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People And Places That Make Wyoming Special

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People And Places That Make Wyoming Special


Wyoming is famous for its rugged scenic beauty, as I discovered on a recent visit. But the state’s people and places are as interesting as the vistas.

Southeast Wyoming grew quickly following the arrival of the Union Pacific Railroad in Cheyenne in November 1867. Cheyenne was called the “Magic City of the Plains,” growing to 5000 people by 1868. Cheyenne became a hub for railroad maintenance, shipping and the cattle boom. The town became the capital of the Territory and later the state of Wyoming.

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Erasmus Nagle, who made his in lumber, cattle and groceries, spent $50,000 building what is now known as The Nagle Warren Mansion in 1888. It was one of the costliest homes west of the Mississippi, but Nagle could afford to live on Millionaire’s Row. At his death just two years later, he was one of the richest men in Cheyenne, worth a half million dollars.

Today the mansion has been restored as the Nagle Warren Mansion Bed and Breakfast. Its furnishings, wallpaper, cherry, mahogany, and oak woodwork and stained-glass windows are right out of the American Old West period.

However, Francis E. Warren, later the state’s first governor and U.S. senator, remarked on the “rough and tumble” atmosphere of early Cheyenne. “Every man slept with from one to a half-dozen revolvers under his pillow, for depradations [sic] of every character could be expected at any hour, day or night.” Such lawlessness no doubt led to the 1872 construction of the Wyoming Territorial Prison in Laramie.

After Nagle’s death, the house was eventually sold to Senator Warren in 1910. General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing, Buffalo Bill Cody, Teddy Roosevelt and President William Howard Taft all were guests at the mansion.

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I stayed in the Pershing room. It had red wallpaper, a vast king-size bed with a carved wooden frame, a carved wooden fireplace, and portraits and photos of the General looking stern, even with his family. Evening reading was a vintage copy of the Hemingway-edited “Men at War,” with “the 37 best war stories of all time.”

Jas Barbe, proprietor of the Mansion, is a colorful character who has been a hospitality consultant and a Cordon Bleu graduate and Michelin-starred chef. He was the owner of a buffalo herd in Centennial, Wyoming, after returning from Vietnam.

In 2021, it became his mission to restore the elegant residence once known as the “Duchess of Cheyenne.” As he serves the beautiful breakfast he cooks for guests, Barbe will entrance you with backstairs tales of The Nagle Mansion, where the ornate hand carved ceilings and stairs and the restored library and parlor takes one back to the Western version of the Gilded Age.

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Cheyenne is also home to the Wild J Trading Hat Bar and Boutique, operated by Jennifer Thompson. Ms. Thompson helps men and women create their own customized cowboy hats, accessorized with hat bands, feathers, threads, stars, playing cards, fabric roses and even spent cartridges. I chose to add a coyote and a cactus, as well as yellow feathers, part of an anti-suicide campaign spurred by the death of a local cowboy.

In Laramie Country, Las Vegas transplant Chad Brown, created Laramie County’s first licensed distillery in Pine Bluffs. Brown came from Las Vegas to open Pine Bluffs Distilling. The growing distiller is family owned and operated, and all grains are locally grown and malted on site. Variants like 5 grain whiskey, straight rye whiskey, oat whiskey, wheated bourbon, vodka and gin can be tried in the tasting room, straight or as cocktails.

Like the Nagle Warren Mansion in Cheyene, the Laramie Plains Museum at the Historic Iverson Mansion shows what life was like for the wealthy in late 19th Century Wyoming. The mansion has a collection of Victorian fixtures and furnishings, kitchenware and old appliances, and even a one-room schoolhouse.

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I wore my new hat to Torrington, a Wyoming agricultural town where one can see a livestock sale in real time. Improbably, Torrington is home to the Bread Doctor, a bakery that draws regular customers from as far away as Montana.

The origins of the popular bakery are simple. Owner Edzan Fluckinger is a doctor who came to Torrington more than 20 years ago to provide medical services. He and his wife have a daughter with Down’s Syndrome. Fluckinger learned to bake and eventually created the bakery, with the thought of having a place where his daughter could work.

The bakery employs many of Torrington’s young people, including his daughter. And its breads, pastries and carefully decorated cakes are delicious.

The city of Laramie is home to “U Dub,” or the University of Wyoming. In 1998, Matthew Shepherd, a gay student, was beaten to death near Laramie. One of the murals that are part of the Laramie Mural Project commemorates the “angels” who held sheets up like wings at the courthouse, to protect Shepherd’s family from homophobic demonstrators.

Today the city has a bohemian vibe. It has brewery and mural tours, as well as many shops and restaurants travelers will enjoy. Even the most confirmed carnivore will find something at Melissa Murphy’s 25-year-old vegetarian restaurant, Sweet Melissa, which also includes a full bar.

“What did you do for financing?” I asked Ms. Murphy. “I borrowed $2,000 from my mother 25 years ago.” She says tourists fanatically look for vegetarian restaurants, and that the students and faculty of the University have also been key customers.

Another Laramie success story is The Range Leather Company, which crafts wallets, journals, pocketbooks, business card holders and bands for Apple Watches. Range also does custom work imprinting a city name or company brand on its leather goods. Owner Kyle Koster started leather work at his kitchen table in 2014 as a hobby. Range now employs over 25 people. Its three key tenets are on its web page; Full Grain Leather, Made In The USA, and a Forever Guarantee.

Ruth Williams, owner of Sugar Mouse Cupcake House (“a little piece of England in downtown Laramie”) also has an interesting story. The tall, elegant Williams is originally from Essex, where she met her husband, who was on a Mormon mission. They married and she followed him to Laramie. She raised their six children and worked providing childcare.

But Williams had a cause; she became passionately involved with helping girls and young women ensnared in Cambodia’s sex trade. She started selling cupcakes at the Farmer’s Market to generate revenue, using recipes she had learned in England using rich cream and real sugar. After a rainstorm ruined hundreds of cupcakes, she knew she needed a storefront.

Sugar Mouse is now a frilly pink tea house for afternoon tea, with scones, crumpets, soup of the day, English stew and, of course, cupcakes. A children’s tea house in the basement is under way.

I ended my tour of Southeast Wyoming with lunch at The Malt in Saratoga, (“Burgers, BBQ, and Whiskey”) drinking a “boozy malted” Irish coffee. Then it was off to soak in a teepee at the mineral springs at the Saratoga Hot Springs Resort and enjoy a steak at 130-year-old Hotel Wolf (“Discover the Wild West”) before sadly returning to Los Angeles.

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Casper veteran David Giralt joins race for Wyoming U.S. House seat

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Casper veteran David Giralt joins race for Wyoming U.S. House seat


CASPER, Wyo. — David Giralt, a Casper-raised military veteran and conservative Republican, has announced his candidacy for Wyoming’s lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. The congressional seat is being vacated by Republican Rep. Harriet Hageman, who launched a campaign in December for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by retiring Sen. Cynthia Lummis. […]



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Rivalries and Playoff Positioning Highlight Week 11 Wyoming Girls Basketball Slate

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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)

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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

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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)

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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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WyoPreps Girls Basketball Week 1 Scores 2025-26

 

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)

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#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)

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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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Submit a Score to WyoPreps

 

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

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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.”

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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.

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“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.

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“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.

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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.

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“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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