Wyoming
Jackson Road Project Turns 5-Minute Drives Into Los Angeles-Like…
A three-week-long paving project on a main town entrance is clogging the already-congested tourist town of Jackson, Wyoming, turning some 5-minute journeys into hourlong jaunts, delaying school buses by more than an hour and amassing unexpected overtime payouts for employers with workers on the road.
While the local sentiment on the Highway 89/Broadway Avenue paving project ranges from “idiotic policies strike again” to “I’m just glad the potholes are getting fixed,” a bit of motorist confusion sparked by a possible signage problem made the delays much worse Monday than they ought to have been, authorities say.
“While the far right lane northbound was being paved — in the five-lane section — crews shifted drivers two lanes over,” Stephanie Harsha, spokesperson for the Wyoming Department of Transportation told Cowboy State Daily in a Wednesday email.
“However, due to the fact that the drivers weren’t comfortable driving in the turn lane like a through lane, and (due to) the construction sign at the start of the project, most vehicles did funnel into one lane,” it reads.
Jackson Police Department Lt. Russ Ruschill was complimentary of the contractor, Evans Construction, and of the operations generally in a Wednesday interview with Cowboy State Daily.
But he attributed Monday’s chaos to a lighted merge sign conveying the wrong message.
“They tried to run two lanes northbound to take care of traffic coming up from Pinedale, Bondurant and Star Valley. But they had an arrow sign, one of those merge signs, illuminated,” said Ruschill. “Everyone interpreted it (as) they were supposed to funnel into one lane.”
That merge sign has since been removed, said Harsha. But the pavers have also changed the lane configurations since Monday.
She confirmed that Jackson PD is now helping WYDOT with its “variable message signs” and helping with additional signage.
Ruschill said traffic flowed better Tuesday and Wednesday.
“I would applaud Evans Construction for fixing and adjusting when they saw a pretty bad problem,” he said.
Evans Construction did not immediately respond to a Wednesday voicemail request for comment.
In The Light
Social media outrage erupted Monday and Tuesday, around the same time that Teton County’s WYDOT bureau made multiple posts explaining its choices, such as why the pavers were working at day rather than at night and why they were working at the start of the school year.
Crews could mill off the old pavement during the night ahead of the paving portion of the project because milling doesn’t send as many people onto the road surface to work amid heavy equipment, Hasha explained in a phone interview with Cowboy State Daily.
But they chose to pave during daylight hours for worker safety and to maintain the 40-degree-plus temperatures the pavement needs for “proper compaction,” the agency’s statement adds.
They chose September for this daytime work because it’s outside the town’s summer/winter tourist booms, the statement adds.
“I have lived in numerous states throughout my life and have never seen such poor planning and mis-management (sic) of road traffic in all my life, and I’m not a spring chicken,” one woman commented under WYDOT’s post. The woman did not immediately return a Facebook message request for further comment. “Even in more populated areas, they make it work. Come on, you are better than this surely!”
Another resident pervaded the post with comments urging others to be grateful for the repair and understanding of the work complications. That resident cut short a Wednesday phone call from Cowboy State Daily and did not return a subsequent voicemail.
Hasha reiterated the necessity of the repair.
“The work is pretty critical for this section of roadway to extend its lifespan. It’s a heavily traveled road, and its surfaces were in dire need of maintenance,” she said, describing potholes and asphalt deterioration.
The new pavement is expected to last another 10 years, “give or take” and not accounting for Jackson’s harsh winters, she said.
Some residents who spoke to Cowboy State Daily lamented the town’s lack of alternate routes.
“There really aren’t a lot of side streets in Jackson that take you where you want to go,” David Weingart told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday.
Some roads lead into neighborhoods, but Broadway and Snow King avenues are the main entrances into the center of town, and they clog easily on a normal day.
Weingart said his main concern is for emergency responders and people in crisis.
“I worry, God forbid there’s an emergency, how emergency vehicles are going to get through,” he said. “So far we’ve been lucky.”
Weingart texted an update to Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday afternoon: southbound traffic was backed up and “terrible” on Highway 89/Broadway from Jackson toward Hoback, but northbound traffic was “actually moving nicely.”
Some roads in town also have ongoing construction and closures “which doesn’t help.”
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Backed up traffic in Jackson, Wyoming, on Broadway Avenue from High School Road to the Y intersection at 5:30 p.m. on Sept. 24, 2024. Locals are complaining of the long backups and waits. (Abby Roich, Cowboy State Daily) -
Backed up traffic in Jackson, Wyoming, on Broadway Avenue from High School Road to the Y intersection at 5:30 p.m. on Sept. 24, 2024. Locals are complaining of the long backups and waits. (Abby Roich, Cowboy State Daily)
Overtime
A business owner with a connection to Jackson, Todd Graus of Green Turf Lawnscapes, said he’s concerned for small businesses surviving on day-to-day income.
“It’s more than an inconvenience. It’s an economic hit to small businesses,” said Graus. For some businesses “if a company doesn’t bill out one day, that really puts a strain on them.”
As for Graus, he has crews traveling from Jackson to Alpine in a van full of equipment. If two workers have to sit in traffic for an hour, it can cost Graus about $80 in hourly pay, payroll taxes, Social Security matching or other extras — just for the delay headed one direction, he said.
“We don’t get to transfer that expense to our clients, therefore we just lose margin,” he said. “It’s a short-term thing, we just have to deal with it.”
If the crews can’t finish their work in the normal week, they may tally overtime as well, he said.
In Graus’ case, his crews can’t just bike or walk to their sites because they have necessary equipment. In the case of a hypothetical waitress who has no equipment and wants to bike into town to get to work on time, she probably can’t do that either since so many service-sector workers in Jackson commute from distant towns with cheaper housing.
The wife of one of Graus’ employees now leaves her home in Alpine at 4 a.m. and returns home at 10 p.m. to avoid the traffic, he said, adding that, “It’s burning her out.”
Weingart was apprehensive ahead of the last People’s Market of the season Wednesday evening, but once he arrived, he said business was just a little light and not massively impacted.
The School District
Construction crews originally paved from about 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., Peter Stinchcomb, WYDOT District 3 Construction Engineer, told Cowboy State Daily.
But after realizing that schedule “messed up” the school bus schedule, the agency spoke with the school district and shortened its hours, now reopening the roadway at 4 p.m. said Stinchcomb.
One teacher at Jackson Hole Classical Academy told Cowboy State Daily that her 3-mile crosstown commute home took an hour and a half — an 8-minute drive normally, maybe twice that in rush-hour traffic.
On Tuesday, better prepared for delays, school buses still ran late. After discharging the last of their passengers, a few drivers parked their buses 30 minutes south of town and sat at a picnic table at a defunct restaurant parking lot, waiting for traffic to clear before they dared return to the bus barn.
“Better to wait it out here than sit in traffic idling and fuming,” one driver said.
The new hours mean workers have to stop paving at about 2:30 p.m. to give the pavement time to cool before removing construction cones. The job is now expected to continue through Oct. 11, says a WYDOT post, but WYDOT personnel told an on-scene reporter they believe they will need just this week to finish the bulk of it — at least enough to get traffic flowing again.
The new hours are expected to help with commuter flow in the afternoon as well as the school schedule, Stinchcomb said.
Despite the misunderstanding Monday, the pavers have worked on just one lane at a time and are keeping one lane open going one direction and two lanes going open going in the other direction, he added.
Well, Yes
The sheer volume of traffic in and around Jackson during the morning and afternoon commute peak is stress-inducing at best on a typical day. Factor in a major repaving job at the town’s southern corridor has generated palpable road rage and some middle fingers extended from car windows.
WYDOT and Evans Construction felt the brunt of the public’s fury. Road workers said they have been on the receiving end of everything from “thank yous” to “f*** yous.”
Bad behavior from motorists Tuesday afternoon included driving on the shoulder and speeding down the center turn lane in frustration.
“People are getting pissed. I’m pissed. But we all have to deal with it,” one motorist told Cowboy State Daily as she sat in a bumper-to-bumper standstill at 5:37 p.m. Tuesday. “Except for a few of these yahoos who think they are above waiting.”
As for workers being flipped off, Stinchcomb said that’s nothing new.
“To be honest with you, that’s almost every project everywhere we go. We don’t notice it,” he said. “And there are a lot of people giving us thumbs-up because we’re getting rid of the potholes too.”
Contact Clair McFarland at clair@cowboystatedaily.com
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com and Jake Nichols can be reached at jake@cowboystatedaily.com.
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)
CLASS 3A
Final Score: Lyman 40 Mountain View 26 (conference game)
CLASS 4A
Final Score: Evanston 41 Riverton 39 (conference game)
Final Score: Natrona County 42 Kelly Walsh 38 (conference game) – Peach Basket Classic
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)
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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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)
#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)
Buffalo at Glenrock, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
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)
Wyoming Boys 4A Swimming & Diving State Championships 2026
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Gallery Credit: David Settle, WyoPreps.com
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.”
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.
“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.
“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.
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.
“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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