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Evacuation Lifted For Pleasant Valley Fire, But Ranchers Worried For…

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Evacuation Lifted For Pleasant Valley Fire, But Ranchers Worried For…


GUERNSEY — Emergency officials in Goshen and Platte counties have lifted evacuation orders on tiny communities north of Guernsey, Wyoming, threatened by a pesky wildfire that’s proved difficult to contain in an area the size of more than 33,000 football fields.

The evacuation order is the second emergency officials have lifted since Tuesday when two separate fires in the region merged to form an inferno that’s burned a 26,000-acre area and now appears stuck in steep and treacherous terrain in the Haystack Range.

This is a good thing as long as hundreds of firefighting personnel can keep it tamed in the tinderbox that locals say is a godforsaken mountainous region.

On Saturday, Tony Krotz, the Platte County emergency management coordinator, told 200 people at the Guernsey-Sunrise High School that evacuation orders for the northern Guernsey communities had been lifted at about 4 p.m.

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Those communities, which have about 150 people living there, include Hartville, located about 5 miles north of Guernsey, and the canyon communities of Sunrise (1 mile east of Hartville) as well as residents who dot Pleasant Valley and Waylen Canyon roads.

Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon told the audience at the hastily pulled together meeting that he would fight for more resources on the frontline of Wyoming’s wildfires.

Emergency officials said that higher priority states like California, Oregon and the U.S. West generally are taking these resources from Wyoming, listed at the bottom of the priority list because of its rural nature and sparse population of a half million people.

“This summer has really been tough,” said Gordon in the high school’s gymnasium that felt nearly as hot as the outside temperature of 100 degrees. “We are doing the best job we can to allocate resources, but virtually all of these resources are already allocated.”

Gordon said he would fight for more firefighting resources, like planes to map the fires or drop water and slurry.

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Emergency officials said at the meeting that it may be another week before they can get a special plane with infrared mapping capabilities to fly over the Haystacks and give a better assessment of the fire’s size and how much of the prairie-scape has burned.

“My main thing for being here today is to tell you that we are 100% behind you,” Gordon said. “We are fighting hard to get the assets we need but they are stretched.”

  • A sign fell over after burning through at its base, near a historical market for the the Cheyenne to Deadwood, South Dakota, stage trail. (Pat Maio, Cowboy State Daily)
  • A 26,000 acre wildfire has been challenging for firefighters, especial for tiny communities north of Guernsey, Wyoming, which itself only has a population of 1,130.
    A 26,000 acre wildfire has been challenging for firefighters, especial for tiny communities north of Guernsey, Wyoming, which itself only has a population of 1,130. (Pat Maio, Cowboy State Daily)
  • A fire smolders on Saturday south of U.S. Highway 26 near oil storage tanks owned by Tallgrass Energy in the background.
    A fire smolders on Saturday south of U.S. Highway 26 near oil storage tanks owned by Tallgrass Energy in the background. (Pat Maio, Cowboy State Daily)
  • A fire smolders on Saturday south of U.S. Highway 26 near oil storage tanks owned by Tallgrass Energy in the background.
    A fire smolders on Saturday south of U.S. Highway 26 near oil storage tanks owned by Tallgrass Energy in the background. (Pat Maio, Cowboy State Daily)

Where Is The Fire?

Tracking the fire has been difficult because of the rocky and steep terrain of the “hills,” as locals have dubbed the Haystacks.

The fire has swirled in an area ranging from U.S. Highway 26, linking Guernsey and Fort Laramie about 12 miles to the east, to the eastern fringe hamlets north of Guernsey that were under orders of evacuation on Friday and Saturday, and to the north to the Haystacks.

“The firefighters on the scene have advised me that they feel comfortable and safe to allow the residents of these communities to return once again,” said Krotz, who received a call from Platte County Fire Warden Aaron Clark shortly before the meeting to support the decision.

Thunderous applause from the audience erupted on that announcement.

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“We’ve always said that if a fire gets in that area, we’re scared,” Krotz observed.

“We know what that train looks like and you know how dry it has been. We saw the winds change in more directions that one night,” he said of the Tuesday-Wednesday battle with the fire over a do-or-die, five-hour window from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m.

“We’re not out of the woods yet, but we got a break here for now,” he said.

As of Saturday, the fire is 30% contained, though some emergency officials say that area could be larger. Without a flyover by the plane with the infrared equipment, it’s difficult to come up with a better assessment.

The latest evacuation order came late Friday afternoon when a violent thunderstorm brought high winds to the area and caused firefighters to lose some of their hold over ditches and mounds of dirt dozed up that were built as a containment wall to keep the fire from spreading on the western front.

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When the wildfire began threatening the Waylen Canyon Road area Friday, emergency officials didn’t think twice to evacuate everyone.

  • More than 200 people showed up at the Guernsey-Sunrise High School to hear Goshen and Platte County emergency officials update them on the latest with the Pleasant Valley Fire, which has burned more than 26,000 acres.
    More than 200 people showed up at the Guernsey-Sunrise High School to hear Goshen and Platte County emergency officials update them on the latest with the Pleasant Valley Fire, which has burned more than 26,000 acres. (Pat Maio, Cowboy State Daily)
  • On left, Anne Lee and her husband, Tom Lee, got a firsthand look at the merging of the Haystack and Pleasant Valley fires late Tuesday when they visited a knoll near their home located at Road 3 and Tank Farm Road, south of U.S. Highway 26.
    On left, Anne Lee and her husband, Tom Lee, got a firsthand look at the merging of the Haystack and Pleasant Valley fires late Tuesday when they visited a knoll near their home located at Road 3 and Tank Farm Road, south of U.S. Highway 26. (Pat Maio, Cowboy State Daily)
  • More than 200 people showed up at the Guernsey-Sunrise High School to hear Goshen and Platte County emergency officials update them on the latest with the Pleasant Valley Fire, which has burned more than 26,000 acres.
    More than 200 people showed up at the Guernsey-Sunrise High School to hear Goshen and Platte County emergency officials update them on the latest with the Pleasant Valley Fire, which has burned more than 26,000 acres. (Pat Maio, Cowboy State Daily)
  • Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon tells more than 200 people who showed up at the Guernsey-Sunrise High School that more resources are needed to fight wildfires in Wyoming.
    Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon tells more than 200 people who showed up at the Guernsey-Sunrise High School that more resources are needed to fight wildfires in Wyoming. (Pat Maio, Cowboy State Daily)
  • More than 200 people showed up at the Guernsey-Sunrise High School to hear Goshen and Platte County emergency officials update them on the latest with the Pleasant Valley Fire, which has burned more than 26,000 acres.
    More than 200 people showed up at the Guernsey-Sunrise High School to hear Goshen and Platte County emergency officials update them on the latest with the Pleasant Valley Fire, which has burned more than 26,000 acres. (Pat Maio, Cowboy State Daily)

Going Home

About 20 people from the Hartville area communities were evacuated to Camp Guernsey Joint Training Center just off U.S. Highway 26 to stay at one of their barracks on the military base.

The American Red Cross from Cheyenne set up a volunteer center to help coordinate the arrival of evacuees.

The latest flareup of the wildfire first reared up with flames several hundred feet high Tuesday and Wednesday.

That’s when the Pleasant Valley Fire combined with the Haystack Fire, creating the large burn area visible to the north of U.S. 26 along the arterial highway from Guernsey to Fort Laramie.

The historic community of Fort Laramie also was threatened by the fire at one point, but a canal 2 miles on the western fringe of town held the advance.

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Along with thousands of acres of grass and forests, the fire also burned the family homestead of congresswoman Harriet Hageman, who grew up in the area.

Tyson Finnicum, a spokesman with the Wyoming Type 3 Team, said that a lightning strike in the Haymarket Range a week ago caused the Goshen County fire. The Pleasant Valley Fire, which is the official name of the combined fire, began Tuesday and is under investigation.

Finnicum’s Type 3 team was formed Thursday.

His team is an emergency classification level used by fire tracking agency National Interagency Fire Center and is made up of a small group of local, state and federal officials needed to help in the management of combating a wildfire.

They have set up an incident camp in Fort Laramie for firefighters to sleep and catch a breath.

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Last Stand

Travis Pardue, the incident commander overseeing management of efforts to combat the fire, told Cowboy State Daily that about 120 firefighters have formed a “control line” on the northern flank of the fire near McGann Pass. That’s where they’ve been most of the day Saturday, he said.

The line has about 3 miles of water hoses strung together in the area that are helping to extinguish the fire, he said.

“We could be seeing smoke for weeks,” Pardue said.

The burn area in the Haystack range is between the McGinnis Pass and McCann Pass in Goshen County at about 5,000 feet in elevation. The range passes are located east of Whalen Canyon Road in the county and are located about 6 miles apart. The southern end of the fire is about 8 miles to the northeast of Guernsey, the area where the Pleasant Valley fire first started.

The biggest concern emerging from Saturday’s meeting seems to be future worries over the health and safety of cattle and horses.

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Rancher Tom Lee and his wife Anne Lee live about 5 miles west of Fort Laramie south of U.S. Highway 26, which is an area that largely escaped the burn area to the north.

The couple visited a hill near Road 3 and Tank Farm Road where they were able to see the march of the Pleasant Valley Fire to the northern edge of U.S. Highway 26.

It’s where several oil tank farms owned by Enbridge, Tallgrass Energy, Sunoco and others are located.

“You could see the big flames from there and lots of smoke,” Tom Lee said. “We saw the two fires come together and the orange glow.”

“I thought we were in California,” Anne joked.

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The Lees, who run a ranching operation of about 100 head of cattle, are worried about larger ranches that may struggle with finding pastures to feed their animals.

Some of the stacked bales of hay were burned in fields located to the north of U.S. Highway 26.

“They also need their fences repaired,” Tom Lee said. “We are just small guys. The bigger guys have problems.”

In his comments to 200 people Saturday, Gordon mentioned the possibility of helping with rebuilding fences with federal emergency money.

Cattle Surrounded By Fire

The Kasperbauer ranching family has about 220 head of cattle grazing near the Haystacks when the fire nearly locked them in.

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Father Vince Kasperbauer and his son, Vince, were able to push the cattle out of the middle of the fire with a John Deere Gator utility vehicle, which kind of resembles a fancy golf cart with big gripping tires, and a frontend loader.

Side-by-side, the father and son pushed the cattle to the Cottonwood Draw into a tunnel under U.S. Highway 26, about halfway between Guernsey and Fort Laramie.

The fire torched roughly 7,600 of their family’s 8,500 acres, Vince Kasperbauer told Cowboy State Daily.

Next week, the family plans to haul the cattle to a ranch north of Wheatland to graze and eat hay there. Their plan is to move the cattle when rain is forecast in order to reduce the stress of the cattle, which already are feeling it.

“They were supposed to stay in the Haystack hills for the summer,” Kasperbauer said. But we’ve got to get them moved. “The 90-degree heat is stressing them.”

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Pat Maio can be reached at pat@cowboystatedaily.com.



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Casper veteran David Giralt joins race for Wyoming U.S. House seat

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Casper veteran David Giralt joins race for Wyoming U.S. House seat


CASPER, Wyo. — David Giralt, a Casper-raised military veteran and conservative Republican, has announced his candidacy for Wyoming’s lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. The congressional seat is being vacated by Republican Rep. Harriet Hageman, who launched a campaign in December for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by retiring Sen. Cynthia Lummis. […]



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Rivalries and Playoff Positioning Highlight Week 11 Wyoming Girls Basketball Slate

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Rivalries and Playoff Positioning Highlight Week 11 Wyoming Girls Basketball Slate


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)

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CLASS 3A

Final Score: Lyman 40 Mountain View 26 (conference game)

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CLASS 4A

Final Score: Evanston 41 Riverton 39 (conference game)

Final Score: Natrona County 42 Kelly Walsh 38 (conference game) – Peach Basket Classic

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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)

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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 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)

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#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)

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Buffalo at Glenrock, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)

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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)

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Submit a Score to WyoPreps

 

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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Political storm in Wyoming as far-right activist caught handing checks to lawmakers

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Political storm in Wyoming as far-right activist caught handing checks to lawmakers


Controversy has engulfed Wyoming’s state legislature after a conservative activist was photographed handing checks to Republican lawmakers on the state house floor, in an incident that has highlighted intra-conservative divisions and the role of money in the Cowboy state’s politics.

The political storm started on 9 February, when Karlee Provenza, a Democratic lawmaker, took a photo showing Rebecca Bextel, a conservative activist and committeewoman for the Teton county Republican party, handing a check to Darin McCann, a Republican representative, on the legislative floor. Marlene Brady, another Republican representative, stands in the photo’s background, a similar piece of paper pinched between her fingers.

“You have a person from the richest county in the country coming down to Cheyenne to hand out checks on the house floor,” Provenza said. “I have never seen something so egregious.”

Questions around the checks were soon swirling, and answers weren’t forthcoming. When asked what Bextel gave to her, Brady told a reporter for local outlet WyoFile: “I can’t remember.”

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Then Bextel herself addressed the incident. “I raised $400,000 in the last election cycle for conservative candidates, and I will be doubling that amount this year,” Bextel wrote on Facebook on 11 February. “There’s nothing wrong with delivering lawful campaign checks from Teton county donors when I am in Cheyenne.”

Since then, it has emerged that the checks came from Don Grasso, a wealthy Teton county donor, who told the Jackson Hole News and Guide that he wrote the checks for Bextel to deliver to 10 Freedom caucus-aligned politicians. Grasso said the checks were intended as campaign contributions, and were not tied to specific legislation. It is unclear how many checks were ultimately delivered, but two of four confirmed recipients include the speaker of the house, Chip Neiman, and John Bear, the former head of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus.

The Wyoming house has formed a legislative investigative committee, and the Laramie county sheriff’s office said they’d open a criminal investigation.

Bextel declined to answer questions from the Guardian. Brady, McCann and Bear did not respond to requests for comment.

Neiman said he considered the criticism a “wraparound smear campaign”. He said: “It never once crossed my mind that this was bribery.

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“These legislators, myself included, are now guilty until we can prove that we’re innocent. How is that right in this country? Isn’t that a little bit backwards?”

The scandal has highlighted long-standing divisions in Wyoming’s Republican party, which in recent years has seen a growing divide between old school, more moderate conservatives and a harder-right Freedom Caucus.

Several former Republican lawmakers forcefully condemned their colleagues for accepting the checks, and a local Republican party branch called for the lawmakers’ resignations.

Ogden Driskill, a Wyoming Republican senator, told the Guardian he does not consider Bextel’s actions to be illegal, but that “just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should”.

Bextel has spent years pushing against housing mitigation fees in Wyoming, and Driskill noted that she distributed the house floor checks just days before a bill she had publicly supported was set to be heard. Bextel was registered as a member of the press, not as a lobbyist when she delivered the checks.

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“Ethically and morally, it’s bankrupt to a massive degree,” Driskill said.

Neiman said that he and other legislators who received checks have supported similar bills in the past: “Bribery is paying somebody to do something they would not otherwise do.”

Nationally, the 2024 election cycle saw record-spending from the mega-wealthy, as well as dark money groups. Wyoming followed the trend, in a tense red-on-red primary season.

For those gearing up to campaign this year, Teton county, the richest in the US, and Bextel’s picturesque home turf, is an essential stop. Its extreme wealth gives it a foothold on the national level as well. Palantir chief executive Alex Karp and Donald Trump attended an annual Republican leadership fundraiser at Jackson Hole in 2024, and JD Vance attended the same one in 2025.

Bextel pulls dollars from Teton county into the Freedom Caucus side of Wyoming’s conservative split. She hosted no-press-allowed meet and greets earlier this year benefitting leading candidates for Wyoming’s governor and open US House seat.

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In an interview with the Open Range Record, a media network she co-founded, Bextel said controversy around the checks was solely because she was making “even playing field” in Wyoming against the state’s more moderate Republicans, who she calls “George Soros” candidates. She said that she will be sure to keep raising money – just away from the legislative floor.

“I guess I’m gonna ask all the gentlemen and gentleladies to step outside the Capitol while I hand them a check,” Bextel said. “Let me be clear: I’m doubling down.”

But it’s not just wealthy local donors putting their weight behind the factions. Last election cycle, out of state groups spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on anonymous and often inaccurate mailers.

“These actors, especially from the far right, they like to push the bounds of the norms,” said Rosa Reyna Pugh, an organizing and advocacy consultant at Western States Center, an Oregon-based non-profit focused on democracy in the western United States. “They like to see what policies they can kind of push, and see where they can play a piece,” Reyna Pugh said.

While Neiman and Driskill fight politically, they do agree on one thing: summer will bring an expensive and brutal campaign season.

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“You’re going to see more dark money than you’ve ever seen. We’ve done absolutely nothing to enforce it. Our secretary of state has not even made a slight attempt to deal with it,” Driskill said. “You’re going to see lots and lots of outside money and I think you’re seeing it on both sides.”

As national questions swirl around pay-to-play politics and profiteering in the Trump administration, Provenza wants better for the Cowboy State.

“We should not be aligning ourselves with how the federal government is conducting itself or how federal elections conduct themselves,” Provenza said. “We owe something far better and more honest to the people of Wyoming than that.”



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