Wyoming
Own a 50-Acre Private Ranch With 27 Buildings in the Heart of Wyoming’s Teton Mountains
Listing of the Day
Location: Moose, Wyoming
Price: $39.5 million
On the market for the first time in 54 years, Lost Creek Ranch offers 27 buildings, including a main lodge, a spa and 10 rustic cabins, and easy access to a range of recreational activities.
The property, which could easily be converted into a private family retreat, is nestled between Grand Teton National Park and Bridger-Teton National Forest, said listing agent Latham Jenkins, of Live Water Properties Jackson Hole. For would-be buyers who are looking at the ranch as a family compound, “they don’t need to do anything. The trend has been that these historic ranches are all slowly being converted for private use,” Jenkins said.
Buyers have been drawn to historic ranches like Lost Creek because their surrounded by an “endless playground” of public park land, he added.
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“There is a real scarcity of these private enclaves surrounded by federally protected land. Lost Creek is a 50-acre island, surrounded by millions of acres of protected areas,” he said.
The ranch, which is being sold furnished and fully turnkey, was the cover feature in a 1993 issue of Architectural Digest and it was used for a scene in the iconic 1953 Western movie “Shane” and an episode of the TV series “Modern Family,” according to the listing.
“This setting is what makes it so unique,” he said. “Lost Creek has 180-degree views of the Teton Range, which is one of the most iconic mountain ranges in the world. I love the Teddy Roosevelt quote, ‘These are the first mountains I’ve seen that look like mountains should.’”
Visitors to the property are “just stunned by the views,” Jenkins said. “These ranches really give people a chance to experience the West. They get to ride horses for a week and play cowboy.”
Lost Creek, which has welcomed guests for nearly a century, was bought by Jerry Halpin, a Virginia real estate developer, and his wife, Helen, with partners Karl and Tina Weber in the late 1960s, according to the listing. The Halpins, who are buried on the ranch, became sole owners in 1989.
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“Jerry died in 2017 and Helen a year later,” Jenkins said. The ranch is being sold by the Halpin Family Trust.
There are an additional 9,000 square feet that have not been built on, he said. New structures might include a main house, a manager’s residence or additional cabins.
“Lost Creek Ranch is entitled for a main house and a new caretaker’s house,” Jenkins said. “There is plenty of opportunity for the next owner to continue improving the property,” he said. The existing buildings are not winterized.
The 7,000-square-foot main lodge was built in 1930 and expanded in 1988, according to the listing. It includes a great room, a dining room, a bar, a pool room and a 1,700-square-foot deck.
The main lodge could easily be converted into a large single-family house by new owners who want to make the ranch private, he said. “They don’t have to do anything other than decide that is how they want to use it.”
MANSION GLOBAL BOUTIQUE: High-End Kitchen Tools for the Home Chef
The three oldest cabins, also built in 1930, are duplex units, and the other seven have two bedrooms and can sleep up to eight people, he said.
There is lots of wildlife to see, he added. “Jackson Hole has the world’s largest elk herd and there are moose running around and the occasional bear.”
Stats
With a total of 36,094 interior square feet, the ranch offers a main lodge, 10 rustic cabins, a spa, a working barn and nine employee housing units.
Amenities
The 5,000-square-foot spa features six treatment rooms, cardio and fitness areas, steam and sauna, a coffee bar, a heated outdoor pool and a hot tub. There is also a corral and a working barn.
Existing permits in Grand Teton National Park offer floating and fishing in the nearby Snake River and guided horseback riding and self-guided hiking.
Neighborhood Notes
The town of Jackson is about 30 minutes from the ranch, and it’s 15 miles to Jackson Hole Airport, Jenkins said.
“Lost Creek has this connectivity to the town of Jackson and the airport,” he said. “Other ranches are much harder to get to.”
Agent: Latham Jenkins, Live Water Properties Jackson Hole
View the original listing.
Write to Listing of the Day
Wyoming
In-N-Out Burger Slams Wyoming, And Wyomingites Say It Can Stay Out
CHEYENNE — If you ask the folks at In-N-Out Burger, Wyoming is one of the worst places on the planet to “find yourself waking up in.”
Not Iran. Not Colima, Mexico, the murder capital of the world. Not even North Korea.
According to the popular fast-food chain that’s grown a cult following for its burgers and Animal-style fries, Wyoming and Florida are the two places people should least want to be.
“Don’t ever take California and In-N-Out for granted,” the company posted to X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday. “You could find yourself waking up in Florida or Wyoming one day.”
The chain has more than 400 outlets, most in California. There are none in Wyoming or Florida.
Why Wyoming is somehow so undesirable is a mystery to the people who actually live here. And they feel the same, telling Cowboy State Daily that if that’s the opinion In-N-Out Burger has of Wyoming, it can just stay out.
“If that’s how they feel, they can just keep themselves in California,” said Cheyenne resident Jae Brown. “I don’t like In-N-Out anyway. They must have something against the good life.”
Why Wyoming?
The closest In-N-Out Burger location to Wyoming is in Loveland, Colorado, about 52 miles south of Cheyenne. Contact information for local restaurants isn’t public, with all listing the corporate office toll-free number.
Cowboy State Daily called the company’s corporate communications and marketing team and was told any questions had to be emailed to In-N-Out Burger and that someone would respond with answers. Nobody had responded by the time this story was published.
We asked:
• What does In-N-Out Burger have against Wyoming?
• Why would it be bad for someone to wake up here, or in Florida?
• Is this a political statement, that Wyoming and Florida are big red states, while California and In-N-Out are blue; so, therefore, it’s better to not be in Wyoming or Florida?
• We have no In-N-Out Burger restaurants anywhere in Wyoming now; could that change in the future? Are there plans for Wyoming to have In-N-Out at some point?
• What is your response to people who live in Wyoming or Florida who may be offended by the post?
What’s Not To Love?
If there’s a contest of whether it’s better to be in Wyoming or California, “It’s Wyoming, hands down,” said Betsy Anderson of Cheyenne.
“I’ve been waking up in Wyoming for a long, long time,” she said, adding that there’s nothing special about In-N-Out. “I’ve tried it once, and it was a hamburger.”
John Borges spent his morning Friday ringing a bell in front of a Salvation Army red kettle at the Walmart off Dell Range Boulevard. He said he loves In-N-Out Burgers and would love for there to be one in Wyoming.
But he said the chain is 180 degrees wrong on its opinion of the Cowboy State.
“I’ve been here since I was 16 and I love it,” he said. “There’s no place I’d rather live.”
Of the locals who chimed in on the In-N-Out post, nearly all threw out examples of why Wyoming not only isn’t a bad place to live, but better than California. Those include:
• No huge traffic jams going to and from work.
• No income tax, and much lower sales, property and other taxes.
• Fewer people.
• Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. All said Yellowstone alone is enough to tip the scales in Wyoming’s favor.
Wyomingites Are Just Smarter
As much as In-N-Out has its underground following, so does Five Guys, another popular fast-food burger chain famous for its burgers and hand-cut fries.
One of the big differences is Five Guys loves Wyoming and does a brisk business at its outlet in the Frontier Mall in Cheyenne, said Darlene Curby, who was busy taking orders as the restaurant opened Friday.
“I was born and raised here and wouldn’t want to be anywhere else,” Curby said, adding there are other benefits working for Five Guys. “We make good money here in Wyoming and it goes farther. And the taxes for businesses is a big deal.”
Wyoming’s business-friendly tax environment alone should be enough for In-N-Out — or anyone – to want to set up shop in the Cowboy State, she said.
Andy Kuntz was ordering a drink and fries — “just a little snack” — and said he loves In-N-Out Burger.
“But this is still better,” he added, pointing at the Five Guys menu board.
All the other debate aside, there’s one thing that tips the scales in Wyoming’s favor over California, said Nadine Murphy, who had just finished shopping at Walmart.
“I think it’s so much better here. I lived in New York, and I would take Wyoming any day,” she said. “And besides, in Wyoming we’re smart enough not to try and pet the buffalo.”
Greg Johnson can be reached at greg@cowboystatedaily.com.
Wyoming
Wyoming's most famous neon cowboy is getting a makeover – WyoFile
One of Wyoming’s most famous cowboys, recently dubbed “Earl,” was plucked from his longtime, remote roadside home of Powder River and is undergoing a much-needed makeover 35 miles down the road in Casper.
The iconic Tumble Inn sign that had greeted passersby along Highway 26 since the early 1960s had grown worse for wear in recent decades, but it still outlived the establishment that once offered “Sizzlin Steaks.” Despite its deteriorating condition — wind-shattered neon glass, growing patches of rust and fading colors — the relic of Americana never lost its charm.
“Driving the road through Powder River from Colorado to Cody over many decades, Jonathan [Thorne] noticed that the sign was falling further and further into decay, and rescuing it became an obsession of sorts,” Thorne’s sister Sarah Mentock told WyoFile.
After years of sleuthing, Thorne finally located the owner and struck a deal that required him to buy the entire lot. The siblings then recruited the talents of neon-glass bender Connie Morgan and John Huff — a motorhead, metal craftsman and all-around tinkerer with a large shop in downtown Casper’s Yellowstone District.
In fact, both Morgan, who owns and operates GloW Neon Lights, and Huff had long shared an appreciation for the sign and worried it might waste away — or worse, suffer at the hands of vandals.
“These old signs, to me, they’re artwork,” Morgan said. “If you look at those old neon signs from the ‘50s and ‘60s, that’s not just a sign advertising a hotel or motel. It’s a piece of art.”
The restoration mission began with a good, eight-hour power washing. Huff had to remove decades of bird skeletons, bird poop and nesting material from Earl’s innards. With his hat removed, Earl was mounted on a large mechanical rotisserie so Huff and his crew could comfortably labor over the sign, carefully sanding multiple layers of paint, tracing lines and rewiring electrical connections.
“I’ve looked at this for days on end wondering, ‘What was this guy thinking when he came up with this idea and put it on this metal?’” Huff said, adding that the original artist remains a mystery. “I feel like I kind of know this guy. I don’t know who he was, but I got a pretty good idea of his style and the way he did things.
“It wasn’t precision like new digital artwork,” Huff added. “Some guy painted this by hand. He didn’t go render it on a computer. He visioned it and then he drew it on a big scale. That’s not how things are done these days.”
A few doors down, Morgan is recreating the neon lights — a task that requires careful forensics to determine the original colors. She was able to salvage some of the original glass that was still intact, while bending hundreds of feet of new neon tubing true to the original design.
“The fact that any of it is still intact is pretty amazing, so I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel making it all new,” Morgan said. “Whoever did the glass-bending on it was pretty phenomenal, so I want to keep it as an homage to the guy who made it originally.”
The restoration team plans to mount the Tumble Inn sign in front of the Yellowstone Garage Bar and Grill in downtown Casper, with an unveiling and celebration on Memorial Day weekend. Huff and his crew are designing an observation deck so people can take photos and enjoy the piece of Wyoming history.
“It’s not a sign,” Huff said. “This is art. This is nostalgia. We’re not doing a sign, we’re not trying to promote a business. But we’re preserving history and the old-school way of doing things.”
Visit this website to learn more about the Tumble Inn sign’s history and the restoration process.
BEFORE YOU GO… If you learned something from this article, pay it forward and contribute to WyoFile. Our work is funded by readers like you who are committed to unbiased journalism that works for you, not for the algorithms.
Wyoming
University of Wyoming trustees punt on concealed-carry vote as debate over guns on campus continues – WyoFile
The University of Wyoming Board of Trustees deferred a decision Thursday on whether to adopt a concealed-carry policy for UW’s campus after hearing from students and staff who overwhelmingly oppose the change.
“I think it’s prudent for the committee to step back, get together, maybe sometime this afternoon briefly to compare notes and make sure we have not missed an issue that was brought up today in public comments that should be considered in the rule,” Trustee John McKinley said at the meeting.
With few exceptions, opposition to concealed carry on campus defined Thursday’s public comment period, with UW students, staff and faculty citing concerns over safety and gun violence.
The policy has formally been in the works since August, when the state’s sole public four-year university sought input on possible changes to its firearms regulations following a request from Gov. Mark Gordon.
In March, the governor rejected legislation that would have done away with most gun-free zones in Wyoming and would have allowed people with concealed carry permits to bring firearms into most public spaces overseen by the state.
“This is not a veto of the notion of repealing gun free zones, it is a request to approach this topic more transparently,” Gordon wrote in his veto letter. “With the authority already in place to address this issue at a local level, I call on school districts, community colleges, and the University to take up these difficult conversations again and establish policies and provisions for their districts.”
University administration has “worked very hard to comply and to draft a rule,” UW President Ed Seidel said at the Thursday meeting.
Meantime, UW Trustee Chairman Kermit Brown made plain that the board is also keeping another branch of Wyoming’s government in mind.
“This topic is going to come up in the Legislature again [next session],” Brown said. “I will guarantee you there’s going to be a bill, and that bill is going to be an overarching reach that would go over the top of all the rules the university makes, all the rules that anybody makes, and mandate statewide what the rule in this state is going to be about carrying concealed weapons and open carry for that matter.”
Indeed, Wyoming Freedom Caucus Chairman Emeritus Rep. John Bear (R-Gillette) told WyoFile in August that eliminating gun-free zones across the state would be a priority of the group of hard-line Republicans in 2025.
Since then, the Freedom Caucus won control of the state House of Representatives in the general election and is expected to secure leadership positions when Republican lawmakers caucus this weekend.
Brown, who previously served as Wyoming’s Speaker of the House, called on those who were “impassioned” and “dedicated today to the position you took with this board,” to not limit their advocacy to Thursday’s meeting.
“You have to go to Cheyenne when they have those hearings and those meetings,” Brown said. “You have to talk to your individual legislators, and you have to go to Cheyenne and make your wishes known.
“Because this board is going to do whatever it’s going to do. We’re trying to find a position that maybe will be acceptable to the Legislature, but we don’t know whether the Legislature will accept it, or whether they’ll cast all this aside and do their own thing,” Brown said.
The discussion comes amid increasing political pressure on UW’s decisions ranging from the now-shuttered Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, to athletics and longtime services for marginalized students.
The trustees’ vote on the policy is now set for 10:15 a.m. Friday.
Amendments and public comment
Like Thursday, the public comment at a Monday town hall on campus was overwhelmingly characterized by opposition.
Many of those who spoke Monday raised specific concerns about UW’s residence halls as well as its Early Care and Education Center (ECEC), which operates as a preschool and daycare, among other things.
In response, the trustees added residence halls and the ECEC and its grounds to the areas on campus exempt from the proposed concealed-carry rules ahead of Thursday’s meeting.
Several ECEC staff and parents thanked the board for doing so at Thursday’s meeting.
The board also added Half Acre Recreation and Wellness Center — the gym on campus — as well as “fitness facilities and indoor practice areas” to the exemptions.
Caroline McCracken-Flesher, a faculty member, pointed to the areas and instances that remain.
“UW is a place of education. Among the exemptions listed in this document, places of education are conspicuous by their absence,” McCracken-Flesher said. “By this document, protected spaces are the Legislature, its meetings, its committees, any meeting of a governmental entity, perhaps including this board, [and] Faculty Senate meetings. In other words, places frequented by those who vote on this document.”
University classrooms and faculty offices, which are not exempt from the policy, are “places of ideas,” McCracken-Flesher said.
“That means they are necessarily places of contention. They’re places of great anxiety, they’re places of academic rivalry. They are not places for weaponry.”
Liz Pearson, a student, said the university’s focus should be elsewhere.
“We have a huge mental health crisis on the UW campus,” Pearson told the board. “Why aren’t we talking about that? Why aren’t we talking about the issues that have arisen due to DEI being defunded? Why aren’t we talking about students that currently feel unsafe on campus due to campus life and culture?”
Pearson also pointed to the results of UW’s survey, which showed that 64.4% of respondents wanted the university’s no-guns policy to remain the same.
The one person to speak in favor of the policy Thursday was Brandon Calloway, a third-year law student.
“Under the current policy, uncertainty prevails,” Calloway said, pointing to the fact that concealed carry is already allowed on certain university grounds, such as the central green space on campus known as Prexy’s Pasture.
“If someone carries a concealed weapon and uses it to protect themselves or others from an active assailant, they would violate university policy and break the law, even if saving lives,” Calloway said. “The proposal eliminates this contradiction.”
The most recent version of the draft policy can be found here. The proposed changes are in red.
BEFORE YOU GO… If you learned something from this article, pay it forward and contribute to WyoFile. Our work is funded by readers like you who are committed to unbiased journalism that works for you, not for the algorithms.
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