Wyoming
The American West: Documenting the Wagonhound
A Frenchwoman from New York came to the Wagonhound, a large ranch outside of Douglas in a snowstorm. Anouk Masson Krantz readily admits she came to Wagonhound carrying not only her cameras, but also a lack of understanding.
Wyoming’s open spaces, the seeming emptiness of the landscape, was the inspiration she sought. She knew at Wagonhound she would find “the power of nature, these amazing landscapes.”
In documenting the lives of the men and women who lived and worked there, she came to understand “all my knowledge about the cowboy around this western way of life, were all sort of misconceptions.” She said, “Once I put my foot through the door, I realized this culture wasn’t dying, but was very much still alive.”
American Indians have deep connections to the high plains of Wyoming and the lands that are now a part of the Wagonhound Land and Livestock, but for myriad reasons they no longer live and hunt there. In the 1800s thousands of people traveled across the landscape. Following Indian trails and the North Platte River were fur trappers and traders, then emigrants, and eventually homesteaders who staked claims and began raising livestock and a few crops.
The high plains roll through this region, becoming less flat, and more rugged as they butt up against the Laramie Mountain Range, with its signature Laramie Peak to the south and Casper Mountain at the northwest end of the arc.
Wagonhound Land and Livestock now encompasses more than 300,000 acres. It is a merging of homesteads carved out by people who came West seeking opportunity and land. Those original settlers filed claims of 160 acres, built cabins, grubbed sagebrush, brought in cattle, horses, and sheep.
Many of them stayed on their land for generations, expanding holdings by buying out a neighbor – or sometimes marrying the neighbor’s daughter. In this country, it is impossible to make a living on 160 acres; there isn’t enough grass for livestock so the homesteads consolidated to larger and larger properties.
By the time she arrived in Wyoming in 2021, Krantz had already learned some things about herself. An early project led to the book The Wild Horses of Cumberland Island. That work gave her “so much inspiration from disconnecting from my concrete, fast-paced competitive life in New York” that she wanted to find “magnificent untouched landscapes.”
She desired big landscapes that were also inhabited by people. “My first thought was cowboys. But that is not easy for a woman from New York and Paris,” she said. “It started with one piece of paper with one phone number of one rancher in Texas. He introduced me to his friends, and they introduced me to their friends.” This led to her second book: American Cowboy.
Then she connected with Art and Catherine Nicklas owners of the Wagonhound in Wyoming. Once again Krantz packed her cameras and headed west, this time to document not a culture of people, but a vast ranching operation.
“Most of the people around the world look at this cowboy culture with misconceptions,” Krantz said, admitting she was in that same mindset. Before spending time on ranches in Texas and Wyoming she believed among other things that the cowboy was someone of the past. “Once I put my foot through the door, (I) realized this culture wasn’t dying, but was very much still alive.”
The cowboys of the Wagonhound have a “connection with this land, freedom, independence,” she said. “These people work very hard. They work together as a community with their families, neighbors. There is so much strength coming from these people.”
While the people are a key part of her work, what really attracted her is the place itself. She says, “It’s the scale of the land, the sky, I think that is what still inspires people from around the world to connect with the American Western landscape.”
And then there is the weather. Krantz quickly learned, “One day it might be sunny, the next day it might be 60 mile an hour winds, or snow.” There are times “where you feel like your hands are going to be froze or you [will be] blown off your horse.”
The isolation of the ranch, combined with the wildlife was surprising. “I had never seen anything like that before,” Krantz said.
Her first photograph was of a long line of elk crossing the road to the ranch. “It was cold and windy. They were crossing. I was just frozen looking at something that I had never seen before and I would never see again, and most of the people around the world would never see. It was magnificent to see that it was still there…the wildlife was still there.”
Krantz experienced one of the worst storms in recent Wyoming history – the Bomb Cyclone that struck in March 2021 dumping nearly five feet of snow over a two-day period in mid-March.
Krantz arrived at the ranch just ahead of the snow that just dumped, and dumped, “and then it’s just quiet.” As soon as she could, she was out in the landscape, documenting the cowboy work, but also observing the wildlife. She watched pronghorn wallowing through snow nearly as deep as they were tall.
Krantz said in the storm “the elk were conserving energy, bundled up on the flank of the mountain. The antelope were the opposite – they were frantic. They would race right, left, right, left, using up all their energy. They didn’t know what to do.”
Watching those animals was a revelation for Krantz. As important, she saw the care the ranch hands had for the livestock while working under such challenging conditions.
“It goes back to this misconception I had, being an outsider. To me the biggest discovery was the land stewardship.” She had seen some of that in her earlier travels but really began to understand it during the two years she spent on the Wagonhound.
As she followed men and women throughout gathering, and branding, and doing their daily chores, she said, “You just learn how they run a ranch. How hard they work. How much it takes to do all this,” she said.
The stewardship involves the use of pasture rotation, which is a “wonderful way to let the earth breathe, rest. What they are doing for our earth is to me mostly unknown to most people.”
Krantz came away from her work in documenting the area realizing the men and women on the Wagonhound, “are probably some of the best stewards of the land that you can find.” She set aside some of her own misconceptions and now knows “how much they do to preserve the land for future generations.”
Spending time on the Wagonhound, gave Krantz an education in Wyoming ranching and land stewardship. The ranch owners want to do that for other people as well.
As reported earlier by Cowboy State Daily, Art and Catherine Nicklas recently donated $2.5 million to the University of Wyoming that will empower the university’s Ranch Management and Agricultural Leadership Program, fueling change and supporting future leaders in ranch management and agriculture statewide.
To see more about Krantz’ connection to the Wagonhound, pick up a copy of her book Ranchland: Wagonhound.
Candy Moulton can be reached at: Candy.L.Moulton@gmail.com
Wyoming
Politicians mull action as details of alleged abuse, falsified records at Wyoming Boys’ School become public
by Maya Shimizu Harris, WyoFile
The photo of an Iraqi inmate strapped by U.S. military police to a restraint chair in the Abu Ghraib prison sparked “a collective cry of ‘torture,’” Sue Burrell, an attorney and author of a 2009 paper on restraints used at U.S. youth detention centers, recalled of a 2005 Newsweek magazine cover.
For Burrell, however, it stirred a more personal response. “All I could think of was that the restraint chair in the photo was almost exactly like the one we had recently seen in a juvenile detention facility in the United States,” she stated in the paper’s preface, which showed the Newsweek photo next to another of a restraint chair at a U.S. youth detention center.
A June court filing in an ongoing lawsuit alleging abuse at the Wyoming Boys’ School, a state facility for delinquent juveniles, almost mirrors the 2009 paper’s preface, showing two side-by-side images, one of a boy in a restraint chair with a white bag over his head and another of him huddled alone in the corner of a cinderblock room. Above the images is a quote attributed to one of the defendants: “[The] best part of the chair is watching the kids cry and scream like a fucking child . . . that’s what makes it worth it.”
“I had never thought I would see a photo of a child with a bag over their head, like they’re being water boarded,” said Rep. Karlee Provenza, a Laramie Democrat who has advocated for juvenile justice reform in Wyoming.
It’s unlikely the images — which sparked outrage on social media — would have come to light if it weren’t for the lawsuit. For years, lawmakers and advocates have grappled with the lack of transparency around the Wyoming Boys’ School specifically and the state’s juvenile justice system more broadly.
Citing confidentiality laws, the Wyoming Department of Family Services, which oversees the boys’ school, has declined to release information about abuse allegations at the facility. DFS treats allegations of abuse or mistreatment at the detention center as Child Protective Service cases. Child Protective Services and the boys’ school are both under the auspices of DFS, meaning the agency investigates itself without oversight or transparency.
“We can’t trust the government to investigate itself,” Provenza said. “We’ve seen how that falls short, so it might be that it needs to be a broader conversation and not just targeted at DFS.”
A legislative catch-22
Lawmakers — those responsible for crafting laws that regulate the state’s juvenile justice system — also struggle to access data that could help them see more broadly how Wyoming’s juvenile justice system works. That’s because Wyoming doesn’t have a statewide system. Instead, each county takes a different approach, making it difficult to collect uniform data showing how kids move through the system and what outcomes they experience.
For years, legislators have sought new laws to standardize data collection on Wyoming’s juvenile justice system and allow DFS to share it. They hoped the data would show how children move through the system and what their outcomes are, which could help lawmakers pinpoint what’s working and what needs to improve.
But fears of government overreach have stymied efforts to pass legislation that would increase transparency. Some lawmakers who opposed these measures have suggested studying the juvenile justice system more before passing any laws.
“My recommendation would be that the Legislature take some time to really put together a good dive into the juvenile justice system and all of its programs together to be able to make one clear, concise bill that fixes a plethora of problems,” Casper Republican Rep. Jayme Lien told her colleagues before voting against a measure to change Wyoming’s confidentiality statutes.
That idea puts the Legislature in a catch-22: to study the state’s juvenile justice system, lawmakers need data. But when the Joint Judiciary Committee tried to do a deep dive into juvenile justice in 2021, it quickly realized that access to that data would require a statute change.
Lien didn’t respond to a message from WyoFile sent Monday inquiring about whether she had looked into the topic and had interest in supporting any related legislation this upcoming session if reelected.
Political will?
Juvenile justice reform isn’t an interim priority for the Joint Judiciary Committee this year. “It doesn’t need any study,” Rep. Art Washut, the Casper Republican who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, said. “We know what it is, we know what the needs are. It’s just a political will to pass legislation.”
“It’s always been very frustrating, sort of circular arguments that we haven’t done this, so we can’t do that,” Donna Sheen, the former executive director of the Wyoming Children’s Law Center, said. “But the bottom line is that we continue to leave children in really harmful places.”
When it comes to how children are treated at juvenile facilities, Wyoming’s current regulations are “pretty minimal,” Sheen said, and don’t differentiate between facility types. “So in that respect, there are very minimal expectations or rules around how children can be treated.”
Through materials provided in discovery, including depositions — testimony given under oath — images and records, the lawsuit against the boys’ school provides a window into what a child might experience at the facility. Besides providing images, the latest response in the case also includes new allegations that boys’ school employees were encouraged to downplay the use of force against residents in incident reports.
“In light of what’s coming out from this lawsuit, it is clear that we need to make changes,” Provenza, the Laramie Democrat, said in a phone call.
What those changes might look like is unclear right now. “I think everyone is digesting what’s coming out from the lawsuit, and then trying to figure out: What are the policies that need to change within the agency? What are the guardrails that the state needs to put in place to protect kids?”
Provenza said over text that she’s “hopeful” other lawmakers “will see the need for statute changes” and will also be willing to work on juvenile justice reforms come the next legislative session.
More broadly, Provenza said she would also prioritize putting a version of past confidentiality amendment bills into statute. “Without that change in statute, we are going to have a difficult time evaluating any program effectiveness,” she said in a follow-up text message.
Governor, candidates react
Gov. Mark Gordon, who appointed DFS director Korin Schmidt, declined to comment on the specifics of the case when asked by WyoFile if he thinks Wyoming should have stronger guardrails on the use of solitary confinement and force against children in state custody and if the lawsuit’s allegations call for an independent review of the boys’ school and DFS’ oversight of the facility.
“Building upon the commitment I witnessed firsthand during my mental health town hall and visit to the Wyoming Boys School in 2023, the safety and security of the students and staff at the facility are paramount to me,” he said.
The governor said that he had been “in direct contact” with Schmidt, who “verified and assured” him that “the youth currently residing at the school are safe and receiving proper care.” He also mentioned that most of these allegations “were made roughly four years ago.” In 2022, WyoFile and the Casper Star-Tribune reported that the use of force, restraints and confined isolation had increased at the boys’ school.
Gordon will finish his final term as governor in November. There are four Republicans and a Democrat vying to replace him. WyoFile posed the same questions to these candidates.
“Wyoming needs a juvenile justice system that protects communities, holds offenders accountable, and ensures children in state custody are treated humanely, safely, and with appropriate guardrails that focus on rehabilitation,” State Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder, a Republican running for governor, said in a statement to WyoFile.
“I take these allegations seriously, children in state custody are the responsibility of the State of Wyoming.”
If elected, Degenfelder said she would “support an independent review” of the boys’ school, including its use-of-force policies, isolation practices, staff training, reporting and transparency for lawmakers and the public.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Brent Bien also said in a statement to WyoFile that he would support an independent review of the allegations. “These are minor children in state custody. As such, the state does have a duty to not only maintain order, but to also ensure accountability while still protecting that child.”
“Though I can not prejudge a lawsuit, as Governor, I would not ignore any allegations that involve excessive force, isolation, ‘restraint chairs,’ or any other actions that may harm children in state custody.”
Wyoming, he said, should have “clear guardrails” for juveniles in state custody. If elected, he would support legislation requiring reporting, “body/video records,” limits on isolation and restraints, trauma-informed training and regular oversight of “all juvenile facilities.” Bien said those measures should include “strong consequences” for violations.
“The recent allegations about the Wyoming Boys’ School are deeply concerning,” Sen. Eric Barlow, a Gillette Republican who served as Speaker of the House, said in a statement to WyoFile. “Every young person in the state’s care deserves to be safe and treated with dignity. Wyoming families want their kids close to home, getting help and support.”
In 2025, Barlow voted in favor of Senate File 157, “Department of family services-confidentiality amendments-2,” one of many attempts over the last couple of years to improve juvenile justice data sharing, before it died in the House Judiciary Committee.
Republican candidate Curt Blake did not respond to WyoFile by publishing time.
The state defendants in the boys’ school lawsuit have until Friday to file their reply supporting their request for summary judgement — when a court decides a matter before a case goes to trial.
This article was originally published by WyoFile and is republished here with permission. WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.
Related
Wyoming
Dan Speas Fish Hatchery temporarily closed to visitors as construction begins on new cool-/warm-water expansion
CASPER, Wyo. — On Thursday, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department announced that the Dan Speas Fish Hatchery will be temporarily closed, beginning June 25, due to the construction of a brand-new, state-of-the-art cool-/warm-water fish production facility.
A release from Game and Fish says that the brief pause in public access is a necessary step to ensure the safety of visitors and staff during the heavy-lifting phases of the project.
“We had hoped to keep access open to the hatchery, but we have discovered there will be too many safety hazards during the demolition phase of construction,” said Lars Alsager, Game and Fish superintendent of Dan Speas. “The Department will reassess the closure in the fall of 2026, once initial demolition and foundational work are safely wrapped up.”
As Wyoming’s largest producer of fish for stocking, the Dan Speas Fish Hatchery — along with the state’s nine other fish hatcheries — will continue its normal cold-water fish production uninterrupted throughout the entire construction process.
Once the expansion is complete, the new facility will dramatically boost Game and Fish’s ability to manage diverse recreational fishing opportunities across Wyoming by raising sport fish locally, rather than importing them from other states.
Anglers can look forward to high-quality, in-state production of walleye, sauger, crappie, bluegill, largemouth bass and channel catfish.
“This project marks a thrilling milestone for Wyoming’s outdoor community, ensuring a robust, self-sustaining future for cold, cool and warm-water sport fishing right here at home,” adds Alan Osterland, chief of fisheries.
The release notes that the Wyoming Game and Fish Department is committed to keeping the community in the loop every step of the way. They included a brief snapshot of what to expect throughout the project:
- Fall 2026: Demolition and foundation work conclude, and the department reassesses public access to the facility.
- Fall 2027: Construction of the new cool-/warm-water fish production facility officially ends.
- Spring 2028: The first batch of cool- and warm-water fish will be produced and prepared to stock Wyoming waters.
“The Wyoming Game and Fish Department extends its sincere thanks to the public for their understanding and cooperation as we build a premier fishery asset for generations of anglers to come,” the release states.
Related
Facing extreme drought in the wake of an exceptionally mild winter, officials in Colorado and Oregon have thrown up their hands and told anglers at some reservoirs: Catch all the fish you want, because they’re going to die anyway.
Conditions aren’t nearly so dire at two of Wyoming’s premier fishing reservoirs, Flaming Gorge in Sweetwater County and Boysen in Fremont County, where limits remain in place and the angling should remain good this summer, a state park manager and marina owner told Cowboy State Daily.
In northeastern Oregon, fishing limits were lifted on three reservoirs on the Powder River, a tributary of the Snake River, which originates in Wyoming.
Colorado is allowing unlimited angling on Antero Reservoir on the South Platte River in the central part of the state, and the Nee Noshe Reservoir to the southeast.
Utah has loosened catch limits on Crouse Reservoir, east of Salt Lake City, and Nine Mile Reservoir, south of the city.
In each instance, state agencies surmised reservoirs are getting so low and stagnant the fish are doomed regardless, according to numerous media reports.
No Emergency, Yet
Despite drought conditions across the state, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department doesn’t have “immediate plans to enact emergency regulations to liberalize creel limits,” according to fisheries management coordinator Mark Smith.
“However, conditions could change rapidly. If an emergency change to creel limits were to occur that information would be disseminated widely to the public and posted at the water for anglers to find,” Smith said in an email to Cowboy State Daily.
Some of Wyoming’s larger reservoirs have conservation pools, or “dead pools,” to act as buffers for fisheries when water is running low, Smith said.
Even so, “all stored water has limitations,” he added. The water at Flaming Gorge and Boysen is expected to drop enough to render some boat ramps useless.
So, Game and Fish is watching closely for a “tipping point” that might warrant a change in fishing regulations, Smith said.
Bad New For Small Waters
For smaller fisheries, the news isn’t quite so good.
“Ultimately, our goal is to protect all of our fisheries, but we recognize that some of our small waters have already been lost, or will be lost, to drying,” Smith said.
Sometimes that happens so fast there isn’t time to react, he said.
“For example, when we were finally able to access roads and assess small ponds in the 33 Mile country north of Casper this May, most of those fisheries had already succumbed to low water elevations and poor water-quality conditions,” Smith said.
“Other sagebrush stock-water reservoirs could face a similar fate,” he added.
Emergency regulations require the governor’s signature.
“Emergency regulations take effect immediately upon the Governor’s approval and would be lifted if conditions improved and fish were likely to survive,” Smith said.
Boysen Could Lose Boat Ramps
Boysen Reservoir has been roughly 70% full during June, Boysen State Park superintendent John Bass said.
Boysen is one of Wyoming’s top destinations for walleye, and also boasts good trout fishing.
Bass said he doesn’t anticipate the reservoir dropping to the point of mass fish die-offs or calls to lift all fishing limits.
According to Bureau of Reclamation estimates, Boysen will slowly fall, but remain above 50% capacity.
All four Boysen boat ramps are usable, he said. They are Bannon, Tough Creek, Fremont Bay and Cottonwood Bay.
“Although, as the lake starts falling, the Fremont and Cottonwood Ramps will be too shallow to use. But that’s a fairly common occurrence in my 10 years here,” Bass said. “The Brannon and Tough Creek boat ramps will be usable for the remainder of the year, until ice-up.”
‘The Marina Could Be Gone’
Likewise, there’s no reason to think officials will call for a free-for-all at Flaming Gorge, which straddles the Wyoming-Utah state line, Buckboard Marina owner Tony Valdez said.
“I don’t think we’ll be at the stagnant water level, where we could lose all of the fish,” he said.
Flaming Gorge draws anglers from all over the region for its prized kokanee salmon. It’s also known for lake trout and other species.
The Bureau of Reclamation this spring announced that Flaming Gorge is set for a million-acre-foot drawdown to make up for severe shortages downstream at Lake Powell, on the Utah-Arizona state line.
An acre foot is the amount of water that would flood an acre of land to the depth of one foot.
Valdez has previously expressed concerns the drawdown could ruin kokanee spawning areas. Kokanee are already under pressure because of competition with lake trout and burbot.
Wyoming Game and Fish and the Utah Division of Wildlife already lifted catch limits on smaller lake trout (under 28 inches) and burbot, in hopes of helping the kokanee.
Valdez said he doesn’t expect fishing limits to be suspended on any other species.
However, boat ramps could be rendered useless as the reservoir drops for the drawdown, he added.
Valdez said his marina could also tank this summer.
“This year, the marina could be gone. In fact, I’ve got to go deal with that right now, and move some stuff around (because of dropping water levels),” he said during a telephone interview with Cowboy State Daily.
Catfish Getting Scarce
Valdez said if there’s any danger of water dropping to fish-killing levels it would hit first upstream, at Fontenelle Reservoir.
“If it did get that low, the first one to go would be Fontenelle, then the Green (River) and then Flaming Gorge. But I don’t see it dropping that low,” he said.
Drought has ruined some of the fishing on the Blacks River, which feeds Flaming Gorge on the west side, Valdez said.
That river once was a hot spot for catfish, he noted.
“People still catch catfish near the confluence, more so in the lake than on the river. The river gets stagnant,” he said.
While Flaming Gorge is holding its own for now, the long-term picture could be stark.
During a Tuesday meeting in Denver, members of the Upper Colorado River Commission said conditions along the river system – which includes the Green River – are dire.
Wyoming state engineer Brandon Gebhart said it could be the worst year on record for the Colorado River basin.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
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