Wyoming
Fake beaver dams help restore Wyoming wetlands – WyoFile
My rubber boots squelched as I grabbed another 5-gallon bucket full of mud from a Wyoming Game and Fish Department herpetology technician. We performed an awkward handoff before I dumped the mud on the ground in front of my sinking boots. The squelching continued as I used my boots to mash the fresh mud up against willow branches woven among 4-inch-wide posts rammed in a streambed.
Our little team, the herpetology technician, a Trout Unlimited project manager and another volunteer like me, were finishing up the first in a series of nearly a dozen fake beaver dams on a creek on the west side of the Snowy Range Mountains in southeast Wyoming. They’re technically called beaver dam analogues — since with their complex patterns of sticks and mud, they’re supposed to imitate real beaver dams. Although I’m not sure my noisy rubber boots really compare to the efficacy of the beaver tail.
The dams’ purpose, as the name implies, is to slow streamflow, lightly flooding banks and providing the water more time to seep into the ground.
If we’re lucky, a family of beavers will come along and make this analogue their home, even tearing out our handiwork to construct something they like better that’s more permanent and sturdier. Beavers are, after all, professional furry engineers, who perfected their craft over millennia.
Our fake beaver dams aren’t meant to last forever. They’ll be maintained annually for about five years (unless real beavers take over earlier), but the result when established in the right place can be remarkable, restoring and rejuvenating wetlands, replenishing the water table, keeping water higher up in systems longer in the year, and providing habitat for everything from insects, frogs and toads to elk and moose, and yes, even beavers.
Stream restoration experts like Steve Gale, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s aquatic habitat biologist, can and do extoll the benefits of beavers and beaver dams. And while the rest of us standing in the stream bed see their utility, we also agreed with Gale when he said: “Who doesn’t want to play in the water with mud and sticks?”
Bigger than just beavers
Before European settlers streamed onto this continent, bringing an insatiable demand for beaver pelts, the rodents lived in streams, creeks and rivers almost everywhere. They dammed any flowing water they could find and had a hand in shaping large swaths of the nation.
While beavers can be a nuisance, falling ancient cottonwoods in parched areas and flooding creeks and irrigation ditches, they’re also one of the best examples of ecosystem engineers, Gale said, and their services have been missed. Without beavers and beaver dams, rivers run faster and cut down into the soil, they wash away sediment and move water faster from headwater states like Wyoming to other states downstream.
Biologists have tried reintroducing beavers across the country — the Army Corps of Engineers even famously airdropped beavers into an Idaho wilderness area — with mixed success.
So now watershed managers are turning to contraptions like the ones a team of nearly 20, including Game and Fish employees and volunteers from all over the state, helped build in mid-September.
We stood on the banks of the South Fork of Lake Creek in the Pennock Wildlife Habitat Management Area and listened to Gale walk us through the process. In the last few decades, the South Fork of Lake Creek had cut deeper and deeper into the earth, ultimately sinking lower than the floodplain and as a result offering little water to surrounding vegetation. When runoff hit each spring, the water rushed down as plants sat parched on the banks.
“We lost riparian habitat and riparian width, which is important for calving areas,” he said. “We’re doing this work primarily for the deer, elk and moose.”
Beavers had been reintroduced here before, but even the industrious rodents had a hard time building dams and ponds deep enough to keep them alive and safe through winter.
We were here to help, hopefully. We would spend the bulk of the day pounding posts made from trees across the width of the creek over a quarter-mile-long stretch and then weaving bendy willow branches through the posts. After building a wall of willows, we would use buckets of mud and sod to fill in the cracks. With any luck, water would begin backing up almost immediately, eventually filling and slowly trickling over the tops.
Life or death
As beaver dam analogues become increasingly popular, biologists with state agencies and nonprofits are teaming up to place them in streams across the landscape.
Austin Quynn, the Trout Unlimited project manager helping direct our team, worked with groups of youth corps members over the last couple summers building, maintaining and repairing hundreds of analogues on a stream called Muddy Creek southwest of Rawlins to help habitat for four native fish species: flannelmouth and bluehead suckers, roundtail chubs and Colorado River cutthroat. Last summer, beavers came from miles downstream and tore out dozens of analogues in one stretch. He sounded amused that his work was destroyed, because in its place, they’d built a massive dam that must have been what the beavers wanted and needed.
Some of the dams blew out from spring runoff, scouring the creek bed of sediment and leaving behind gravel that cutthroat trout could use for spawning.
Deep pools created by the analogues — and eventually beavers themselves — also offer fish refuge from the heat on mid-summer days.
On the east side of the Snowy Range, Wendy Estes-Zumpf, Game and Fish’s herpetological coordinator, and others built eight analogues in a creek which contains one of the last boreal toad populations in southeast Wyoming. It had been a stronghold for the creatures, but in the absence of beavers, the creek became incised, leaving little wetland habitat for toads to breed and survive.
A few seasons after Estes-Zumpf’s team erected the fake beaver dams, boreal toad populations have started to come back. She counted as few as four toads on past spring surveys and found almost 30 this spring including multiple age classes.
Beaver dam analogues aren’t a silver bullet for a drought-stricken West, Gale said, but for some species and some creeks, they could be the difference between life and death.
Plus, it’s hard to beat a day playing in the mud.
Since moving to Wyoming many years ago, and having lived in a few towns around the state, I find that some town and city rivalries must be addressed. Some are based on past conflicts that still cause pain to this day. Some are unexplained.
For example, to this day, all of Johnson County still does not trust Cheyenne after the Johnson County War of 1892. Cattlemen in Cheyenne sent a hit squad hired by the barons to invade Johnson County to eliminate alleged rustlers. A shootout that lasted several days ensued.
Other town rivalries include:
Green River vs. Rock Springs: The two towns are close together and share one of the most intense and oldest community, cultural, and athletic rivalries in the state.
Lander vs. Riverton: Located in Fremont County, this rivalry dates back to 1922 and divides the area over high school football bragging rights. They talk a lot of smack about each other.
Cheyenne vs Casper: The towns just HATE each other. I’ve lived in both, and I can tell you that there is nothing wrong with either town. But I’ve come across people in both towns who talk about their hatred of the other.
There is not a lot of love across Wyoming for Jackson, mostly because of the mega-rich liberals who live there. Many of those mega-rich liberals look down on the rest of Wyoming.
Folks talk smack about Laramie, but in a very different way than people talk smack about Gillette.
Having traveled around Wyoming, I can tell you that most of this hate is just nonsense and a waste of time. In the end, we are all Wyomingites. Just one big bickering family who still have each other’s backs when it comes down to it.
The Charmingly Odd Town Of La Grange Wyoming
It is well worth the long drive to see one of the most interesting and quirky little towns in Wyoming.
Stay for lunch. You won’t regret it.
Gallery Credit: Glenn Woods
Jay Em, Wyoming, Frozen In Time
Jay Em, what an unusual name for a town.The few people who live there are proud of what their spot on earth once was, and they work to preserve it. They keep this little community frozen in time.
Gallery Credit: Glenn Woods
Wyoming
Hoping to draw Colorado interest, construction begins at $80M betting facility in Laramie County
CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Foundation work is beginning this week on Wyoming’s next horse betting and gaming house.
The $80 million Wyoming Downs facility in Laramie County, one of two the company is investing in over the next couple of years, is poised to be one of the largest facilities of its kind in the state. The company is aiming for a spring 2027 opening.
The facility will host upwards of 600 historic horse racing machines, Wyoming’s largest TV wall, multiple dining options and more across 58,000 square feet. More land was bought for future hotel development. Commuters driving between Cheyenne and the Colorado border can see clearly from Interstate 25 the expansive development.
That placement along the travel corridor is purposeful, Wyoming Downs and 307 Horse Racing President Kyle Ridgeway said.
“I think that the targeted consumer for this is from Colorado or from the Front Range,” Ridgeway said. “I anticipate we’re going to have plenty of people from Cheyenne come down here to play and enjoy the amenities, but when you look at 600,000 people within a 30-minute drive, that’s what justifies this investment and brings all that tax revenue in from another state, which is fantastic.
“We don’t get the opportunity to do that in Wyoming very often.”
There is still plenty to offer Cheyenne residents besides the facility’s amenities. Ridgeway said in a speech to attendees at the project’s groundbreaking Tuesday, June 2, that more than 150 permanent jobs will be supported by the facility on top of the dozens supported by the companies’ corporate offices and the 400-plus involved in the project’s construction.
Groathouse Construction, a Wyoming business, is the project’s general contractor. Wyoming Downs said it believes putting the project in local hands also helps keep the project uniquely Wyoming-focused.
Ridgeway added the facilities have already proven themselves to be effective tax revenue generators for the local governments. The Wyoming Gaming Commission’s 2025 report, released in late May, shows bettors wagered $2.49 billion on historic horse racing machines last year, a jump from the $2.11 billion wagered in 2024.
Wyoming Downs facilities generate roughly $25 million in taxes annually across the state, and Ridgeway estimated after the ceremony that the upcoming $80 million facility alone will generate an additional $3 million for Laramie County once the property has been in operation for a few years.
Horse betting sites have been increasingly popping up across Wyoming this decade. The Wyoming Downs location will be Cheyenne’s second large-scale horse betting facility since 2024, when the 30,000-square-foot Horse Palace at Swan Ranch opened. Ridgeway said Wyoming Downs is still offering something fresh for tourists and residents.
“This’ll have amenities that Swan Ranch doesn’t have, including the largest TV wall in Wyoming and a pretty super-cool sports viewing area with a restaurant and just a level of finish and class that I don’t think Wyoming has quite seen yet with these types of properties,” he said.
Ridgeway said he thinks resident fatigue with these facilities isn’t as strong as it appears, especially given the tourism benefits of off-track betting.
“Wyoming’s been built on mineral extraction and tourism, and what this is is a touristic facility. I’m not aware of any particular pushback about this specific facility outside of — you see random social media comments where people say, ‘Oh, another gambling facility.’ But where this is located, I think people in Cheyenne have generally been supportive of,” he said.
The Laramie County facility will be just one part of a larger project Wyoming Downs is working on over the next few years. Construction will begin in early 2027 on a similar facility in Evanston looking to draw in Utah and western Colorado crowds.
Some of the company’s current facilities, notably in Casper, Cheyenne and Rock Springs, will see millions poured into renovations as well. New smaller-scale parlors will also go up in Gillette and Green River this year, according to an information packet provided by the company.
More details will come as the construction process develops, Ridgeway said. Details about amenities, such as what the complex’s dining options will look like, remain undisclosed, though Ridgeway promised that options will be “excellent.”
“We haven’t made final selections on what the options are, but we have a number of different options on the table that we’re considering for what we want to offer for the customers,” Ridgeway said. “You have to have something that’s high quality for where this is located. If somebody’s going to drive 25 or 35, or even 45 minutes to come here, they got to be able to sit down and have a quality meal.”
For more information as it becomes available and to learn more about Wyoming Downs facilities and 307 Horse Racing‘s events and offerings, see the companies’ websites. Renderings for the upcoming Cheyenne facility commissioned by the company are available for viewing below.
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