Wyoming

New Look At Wyoming’s Deadliest Train Wreck Reveals Potential Murder Plot

Published

2 years ago

January 21, 2024

New Look At Wyoming’s Deadliest Train Wreck Reveals Potential Murder Plot

Original documents from Wyoming’s deadliest train wreck fired up Casper historian and steam locomotive engineer Con Trumbull to investigate his own interpretation of the Cole Creek disaster that happened a century ago.

Trumbull’s book “Steam, Steel, and Silence, The Story of the Cole Creek Train Wreck” was published in September, just in time for the 100th anniversary of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Train No. 30 from Casper to Denver that collapsed into a roaring creek bed between Casper and Glenrock on Sept. 27, 1923.

“This wreck is important to the state’s history because it is the worst railroad passenger wreck in the history of the state of Wyoming,” Trumbull told Cowboy State Daily. “It was unusually bad weather, it was in the night, in the dark, it was worse than any wreck down along the Union Pacific or anywhere else in the state.”

Trumbull believes 31 people died, but circumstances surrounding the wreck made getting a definitive number difficult. Four bodies known to be on the train were never recovered. The body of an “unknown male” also was recovered.

And a century after the fact, Trumbull also dredged up information that points to a potential murder plot unrelated to the wreck.

Author And Locomotive Engineer

In addition to being the book’s author, Trumbull also is train master for the Nevada Northern Railway in Ely, Nevada, that features steam locomotives and excursion trains on 30 miles of track.

He understands what it’s like to sit in a steam locomotive from the engineer’s seat and stare at the track ahead with the engine’s headlight piercing into the darkness as the steam, noise and elements add to one’s perception.

Sitting in that seat a century ago at 8:30 p.m. was a replacement engineer named Ed Sprangler, Trumbull said, because the regular engineer “called off” on the route. A young man, Ollie Mallon from Greybull, rode in the cab beside him. As the fireman on the oil-fired locomotive, his job was to ensure the efficiency of the oil burner as well as correct water levels.

On the train were local passengers headed back from Casper to Glenrock and Douglas after a day of shopping and business. There were also salesmen headed to Denver, and a man by the name of Charles Guenther who was an up-and-coming young politician, oilman and philanthropist from Douglas.

“Unfortunately, his story ended before it could get going,” Trumbull said.

It was the examination of the people on the train that provided the most surprising revelations.

“There was also a federal narcotics agent named Doc Chipley who had been collecting evidence against a narcotics ring in Casper. And a strange man follows him onto the train … and they couldn’t find anything about him, and the investigation concluded that he was most likely on the train to rob or kill the narcotics agent to keep the evidence from getting back to Cheyenne.”

Crews work to recover the wrecked train that plunged into Cole Creek in 1923, killing dozens. (Courtesy Western History Center at Casper College)
Train cars in Cole Creek after a bridge collapse sent a passenger train into the water in 1923. (Courtesy Western History Center at Casper College)
A crane recovers one of the cars that plunged into Cole Creek in September 1923. (Courtesy Western History Center at Casper College)
Interior of Pullman car 21, which was pulled from Cole Creek. (Photo Courtesy Fort Caspar Museum)

Albert Hill’s Story

Trumbull also found the story of a deceased young Black man Albert Beverly Hill, who had moved to Casper and was working at the Chicago and North Western Railroad roundhouse to support his family. Trumbull’s research shows that when claims were being paid out to families of victims in the wreck, the railroad used race to keep his settlement low. Efforts to prove Hill’s work ethic and support eventually garnered his family a $5,000 settlement.

For comparison, the settlement for Guenther’s death was $22,500.

Trumbull said his research project on the disaster began when he received a call from the Western History Center at Casper College. Folks there told him they had a box of documents from the official railroad investigation. He knew much has been written about the wreck, but not about the people involved.

“It had files on all of the people on the train that were impacted, so I was able for the first time to compile the best list of everybody that was on the train, as well as what happened to them, their firsthand accounts, what their injuries were, what they got paid out at the end of the day and where they were traveling,” he said. “It really dived into the people, and it was such a cross section of central Wyoming society that it was amazing to put all of that together. One of my favorite parts about the book is at the end, an appendix that lists all the people for the first time.”

Passenger Numbers

At the time, Trumbull said there were railroads all over the state and for Casper, the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy was one of the main ones. He said that on the fateful night, he believes 69 passengers joined 10 crew members on the overnight train to Denver. The actual number of passengers is “hotly contested.”

“The thing is, we don’t really know,” he said. “The conductor’s records were washed away, a lot of people didn’t get on the train that were supposed to, they never did find all of the bodies,” he said. “So, the actual number of people on the train we are never going to know for sure.”

Cole Creek, just inside the Converse County line from where it borders Natrona County, was typically dry. But days of rain and then snow led up to that day. Prior to the disaster, a railroad worker had inspected the bridge.

Yet, the wreck investigation would discover a natural dam upstream had broken just prior to the arrival of the train and unleashed a torrent of water at the bridge creating 12-16 feet of water surging within and over the creek’s banks.

While some speculate the bridge was weakened, Trumbull concludes the bridge was taken out because the passengers felt the jolt of the engineer applying the emergency brakes.

After the disaster, the swollen waters of the creek carried bodies, mail and train debris into the North Platte River.

“A lot of the mail went down the North Platte and pieces of the train were washing up in Douglas and as far down as Guernsey,” he said.

After boarding in Casper, Trumbull said a lot of the male passengers went to the smoking car, which was located right behind the mail car, baggage car and engine. Also part of the train were two coach cars with seats, and two Pullman cars and a Pullman crew. The Pullman crew included a conductor. There was a separate conductor for the train.

Pullman accommodations meant a private contractor “operated a hotel on your train,” he said.

Three Bumps

Accounts show several passengers in the sleeping cars had crawled into their bunks. When the train arrived at the creek without a bridge they reported “three bumps.”

“Bump No. 1 was when the engineer threw the emergency brake. Bump No. 2 is when the train went off the track, and bump No. 3 was when it crashed into the stream,” Trumbull said. “What amazed me reading the firsthand accounts from the time, with the exception of one person who was the ‘over-the-top’ witness, everyone else commented on how quiet it was. It was so sudden and so devastating that there weren’t even any screams.”

Trumbull said the locomotive and the first five cars — the baggage car, mail car, two coaches and sleeping car — all ended up in the water. Passengers in the last two cars were spared a plunge into the water and were the “lucky ones.” Most of those who died, did so immediately.

The train’s conductor, Guy Goff, died and Pullman conductor Lemont Coburn took control of the train and helped rescue survivors in the stream and got them into one of the two remaining cars on the bank. Survivors headed down the track to find help and call the wreck in. A rescue train with doctors and nurses was dispatched from Casper, along with tools rescuers could use to free people from the wreckage.

Locomotive No. 350 in the Casper Yard before being moved to the railroad’s shops in Denver to be rebuilt. (Photo Courtesy Con Trumbull)
The Cole Creek train disaster was the worst in Wyoming’s history. The engine can bee seen on its side at lower right. (Courtesy Photo)

Locomotive Swallowed

Rescuers arrived to find the bridge gone, the water roaring and that the sandy bottom of the stream had “just swallowed the locomotive.”

“The passenger cars landed on top of it, and it took them days and days to dig down to it,” Trumbell said.

Passengers were suffering from shock. One passenger in a car that landed on top of the locomotive as it was sinking into the stream was severely scalded by steam.

Those in the cars behind suffered fairly minor injuries, Trumbull said. The very last car of the train managed to stay on the track, so the rescue train used that car to haul the injured and survivors back into Casper.

“It took years for the full cleanup,” he said. “Within a week, they had a temporary bridge built and they had service going again, but it took them years to put a permanent bridge back into place and completely clean up the wreck. It was quite a mess.”

The engineer’s body wasn’t uncovered until two years after the wreck when crews were installing the new bridge and driving pylons, Trumbull said. The last remains attributed to the wreck were found in the river during the 1950s.

Investigations found the railroad could have done nothing to prevent it, railroad personnel had inspected the tracks earlier and everything was fine. It was called an “act of God.”

“A few years later there was another wreck with exactly the same situation in Montana,” Trumbull said.

From Coal Mines To Shoveling Coal

Trumbull, 35, is a fifth-generation Wyoming resident who has a degree in geology and worked as a coal mine inspector. In 2016, he started volunteering at the Nevada railroad, learning about steam train operations and working on the train. In 2019, he left his mining job.

“I left my job with the federal government inspecting coal and started throwing coal in the firebox,” he said. “I worked my way up from student brakeman, like everyone else who starts out here, and I am currently the train master in charge of operations.”

He also is the author of a book on central Wyoming railroads, co-author of a book on Casper’s history and author of a children’s book.

Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.

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Wyoming

Rivalries and Playoff Positioning Highlight Week 11 Wyoming Girls Basketball Slate

Published

11 hours ago

February 27, 2026

Press Room

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)

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

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)

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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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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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Wyoming

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

Published

24 hours ago

February 26, 2026

Press Room

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.”

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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Wyoming

Wyoming man reaches plea deal to avoid jail time in wolf-abuse case

Published

1 day ago

February 25, 2026

Press Room

Wyoming man reaches plea deal to avoid jail time in wolf-abuse case

A Sublette County man who captured and brought an injured wolf into a bar in February 2024 has struck a deal with prosecutors that could keep him out of jail, reports WyoFile.

A signed plea agreement filed with the Sublette County District Court and acquired by WyoFile on Wednesday afternoon means that Cody Roberts, 44, would likely no longer face trial. It had been set to begin March 9.

Under the deal, Roberts withdraws his earlier not guilty plea and changes that plea to guilty or no contest for felony cruelty to animals.

The deal calls for a prison sentence of 18 months to two years that would be suspended in favor of 18 months of supervised probation and a $1,000 fine. Additionally, agreed-upon conditions of his probation include: no hunting or fishing; no alcohol, presence at bars or liquor stores; and a requirement that Roberts follow recommended addiction treatment.

As part of the deal, the parties are asking that a “pre-sentence investigation report” be ordered by the court.

Roberts allegedly acquired a wolf by striking it with a snowmobile, leaving it “barely conscious” on Feb. 29, 2024. Photos and video from that night showed him posing for pictures with the animal and even kissing it. The wolf’s behavior suggests that it was gravely injured, according to biologists who’ve reviewed video of the muzzled animal while it was prone and barely moving on the floor of the Green River Bar.

The Wyoming Game and Fish Department initially handled the incident, issuing Roberts a $250 fine for possession of warm-blooded wildlife. The state agency declined to seek stiffer penalties or jail time, and Game and Fish officials maintained that predatory animals, including wolves, were exempted from felony animal cruelty laws.

Sublette County law enforcement officials disagreed. In August, prosecutor Clayton Melinkovich convened a grand jury that indicted Roberts for felony animal cruelty. That crime could have put Roberts in jail for up to two years, though his plea agreement averts mandatory time behind bars as long as he successfully completes probation.

WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.

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