Wyoming
Wyoming Did Propose Drilling A Tunnel Through Teton Pass But It Never…
Dreams are just that.
Nothing more, unless there’s lots of money sloshing around in the U.S. Treasury that can make them happen.
In late 2021, the federal government had so much taxpayer money in its overstuffed wallet that it made available to every state when the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act got signed into law.
The law set aside over $1.2 trillion for everything from rebuilding bridges and roads to improving electrical grids and building wind turbines and solar projects in open spaces across the United States.
Boring tunnels through mountains for desperately needed road projects also were considered.
Three years ago, governors — like Mark Gordon in Wyoming — were asked to come up with a “wish list” of road, bridge and other projects where they could apply for billions to fund pet transportation projects.
In Wyoming, the job of coming up with some of the list fell to Luke Reiner, the now retired head of the Wyoming Department of Transportation.
It also was an opportunity to try and get money for a bucket-list item on the state’s wish list — a tunnel through the Teton Range to replace a chronically problematic Highway 22 over Teton Pass.
It Would Cost How Much?
Back in January 2013, the Wyoming Department of Transportation took a serious look at the possibility of building a tunnel through the Tetons, bypassing all the switchbacks that snake back and forth in the area where the road collapsed down the mountainside June 8.
The estimated price tag to build the tunnel in 2021 was $750 million, according to WYDOT spokesman Doug Moran. That’s up 188% from the $260 million estimated in 2013 when the idea first surfaced with a feasibility study.
Adding another 15.9% cumulative rate of inflation since 2021 and a tunnel like the one proposed by WYDOT more than a decade ago could cost nearly $870 million today.
That’s well over three times the cost of the tunnel’s price tag estimated by WYDOT analysts a decade ago.
With the pass open again with a temporary fix and WYDOT planning to rebuild the part of the mountain that gave way, some are asking if it’s not time to reconsider a tunnel.
‘Hugely Expensive’
“It’s hugely expensive,” said Luke Reiner, who retired as WYDOT director in March 2023 after a four-year stint at the helm of the state agency. “It’s all about money.”
Also, Wyoming Highway 22 is a headache.
It needs constant maintenance and repair in the winter months when snow is several feet deep, and another project getting penciled out would widen the road to the heavy daily traffic through the Teton Pass.
The highway connects Victor and Driggs in Idaho where the blue-collar workforce lives, which serves the high-brow community of Jackson, Wyoming, where the people from Idaho fill jobs in hospitals, restaurants and expensive clothing and arts and craft stores.
“Part of the reason for putting it in would be the cost of maintenance in the winter,” Reiner told Cowboy State Daily of the patching and repairs that it spends annually on fixing Wyoming Highway 22, the main route through the Teton Pass.
While the tunnel never got funded, Reiner added another perspective, possibly one of greater good for the country.
“As you look at the needs of the state and the needs of the nation, things always get whittled down. There certainly may be an option at some later time,” he said.
“There may be more important issues out there. That’s what you must keep in perspective,” Reiner said. “The reality is, I would not hold my breath for funding.”
The ‘Dream List’
The “dream list” that Reiner gave to Gordon for submission to the Biden administration back in 2021 included more than $9.4 billion in projects.
These included the $750 million Teton Pass tunnel project, $400 million in improvements to the three Wind River tunnels in the canyon south of Thermopolis, $310 million for improvements to the 80 and Interstate 25 interchange in Cheyenne, and $6.1 billion for rerouting 19 miles of I-80 onto an expanded U.S. 30 to four lanes in south central Wyoming for truckers to travel on as an alternative route during icy and rainy weather or to bypass pileups.
“There was a very nice increase in funding from the infrastructure law that resulted in significant enhanced revenue coming back to the state,” Reiner said. “But inflation has a great way of eating up those dollars. In the end, the bipartisan infrastructure law allowed us to complete projects we already scheduled without cutting them.”
The Road Collapses
While Wyoming didn’t receive billions of dollars for it’s shovel-worthy projects, the Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration did hand over $6 million in emergency money to help offset the costs of repairs in the Teton Range caused by last month’s landslide.
The funds were used to build “a safe, temporary detour” near the Wyoming-Idaho border that restores critical access to popular tourist destinations such as Jackson Hole, Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park.
The collapse of Wyoming State Highway 22, also known as Teton Pass, happened June 8 when 200 feet of the road washed down an embankment, causing a complete loss of the roadway at milepost 12.8.
Another landslide happened a day earlier at milepost 15, covering the highway in mud and debris. No vehicles were on the highway at the time of the collapse and there were no injuries reported.
Crews worked around-the-clock to clean up the water, mud and debris that washed down the mountain from these disasters.
The road was reopened June 28 to traffic that WYDOT says handles about 7,200 vehicles annually, with counts climbing to 10,000 in June and July during peak tourism season.
WYDOT’s alternative to a washed-out Highway 22 over Teton Pass in Wyoming is the reason why everyone drove more than 100 miles along five highways of bumper-to-bumper traffic from Victor, Idaho, at the border with Wyoming, to Jackson.
Less than three weeks after a section of mountain dropped off and took part of Highway 22 with it, the temporary fix is just that.
Rebuilding The Mountain
Plans now are for WYDOT to rebuild the mountain and the road on its original spot.
It will be a massive undertaking, but WYDOT won’t be considering a tunnel as a long-term solution.
“It isn’t feasible,” Moran told Cowboy State Daily.
To Reiner, there were advantages to a tunnel that would have extended 1.4 miles, or 7,400 feet, from different spots under consideration near the switchbacks, completely bypassing the road area that slid down the mountainside.
The tunnel site would have extended well over a mile from just west of Wilson, Wyoming, to somewhere near the turnoff for Mail Cabin Creek Road, according to a copy of the feasibility study obtained by Cowboy State Daily.
“You wouldn’t have to plow it because it’s under a mountain. There are some good operational reasons to do it,” Reiner said. “Every time you can’t drive through the Teton Pass because of a snowstorm, you’ve got to get a plow driver up in the middle of the night.”
There also are disadvantages, he said.
“Operationally, there are some drawbacks, like whether it is well ventilated, and you must be careful of safety on either end of the tunnel, and work to mitigate that,” Reiner said. “When you look at the big picture, you have to say, ‘Is this the best project for our dollar?’”
Rising Maintenance Costs
Tunnels are expensive propositions. There may be lessons to be learned from Colorado to the south.
Bob Wilson, a spokesman for the Colorado Department of Transportation, said that it is unlikely his state would ever again build another tunnel.
“We’re not building any tunnels. It’s too cost prohibitive,” Wilson said.
Its hallmark tunnel project was the Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnel, built in two sections in the 1970s that connected the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains to the Western Slope.
Located about 60 miles west of Denver on Interstate 70, the two eastbound and westbound tunnels extend 1.7 miles through the Rockies.
It cost $262 million to build both bores between 1968 and 1979, or the equivalent of about $1.2 billion in today dollars, Wilson said.
“We’re just expanding the existing structure today,” said Wilson of the tunnel that handles nearly seven times as much traffic volume as the Teton Pass in its busy tourism season.
And maintenance in the city-like area where the tunnels are located is a constant challenge. It’s risen nearly 37% to $4.1 million in two years to pay for a fire department, plumbers and electricians.
“It’s kind of like a mini-city,” Wilson said. “The maintenance is quite significant, as you’ve got to keep the sides of the walls clean because they get filthy, especially in the winter with traffic, and plumbing for water systems and lights. It must be self-sufficient. The nearest city is 12 miles away.”
In the early 2000s, there was talk about building another tunnel through Berthoud Pass, a high mountain pass in central Colorado, in the Front Range of the Rockies.
“We decided to go over the Berthoud Pass, not through it,” Wilson said.
“It was eliminated fairly early in the study process since the cost was prohibitive and any funds for tunnels would be more focused on the Eisenhower due to its location on the interstate and much higher traffic numbers,” Wilson told Cowboy State Daily.
Pat Maio can be reached at pat@cowboystatedaily.com.
If the Wyoming House and Senate approve its budget changes, then the chambers’ Joint Conference Committee will have helped the University of Wyoming dodge a $40 million cut, while also limiting the Wyoming Business Council to one year’s funding instead of the standard two.
The Joint Conference Committee adopted numerous changes to the state’s two-year budget draft, but didn’t formally advance the document to the House and Senate chambers. The committee meets again Monday and may do so at that time.
Then, the House and Senate can vote on whether to adopt that draft by a simple majority.
First, UW
Starting in January, the Joint Appropriations Committee majority had sought to deny around $20 million in exception requests the University of Wyoming made, while imposing a $40 million cut to the university’s block grant.
That’s about 10% of the state’s grant to UW but a lesser proportion of the school’s overall operating budget.
The Senate sought to restore the $60 million.
The House sought to keep the denials and cuts, ultimately settling on a bargain to cut $20 million, and hinge UW’s retention of the remaining $20 million on its finding and reporting $5 million in savings.
The Joint Conference Committee the House and Senate sent into a Friday meeting to negotiate those two stances chose to fund UW “fully,” Senate Majority Floor Leader Tara Nethercott, R-Cheyenne, told Cowboy State Daily in the state Capitol after the meeting.
But, $10 million of UW’s $40 million block grant won’t reach it until the school charts a “road map” of how it could save $5 million, and reports that to the Joint Appropriations Committee, she added.
“A healthy exercise, I think, for them to participate in, while the Legislature still allows them to receive full grant funding,” Nethercott said.
“I’m hopeful people feel confident the University is fully funded,” she continued, as it’s “on the brink of receiving a new president, having the resources he or she may need to continue to steer the leadership of the University, our state’s flagship school into the future.”
Hours earlier in a press conference, House Speaker Chip Neiman, R-Hulett, said the Legislature has been clear that UW should avoid “diversity, equity, and inclusion” or DEI programming, and that it’s the position of the House majority that the school should tailor its programming to Wyoming’s true business needs – so UW graduates will stay in the state.
Within an earlier draft of the budget sat a footnote blocking money for Wyoming Public Media — a publicly funded media and radio entity funded through UW’s budget.
That footnote is gone from the JCC’s draft, said Nethercott.
Wyoming Business Council
The Wyoming Business Council is set to receive roughly $14 million, confined to one year, for its internal operations, said Nethercott.
“Both chambers have decided to only fund the operations,” Nethercott said, “not all the grant programs.”
She said that’s to compel the Legislature to revisit the concerns it has with the agency, then return in the 2027 legislative session with a vision for its future.
The Business Ready Communities program is “eliminated,” she said.
JCC member Rep. Ken Pendergraft, R-Sheridan, elaborated further.
Of the appropriation, $12 million is from the state’s checking account, plus the state is authorizing WBC to use $157,787 in federal funds and nearly $1 million from other sources.
“We’re going to take it up as an interim topic in appropriations (committee) and how to rebuild it and make it work the way we think it should work,” said Pendergraft. But the JCC opted to fund the Small Business Development Center for two years, along with Economic Diversification Division for Manufacturing Works, and the Wyoming Women’s Business Center, Pendergraft noted, pointing to that language on his draft budget sheet.
Pendergraft made headlines last year by saying he wanted to eliminate the Wyoming Business Council altogether.
But Nethercott told the Senate earlier this month, legislators have complained of that agency her entire nine-year tenure.
She attributed this to what she called communications shortfalls that may not be intentional. She cosponsored a now-stalled bill this year that had sought to adopt a task force to evaluate WBC.
The Wyoming Business Council’s functions range from less controversial, like helping communities build infrastructure, to more controversial, like awarding tax-funded grants to certain businesses on a competitive application process.
Wyoming Public Television
Wyoming Public Television, which is not the same as Wyoming Public Media, is slated to receive the $3 million it lost when Congress defunded the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Nethercott said.
It will also receive its usual $3 million from Wyoming.
The entity will not receive another $3 million it had sought to upgrade its emergency-alert towers, said Nethercott, “because we received information from them… they have another source to pay for the replacement and maintenance of the towers.”
Like the Wyoming Business Council, the Wyoming Public TV’s functions range from less controversial to more controversial.
The entity operates, maintains and staffs emergency alert towers throughout Wyoming.
Wyoming Public TV also produces entertainment and informational movies. Its state grants run through the community colleges’ budget.
State Employees
Nethercott noted that the JCC advanced to both chambers an agreement to pay $111 million from the state’s checking account to give state employees raises.
Those raises would bring them to 2024 market values for their work, she noted.
Because that money is coming from the state’s checking account, or “general fund,” and not its severance tax pool as the House had envisioned, then $111 million won’t impact the $105 million investment another still-viable bill seeking to build an “energy dominance fund” envisions.
That bill, sponsored by Senate President Bo Biteman, R-Ranchester, seeks to lend to large energy-sector projects.
Biteman told Cowboy State Daily in an interview days before the session convened that its purpose is to counteract “green” compacts investors have adopted, and which have bottlenecked energy projects.
Wyoming’s executive branch is currently suing BlackRock and other investors on that same assertion.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
It’s Week 11 in the 2026 Wyoming prep girls’ basketball season. That means it’s the end of the regular season. 3A and 4A schools have their final game or games to determine seeding before the regional tournament, or if a team is locked into a position, one last chance to fine-tune before the postseason. Games are spread across four days.
WYOPREPS WEEK 11 GIRLS BASKETBALL SCHEDULE 2026
Every game on the slate is a conference matchup. Several rivalry contests are part of this week’s schedule, such as East against Central, Cody at Powell, Lyman hosting Mountain View, and Rock Springs at Green River, just to name a few. Here is the Week 11 schedule of varsity games WyoPreps has. All schedules are subject to change. If you see a game missing, please email david@wyopreps.com.
CLASS 4A
Final Score: Laramie 68 Cheyenne South 27 (conference game)
CLASS 3A
Final Score: Lyman 40 Mountain View 26 (conference game)
CLASS 4A
Final Score: Evanston 41 Riverton 39 (conference game)
Final Score: Natrona County 42 Kelly Walsh 38 (conference game) – Peach Basket Classic
Final Score: #4 Thunder Basin 64 Campbell County 32 (conference game)
CLASS 3A
Final Score: #1 Cody 77 Worland 33 (conference game) – 5 different Fillies with a 3, and Hays led the way with 34 points.
Final Score: #2 Lander 49 Lyman 34 (conference game)
Final Score: #4 Wheatland 51 Douglas 40 (conference game)
Final Score: #5 Powell 48 Lovell 42 (conference game)
Final Score: Burns 56 Torrington 43 (conference game)
Final Score: Glenrock 78 Newcastle 30 (conference game)
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WyoPreps Coaches and Media Basketball Polls 1-21-26
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WyoPreps Girls Basketball Week 1 Scores 2025-26
CLASS 4A
Rock Springs at #2 Green River, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
#4 Thunder Basin at #5 Sheridan, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
#1 Cheyenne East at #3 Cheyenne Central, 6 p.m. (conference game)
Jackson at Star Valley, 6 p.m. (conference game)
CLASS 3A
#3 Pinedale at Mountain View, 4 p.m. (conference game)
#1 Cody at #5 Powell, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
Buffalo at Glenrock, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
CLASS 3A
Newcastle at Buffalo, 12:30 p.m. (conference game)
Glenrock at Rawlins, 3 p.m. (conference game)
Torrington at #4 Wheatland, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
Wyoming Boys 4A Swimming & Diving State Championships 2026
4A Boys State Swim Meet for 2026 in Cheyenne
Gallery Credit: David Settle, WyoPreps.com
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