Wyoming

Jackson Road Project Turns 5-Minute Drives Into Los Angeles-Like…

Published

2 years ago

September 26, 2024

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.”

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)
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.

Road work 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. (WYDOT)

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.

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Wyoming

Wyoming Has Half Of The West’s 26 100-Year-Old Dude Ranches

Published

9 hours ago

March 29, 2026

Press Room

Wyoming Has Half Of The West’s 26 100-Year-Old Dude Ranches

Like many rabbit holes, it all started with a simple question.

About two years ago, Jaye Wells was at a small gathering in Cody when the topic of the 2026 centennial anniversary of the Dude Ranchers’ Association came up.

Wells asked how many dude ranches in the country had a comparable 100-year legacy to the Cody-based member organization.

“Nobody in the room knew,” said Wells, co-founder of the True Ranch Collection, with a portfolio of dude ranches around the West, including the Blackwater Creek Lodge and Guest Ranch in Cody.

Thus began a yearslong and, at times laborious, project of tracking down the number of dude ranches in operation since 1926, which are commemorated in “100 Years of Dude Ranching,” a coffee-table-style book published by Wells in December.

Though it took a lot of digging through records at the Wyoming Historical Society, old newspaper clippings and cross-referencing family records, the team behind the book finally identified a fitting answer to Wells’ question.

Of the 94 dude ranches that are members of the association today, 26 were in operation and accepting guests a century ago.

“That shocked us,” Wells said. “Every ranch has got its own little curiosity.”

The team behind the book was strict about the criteria it established: To be included in the book, a dude ranch must have been accepting guests in 1926. Had they expanded their criteria, the list would have been even longer.

“There are a lot of ranches that are 97 or 98 years old,” Wells said.

A Tribute To Hospitality

As much as the book celebrates the long legacy of dude ranching, it also serves as a tribute to a unique way of life — particularly in Wyoming.

The state is home to half of the 26 centennial ranches: A Bar A Ranch (Encampment), Absaroka Ranch (Dubois), Blackwater Creek Lodge and Guest Ranch (Cody), CM Ranch (Dubois), Crossed Sabres Ranch (Cody), Darwin Ranch (Jackson), Eatons’ Ranch (Wolf), the Hideout Lodge and Guest Ranch (Shell), Medicine Bow Lodge and Guest Ranch (Saratoga), Paradise Guest Ranch (Buffalo), Rimrock Ranch (Cody), Shoshone Lodge and Guest Ranch (Cody), and Triangle X Ranch (Moose).

As the book details, the origins of dude ranching trace back to the 1880s, when a ranch near modern-day Medora, North Dakota, began charging guests from back East room and board when they’d come out West to hunt bison and other big game.

The word “dude” had become a popular term by that time for a man with fancy duds.

More and more ranches started opening up to guests in the 1900s, including welcoming many young men whose parents had sent them West to dry out and stay out of trouble.

“You had to be wealthy to stay at a dude ranch back in the day,” Wells said.

But life on these ranches today might look surprisingly similar to a century ago.

Ranch hands might start rounding up horses at 4:30 in the morning and preparing breakfast so it’s ready for guests when they awaken, Wells said. In addition to historic photos of the ranches, photographer Scott Baxter spent four months on the road capturing how the ranches look now.

While still offering a vacation that’s more expensive than a typical tourist might be able to afford, Wells said one of the constants at the centennial ranches spread across four states is the service and experience they offer.

“The strongest element that’s kept dude ranching going all that time is a common denominator,” Wells said. “It’s the desire to offer great hospitality.”

As much as the book celebrates dude ranches, it’s also a tribute to a unique way of life, particularly in Wyoming. “It’s such a tough business, but it’s such a joy,” said Jaye Wells, who owns the Blackwater Creek Lodge & Guest Ranch in Cody. (Courtesy Scott T. Baxter)
It was while kicking around ideas for the 100-year anniversary of the Dude Ranching Association that Jaye Wells asked how many ranches have a similar legacy. “Nobody in the room knew,” Wells recalled. That’s how the new book “100 Years of Dude Ranching” was born. (Courtesy Scott T. Baxter)
As much as the book celebrates dude ranches, it’s also a tribute to a unique way of life, particularly in Wyoming. “It’s such a tough business, but it’s such a joy,” said Jaye Wells, who owns the Blackwater Creek Lodge & Guest Ranch in Cody. (Courtesy Scott T. Baxter)
As much as the book celebrates dude ranches, it’s also a tribute to a unique way of life, particularly in Wyoming. “It’s such a tough business, but it’s such a joy,” said Jaye Wells, who owns the Blackwater Creek Lodge & Guest Ranch in Cody. (Courtesy Scott T. Baxter)

Pressures To Modernize

Even so, dude ranch owners do feel some pressure to modernize to appease guests who have become downright uncomfortable unplugging.

Such changes have seen ranches offering Wi-Fi, say, or packing days with lots of activities.

Even though guests will quickly learn that riding a horse all day is exercise in and of itself, Wells said he’s felt that pressure, too. “We have a full-blown exercise room at White Stallion Ranch,” he said of one of his ranches near Tucson, Arizona. “You have to have it now.”

What’s more, even though guests will rave about how relaxing they find their stay or how much they appreciate the quality time with loved ones, they’re booking shorter and shorter stays.

In the 1920s, people from out East might come to a ranch for months at a time, and there was a time not so long ago when a one- or two-week stay was the norm.

“Now, guests only want to stay three nights. That’s the number one trend in the business we see,” Wells said. “We forget we’re so connected now, it’s almost too much. We’re being bombarded by information 24 hours a day.”

Wyoming has 13 100-year-old dude raches, half of the 26 centennial dude ranches in the West. That's one of the things the team behind the new book — Wyoming has 13 100-year-old dude raches, half of the 26 centennial dude ranches in the West. That’s one of the things the team behind the new book “100 Years of Dude Ranching” learned in documenting the industry’s century of Western hospitality. Above is a scene from the Blackwater Creek Ranch. (Courtesy Scott T. Baxter)

‘It’s Such A Joy’

Putting this book together gave Wells a newfound appreciation for the diversity of Wyoming’s topography and landscapes.

The project also offered constant reminders about why he loves dude ranching so much and how pivotal the business was to shaping the West.

Of course, he’s also reminded of how unique this business is while conversing with guests over the years — including tourists from abroad who marvel at the idea of being able to shoot a gun, spend a week bonding with a horse or simply get to decompress in a way they haven’t been able to do since childhood.

“I would venture to say it’s one of the most iconic symbols in the world,” Wells said of dude ranching. “It’s such a tough business, but it’s such a joy.”

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Wyoming

(PHOTOS) Casper Holistic Expo packs the Central Wyoming Fairgrounds

Published

21 hours ago

March 28, 2026

Press Room

(PHOTOS) Casper Holistic Expo packs the Central Wyoming Fairgrounds

CASPER, Wyo. — There was magic, or something like it, in the air on Saturday as the Central Wyoming Fairgrounds presented the 2026 Casper Holistic Expo, Casper’s longest running holistic expo and a hallmark of the beginning of spring in Natrona County.

Countless vendors from Casper and beyond gathered with their goodies to present them to eager customers searching for something a little different.

The holistic expo featured crystal and metaphysical shops, tattoo and body piercing studios, henna and glitter tattoo studios, holistic shops, tarot readings, fortune tellers, magic and so much more. There was truly something for everyone, and Christina Kuhn, the lead organizer, said that nobody who came to the expo would leave disappointed.

“This actually started over 20 years ago,” Kuhn said. “I’ve been doing it for years. My mom did it for seven years before me. And Judy Ick, who actually does our photography, she did it before that. So it’s been a very long, very longstanding and growing event.”

Kuhn said that the Holistic Expo has grown exponentially over the years.

“When Judy passed it down to mom, there were 38 booths,” she said. “After mom passed it down to me, there were 78. Now I think we’re up to, like, 98.”

The booths are as eclectic as the people who run them. There’s magic, mysticism and moonlight; storytellers and palm readers; conversationalists and creators. There are CBD products, organic teas, energy testing, and even fudge.

“Some of this is kind of a special niche,” Kuhn shared, “but some of it is not. We’ve got a chiropractor. We’ve got people that are working with healing modalities. Some of it’s spiritual stuff. We’ve got crafts, too.”

There’s a wide variety of vendors and customers as the Holistic Expo, and Kuhn said she wouldn’t want it any other way. The most important thing they do, Kuhn said, is donate to local nonprofits.

“People can either pay the $5 door fee — anybody that’s 13 or over — or they can donate five nonperishable goods,” Kuhn said. “We started donating that to poverty resistance, and then we did City Park Church. This year we’re donating to the Wyoming Food for Thought Project.”

Kuhn said this was just a simple way to give back to the community, a community she and her business have been a part of for years. Kuhn owns a store in downtown Casper called A Place for Passion, and the Holistic Expo also allows her to bring some merch from her store and put in on display with a variety of other items. It’s a fun way to spend a weekend, she said, and she’s proud to be a part of it.

“Good lord, I’ve been doing this for a long time,” she said. “I helped my mom with it for ages and she wanted somebody that would carry on and keep expanding and doing well with it. Before I was helping run the show and managing it, I was a booth. I started sharing a booth with my mom because I only had a few things and I wasn’t sure how well they’d sell. But then it just expanded and took off, and now here I am.”

Kuhn said it means a lot that she’s able to continue the Holistic Expo for her mother.

“It’s nice to keep expanding something, especially something that contributes so much to the community,” she said. “There are so many people that come out and enjoy everything that they get here. And it’s a big opportunity for them to connect with others, to connect with people that have stuff they want to offer them.”

That, Kuhn said, is her favorite part of the Holistic Expo — meeting people.

“It’s just nice connecting with people and helping them out in any way that you can,” she said. “Everybody’s got their own knowledge, gifts, products that they’re putting out — services, whatever it is. So being able to share that with others is awesome. You’ve got to come check it out. It’s an awesome experience. There’s a little something for everyone.”

The Casper Holistic Expo is happening Saturday until 6 p.m. and on Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Industrial Building at the Central Wyoming Fairgrounds.

Photos from the Holistic Expo can be seen below:

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Wyoming

Wyoming teen discovers rare and ancient megalodon shark tooth off Florida coast

Published

1 day ago

March 28, 2026

Press Room

Wyoming teen discovers rare and ancient megalodon shark tooth off Florida coast

A 6-inch megalodon shark tooth was found by a Wyoming teen during a dive trip off Manasota Key, Florida earlier this week.

Sixteen-year-old Aiden Andrews and his father Brian were on a guided dive with Fossil Junkies, a local fossil-hunting tour company.

Captain John Kreatsoulas told FOX 13 Tampa Bay reporter Kimberly Kuizon that while finding small megalodon teeth isn’t uncommon, finding one that size is quite rare.

Video captured the moments when Aiden and his father celebrated underwater after making the remarkable discovery.

Popularized by Hollywood monster movies, the Carcharocles megalodon was the largest shark to have ever lived, according to the Smithsonian Institution.

A 6-inch megalodon shark tooth was found by a Wyoming teen during a dive trip off Manasota Key, Florida. Fossil Junkies