passed on his love for Wyoming and his energy expertise to his family,” the senator added. “He would be so proud of how his children and grandchildren carry on the family business and his tradition of giving back to the state and people he loved so much.”
John Wold, right, was a busy man but always took time for his family, Peter Wold said. (Courtesy Peter Wold)
Big Into Rock
Peter Wold said his dad’s successes in part came from his education, continuous learning and ability to compartmentalize and head for the goal — something he loved to do on the hockey rink as well.
Born in New Jersey, John Wold grew up on the Union College campus where his father, Peter I. Wold, was a distinguished physics professor. The family lived on campus.
Advertisement
While growing up, a young Wold became fascinated with the excess rocks being tossed out by the college’s geology department and started his own mineral collection.
Following graduation from high school, the Eagle Scout attended Union College and became an exchange student at St. Andrews University in Scotland.
While at Union College, he played on the hockey team, and he graduated with a bachelor of arts in geology and went on to Cornell University to earn a master’s degree in geology as well.
Prior to World War II, Wold worked in Oklahoma and Texas for an oil company, but in 1941 he volunteered to help the U.S. Navy’s Bureau of Ordinance researching magnetic mines.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, he was sent to Midway Island as a physicist involved in degaussing or demagnetizing submarines to protect them from magnetic Japanese mines.
Advertisement
Navy Man And Inventor
Although he never officially attended Navy officer training school, Wold was given a commission and went on after his Midway assignment to serve as a gunnery officer and executive officer on destroyer escorts.
Peter Wold said his dad’s wartime ship assignments did not involve any significant battles.
It was while in the Navy that Wold had an idea to improve the masks of divers while watching them work.
He applied for a patent in July 1946 for his improved “underwater goggle.”
“The purpose of this invention is to provide an efficient underwater goggle, simple of manufacture, which is of such form that it will fit with water-tightness the contours of most faces without alteration or tailoring by the wearer,” he wrote on the application.
Advertisement
Wold wrote that the design was meant to be flexible enough that it could be worn “across or below the nose of the diver with equal water-tight integrity.”
The inventor received his patent in Casper on Oct. 3, 1950, and it was something he was always proud of.
Peter Wold said he kept it framed on his office wall during his business career.
John Wold loved Wyoming and enjoyed fishing, skiing, and outdoor activities. (Courtesy Peter Wold)
John and Jane Wold on parade during his political career. (Courtesy Peter Wold)
John Wold served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and worked demagnetizing submarines as well as serving as an officer on destroyer escorts. John Wold and his wife Jane in their later years. (Courtesy Peter Wold)
The Oil Field Calls
After the war, John Wold married his wife, Jane, and worked for Barnsdall Oil on the Gulf Coast.
By 1949, Peter was born, and that winter the Wold family was sent to Casper to establish an office for Barnsdall Oil.
The family drove from Houston to Denver and found the roads north had been blocked by the infamous blizzards of 1949 for the previous two weeks.
Advertisement
Peter Wold said his dad liked to tell the story of how he only had enough money for one night in a Denver hotel.
The next day, his dad said it was like a “miracle” and the road opened, allowing them to reach Casper. The highway shut the next day and stayed closed for two more weeks.
In 1950, Wold launched his own firm, Wold Oil Properties, as a consulting petroleum geologist, and never looked back.
A search of Wold in old newspapers shows his progression of accomplishments in both his business life and Republican politics in Wyoming.
Ahead Of His Time
In 1953, in addition to growing his new business, he was a member of the Natrona County Republican Party Executive Committee.
Advertisement
He ran for and won a state House seat in 1956. In 1960, he became the state Republican chairman, as well as a member of the nation’s Republican National Committee.
In 1964, he was the Republican nominee for Wyoming’s U.S. Senate seat to run against Sen. Gale McGee.
His political office high point culminated in his election as Wyoming’s U.S. House representative in 1968 as Richard Nixon was winning the White House.
He was the first professional geologist ever elected to the U.S. House. While there, he authored and sponsored the National Mining and Minerals Policy Act of 1970.
That legislation was instrumental in laying the groundwork for Wyoming’s and the nation’s mining industry.
Advertisement
It directed the U.S. to develop a stable domestic mining industry that’s economically sound and encourages private investment. It also called for standards to dispose of and reclaim mining waste and land to mitigate environmental impacts.
While he was proud of his time in Congress, the scientist and businessman who liked to get things done was stymied there.
“He recognized that he was one of 435 congressmen and that frustrated him,” Peter Wold said. “He said, ‘I’m going to go for the Senate.’”
In 1970, he took on McGee again and lost, as Republicans took a beating in the Nixon midterm election.
Peter Wold said his dad never ran for office again but stayed interested in politics.
Advertisement
On the business side of his life, John Wold excelled and was able to use his geology, chemistry and economics savvy to see opportunities that others might miss.
He also could see when those opportunities were turning south.
During his lifetime, Wold started companies that got involved in pursuing coal, uranium, trona, and coal gasification. But each of those sectors came at different times of his life and career.
“When he focused on something he focused primarily on that project,” Peter Wold said. “He was active in the coal business, in the uranium business. But he did those separately, compartmentalized.
“You have to be really good at what you are doing.”
Advertisement
John and Jane Wold at their ranch property. (Courtesy Peter Wold)
John Wold poses with his extended family. (Courtesy Peter Wold)
John and Jane Wold left a legacy that continues through the next generations of the their family. (Courtesy Peter Wold)
Business Ventures
A joint venture with Peabody Energy and Consolidation Coal Co. (now CONSOL Energy) put Rocky Mountain coal in the spotlight.
In 1973, he started Wold Nuclear Co. and was a co-discoverer of the Christensen Ranch uranium ore deposit in the Powder River Basin.
He also became the principal in the development of the Highland uranium mine in Converse County, which once was the largest uranium production operation in the U.S.
Peter Wold said his dad used a technique with paper cups and a tiny piece of film on the bottom of each cup that would be buried for a few days on potential uranium lands.
While he did not invent the technique to detect radon gas, he used it on a huge scale.
“They wanted to see what radiation penetrations there were,” Peter Wold said. “They laid thousands of those cups all over Wyoming, New Mexico, and Texas.
Advertisement
“With that information they were able to determine there were uranium ore bodies.”
Wold’s holdings of potential uranium lands in south Texas led to an unforeseen talc mining opportunity, so he created American Talc Co., which became one of the largest talc operations in North America. It was sold to Daltile in 2017.
Wold’s interest in trona mining in the southern Green River Basin led to patents on solutions-based mining processes that he worked to create and develop with a Colorado firm.
But several years of work and roadblocks led him to sell the reserves he bought. The technology he helped develop, however, helped transform the trona industry.
Wold also bought a coal gasification idea during the first decade of this century and became chairman and CEO of GasTech.
Advertisement
The company sought to develop gas from deep layers of coal in the Powder River Basin through pumping oxygen down into the beds and setting them on fire.
He worked with an Australian company that had pioneered a similar concept in Australia.
A demonstration plant never came to development.
Peter Wold said his dad’s efforts to develop coal and coal gasification in Campbell County came from his understanding that the coal, natural gas, and oil in the county held more BTUs of energy than all of Saudi Arabia’s oil.
During his life, John Wold’s expertise was sought by many companies that recruited him for their boards.
Advertisement
Hole In The Wall Ranch
Outside of energy, Wold enjoyed Wyoming’s outdoors and sports.
In 1977, he bought the Hole in the Wall Ranch southwest of Kaycee where the notorious Hole in the Wall Gang left their hoofprints fleeing the law.
Peter Wold said his dad did not buy the land because of the history.
“It was because of the fishing,” he said. “The Hole in the Wall Ranch has the Middle Fork of the Powder River as it comes out of the Bighorn Mountains and it runs through the ranch. And it is really good fishing.
“Dad loved to recreate and he loved fishing and one thing led to another and he said, ‘We ought to buy this place,’ so we did.”
Advertisement
While his dad was not that interested in cattle ranching, Peter Wold is.
Today, the ranch runs 600-800 head of Black Angus cattle.
Wold also was key to the development of the Hogadon Basin Ski Area on Casper Mountain and helped support the building of the Casper Ice Arena, where he coached young hockey players.
As he grew older, macular degeneration, a trait that ran in his family, started to take Wold’s eyesight.
Peter Wold said his dad’s loss of vision frustrated him. Even though he couldn’t see well, he kept driving a car into his mid-90s.
Advertisement
“He didn’t like being dependent on someone to take him to the grocery store or bring him down to the office,” Peter Wold said. “The macular degeneration was very discouraging to him.”
Before he died, John Wold put money toward finding a cure for his blindness that became the Wold Family Macular Degeneration Center at Oregon Health & Science University’s Casey Eye Institute at Oregon Health and Science University.
The institute touts the center as a “central hub” for ongoing research and clinical care efforts as well as a “catalyst for further discovery and innovation by having research, clinical care and clinical trials all in one place.”
Throughout his life, the former college athlete never stopped moving and working to stay fit.
Wold would do leg lifts and stomach crunches before getting out of bed. In his 90s, he was still running down his street even on ice and snow.
Advertisement
He continued to challenge himself mentally and never retired.
Peter Wold said carrying on the legacy of his dad’s business success means he thinks a lot about what would make John Wold proud. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily)
Legacy Of Giving
As Peter Wold and his brother Jack continue to work in the oil business started by their father, they and their sister, Priscilla Longfield, also continue the legacy of giving launched by their parents.
Peter Wold said the family foundation donates about $3 million a year.
The foundation’s directors include his brother, sister and himself, but John Wold’s eight grandchildren are now involved in choosing who the benefactors will be as well.
While his dad could be a “taskmaster” who wanted his children to have purpose and goals, Peter Wold said he also instilled a desire for them to make a difference in their time.
Peter Wold agrees he feels a “weight” and responsibility that flow from his dad’s accomplishments, and he thinks about that.
Advertisement
“How can I live up to his expectations? What should I be doing that would have him proud?” Peter Wold said. “He left a wonderful legacy that our whole family is proud of.”
When John Wold died at 100, the Casper Star-Tribune dubbed him Wyoming’s “citizen of a century.”
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
