It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming, for Wednesday, July 31. I’m Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom – Brought to you by Wyoming Senior Olympics! Don’t miss the action at this year’s summer games from today through August 4th in Cheyenne, Wyoming. For more info and a schedule of events, visit Wyoming Senior Olympics dot org.

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It’s wildfire season in the West, and while Wyoming tends to live in the smoke clouds of its Western neighbors, the Equality State itself is battling its own wildfires.

In northeast Wyoming, two fires have already caused damage to homes and buildings, and Cowboy State Daily’s Jake Nichols reports that the Shoshone National Forest is blazing between Cody and Yellowstone.

“Clearwater Fire started by lightning and made significant progress Monday due to high winds 40-50 mile an hour gusts. Pushed that thing right up the elk fork drainage directly at – if you’re familiar with the area – that cute little campground, Wapiti, right off the highway. And for firefighters, highway access is the main concern from Cody to the east entrance of Yellowstone – that’s highway 14-16-20. And if this fire does not jump that highway, I’d be surprised. It’s knocking on the door.”

In Campbell County, a handful of people were left without homes to return to after erratic winds shifted direction Saturday and thrust a grassfire onto Peaceful Valley Drive just west of Gillette. Dozens of pets, horses, goats, chickens and other animals were saved, but some dogs were reported killed.

Read the full story HERE.

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Homes under $1 million are practically nonexistent in the Jackson Hole real estate market, and the rare few that are available go fast.

That’s even as the latest Jackson Hole Real Estate report from the Viehman Group shows the $2 million to $3 million segment of the Jackson Hole market is the most stagnant right now. Business reporter Renee Jean reports that sales have dropped off 6% overall, even as overall inventory has risen 5%.

“There’s still pretty robust demand for those homes, if people just would let go of pandemic pricing and come down just a little bit… these are people who can afford to sit on the market for a while and see what it does. And so, you know, you could see some price drops in the Jackson market, but I don’t think anyone should expect that that’s going to last for very long.”  

Right now, there are just 10 condos or townhomes under $1 million dollars, and only six single-family homes less than $2 million on the market.

Read the full story HERE.

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For the first time since their inception, the most significant moves toward tightening Wyoming’s relatively opaque and lenient limited liability corporation laws may be about to happen.

Cowboy State Daily’s Leo Wolfson reports that the Legislature has convened a Business Fraud Working Group that’s spent the summer meeting to gain a better understanding of the alleged fraud some people commit under Wyoming-registered businesses because of the state’s LLC laws.

“Wyoming’s LLC laws and trust laws are renowned for being extremely private, and allowing sometimes some nefarious actors to get involved in the state. So this would basically at least make an effort at trying to kind of address some of those issues that had been brought up.”

Wyoming has some of the most lenient and private corporate business filing laws in the country, and some of the lowest associated fees for registering LLCs.

Read the full story HERE.

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A Green River man is facing up to 10 years in prison on claims he pointed a loaded 9 mm pistol at a teen who parked a powered-off dirt bike on the grass in front of the man’s home.

Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that 70-year-old Boyd Kettle was charged Monday with aggravated assault in Sweetwater County Circuit Court.  

“Boyd Kettle allegedly comes out and chastises the teen and points a loaded pistol at him. The reason that there’s an inference in that affidavit that it was loaded is that police met up with him later and collected a nine millimeter Taurus that had a full magazine and also one in the chamber.”

 Wyoming law contains multiple variations of aggravated assault. Among those are charging options for people accused of pointing a “drawn deadly weapon” at others. 

Read the full story HERE.

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Former President Donald Trump is paying attention to Wyoming and its 2024 races for the state Legislature. Over the weekend, Trump endorsed Cheyenne Republican Senate candidate Darin Smith on his social media platform Truth Social.

While Trump has endorsed Wyoming candidates before, he hasn’t expressed support for anyone running for the state Legislature until now, reports Cowboy State Daily’s Leo Wolfson.

“Smith is running in Cheyenne is rural Laramie and Platte counties for the state senate for a seat currently occupied by Senator Anthony Bouchard, a Republican from Cheyenne. It’s notable that Smith got the endorsement, as it is the first endorsement Trump has ever made for a Wyoming State Legislature candidate.”

The track record shows that a Trump endorsement usually turns out well for those candidates.

Read the full story HERE.

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A half-shredded blade hanging from a wind turbine just off Interstate 80 west of Cheyenne is a reminder that these towering electricity generators are not immune to the sometimes-violent hail and lightning storms that roll through southeastern Wyoming.

Laurie Farkas, a spokeswoman for Black Hills Energy, told energy reporter Pat Maio that the blade was damaged by a lightning strike July 17 at the Corriedale wind farm west of Cheyenne.

“If you look at it really closely, and I did, I stopped off on the side of the road there and looked at it with the telephoto lens, and you can see, like strands of rope, almost, dangling where it had been snapped in half. And it’s basically a carbon fiber type of substance, and they have to be disposed of properly in the right landfill and whatnot. And there is a big landfill that does take them up in Casper, but they stopped doing it a couple years ago.” 

Lightning damage is the single largest cause of unplanned downtime for wind turbines and the most common insurance claim filed by wind farm owners.

Read the full story HERE.

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The needless suffering of animals dying slow deaths tangled in old barbed wire fences inspired an army of volunteers to clean up rusted wire from an area between Cody and Yellowstone National Park.

Outdoors reporter Mark Heinz spoke to volunteers involved in the Absaroka Fence Initiative, which aims to rid the area of these specific hazards to wildlife. The initiative was sparked by a property owner who witnessed a tragic incident in 2012 in which two deer were tangled in barbed wire right in front of her house.

“It just turned into this horrible agonizing episode where it’s like two or three hours, and they finally got one of the Bucks free and it wandered off the property and didn’t live. The other one Game and Fish wardens had to put down on the site… on Monday, 12 years later, the Absaroka Fencing Initiative… they got about 40 people, and they came in and they removed three miles of old nasty rusty abandoned barbed wire, so that this doesn’t happen to any more animals or pets or things like that.”  

Abandoned fences, usually dating from the early 1950s-1990s, are a problem all over the Cody region and the rest of Wyoming.

Read the full story HERE.

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Douglas Smith continues to profess his innocence after being accused of killing two people during a daytime robbery of a downtown Cheyenne coin shop in 2015.

The 68-year-old California resident pleaded not guilty to two counts of first-degree murder during his arraignment hearing Monday in Laramie County District Court. That’s according to Cowboy State Daily’s Leo Wolfson.

“A jury trial has been set for December in that case, and he is still being held with no bond. During Monday’s court hearing, his attorney argued for reduced bond or any bond at all. But the judge has kind of delayed that for the future.”

Smith is accused of shooting and killing the then-owner of The Coin Shop, 67-year-old Dwight Brockman and his friend, 76-year-old George Manley, during that year’s Frontier Days. The brazen nature of the murder left many in Cheyenne shocked.

Read the full story HERE.

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Accused of going after four transients with a machete under a bridge in Green River — and slicing open the ear of one of them — a California man could face up to 40 years in prison.

Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that 34-year-old Jacob Rial of Gaberville, California, was charged Monday with four counts of aggravated assault in Rock Springs Circuit Court.

“It’s a chasm of two sides to this story if I’ve ever seen one. On the one side, you have the defendant saying they tried to jump me, they tried to drown me. I pulled out my machete, I defended myself. I got away. And on the other side, you have the four people, two of whom are badly cut. I mean, one guy got his ear slashed, and saying, we were just talking, and randomly he grabs a machete out of his tan backpack and starts swinging, and we tried to fight it away from him. And that’s how two of us got cut.”

One of the men had a severe laceration to the side of his head and his ear, and the other had a less-severe cut to his neck.

Read the full story HERE.

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

Radio Stations

The following radio stations are airing Cowboy State Daily Radio on weekday mornings, afternoons and evenings. 

KYDT 103.1 FM – Sundance

KBFS 1450 AM — Sundance

KYCN 1340 AM / 92.7 FM — Wheatland

KZEW 101.7 FM — Wheatland

KANT 104.1 FM — Guernsey

KZQL 105.5 FM — Casper

KMXW 92.5 FM — Casper

KJAX 93.5 FM — Jackson

KROE 930 AM / 103.9 FM — Sheridan

KWYO 1410 AM / 106.9 FM  — Sheridan

KYOY 92.3 FM Hillsdale-Cheyenne / 106.9 FM Cheyenne

KRAE 1480 AM — Cheyenne 

KDLY 97.5 FM — Lander

KOVE 1330 AM — Lander

KZMQ 100.3/102.3 FM — Cody, Powell, Medicine Wheel, Greybull, Basin, Meeteetse

KKLX 96.1 FM — Worland, Thermopolis, Ten Sleep, Greybull

KCGL 104.1 FM — Cody, Powell, Basin, Lovell, Clark, Red Lodge, MT

KTAG 97.9 FM — Cody, Powell, Basin

KCWB 92.1 FM — Cody, Powell, Basin

KVGL 105.7 FM — Worland, Thermopolis, Basin, Ten Sleep

KODI 1400 AM / 96.7 FM — Cody, Powell, Lovell, Basin, Clark, Red Lodge

KWOR 1340 AM / 104.7 FM — Worland, Thermopolis, Ten Sleep

KREO 93.5 FM — Sweetwater and Sublette Counties

KERM 98.3 FM — Goshen County

Check with individual radio stations for airtime of the newscasts.