One of Wyoming’s most famous cowboys, recently dubbed “Earl,” was plucked from his longtime, remote roadside home of Powder River and is undergoing a much-needed makeover 35 miles down the road in Casper.

The iconic Tumble Inn sign that had greeted passersby along Highway 26 since the early 1960s had grown worse for wear in recent decades, but it still outlived the establishment that once offered “Sizzlin Steaks.” Despite its deteriorating condition — wind-shattered neon glass, growing patches of rust and fading colors — the relic of Americana never lost its charm.

“Driving the road through Powder River from Colorado to Cody over many decades, Jonathan [Thorne] noticed that the sign was falling further and further into decay, and rescuing it became an obsession of sorts,” Thorne’s sister Sarah Mentock told WyoFile.

After years of sleuthing, Thorne finally located the owner and struck a deal that required him to buy the entire lot. The siblings then recruited the talents of neon-glass bender Connie Morgan and John Huff — a motorhead, metal craftsman and all-around tinkerer with a large shop in downtown Casper’s Yellowstone District.

In fact, both Morgan, who owns and operates GloW Neon Lights, and Huff had long shared an appreciation for the sign and worried it might waste away — or worse, suffer at the hands of vandals.

“These old signs, to me, they’re artwork,” Morgan said. “If you look at those old neon signs from the ‘50s and ‘60s, that’s not just a sign advertising a hotel or motel. It’s a piece of art.”

The restoration mission began with a good, eight-hour power washing. Huff had to remove decades of bird skeletons, bird poop and nesting material from Earl’s innards. With his hat removed, Earl was mounted on a large mechanical rotisserie so Huff and his crew could comfortably labor over the sign, carefully sanding multiple layers of paint, tracing lines and rewiring electrical connections.

“I’ve looked at this for days on end wondering, ‘What was this guy thinking when he came up with this idea and put it on this metal?’” Huff said, adding that the original artist remains a mystery. “I feel like I kind of know this guy. I don’t know who he was, but I got a pretty good idea of his style and the way he did things. 

“It wasn’t precision like new digital artwork,” Huff added. “Some guy painted this by hand. He didn’t go render it on a computer. He visioned it and then he drew it on a big scale. That’s not how things are done these days.”

A few doors down, Morgan is recreating the neon lights — a task that requires careful forensics to determine the original colors. She was able to salvage some of the original glass that was still intact, while bending hundreds of feet of new neon tubing true to the original design.

“The fact that any of it is still intact is pretty amazing, so I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel making it all new,” Morgan said. “Whoever did the glass-bending on it was pretty phenomenal, so I want to keep it as an homage to the guy who made it originally.”

The restoration team plans to mount the Tumble Inn sign in front of the Yellowstone Garage Bar and Grill in downtown Casper, with an unveiling and celebration on Memorial Day weekend. Huff and his crew are designing an observation deck so people can take photos and enjoy the piece of Wyoming history. 

“It’s not a sign,” Huff said. “This is art. This is nostalgia. We’re not doing a sign, we’re not trying to promote a business. But we’re preserving history and the old-school way of doing things.”

Visit this website to learn more about the Tumble Inn sign’s history and the restoration process.

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The University of Wyoming Board of Trustees deferred a decision Thursday on whether to adopt a concealed-carry policy for UW’s campus after hearing from students and staff who overwhelmingly oppose the change. 

“I think it’s prudent for the committee to step back, get together, maybe sometime this afternoon briefly to compare notes and make sure we have not missed an issue that was brought up today in public comments that should be considered in the rule,” Trustee John McKinley said at the meeting. 

With few exceptions, opposition to concealed carry on campus defined Thursday’s public comment period, with UW students, staff and faculty citing concerns over safety and gun violence. 

The policy has formally been in the works since August, when the state’s sole public four-year university sought input on possible changes to its firearms regulations following a request from Gov. Mark Gordon. 

In March, the governor rejected legislation that would have done away with most gun-free zones in Wyoming and would have allowed people with concealed carry permits to bring firearms into most public spaces overseen by the state. 

“This is not a veto of the notion of repealing gun free zones, it is a request to approach this topic more transparently,” Gordon wrote in his veto letter. “With the authority already in place to address this issue at a local level, I call on school districts, community colleges, and the University to take up these difficult conversations again and establish policies and provisions for their districts.”

University administration has “worked very hard to comply and to draft a rule,” UW President Ed Seidel said at the Thursday meeting. 

Meantime, UW Trustee Chairman Kermit Brown made plain that the board is also keeping another branch of Wyoming’s government in mind. 

“This topic is going to come up in the Legislature again [next session],” Brown said. “I will guarantee you there’s going to be a bill, and that bill is going to be an overarching reach that would go over the top of all the rules the university makes, all the rules that anybody makes, and mandate statewide what the rule in this state is going to be about carrying concealed weapons and open carry for that matter.”

Indeed, Wyoming Freedom Caucus Chairman Emeritus Rep. John Bear (R-Gillette) told WyoFile in August that eliminating gun-free zones across the state would be a priority of the group of hard-line Republicans in 2025. 

Since then, the Freedom Caucus won control of the state House of Representatives in the general election and is expected to secure leadership positions when Republican lawmakers caucus this weekend. 

Brown, who previously served as Wyoming’s Speaker of the House, called on those who were “impassioned” and “dedicated today to the position you took with this board,” to not limit their advocacy to Thursday’s meeting.

“You have to go to Cheyenne when they have those hearings and those meetings,” Brown said. “You have to talk to your individual legislators, and you have to go to Cheyenne and make your wishes known.

“Because this board is going to do whatever it’s going to do. We’re trying to find a position that maybe will be acceptable to the Legislature, but we don’t know whether the Legislature will accept it, or whether they’ll cast all this aside and do their own thing,” Brown said. 

The discussion comes amid increasing political pressure on UW’s decisions ranging from the now-shuttered Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, to athletics and longtime services for marginalized students. 

The trustees’ vote on the policy is now set for 10:15 a.m. Friday. 

Amendments and public comment 

Like Thursday, the public comment at a Monday town hall on campus was overwhelmingly characterized by opposition. 

Many of those who spoke Monday raised specific concerns about UW’s residence halls as well as its Early Care and Education Center (ECEC), which operates as a preschool and daycare, among other things. 

In response, the trustees added residence halls and the ECEC and its grounds to the areas on campus exempt from the proposed concealed-carry rules ahead of Thursday’s meeting.

Several ECEC staff and parents thanked the board for doing so at Thursday’s meeting.

The board also added Half Acre Recreation and Wellness Center — the gym on campus — as well as “fitness facilities and indoor practice areas” to the exemptions. 

Caroline McCracken-Flesher, a faculty member, pointed to the areas and instances that remain.

“UW is a place of education. Among the exemptions listed in this document, places of education are conspicuous by their absence,” McCracken-Flesher said. “By this document, protected spaces are the Legislature, its meetings, its committees, any meeting of a governmental entity, perhaps including this board, [and] Faculty Senate meetings. In other words, places frequented by those who vote on this document.”

University classrooms and faculty offices, which are not exempt from the policy, are “places of ideas,” McCracken-Flesher said. 

“That means they are necessarily places of contention. They’re places of great anxiety, they’re places of academic rivalry. They are not places for weaponry.”

Liz Pearson, a student, said the university’s focus should be elsewhere. 

“We have a huge mental health crisis on the UW campus,” Pearson told the board. “Why aren’t we talking about that? Why aren’t we talking about the issues that have arisen due to DEI being defunded? Why aren’t we talking about students that currently feel unsafe on campus due to campus life and culture?”

Pearson also pointed to the results of UW’s survey, which showed that 64.4% of respondents wanted the university’s no-guns policy to remain the same. 

The one person to speak in favor of the policy Thursday was Brandon Calloway, a third-year law student. 

“Under the current policy, uncertainty prevails,” Calloway said, pointing to the fact that concealed carry is already allowed on certain university grounds, such as the central green space on campus known as Prexy’s Pasture.

“If someone carries a concealed weapon and uses it to protect themselves or others from an active assailant, they would violate university policy and break the law, even if saving lives,” Calloway said. “The proposal eliminates this contradiction.”

The most recent version of the draft policy can be found here. The proposed changes are in red. 

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