For the last 16 years, Joy Bannon has been leading tours of the land near Rock Springs, Wyoming. Usually, Bannon and her cohort mosey through Wyoming’s southwest landscape—home to the sandstone badlands and slithering dunes of the Northern Red Desert, and the Big Sandy Foothills, a sea of sagebrush bordering the Wind River range—in vehicles, chattering over walkie talkies. At a particularly stunning vista, they set out on foot or take to the skies. Flyovers cover more ground, and better showcase the area’s topographical diversity.
Bannon, the executive director of the Wyoming Wildlife Federation, a nonprofit that advocates for policies that preserve Wyoming’s wildlife, landscapes and strong recreation heritage, leads the tours to help county, state and federal officials along with other nonprofits, all of them involved in Bureau of Land Management’s Rock Springs Resource Management Plan, better understand the region’s natural contours.
“When a decision maker is more familiar with an area, they’re going to have more ownership,” she said. “They’re going to be more interested, they’re going to be able to make decisions with a better understanding of what they’re making a decision on.”
For over a decade—an unprecedented amount of time—the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has been working to finalize a Resource Management Plan for its Rock Springs field office, which manages 3.6 million acres of land in the area. This week, the process inched closer to completion after the BLM concluded its public comment period. While Bannon’s tours may have helped increase interest in conservation of the land she loves, there’s still staunch disagreement about how it should be managed.
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Resource management plans establish long-term policies for how the BLM juggles dozens of competing interests—oil and gas extraction, mining for coal and trona (the main mineral in baking soda), renewable energy development, livestock grazing allotments, animal migration corridors and recreational opportunities, to name a few. Without a new plan, the agency operates under the old one, in this case a relic from 1997.
Last August, the BLM announced its draft plan and preferred alternative, a non-binding step it is legally required to take. The agency chose its Alternative B, which “conserves the most land area for physical, biological, and cultural resources” while implementing the most restrictions on resource extraction, the Bureau said.
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State politicians, public officials and members of Wyoming’s oil and gas industry, which, under Alternative B, would be prevented from bidding on over half of the land under management, did not mince words in response to the BLM’s plan, calling it a national disaster and a death knell to the state’s economy.
But conservationists have countered that the oil and gas industry hasn’t shown interest in much of the land under the BLM Rock Springs Office’s jurisdiction, justifying more stringent leasing restrictions by the agency. The presence of culturally sacred sites for Indigenous Nations, valuable recreation areas, indispensable habitats and wildlife migration corridors make future oil and gas leases undesirable, leaving conservation as the right management tool for the job, they contend.
BLM director Tracy Stone-Manning defended the agency’s selection of Alternative B in a statement to Inside Climate News, saying the alternative strikes “a balance with conservation and multiple uses.” Nonetheless, she said the agency has valued Wyomingites’ feedback throughout the comment process. “Our experience is that the more a public discussion goes into the details, science and intention of a proposed plan, the more the heated rhetoric dissipates and the better the final product will be.”
Members of the Petroleum Association of Wyoming, a trade group that represents the industry’s interest in the state, declined to comment for this story after multiple requests.
The backlash and fierce public debate have illuminated the contours of a wider struggle in Wyoming: preserving some of the Cowboy State’s spectacular and sacred scenery in the face of its economic reliance on fossil fuel extraction.
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In November, Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon convened a task force of representatives from energy, conservation, agriculture and recreation organizations to come up with consensus-driven recommendations for the BLM. On January 10, the task force submitted its recommendations to the agency; a week later the public comment period for the BLM’s proposed plan, already once extended, ended.
Now, the agency returns to the drawing board with thousands of lines of texts from Wyomigites detailing changes they’d like to see in the agency’s management approach.
“We’re excited to see the BLM making a shift to acknowledging that multiple use mandates require equal balancing of conservation,” and resource extraction, said Julia Stuble, the Wyoming state director of the Wilderness Society, describing her initial reaction to the agency’s preferred alternative.
Stuble, born in southern Wyoming and now a Lander resident, built her career advocating for broad environmental and public land issues. Even after decades of work in the field, seeing a BLM preferred alternative so devoted to conservation came as “such a surprise,” she said.
Part of her shock stemmed from BLM’s proposal to cordon off 61 percent of the land from future oil and gas leasing, a figure the industry has seized on.
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“We have significant concerns about the current [preferred] plan as it stands,” Ryan McConnaughey, Petroleum Association of Wyoming vice president and director of communications, told Wyofile, a state news outlet. McConnaughey added that technological advancements in hydraulic fracturing have allowed producers to access rock formations with fewer surface level disturbances.
“Their preferred alternative, from their own admission, would cut economic output in the field office by over half,” he said.
In comments submitted to the BLM, the Petroleum Association of Wyoming and Western Energy Alliance, a trade group representing oil and gas interests in nine Western states, argued that the BLM had made a “hard left turn” by selecting Alternative B. The two organizations asserted that making more acreage available for future leases would be an “environmentally protective outcome” as it would prevent oil and gas projects (and their emissions) from being transferred to other areas of the U.S., or overseas.
Local county officials have expressed concerns about what a decrease in oil and gas leases would mean for the region’s economy. “This Alternative B—if they actually got this whole thing through—would destroy our county,” said Mary Thoman, a Sweetwater County commissioner who was a local government cooperator, helping the BLM craft alternatives for the plan over the past 12 years. Reducing the number of future oil and gas leases would “affect the senior citizen centers, really impact the schools, the county infrastructure—it would be totally devastating,” Thoman said. “It’d be like shutting our county down, basically.”
But the oil and gas industry has shown little interest in the lands under BLM management in Rock Springs, and in a recent revenue estimate forecast, Wyoming acknowledged that its natural gas production has declined by nearly 50 percent since 2009.
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“When you dig into where the potential oil and gas for future development is, it’s low,” Stuble said. What’s more, closures from Alternative B wouldn’t affect “existing production and future production of existing leases,” she said.
In 2023, the oil and gas industry bid on public lands available for oil and gas leasing, including acreage in the Rock Springs management plant. From quarters two through four, 3.5 percent of the acreage up for sale across the entire state yielded nearly 85 percent of the revenue, according to an analysis by the Center for Western Priorities, an environmental nonprofit that advocates for conservation of America’s Western landscapes. Over three quarters of the acres up for sale didn’t sell at all or sold for the $10 minimum.
Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the Center For Western Priorities, did not buy the argument that today’s low-potential lands could be tomorrow’s booming oil reserves. “The oil and gas industry has basically been in charge of the leasing process for the last hundred years,” he said. “Almost any parcel of land in the West that has produced oil or will ever produce oil is already under lease.”
Even low-potential leases sitting untouched for years could be a waste of state and federal resources, said Alec Underwood, program director of the Wyoming Outdoor Council, a state-based conservation organization. Undeveloped leases come “at the cost of agency resources, at the cost typically of taxpayers. It can also preclude, you know, other use of those lands, like restoration,” he said.
The fight to preserve some of the conservation priorities the BLM outlined in Alternative B in the agency’s final draft, the next step in the plan process, involves more than disagreement over the sprawl of oil and gas leases. For some, culturally significant sites and the majesty of the lands and animals under the BLM’s jurisdiction are reason enough to ensure they remain pristine for decades to come.
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The White Mountain Petroglyphs, designs carved by hand into pale sandstone cliffs more than 200 years ago, sit in the Red Desert, the heart of the land under the BLM’s jurisdiction. The site is “culturally important to four Native American tribes,” the BLM states. But despite the site’s significance and proximity to several expired oil and gas permits and abandoned wells, no representative from Native Nations were included on Gov. Gordon’s task force.
Rock Springs is also home to a state-recognized mule deer migration corridor—the species’ longest on earth—and the ranges where the deer seek food during Wyoming’s brutal winter, said Josh Coursey, co-founder and president of the Muley Fanatic Foundation.
Coursey, who was appointed by Gov. Gordon to represent hunters’ interests on the resource management plan task force, believes a balanced approach to conservation and resource extraction will be crucial for the prospects of mule deer in Wyoming.
Mule deer have declined 40 percent over the last three decades, he said, for a variety of reasons.
“Habitat fragmentation, that certainly has been a big culprit,” he said. There may be no “silver bullet” to save the mule deer, but “wide open spaces,” like those under BLM jurisdiction in Rock Springs “would certainly be valuable for the health of deer populations.”
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And, for the people living on these lands, the Northern Red Desert and Big Sandy Foothills—also called the “Golden Triangle” for the triangular shape highways 181 and 91 mark around the land yawning toward the Wind River mountains—represent some of the best recreation and hunting opportunities in the state, said Underwood. These lands are “a true iconic landscape of the American West,” he said. “It’s a place worthy of protection.”
Coursey and Underwood, both members of Gov. Gordon’s task force, viewed the deliberations largely as a success; the group was able to come to consensus on a range of issues, including those raised by the state’s powerful ranching industry. They each noted that 45 days spanning two major holidays was hardly enough time to flesh out all the concerns from every stakeholder at the table.
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For instance, the group could not come to an agreement around oil and gas leases in the Northern Red Desert and Big Sandy Foothills, Underwood said. “We’re still pushing and hoping that the BLM will implement some of the added protections” in the final draft, he said.
Coursey expects that task force’s feedback to help usher in a “mosaic and hybrid approach” to managing the lands that will meet a range of priorities across all the stakeholders on the task force.
That final document may still be a ways off. Now that the BLM has public feedback, the agency will begin evaluating and revising its draft plan. Then, it will submit a final plan and Environmental Impact Statement, which are subject to simultaneous 30-day protest periods for the public and a 60-day review period by the governor.
In the meantime, Wyoming Attorney General Bridget Hill and the state’s general assembly have explored taking legal and legislative actions against the BLM for its draft proposal.
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Jake Bolster
Contributor
Jake Bolster is a freelance multimedia journalist who covers climate and the environment across the United States.
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.
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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
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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.”
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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?
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“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?’”
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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.
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“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.
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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.
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“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.’”
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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.
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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.
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“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.
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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.
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“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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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“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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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“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.
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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.
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“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.
