Wyoming

'Great legend': Former Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming remembered

Published

12 months ago

March 15, 2025

'Great legend': Former Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming remembered

There are few people in Wyoming politics who have loomed larger than former U.S. Sen. Al Simpson.

At 6’7” tall, Simpson was known for his sense of humor and often joked that his time as a student athlete at the University of Wyoming prepared him for a career in politics. He died Friday at age 93.

Watch the video:

Former Wyoming U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson dies

However, it’s not his stature that most will remember.

“I have interviewed many people at high levels, presidents, vice presidents, senators, and others, and none are more fascinating than Al Simpson,” said Penny Preston, an MTN contributor and Cody journalist.

Preston has not only interviewed Simpson extensively over the course of her career, but she also credits Simpson with bringing her to Wyoming. In 1998, Preston says Simpson convinced her husband, Chuck Preston, to help create the Draper Museum of Natural History.

“I don’t know anyone else who has influenced my life and guided me more than Al Simpson,” said Chuck Preston.

Watch Alan Simpson’s family remember him:

Alan Simpson remembered by his family

His family, including his wife, Ann, of 72 years, and his children, sat down with MTN News in Cody to discuss his legacy.

“To see two people in today’s world who have that kind of connection. And everybody should have a life partner that way,” said Bill Simpson, Alan’s son, of his parents’ marriage. “Because life is very difficult and challenging particularly today. But these two. They’re a life lesson for how you ought to do it.”

Bill Simpson is a district court judge in Park County.

The Simpson children say their mom kept their dad in line.

“He was so big and… he was funny,” said Ann Simpson. “He had that broken nose that was sort of like Bob Hope, that when he came in the room people smiled because they knew it would be laugh. He loved making people laugh.”

“He was intellectually curious,” said Susan Simpson Gallagher, Alan’s daughter, who owns an art gallery in Cody. “But personally curious about others. That’s what made him so great. He always wanted to know about you. And he wanted to know about your kids. And he remembered everybody’s kids’ names. And he remembered their kids’ names. And he didn’t remember their dog’s names so much. But he cared.”

And that’s something all three Simpson children admired about their dad.

“Dad was the citizen of the world,” said Colin Simpson, who served in the Wyoming Legislature for 12 years.. “He never met a stranger. And if you went somewhere with dad and no one recognized him, he’d introduce himself so he could talk to someone.”

Simpson, a lifelong Republican, was close friends with George H.W. Bush, and even delivered the eulogy at the 41^st president’s funeral.

Simpson’s lasting legacy was perhaps his ability to bridge partisan gaps. He was also a friend to many influential Democrats, including Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

Simpson served three terms as a U.S. senator from 1979 to 1997. The son of Wyoming Gov. Milward Simpson, Al credited his Wyoming upbringing for his strong moral compass.

“He would never be hateful no matter how strong his opinion was,” said Penny Preston.

Simpson never wavered from that moral compass, even though it may have cost him a chance at even higher office.

“He could have been vice president had he backed down from his belief that a woman had a right to choose,” said Preston. “He always said male legislators shouldn’t even be able to vote on the issue.”

Simpson also served 56 years on the board of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, and just last year at the age of 92, he co-created the Simpson-Mineta Institute at Heart Mountain, helping preserve the stories of 14,000 Japanese Americans imprisoned there during World War II.

Simpson is being remembered and honored as a man who left a legacy in the Cowboy state and far beyond.

“This country is going to lose a great legend. I have so much respect for him and we will miss him,” said Preston.

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Wyoming

Wyoming High School Basketball 2A State Tournament 2026

Published

3 hours ago

March 1, 2026

Press Room

Wyoming High School Basketball 2A State Tournament 2026

The 2-time defending champ Tongue River girls, along with both teams from Big Horn will represent Sheridan County in the small school version of March Madness.

Click here to see results from the regional tournaments.

2A Boys:

First Round:

Thursday, March 5th: (All games played at Casper College)

(#2E) Big Horn vs. (#3W) Shoshoni – Noon

(#1W) Thermopolis vs. (#4E) Sundance – 1:30pm

(#2W) Wyoming Indian vs. (#3E) Wright – 6:30pm

(#1E) Pine Bluffs vs. (#4W) Rocky Mountain – 8pm

Friday, March 6th: (All games played at Ford Wyoming Center)

Consolation Round:

Big Horn/Shoshoni loser vs. Thermopolis/Sundance loser – Noon LOSER OUT!

Wyoming Indian/Wright loser vs. Pine Bluffs/Rocky Mountain loser – 1:30pm LOSER OUT!

Semi-Finals:

Big Horn/Shoshoni winner vs. Thermopolis/Sundance winner – 6:30pm

Wyoming Indian/Wright winner vs. Pine Bluffs/Rocky Mountain winner – 8pm

Saturday, March 7th:

Friday Noon winner vs. Friday 1:30pm – Noon at Ford Wyoming Center Consolation Championship

Friday 6:30pm loser vs. Friday 8pm loser – 3pm at Natrona County High School 3rd Place

Friday 6:30pm winner vs. Friday 8pm winner – 7pm at Ford Wyoming Center Championship

2A Girls:

First Round:

Thursday, March 5th: (All games played at Casper College)

(#2W) Wyoming Indian vs. (#3E) Big Horn – 9am

(#1E) Sundance vs. (#4W) Shoshoni – 10:30am

(#2E) Tongue River vs. (#3W) Greybull – 3:30pm

(#1W) Thermopolis vs. (#4E) Pine Bluffs – 5pm

Friday, March 6th: (All games played at Ford Wyoming Center)

Consolation Round:

Wyoming Indian/Big Horn loser vs. Sundance/Shoshoni loser – 9am LOSER OUT!

Tongue River/Greybull loser vs. Thermopolis/Pine Bluffs loser – 10:30am LOSER OUT!

Semi-Finals:

Wyoming Indian/Big Horn winner vs. Sundance/Shoshoni winner – 3:30pm

Tongue River/Greybull loser vs. Thermopolis/Pine Bluffs loser – 5pm

Saturday, March 7th:

Friday 9am winner vs. Friday 10:30am winner – 9am at Ford Wyoming Center Consolation Championship

Friday 3:30pm loser vs. Friday 5pm loser – 10:30am at Ford Wyoming Center 3rd Place

Friday 3:30pm winner vs. Friday 5pm winner – 5:30pm at Ford Wyoming Center Championship

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Wyoming

Wyoming Crow Hunters Can Blast All They Want, But Nobody Eats The Birds

Published

15 hours ago

March 1, 2026

Press Room

Wyoming Crow Hunters Can Blast All They Want, But Nobody Eats The Birds

Mention of bird hunting might conjure up images of hunters and their dogs huddling in freezing duck blinds or pounding the brush in hopes of kicking up pheasants. But crow hunting is a thing in Wyoming too.

“It’s about the sport of it,” Dan Kinneman of Riverton told Cowboy State Daily.

He started crow hunting when he was 14 and is about to turn 85. He’s never tried cooking and eating crows or known anybody who has.

Instead, shooting crows is essentially nuisance bird control, as they’re known to wreak havoc on agricultural crops.

“All the ranchers will let you hunt crows. I’ve never been refused access to hunt crows. They all hate them,” he said.

In Wyoming, crow hunting season runs from Nov. 1 to Feb. 28. No license is required, and there’s no bag limit. Hunters can shoot all the crows they want to.

It’s a ball for hunting dogs too, Kinneman said.

“My yellow Labrador retriever, he doesn’t care whether it’s a crow or duck. In fact, he likes crow hunting more than duck hunting, because there’s more action,” he said.

Crow hunting requires skill, patience and a good set of decoys, an experienced Wyoming hunter said. The upside is, there’s no bag limit, hunters can blast all the crows they want. No one eats them, though.

Don’t Expect It To Be Easy

Kinneman said that in the days of his youth, crow hunting was as simple as driving around and “shooting them out of trees with rifles.”

However, as the number of people and buildings potentially in the paths of bullets grew, such practices fell out of favor. Crow hunting became more regulated.

And it evolved to resemble hunting other birds, such as waterfowl.

Meaning, hunters started setting out decoys, hiding in blinds and using calls to tempt crows to within shotgun range.

Kinneman is no stranger to hunting of all types. He’s taken numerous species of big game in Wyoming and elsewhere. And in July 2005, he shot a prairie dog near Rock Springs from well over a mile away.

He hit the prairie dog from 2,157 yards away. A mile is 1,760 yards.

But bird hunting has always been his favorite.

“It’s my life,” he said.

He has a huge collection of duck, goose and dove decoys. And two tubs full of crow decoys.

The uninitiated might think that going out and blasting crows would be a slam dunk.

That isn’t so, Kinneman said. He likes crow hunting for the challenge of it.

“Hunting crows is hard. They are a lot smarter than ducks and geese,” he said.

Pick Up After Yourself

Even though he doesn’t eat crows, Kinneman said he never just left them littering the ground where he shot them.

“I never let them lay out there. I always picked them up and disposed of the carcasses,” he said.

That’s good ethics and it shows respect for the ranchers, he said.

“Leaving them (dead crows) out there would be no different than just leaving all of your empty shotgun shells out there,” he said.

“You have to pick up after yourself, or the ranchers won’t let you back onto their land,” he added.

Slow Year

At his age, Kinneman isn’t sure how much longer he’ll be able to get out crow hunting. And this year has been a total bust.

“I love doing it. But this year there are no crows,” he said.

The Riverton area is along major crow migration routes.

Picking a good hunting spot is a matter of “finding a flyway” that the crows are on and then setting up a spread of decoys and a blind along the route.

But with an unusually warm winter, the crow flyways have been practically empty, he said.

Migrations Are Off Everywhere

Avid birdwatcher Lucas Fralick of Laramie said that warm, dry conditions much of this winter have knocked bird migrations out of whack.

“I do know that because of the weather, migrations are off all over the place,” he said.

One of his favorite species is the dark-eyed junco, a “small, sparrow-like bird,” he said.

They usually winter in the Laramie area and leave right around March. This year, they were gone by November, he said.

“They’re a cold-weather bird,” he said.

Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.

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Wyoming

Wyoming State Parks surpasses five million visitors in 2025

Published

1 day ago

February 28, 2026

Press Room

Wyoming State Parks surpasses five million visitors in 2025

Wyoming State Parks is thrilled to announce that system-wide visitation surpassed the 5-million-visitor milestone in 2025. With an estimated 5,048,419 total visitors, the agency saw a 5% increase over 2024, marking its highest visitation levels since the 2020-21 recreation surge. This continued growth reaffirms Wyoming’s reputation as a premier destination for recreation, history, and culture. […]

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