Wyoming
Opinion: From Colorado lands smeared with my ancestors blood to a Wyoming sacred hot springs stolen from us, the dispossession continues
If only the cottonwood trees throughout our sacred homelands — stretching from the Sand Creek Massacre Site to the sacred waters of Hot Springs State Park to the Little Bighorn National Monument, could tell the stories of our peoples.
There is a reason the National Parks Service refers to them as witness trees. This spring when I traveled to the Massacre Site, in what is today called Colorado, to commemorate my Arapaho and Cheyenne ancestors killed there and those who barely escaped with their lives, the cottonwood trees had a ghostly appearance. It sounded like they sang with me as the wind picked up when I prayed there.
From there I traveled north, along the Sand Creek Massacre Trail that my ancestors followed to escape to one of their safe heavens: the sacred source of the hot water at what is now referred to as Hot Springs State Park, in Cheyenne. We call it tsexhoeomotometo mahpe, where the breath of life comes out of the water.
From there, I traveled all the way back to the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in what is today called Montana, past the Little Bighorn Battlefield, to the place where our ancestors sundanced to pray for guidance before the battle in 1876.
My journey through the Arapaho and Cheyenne homelands — from Sand Creek, to Hot Springs, to Little Big Horn — marked a trail of dispossession of our peoples.
We were effectively driven from the state of Colorado by genocide. A recent study found that the state of Colorado alone benefitted over $1.7 trillion from the dispossession of land of Indigenous Peoples.
The dispossession continues to this day.
The state of Wyoming tried to unilaterally proceed with major changes at what they designated in as Hot Springs State Park. These hot springs have always been sacred to our people, our ancestors went there for healing, including after the Sand Creek Massacre.
But the springs and 100 acres of land surrounding it was taken from the Wind River Reservation
and the compensation was not just nor fair. The federal government turned around and gave the
land to the state since settlers had been pushing into the area.
In a recent letter to me, Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon recognized this, he stated: “I fully acknowledge that the trauma of these events strongly impacts Tribal members even now, and that the wounds are still deep and fresh. While it may seem to some that the days of forced relocation and violent conflict are far behind us, that brutal history is all too recent for many, sometimes only removed by one or two generations as noted in your letter.”
He then proceeded to describe what I consider a continuation of the same: the unilateral state decision-making process that started with a Master Plan almost 10 years ago for the development of the springs and continues with the current decisions handing facilities over to out-of-state operators aiming at the further commercialization of our sacred waters.
This does not meet the standards of consultation with Indigenous Peoples necessary under U.S. law, let alone the requirement of prior informed consent of the Arapaho and Cheyenne Peoples under international law, including under the United Nations (U.N.) Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that the United States government has committed to implementing.
This single largest source of sacred hot springs in the world is a sacred site to our people. My grandparents and parents taught me to always make offerings there and they took me to the privately owned Star Plunge pool to swim as a child. I have since taken my children and most recently my 3-week-old grandson there to swim at this place that continues to facilitate intergenerational Indigenous and local access, which stands to be forever changed, without our peoples’ necessary input and consent.
The state points to the publicly owned bathhouse, which it considers as a fulfillment of the promise to give the Indigenous Peoples free access, in the past elders and people with disabilities could easily access individual pools there, which is no longer the case, and access is limited to 20 minutes. The waters there are also too hot for little children, so the Star Plunge is the main place where our people have been coming together in 3+ generations for collective healing.
Most recently the local family that has been operating the Star Plunge for three generations and stands to be expropriated organized a free swim for the Northern Arapaho and Cheyenne and more than 700 of our people came and around the beginning of August the Eastern Shoshone will also be joining in. This is an example of benefit-sharing with the main obligations falling to the state. What the state has to understand is that when we as Indigenous Peoples talk about access and benefit-sharing it connects to the requirement of FPIC, which requires dealing with us as decision-makers regarding access to our lands and waters, and the site of Hot Springs State Park.
In order to truly address the intergenerational effects of genocide, access and benefit-sharing regarding the Hot Springs State Park have to be implemented with the Arapaho and Cheyenne people right now.
But the dispossession doesn’t stop at the Wyoming border.
It is important to acknowledge that our people were deliberately targeted by genocidal strategies, first by the U.S. Army and militias like the Colorado volunteers; followed by an even more devious strategy to go after our children, through the so-called boarding school system. It really had nothing to do with education; it exploited our children as forced labor, while assimilating them by literally beating our indigenous languages and ways of thinking out of them.
Many died and were buried on the grounds of these institutions, too often in unmarked graves. The forceful removal of Indigenous children meets the international definition of genocide under Article 2(e) of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
In 2020, Colorado lawmakers passed a bill titled “Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Public Schools” (House Bill 1336), which requires completion of such a course as a condition of high school graduation.
Yet the Colorado Boarding School system was not included in this recent statute, not even after the Colorado Legislature commissioned House Bill 1327 and was presented with a study into how these boarding schools were genocidal. What is almost more shocking is that the Sand Creek Massacre is not explicitly listed for study in the bill, although the then-governor of Colorado Hickenlooper presented an official apology on the 150th anniversary which makes it come up on its 10-year mark this year.
Actually, the only two genocides explicitly mentioned are the “holocaust meaning the systemic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews and five million individuals targeted for their religion, disability, or identity by the Nazi Regime” and the Armenian Genocide. As William Zessar, who lost many of his relatives to the Holocaust, and has been advocating to amend the statute said: “To fail to recognize the genocides that happened in the very land where we sought refuge, means to diminish all other genocides.”
As a fellow intergenerational survivor of genocide, I wholeheartedly agree, there can be no competition or for that matter comparison between genocides: We have to condemn them all; they are cumulative on the soul of humanity. What signal does the Colorado legislature send by not explicitly listing the Sand Creek Massacre and the Colorado Boarding School system, when they constitute incidents of genocide in the state?
Some might point to the discretion passed on to the Colorado State Board of Education to set the standards for the teaching of the course and that they can add and for that matter also remove genocides by way of a simple majority vote. They have to date added eight more genocides, among them the Sand Creek Massacre, although it remains the only one among them that does not have educational materials attached to it, that facilitate the teaching of the respective content.
And they have not added the Colorado Indian Boarding School system, contributing to the lack of education on this incident of genocide in the state. There is no doubt that a simple vote at the State Board of Education, does not equal the standard and protection of having incidents of genocide directly listed in the statute, and that is why as a direct descendant of families impacted by the Sand Creek Massacre and the Indian Boarding School system, I urge the amendment of the Colorado Holocaust and Genocide Studies Statute to explicitly list “genocides of Native American Peoples, including the Sand Creek Massacre and the Colorado Indian Boarding School system,” to ensure that they are taught to all students in public high schools.
There is no better way to commemorate the upcoming 160th anniversary of the Sand Creek Massacre on November 29, than for legislators to make a commitment to do this. Public education about this topic is key in the lead-up to the 150th anniversary of Colorado becoming a state in two years. I call on the Colorado 150/America 250 Commission to champion this.
In Montana, we will commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Battle of the Little Bighorn at the same time, when our ancestors took a stand for our way of life, which includes our Indigenous languages, way of thinking, our identities and our spiritual connection to the land, all things that the Indian Boarding school system tried to sever.
And 2026 will also mark the 250th anniversary of the creation of the United States, with the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, in Pennsylvania.
Too many U.S. citizens do not know that Pennsylvania hosted a crucial institution in the Indian boarding school system in the United States: The Carlisle Indian Industrial School was set up by the U.S. Army in 1879, within 3 years of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, targeting especially children of leaders of Plains Indian Tribes. While a number of my great-grandparents had been at the Sand Creek Massacre and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, they saw their children, my grandparents, targeted to attend first the Carlisle Indian Industrial School and the next generations Indian Boarding Schools in other states.
The systemic genocidal intent is clear, and as their descendants, we carry the intergenerational effects. Thankfully our Indigenous teachings passed on from generation to generation also carry many counter-remedies that the world needs now more than ever, and we would be ready to share these as part of learning about genocide.
Northern Cheyenne traditional Chief Phillip Whiteman Jr, Heoveve’keso (Yellowbird), comes from long lines of chiefs and works with Indigenous Peoples across North America. He has developed his own teaching model based on ancestral wisdom and his life experience to counter the intergenerational effects of genocide with indigenous teachings. More information can be found at: phillipwhitemanjr.org
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Twelve miles shy of the Teton County line on a 40-acre slice of Fremont County with five mountain springs and a creek, Dubois resident Gary Engman is building a 9,000-square-foot, off-grid mansion from reclaimed antique wood that he’s calling the Cowboy Starship.
The property, which has just listed with luxury real estate brokerage Engel and Volkers for $7.95 million, is surrounded by the Absaroka and Wind River mountain ranges. Construction is expected to finish sometime in August.
Real estate broker Jo Gathercole said the home has already had a number of international callers expressing interest, and it’s not even finished yet.
“It’s got solar, it has diesel generators,” she said. “If you wanted internet, you’d put in a Starlink. It’s completely off-grid luxury.”
Off-grid cabins are not unheard of, especially in Wyoming, Gathercole added. But an off-grid mansion?
“It’s unusual. When I first saw it, it was kind of stunning to think he was doing this. He’s more than a builder. I think of him as an artist,” she said about what Engman’s building. “He’s actually creating art with this home, which makes it very unique in my mind.”
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Gary Engman in the “war room” of the Cowboy Starship he’s building. The room will become the master bedroom once the home is completed. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) -
The horses in this photo are grazing near where a mama grizzly and her cubs played the day before. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily)
Why Pay $40 Million To Be In Teton County?
Engman has chosen his canvas for the home with care.
“This is just a spectacular location,” he told Cowboy State Daily, gesturing toward Ramshorn Mountain. “And I think the house looks like a starship that’s landed on top of a Wyoming mountain.”
It’s not the first luxury home Engman, a former seafood magnate, has built, and isn’t likely to be the last.
Engman is betting he can expand the luxury market to this slice of Fremont County with homes priced more favorably when compared to ultra-wealthy Jackson Hole.
Based on his research, Engman believes this is the first large-scale, ultra-luxury spec home built in Fremont County.
The home, Engman said, is comparable to some of the $40 million homes sold in Teton County.
“One of the houses I’m involved with in Jackson is going on the market for $40 million, and it’s the same size as this,” Engman said. “It’s on 15 acres, and not as nice a lot as this 40 acres.
“To me, that house is very nice, but not as nice as this one.”
He gestured toward the corner of a fence line about 1,000 feet from the house and said he’d seen a grizzly bear momma with two cubs eating grass there while he was having lunch Wednesday.
He’s also seen elk, deer, and antelope browsing through the property’s surrounding pastures.
“I have more wildlife on my ranch than there is in Yellowstone,” he said with a chuckle. “This is going to, I know this will sell quickly.
“When you look at all the traffic and congestion in Jackson now, and you can buy, for under $10 million, a 40-acre property with a 9,000-square-foot house an hour from the Jackson airport or 20 minutes from the Dubois airport, where you can land any private jet and you save $30 million?”
In his mind, that $30 million covers a private jet and then some, making his property a much more logical deal for those who want to be in or near Jackson Hole.
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The view outside of the Cowboy Starship. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) -
Gary Engman points to the area where he saw a mama grizzly bear and cubs playing Wednesday. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) -
The bar is going here, where this plywood is holding tools and other items for construction workers. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily)
Of Ghost Mills And Shipwrecks
His company located in Dubois also supplied the reclaimed, antique lumber that Brush Creek Ranch near Saratoga used to built The Farm, Engman said.
Restoration Lumber Co. produces 2 million to 3 million board feet of reclaimed antique lumber annually and employs 30-40 people.
For the Cowboy Starship, he’s using redwood planks sourced from Napa Valley’s enormous wine vats for the deck, giving their surface a patina of old purples and reddish brown.
Overhead, vintage 1910 heavy trusses salvaged from Bumble Bee’s salmon cannery in Washington span the ceilings, tying the mansion to a working waterfront that no longer exists.
“Everything here has a story, a history,” he said. “It has provenance.”
Not only do they tell a story, they are massively strong. They’ll hold a snow load up to 200 pounds per square foot, Engman said.
The front door, a massive dark brown, is made from old-growth redwood planks transported to the Sea of Cortez more than 150 years ago. They were salvaged from an Indonesian shipwreck.
The double doors to either side are salvaged Yosemite Pine cut to build booming mine towns in California and date to around 1860.
Gold mines, saw mills, cannery operations — Engman only buys wood from places he is sure can’t be saved or that have no historical value.
Dismantling is done surgically, cataloguing each beam, which will later be custom cut to size for its new home.
Inside the Cowboy Starship, he’s bringing special reclaimed items for the interior, including an ornate bar from the old Wyoming bar in Lander, built in 1890. He sees that as a particular centerpiece with its ornately carved wood and mirrored face.
Beyond the bar are picture windows framed with more antique wood, which in turn frame up Ramshorn Mountain like art in a museum. To get to the breathtaking view, Engman wants people to know they’re not just crossing a room. They’re crossing centuries of history.
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Wood from old wine vats in California were used to make the deck for the Cowboy Starship. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) -
The entrance to the Cowboy Starship. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) -
The reclaimed wood still has 1800s-era square-head nails. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) -
A decoration over the entrance to the Cowboy Starship. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily)
For The Love Of History
Engman’s obsession with history tracks back to an old saw mill he bought to reclaim its wood after he decided to pivot from a business selling log cabin kits to buyers in Japan.
“It had a lot of spirit to it,” Engman said. “Something about the spirit of that 150-year-old wood somehow got into my psyche. A lot of these saw mills and salmon canneries were all going out of business. So these huge buildings, built in the 1800s, became available.
“I started buying any of them that I could. I’ve bought enough buildings and antique wood to probably build 1,000 homes of this size.”
Still, he has a code about which buildings he will buy for salvage.
“If a structure can be saved and has any historical value, I will not take it down,” he said. “I very much believe in living history. For instance, if somebody came to me and said, ‘I’ve got this big barn in North Dakota, will you purchase it or I’ll give it to you if y ou take it down?’ I’ve never taken down a barn because I feel that would be destroying our heritage.”
If they still wanted to sell or give it away, he’d work with the owner to put together an organization to raise money to save the barn rather than destroy it.
“I’ve done that probably a dozen times,” he said. “There’ll be a big barn or something that really can be saved, I’ll donate all the material to save it.”
It’s important for future generations to see the past in full living color, Engman said.
“To see and understand what the pioneers and the Native American people went through, just to survive in this country,” he said. “You destroy all the beautiful antique structures and replace them with trailer parks, what is an 18-year-old going to learn from that?”
Engman’s obsession with history doesn’t stop at salvaged timbers. He sits on the board for Fremont County’s museum foundation.
Once the Cowboy Starship is complete, he plans to host a party there as a fundraiser where he expects to raise around $100,000 by donating a weeklong charter on his 110-foot super yacht. He’s also considering a historical display of recent artifacts he found while traveling through Arizona.
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From a distance, the Cowboy Starship has been designed to look like a space vessel — after re-entering orbit and burning up the exterior. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) -
The Cowboy Starship is surrounded by the Absaroka Mountains and the Wind River Range. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) -
The route to Cowboy Starship is along a remote dirt road, but has awesome views, like this one of Ramshorn Mountain. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily) -
These two horses roam free at the Cowboy Starship. (Renee Jean, Cowboy State Daily)
From Starship To Stewardship
It’s also important to Engman to build new structures that can become one-of-a-kind legacies, like the Cowboy Starship near Dubois.
That one is actually the second of the “starships.” The first was a 20,000-square-foot mansion Sun Valley at a ski resort in Idaho.
Sun Valley, Engman said, is “probably the most popular ski resort in the United States,” and offers a different kind of setting. There’s world-class skiing, a celebrity cachet, and a market that’s used to ultra-luxury builds.
The success of that project helped set the template for what he’s now doing in Fremont County, but this time he’s betting on something a little different than a crowded ski town.
“That was my last house,” Engman said. “It took me a year and half to finish that one. And then I bought the ranch here (near Dubois) with the idea of building a spec house.
“I don’t need to sell it. Maybe I won’t sell it,” he added, staring down at the corner where the grizzly momma played with her cubs the day before.
Then he flashed a smile and said, “But I probably will, and then I’ll just build another one.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
Four-time NFR heeler Trey Yates has been at the top of his game, placing at every rodeo he entered between July 9 and July 12. With consistency leading the way, Yates has established a comfortable lead in the Mountain States Circuit Standings.
NFR Open at the Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo
Yates punched his ticket to Colorado Springs after winning the average at the 2025 Mountain States Circuit Finals with Garrett Tonozzi. The Pueblo native also claimed the year-end circuit title.
During Pool A of the NFR Open, Tonozzi and Yates secured their spot in the finals after clocking a 16.3 on two head. In Round 1, the team stopped the clock in 10.6 seconds to win fourth. They followed up their fourth place with a second-place finish in round 2 with a run of 5.7 seconds.
The Mountain States Average Champs will compete again on July 18, looking to secure that huge NFR Open win.
Circuit Rodeo Success
After changing roping partners in June, Yates has found success with header Riley Kittle at several rodeos, including many in his circuit.
For the first time in his career, Yates took home first place at the Cattlemen’s Days Inc. Rodeo. He heeled his steer in 4.4 seconds to win $3,384. Yates also entered the calf roping, where he placed sixth and clinched the all-around title.
In Monte Vista, Kittle and Yates placed third with a time of 5.3 seconds, winning $1,757 at the San Luis Valley Ski-Hi Stampede.
The Laramie Jubilee Days wrapped up July 12, and after the dust settled, Yates had added another $2,202 to his busy weekend wins. He and Kittle placed fourth in Laramie with a 5.4-second run.
Despite some tough luck in the first round of the Sheridan WYO Rodeo, Kittle and Yates roped their steer in 5.5 seconds to place second in Round 2, adding $2,832 to the team’s earnings.
World Standings
Yates has consistently been within the Top 15 for most of the year and is pursuing his fifth trip to Las Vegas. The 2018 NFR Average Champ currently sits at number ten in the PRCA World Standings with $73,598.33.
He also leads the Mountain States Circuit in both the heeling ($29,352.04) and the all-around ($30,654.88) after his success in Gunnison.
After solidifying his spot for his fourth NFR at the 2025 Governor’s Cup, Yates is looking to head back to Sioux Falls for that season-defining rodeo. He sits in the sixteenth spot for the Cinch Playoff Series with a total of 463.04 points.
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Douglas photographer Mark Panasuk enjoys transforming a dark scene into something beautiful.
He’s always on the lookout for another interesting setting, and when he found an abandoned stone ranch house north of Lost Springs, Wyoming, he knew he had something special.
Unlike the famous line from poet Dylan Thomas, he portrayed the property as going “gentle into that good night.”
Digging into its history, Panasuk became even more enamored with capturing the stone walls and grounds with the Milky Way above it because it once was home to one of the most successful Back ranchers in the West — Jim Edwards.
“It was kind of a unique house in that it was big house, two story, out in the prairie here in eastern Wyoming,” Panasuk said. “It had several buildings … and he was really inventive because he put in that water tower.”
The tower was built with an opening that appeared to allow a space for a fire that would keep the water from freezing in the winter.
The house had a bathroom with toilet, shower, and the property also featured a stone garage.
There is evidence of several other outbuildings that once were around it. Several accounts of the property state that Edwards was the first in the area to have indoor bathroom facilities.
Panasuk got permission from the current landowner to photograph the house and grounds, and the result shows the Milky Way like an arch above it framing the property.
He said he put a light inside the house, which has lost its windows, because he thought it made a better piece of art.
Creating the final image required a combination of 35 photos and three-minute exposures to fully reveal the Milky Way.
He used a computer program to stitch the digital images together to make it one.
Panasuk said he spoke with some of the ranchers around the property and learned that a father or grandfather knew Edwards, who made a name for himself well beyond Wyoming.
Turns out that Edwards is a featured name at the Homestead National Historic Park in Beatrice, Nebraska, and Ebony Magazine once profiled him in its March 1949 issue that had Billy Eckstein on the cover.
Magazine Profile
The profile was titled “The Last Days of Jim Edwards” and characterized him as a “legend” in Wyoming and a name that would remembered well beyond his death.
A history of Edwards written for the Black Past website says he was “one of the most successful African American homesteaders in the state of Wyoming.”
And “Pages From Converse County’s Past” compiled in the 1980s revealed that he was commonly known as “(N-word) Jim.”
But that word did not stop Edwards from becoming a successful rancher and business man. His coming and goings had fairly frequent mentions in the social columns of the local rural newspapers.
The Black Past account of Edwards’ life says that he was born on Feb. 14, 1874, and arrived in Wyoming in 1900 with his father and a group of Italian miners responding to newspaper ads about work in a Lusk coal mine.
The miners drove Edwards out, and he walked to Lusk and found work on the Wilson Brother’s Running Water Ranch.
Over the next 14 years, he rose to the rank of foreman and was a good sheepman, cowboy and horse trainer.
In his final years at the ranch, a dispute with the Wilson brothers led to a lawsuit that Edwards won in 1923, giving him $3,000 in back wages plus interest. The Wyoming Supreme Court increased it to $4,000.
The Lusk Free Lance on Nov. 1, 1923, reported that the dispute had been over an accounting of his share of sheep as well as his wages.
1913 Homestead
Meanwhile in 1913, the Wilsons helped him homestead acreage on Harney Creek.
Edwards recruited other blacks to homestead on land around him, and he eventually bought their properties.
“Converse County’s Past” states that Edwards married Lethel Dawson in 1914 in Denver, and that her parents cooked on a river boat on the Mississippi River
When her father contracted tuberculosis, they moved to Denver for his health.
A story looking back on Lost Springs in the Casper Star-Tribune on April 6, 1974, reports that Lethel’s father was a full-blooded Indian and her mother black.
After her marriage to Edwards, she traveled to Denver from time to time to sing on radio stations.
The Lusk Standard newspaper on Sept. 12, 1919, reported that “Mrs. Jim Edwards” had just become the “happy” owner of a new piano.
“Now, we’ll have some jazz,” the editor wrote.
In the Ebony Magazine story a few years after his wife’s death, Edwards was still in charge of his 14,000-acre Sixteen-Bar-One Ranch.
He had named it the Sixteen-Bar-One because it represented the ratio of white ranchers to black ones.
Edwards told the reporter that when he first arrived in Wyoming and then later set up his homestead, gunplay with neighboring ranchers and would-be outlaws was not uncommon. He was tested.
“No man will ever run Jim Edwards off of his land,” Edwards told the magazine. “Let ’em know right away that you’re going to fight for what you own. Just because a man’s colored is no reason for people to think he’s a coward.”
That philosophy likely was part of the reason for a story in the Niobrara County News on Dec. 3, 1914, when Edwards still served as herder for the Wilson Brothers and had a “mix-up” with a herder from another ranch over their bands of sheep.
Edwards had the man arrested, but later “dismissed the case and paid all the costs.”
Sheep ‘Straying’
Another mention of Edwards in the Lusk Herald a year earlier had him complaining that he had a lot of trouble with sheep “straying away.”
The Ebony account said that at one time, Edwards had 20,000 acres of land with oil rights, and during his normal operations had more than 1,000 head of cattle, 9,000 sheep, 200 horses, 5,000 chickens and 500 hogs.
He told the reporter that what he considered most important in his success was a “clean mind and a few years ago a pistol.”
“I didn’t have to use my pistol much, but then you don’t have to when you make your decision to stand at the outset,” he added.
Edwards built the stone house himself, helped pay for the construction of the Congregational Church in Lusk — where his wife sang in the choir — and told the reporter that Lethel had been “the guiding influence in my life.”
And it turned out that ranching was not his only interest and business success.
A feature story in the Casper Tribune-Herald on July 16, 1945, profiled a restaurant co-owned by Mary Simms, a black woman, and Edwards that specialized in Southern fried chicken.
“In spite of rationing which has made it difficult to obtain the steaks to fill demand, the restaurant has kept abreast of the demands for the excellent fried chicken which has been its specialty,” the newspaper reported. “With the generous helping of chicken, French fries, a vegetable, dessert and the special golden brown succulent biscuits are served.”
Edwards’ love Lethel died of leukemia in 1945, according to the Converse County history, and he sold his ranch that contained 18 sections to four buyers in 1950.
The Scottsbluff Star-Herald on Jan. 7, 1951, recounted Edwards’ death at age 76.
“A Scottsbluff man died from suffocation Saturday night after water boiled away in a pot in which chicken was being cooked filling a basement room with smoke,” the newspaper reported. “The dead man was James E. Edwards, age unknown, who rented a room at 801 East Eighth Street.”
He is buried in Scottsbluff.
Panasuk said he was happy to get a photo of the once prosperous ranch while it still stands.
“The sad part about it is that probably about in 10 years it’s all going to be gone,” he said.
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
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