Wyoming
People And Places That Make Wyoming Special
A man is seen along West Lincoln Way on Saturday July 20, 2024 in Cheyenne, WY. Wyoming became a … [+]
Wyoming is famous for its rugged scenic beauty, as I discovered on a recent visit. But the state’s people and places are as interesting as the vistas.
Southeast Wyoming grew quickly following the arrival of the Union Pacific Railroad in Cheyenne in November 1867. Cheyenne was called the “Magic City of the Plains,” growing to 5000 people by 1868. Cheyenne became a hub for railroad maintenance, shipping and the cattle boom. The town became the capital of the Territory and later the state of Wyoming.
Erasmus Nagle, who made his in lumber, cattle and groceries, spent $50,000 building what is now known as The Nagle Warren Mansion in 1888. It was one of the costliest homes west of the Mississippi, but Nagle could afford to live on Millionaire’s Row. At his death just two years later, he was one of the richest men in Cheyenne, worth a half million dollars.
Today the mansion has been restored as the Nagle Warren Mansion Bed and Breakfast. Its furnishings, wallpaper, cherry, mahogany, and oak woodwork and stained-glass windows are right out of the American Old West period.
However, Francis E. Warren, later the state’s first governor and U.S. senator, remarked on the “rough and tumble” atmosphere of early Cheyenne. “Every man slept with from one to a half-dozen revolvers under his pillow, for depradations [sic] of every character could be expected at any hour, day or night.” Such lawlessness no doubt led to the 1872 construction of the Wyoming Territorial Prison in Laramie.
After Nagle’s death, the house was eventually sold to Senator Warren in 1910. General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing, Buffalo Bill Cody, Teddy Roosevelt and President William Howard Taft all were guests at the mansion.
A breakfast table is set for guests at the Nagle Warren Mansion, a bed and breakfast in downtown … [+]
I stayed in the Pershing room. It had red wallpaper, a vast king-size bed with a carved wooden frame, a carved wooden fireplace, and portraits and photos of the General looking stern, even with his family. Evening reading was a vintage copy of the Hemingway-edited “Men at War,” with “the 37 best war stories of all time.”
Jas Barbe, proprietor of the Mansion, is a colorful character who has been a hospitality consultant and a Cordon Bleu graduate and Michelin-starred chef. He was the owner of a buffalo herd in Centennial, Wyoming, after returning from Vietnam.
In 2021, it became his mission to restore the elegant residence once known as the “Duchess of Cheyenne.” As he serves the beautiful breakfast he cooks for guests, Barbe will entrance you with backstairs tales of The Nagle Mansion, where the ornate hand carved ceilings and stairs and the restored library and parlor takes one back to the Western version of the Gilded Age.
Cheyenne is also home to the Wild J Trading Hat Bar and Boutique, operated by Jennifer Thompson. Ms. Thompson helps men and women create their own customized cowboy hats, accessorized with hat bands, feathers, threads, stars, playing cards, fabric roses and even spent cartridges. I chose to add a coyote and a cactus, as well as yellow feathers, part of an anti-suicide campaign spurred by the death of a local cowboy.
Owner Jennifter Thompson shows off one of the cowboy hats she has personalized with hat bands, … [+]
In Laramie Country, Las Vegas transplant Chad Brown, created Laramie County’s first licensed distillery in Pine Bluffs. Brown came from Las Vegas to open Pine Bluffs Distilling. The growing distiller is family owned and operated, and all grains are locally grown and malted on site. Variants like 5 grain whiskey, straight rye whiskey, oat whiskey, wheated bourbon, vodka and gin can be tried in the tasting room, straight or as cocktails.
Like the Nagle Warren Mansion in Cheyene, the Laramie Plains Museum at the Historic Iverson Mansion shows what life was like for the wealthy in late 19th Century Wyoming. The mansion has a collection of Victorian fixtures and furnishings, kitchenware and old appliances, and even a one-room schoolhouse.
I wore my new hat to Torrington, a Wyoming agricultural town where one can see a livestock sale in real time. Improbably, Torrington is home to the Bread Doctor, a bakery that draws regular customers from as far away as Montana.
The origins of the popular bakery are simple. Owner Edzan Fluckinger is a doctor who came to Torrington more than 20 years ago to provide medical services. He and his wife have a daughter with Down’s Syndrome. Fluckinger learned to bake and eventually created the bakery, with the thought of having a place where his daughter could work.
The bakery employs many of Torrington’s young people, including his daughter. And its breads, pastries and carefully decorated cakes are delicious.
The Bread Doctor at work: Dr. Edzan Fluckinger, a medical doctor, is also the baker and owner of the … [+]
The city of Laramie is home to “U Dub,” or the University of Wyoming. In 1998, Matthew Shepherd, a gay student, was beaten to death near Laramie. One of the murals that are part of the Laramie Mural Project commemorates the “angels” who held sheets up like wings at the courthouse, to protect Shepherd’s family from homophobic demonstrators.
Today the city has a bohemian vibe. It has brewery and mural tours, as well as many shops and restaurants travelers will enjoy. Even the most confirmed carnivore will find something at Melissa Murphy’s 25-year-old vegetarian restaurant, Sweet Melissa, which also includes a full bar.
“What did you do for financing?” I asked Ms. Murphy. “I borrowed $2,000 from my mother 25 years ago.” She says tourists fanatically look for vegetarian restaurants, and that the students and faculty of the University have also been key customers.
Another Laramie success story is The Range Leather Company, which crafts wallets, journals, pocketbooks, business card holders and bands for Apple Watches. Range also does custom work imprinting a city name or company brand on its leather goods. Owner Kyle Koster started leather work at his kitchen table in 2014 as a hobby. Range now employs over 25 people. Its three key tenets are on its web page; Full Grain Leather, Made In The USA, and a Forever Guarantee.
Jim Osborn (middle) is the central figure of a mural in downtown Laramie alongside fellow angles … [+]
Ruth Williams, owner of Sugar Mouse Cupcake House (“a little piece of England in downtown Laramie”) also has an interesting story. The tall, elegant Williams is originally from Essex, where she met her husband, who was on a Mormon mission. They married and she followed him to Laramie. She raised their six children and worked providing childcare.
But Williams had a cause; she became passionately involved with helping girls and young women ensnared in Cambodia’s sex trade. She started selling cupcakes at the Farmer’s Market to generate revenue, using recipes she had learned in England using rich cream and real sugar. After a rainstorm ruined hundreds of cupcakes, she knew she needed a storefront.
Sugar Mouse is now a frilly pink tea house for afternoon tea, with scones, crumpets, soup of the day, English stew and, of course, cupcakes. A children’s tea house in the basement is under way.
I ended my tour of Southeast Wyoming with lunch at The Malt in Saratoga, (“Burgers, BBQ, and Whiskey”) drinking a “boozy malted” Irish coffee. Then it was off to soak in a teepee at the mineral springs at the Saratoga Hot Springs Resort and enjoy a steak at 130-year-old Hotel Wolf (“Discover the Wild West”) before sadly returning to Los Angeles.
Ruth Williams, owner of Sugar Mouse Cupcake House in Laramie, Wyoming. She is pictured here in the … [+]
When the University of Wyoming’s 25,000-seat football stadium is exceeds the population of all but four cities in the state.
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Jamie Schwaberow/Getty Images
At the anti-abortion March for Life rally in D.C. last year, Vice President J.D. Vance had a clear message.
“So let me say very simply, I want more babies in the United States of America,” Vance said to a cheering crowd.
As birth rates fall in the U.S., prominent conservatives such as Vance are encouraging Americans to have more children. They say that’s crucial to maintaining the nation’s workforce, so there will be enough caregivers for an aging population.
Now, those arguments are being cited to pass new state-level restrictions on abortion, including in Wyoming, which recently passed a law to outlaw abortions once there’s a “detectable fetal heartbeat.”
According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, it is “clinically inaccurate” to describe what can be heard via an ultrasound during very early pregnancy as a heartbeat. Cardiac cells in an embryo may exhibit electrical activity that is detectable, but there are no cardiac valves that could generate the sound that people know as a heartbeat.
The Wyoming law — which has now been temporarily blocked in court — prohibits abortions after cardiac activity can be detected, which is generally around the sixth week of pregnancy.
“We’re sending a message that children are important and that they’re the future,” said Republican state lawmaker and former nurse Evie Brennan.
“Without an up and coming population that grows up here that wants to stay here, then we just become a stagnant or an aging slash dying state,” she added.
Suzanne Bell, a demographer at John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said Wyoming’s tactic is unlikely to substantially grow its population.
“Imposing a ban on abortion is not going to transform the trajectory of a state’s fertility pattern,” Bell said.
She added that abortion bans can lead to a short-term population bump. Wyoming’s neighbor, Idaho, saw one after it instituted one of America’s strictest abortion bans in 2023.
“What that works out to in absolute terms is about 240 excess births,” Bell said.
But at the same time, researchers found Idaho was hemorrhaging healthcare workers. It now has 35% fewer OB-GYNs than before their law went into effect.
In Wyoming, population loss has been an issue for decades. Giving a tour to prospective students at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Claire Lane said there’s not a lot of industry here.
“ I feel like a lot of students don’t see a ton of opportunities maybe necessarily in their fields to work here in Wyoming,” said Lane, a college senior with purple-tipped hair.
She said she plans to stick around for graduate school in speech language pathology, but she’ll probably leave the state to find work.
“We do have a super small population, so a lot of students know that they might need to go somewhere else to find a job,” Lane said.
A 2024 Harvard Kennedy School working paper said by the time Wyomingites reach their thirties, nearly two thirds have left — one of the highest rates in the country. It said a lot of young people are leaving for cities, of which Wyoming has few.
“With bigger areas, there comes more unique people and more creative people,” said Aidan Freeman, a second-year music student at the University of Wyoming.
Sitting in the student union building, Freeman said he and his partner hope to move to Fort Collins, Colorado soon.
“Wyoming is very traditionalist in some ways,” Freeman said. “It is kind of a bubble.”
Researchers from Harvard recommended Wyoming invest in its rural areas, making them more economically diverse and investing in a supply of housing for young people.
Brennan said she knows the partial abortion ban, which she helped pass, is not the complete answer to growing Wyoming’s population. She said the pro-life movement also needs to start focusing on more long-term solutions.
“We have to send the message that not only are you important in utero, but you’re also important on day one when you’re born, like outside of utero,” Brennan said. “And I don’t know that the legislature has had good, robust conversations on what that looks like.”
Wyoming Republic state Sen. Evie Brennan
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Dreaming Hollow Photography/Dreaming Hollow Photography
Brennan said she hopes the legislature will evaluate the effects of the six-week abortion ban, but that depends on whether courts let it stand.
Pro-abortion rights groups challenged it soon after it passed. On April 24, a federal district court judge temporarily blocked the law, while litigation continues. That means abortion is once again legal in the state after six weeks.
Proceedings will continue at the district court level, and the judge will weigh in on the constitutionality of the law. That decision could then be appealed to the Wyoming Supreme Court. Earlier this year, that court struck down two more sweeping abortion bans in the state.
Wyoming
Statewide candidates split on Wyoming GOP’s plans to defy state law and make endorsements – WyoFile
After the Wyoming GOP voted to defy a state law prohibiting the party from backing one Republican over another before the primary election, statewide candidates are split on whether they would accept such an endorsement.
Some told WyoFile they agree with the party’s decision and will seek out an endorsement, while others said they oppose a political party breaking election law. A few said they were taking a wait-and-see approach.
“Jury’s still out on this one for me,” Wyoming State Auditor Kristi Racines said Wednesday.
For years, the Wyoming Republican Party has argued that because it is a private organization, state laws that govern its organizational structure and prohibit it from endorsing or financially backing candidates in opposed primary election races are unconstitutional.
At its convention in Douglas last weekend, the party took things into its own hands, voting to adopt bylaws establishing a process for vetting, endorsing and spending money to support candidates ahead of the primary.
Supporters of the new bylaws point to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling from 1989, which struck down California’s ban on political party endorsements, ruling that the law violated the First Amendment’s guarantees of free speech and association. Opponents, meanwhile, raised concerns at the convention about the bylaws breaking the law, litigation costs and unintended consequences.
The new bylaws are widely expected to spark lawsuits, while the Wyoming Republican Party has said it plans to file its own legal challenge against the state.
In the meantime, the new bylaws lay out a process for evaluating candidates based on “commitment to the Wyoming Republican Party Platform, demonstrated loyalty to the Party’s principles, legal eligibility to hold office, and for incumbents, their voting record.”
The state party will consider candidates running for Wyoming’s state-elected officials — including governor, secretary of state, superintendent of public instruction, treasurer and auditor — as well as congressional candidates. Otherwise, county parties “may vet all other races on their respective County Ballots,” according to the new bylaws.
The state party, as well as each county party, “shall each create and oversee a Candidate Vetting Committee empowered to review and recommend approval or disapproval of candidates based on established criteria,” the bylaw states. “The Committee shall provide candidates an opportunity to respond to concerns prior to issuing a recommendation.”
Candidates
Brent Bien, who is running for governor, told WyoFile the bylaw changes are “a long time coming,” pointing back to the 1989 ruling.
“I think we just got to make sure we get those folks that truly believe on the Republican side of the equation, who truly believe in the platform and what Wyoming stands for,” Bien said. “And I just don’t think there’s been any enforcement mechanism to do that.”
At the convention, Bien was a clear favorite among many attendees who wore his campaign buttons and t-shirts. Still, Bien said he wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t get the party’s endorsement.
“I didn’t get Trump’s endorsement,” Bien said. “And some of these legislators around the state, you know, they haven’t endorsed me.”
Bien’s take isn’t shared by all the gubernatorial candidates.
“Contested primaries should be decided by voters,” Gillette Sen. Eric Barlow wrote in a statement. “The role of the state party is to unite Republicans around shared values and help grow the party, not decide elections before voters have had their say.”
“Under current law, the state party should not choose sides in Republican primaries, and I will not ask them to start now,” he wrote. “My job,” running for governor, “is to earn the trust of Wyoming voters directly.”
At the convention, supporters of the bylaws said the party had tried to get the Legislature to change state statute. Barlow directly pushed back on that argument.
“As a legislator for the past 14 years, this issue has never come before us,” Barlow said. “If it had, it would have ensured all Wyomingites could weigh in and decisions would have been made openly and transparently — not in the courts and not a few months before an election.”
Secretary of State Chuck Gray, who is running for U.S. House, told WyoFile he supports the new bylaws.
“I will participate in the Party’s vetting process and will seek their support because I’m the only candidate in this race with a proven record of standing up for conservative principles — even when it wasn’t popular with the media and the insiders,” he wrote in a statement.
As secretary of state, Gray is Wyoming’s chief election officer and oversees statewide election administration. Asked if he wanted to comment in his official capacity on the Wyoming Republican Party’s decision to defy state law, Gray did not respond by publishing time.
U.S. House candidate David Giralt took a more cautious approach when asked for his opinion on the new bylaws.
“I trust Wyoming Republicans to make good decisions for our party, and I’ll let the process play out,” Giralt said. “I’m focused on getting in front of as many Wyoming voters as possible and making the case for why I’m the right person to represent this state in Congress.”
Kevin Christensen, another U.S. House candidate, said he wanted to see how fair, transparent and consistent the process played out before weighing in.
“The Wyoming people are the ones that make the determination in the primary, not the party,” he said. “That being said, if this is about supporting candidates and determining who is really a Republican and who’s just putting an ‘R’ next to their name, that seems like that would be consistent with being the Republican Party.”
Jillian Balow, yet another candidate for U.S. House and former superintendent of public instruction, said she “would be honored to accept an endorsement and money from the state party only if it is in accordance with Wyoming and federal law.”
“The contingency of our party at the convention knew the changes they made defied state law and they curtailed delegate discussion to pass new by-laws anyway,” Balow wrote in a statement. “Some delegates were appalled, some were gleeful, and many were silent, because they were silenced. This is not the way Wyoming does business.”
U.S. House candidate Reid Rasner also pushed back on the new bylaws.
“As a pro-Trump conservative, I always expected the political establishment to try and stop our campaign,” he wrote in a statement. “But, after making over 200 stops across our communities, one thing is clear: people are tired of the political games.”
Sheridan Republican Rep. Tom Kelly, who is running for superintendent, said while he opposes “the idea of parties having the power to disallow anyone from running under their banner,” he thinks “parties should be able to express publicly which people they would like to represent them.”
Though he’s not actively seeking endorsements, Kelly said he would accept support from the state party.
“Financial backing? Absolutely,” Kelly said. “Contrary to a popular false narrative, I have no wealthy D.C. donors bankrolling me.”
And if the party endorsed one of his opponents, Kelly said he would tell them, “Congrats. I should have done a better job presenting myself.”
WyoFile reached out to other statewide Republican candidates, including those running for governor, secretary of state, superintendent, U.S. House and U.S. Senate. They did not respond by publishing time.
Update: This story has been updated to include comments from Reid Rasner.
WYOMING, Mich. (WOOD) — The final day of Wyoming’s carnival at Lamar Park was canceled.
The Wyoming Parks and Recreation Department announced the closure in a social media post Sunday. The carnival was previously closed April 29 due to inclement weather.
It is unclear what led up to the carnival’s closure. Carnival dates for 2027 have not yet been released.
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