A University of Wyoming archaeologist is the lead author on a new paper that has potentially upended what we know about the history of humanity in the Americas.
Todd Surovell, a professor and director of the George C. Frison Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Wyoming (UW), led an international, multidisciplinary team of scientists on an expedition to Monte Verde in southern Chile, one of the most revolutionary archaeological sites in the world.
The evidence they collected and analyzed from Monte Verde pushed back the arrival of humans in the Americas by thousands of years.
According to Surovell, the site has been “the foundation” of a theory that humans migrated and settled in North and South America over 20,000 years ago.
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Surovell studied the same evidence and reached a much younger, more controversial age.
He and his team dated Monte Verde to 8,200 years, at the oldest, rather than the 14,500 years that has been “an unquestionable scientific fact” for most archaeologists.
“This site is now 5,000 years younger than the first Clovis settlements, instead of 1,500 years older,” Surovell told Cowboy State Daily. “Monte Verde was supposed to be game-changing. It was supposed to be paradigm-changing, a settled matter of science. In our interpretation, they got it wrong.”
The Clovis First Model
To understand the earth-shattering implications of Surovell’s new paper, some archaeological context is required.
The date of humanity’s arrival in the Americas is “a hotly debated topic,” according to Surovell. The most widely accepted theory, until Monte Verde, was the “Clovis First” model.
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“That was the idea that the first peoples managed to get past the continental ice sheets in the northern part of the continent and flooded into North and South America around 13,000 years ago,” he said. “This was evidenced by these big, fluted spear points we call Clovis points, which are evidence of people hunting large animals like mammoths.”
The “Clovis first” model was presented in 1936 and was “the” theory for human arrival in the Americas for 60 years.
That all changed with Monte Verde II, first excavated by archaeologists Tom Dillehay and Mario Pino in 1977.
They discovered a prehistoric campsite in southern Chile that contained charcoal, animal hides, stone tools, and other artifacts that indicated humans had lived there for a prolonged period.
“They claimed to have evidence of rectangular wooden structures, cordage, medicinal plants, and plant foods,” Surovell said. “It suggested that there was a lot that we didn’t understand, and there was this deep missing prehistory in North America.”
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When Dillehay and Pino used radiocarbon dating to determine the age of the bones and charcoal at Monte Verde II, they found an average age of 14,500 years old.
The findings at Monte Verde, published in 1997, rocked the archaeological world and effectively disproved the “Clovis First” model. This led to the pre-Clovis theory that humans had arrived in the Americas thousands of years before the Clovis.
Since then, the pre-Clovis theory has been buffeted by the discovery of other sites in North and South America that are older than 13,000 years. Footprints preserved at White Sands National Park in New Mexico have been dated to between 21,000 and 23,000 years.
And none of that sat well with Surovell and his understanding of humanity’s history in the Americas.
From left, researchers Claudio Latorre, Juan-Luis García, Todd Surovell and César Méndez conducted the study that found the famous Monte Verde archaeological site in southern Chile is much younger than initially believed. (Todd Surovell Photo via University of Wyoming)
How?
Surovell’s archaeological research at UW has focused on the first people of the New World. He published dozens of papers on Paleoindians, including the ground-breaking discovery of bone beads and needles at the La Prele Mammoth Site near Douglas.
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Surovell heard Dillehay give a presentation on his findings at Monte Verde while he was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin. As he continued to build his expertise through fieldwork and research, Monte Verde II seemed too “anomalous” to fully accept.
“It’s been the backdrop of my entire career,” he said. “I was in my second year of graduate school when this dropped, and I’ve always been skeptical of it. It doesn’t fit in so many ways.”
One reason Surovell was skeptical is that Monte Verde is at least 500 years older than any known archaeological sites in Alaska.
The accepted theory, to this day, is that America’s first peoples reached North America by crossing the land bridge from Northeast Asia to Alaska, migrating south from there.
“How do you get people to southern Chile over 14,000 years ago, while leaving basically an invisible record further north? Occasionally, we find remarkable things, but Monte Verde was a statistical outlier in terms of age, location, and human behavior,” he said.
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Even as he taught classes at UW that included Monte Verde, he was stuck on how unusual it was for a site of that age to exist so far south. It left him with a desire to return to the important site, collect more evidence, and either confirm or refute the work from the past.
“I developed a research project with Claudio Latorre, a paleoecologist and my collaborator in Chile,” he said. “We expanded our team to include archaeologist Cesar Mendez, geomorphologist Juan Luis Garcia, and two radiocarbon dating specialists.”
Surovell, Latorre, and their team received a permit from the National Monuments Council of Chile to return to Monte Verde in 2023. It was the first independent archaeological investigation of the paradigm-shifting archaeological site since 1997.
Layers Upon Layers
As soon as they arrived at Monte Verde, Surovell said his peers were questioning what had been an “unquestionable scientific fact” for the last 29 years. The first clue came from Latorre’s assessment of the site’s geological context.
“He’s looking at the deposits and immediately recognized what he thought was a problem with the dating of the site,” he said. “At that point, we decided that we needed to collect data to test this idea.”
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If the number wasn’t enough of a clue, Monte Verde II isn’t the only archaeological site of interest at this spot. Monte Verde I is a distinct site below Monte Verde II, but it’s an older layer that preserves evidence of a treeless periglacial environment.
“Monte Verde is in what’s called a glacial outwash plain between the Andes to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west,” Surovell said. “If you go there today, you can see 14,000-year-old remarkably well-preserved pieces of wood sticking right out of the bank.”
The wood was preserved by an organic marsh deposit, which was buried by a layer of volcanic ash.
That volcanic ash was very important to Surovell’s work at Monte Verde because of its “unique chemical fingerprint.”
“All volcanic ashes are geochemically unique,” he said. “Once you do the geochemistry of the ash, you can identify exactly what ash it is, the volcano it came from, and its age. It’s a regional stratigraphic marker.”
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The volcanic ash layer was dated to 11,000 years, while the wood in the organic marsh layer was dated to 14,000 years. Then, those layers were buried by the outwash from glaciers moving in and out of the area, covering the ash and the marsh with more sediment.
This layered explanation is critical to Surovell’s conclusions because these layers remained buried until Chinchihuapi Creek, which still exists today, began eroding through the glacial, volcanic, and marsh layers, spreading sediment and organic material throughout the area.
That leads to the critical “old wood problem.”
The Old Wood Problem
When Monte Verde II was dated in 1977, one of the materials used to date the site was charcoal. That was, unquestionably, the remains of wood burned by the ancient peoples who settled there.
Charcoal is excellent for radiocarbon dating. Surovell said it’s very common for archaeologists to date sites with charcoal, even though there’s one significant caveat that can make all the difference.
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“When you radiocarbon date charcoal, you’re dating the age of the wood that was burned, not the time it was burned,” he said. “If I go out to the Laramie Basin today, burn an old western red cedar, and date the charcoal, I’m going to get a radiocarbon date of 600 BP. That’s not when I burned it. That’s the age of the red cedar.”
It’s well within the realm of possibility. Last year, a team of scientists published research on more than 30 whitebark pine trees exposed by melting snow in the Beartooth Mountains, which were nearly 6,000 years old.
The “Old Wood Problem” isn’t a problem at most archaeological sites, as wood typically doesn’t preserve unless it’s burned into charcoal. Unburned wood often decays before it can be recovered.
However, Monte Verde II isn’t a typical archaeological site. Surovell said it’s unusual because it preserves a large amount of ancient wood, which can still be recovered in the 14,000-year-old organic marsh layer underneath the 11,000-year-old volcanic ash layer.
“This site has a really unique preservational situation,” he said. “The Chinchihuapi Creek cut through these layers, so you would have Ice Age wood and organic matter piling up on the surface that ancient people would have been living on.”
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Using radiocarbon dating, tephrochronology (a technique for dating volcanic ash), and optically stimulated luminescence dating, the team redated nine alluvial layers and the volcanic ash layer at Monte Verde.
They determined that the sediment that buried and preserved Monte Verde II was between 3,000 and 8,000 years old. The wood and charcoal were still dated to around 14,500 years, but Surovell believes that’s due to the redeposition of much-older wood at the much-younger archaeological site.
“If you’re trying to date when people were at Monte Verde, but you’re dating redeposited wood from the Ice Age, you’re going to have a serious dating error of at least 6,000 years,” he said. “The reason why they thought this occupation was 14,500 years old is that they were dating wood and organic matter that was redeposited onto this 8,000-year-old surface.”
Prove Us Wrong
Surovell’s paper was published in Science on March 19. The reaction was immediate and intense, as would be expected for anything that upends nearly 30 years of established knowledge.
Dillehay, the original investigator, has already said he disagrees with the paper’s findings.
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He told Live Science that “there is no 11,000-year ash layer under the Monte Verde II site” and they are projecting the geologic context from another site onto their interpretation of Monte Verde II.
Surovell noted that he approached Dillehay “in a collaborative spirit” to join his team for their project.
“I’ll just say that he said, ‘No, thank you.’ He wasn’t interested,” Surovell said.
In fact, Dillehay and other members of the 1977 team objected to this new project. Surovell said they tried to prevent the National Monuments Council of Chile from issuing a permit for them to return to Monte Verde.
“Getting access to the site and actually being able to do this work was challenging,” he said. “We required permission from the National Monuments Council of Chile, and I’m really grateful they gave us a permit.”
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David Melzer, an archaeologist who was part of an independent team that verified Dillehay’s conclusions in 1997, told Live Science there are “several problems” with the new research. One problem he believed was that Surovell’s team worked in sediment that was “tens to hundreds of meters distant,” which he feels is too far to provide an accurate analysis of the Monte Verde II site.
Surovell is aware of the positive and negative feedback on his paper and isn’t deterred by the dissent. In fact, he’s encouraging it.
“If anybody wants to replicate what we’ve done, or try to show that we’ve done something incorrectly, I 100% encourage it,” he said. “If anybody wants to re-date any of the samples that we’re currently in possession of that we collected for this study, they are more than welcome to.”
Independent Replication
One of the major problems Surovell encountered is that Dillehay and the original team maintained exclusive permits to Monte Verde since they found it. That’s made independent investigations difficult, if not impossible, without the consent of the original team.
Surovell and his team got their permit to work at Monte Verde in a brief window when the original permits expired. Even if their findings are completely refuted by future research, he believes the archaeological community needs to be more open to independent research.
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“Independent replication is a standard part of science, but it has never really been a serious part of archeological research,” he said. “For basically five decades, (Monte Verde) was never independently investigated by anybody. If you’re going to make an extreme claim, you should encourage other researchers to come, have access to the site, and do independent work to try to verify those results.”
Everything Or Nothing?
While the study is still new, the broad consensus is that even if these new findings are accurate, and Monte Verde isn’t a 14,500-year-old archaeological site, it doesn’t change much. Since 1977, enough pre-Clovis sites have been found to support the theory that humans settled in the Americas before the Clovis arrived 13,000 years ago.
Surovell cautioned his peers against complacency. He harkened back to the need for archaeology to embrace independent replication, especially for pre-Clovis sites.
“All of these pre-Clovis sites are unusual, unreplicated finds,” he said. “Each site needs to be considered on its own merits, independently. But in most cases, nobody else has been able to go into these sites and independently validate those results.”
Based on his career of research, buffeted by the findings at Monte Verde, Surovell believes there’s more merit to the original “Clovis First” model that many archaeologists have discounted because of the discovery of Monte Verde.
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“We have hundreds of Clovis sites that have been independently found by hundreds of people,” he said. “Of those sites, a couple dozen have produced the exact same style of spear point that are all unusual in the way they’re made, and date exactly to the same time. We’ve found the same thing at different locations in North and South America. You can say that for Clovis. You can’t say that for pre-Clovis.”
He also believes that the archaeologists supporting the much older pre-Clovis sites should be open to more independent research. That, in his opinion, is “the more extreme claim” for the origins of America’s first peoples.
“They should be encouraging independent investigation so we can validate the strength of their claims, and that’s never happened,” he said.
The Keystone In the Arch
Even Surovell admits his research at Monte Verde doesn’t invalidate the pre-Clovis theory, but redating the site from 14,500 years to 8,000 years, at the oldest, would be a significant blow to its support. He called it “the keystone in the arch” of the pre-Clovis theory.
Many archaeologists have called Surovell’s new paper “controversial.” That’s an expected reaction, and one that he knows will come with criticism and skepticism from his peers.
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“You’re going to get a range of opinions, depending on who you talk to,” he said. “I very much believe in the science that we did, but I’m certainly open to the possibility that we’re wrong. If other researchers do their own independent work to verify or refute those results, that’s great.”
While he stands by his science and its conclusions, he hopes it will cajole more people to investigate and independently verify the age and significance of pre-Clovis sites.
That’s bigger than any one paper, site, or artifact. It creates a stronger scientific future for archeology.
“I hope this encourages other people to go to controversial sites and to try to replicate the initial results,” he said. “Until we have some (research) that has been truly, independently replicated by people completely unrelated to the original investigators, I don’t think we should take these other claims terribly seriously.”
As it stands, the understanding of humanity’s arrival in the Americas has been upended, once again, by Monte Verde.
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America’s first people might have arrived 13,000 years ago or over 24,000 years ago. Archaeologists worldwide will be arguing over Surovell’s findings at Monte Verde for years, but as long as they’re channeling their opposition into solid research, that’s a win for Surovell.
“The debate continues, but it’s a much broader debate than it was yesterday,” he said.
Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.
County 17 publishes letters, cartoons and opinions as a public service. The content does not necessarily reflect the opinions of County 17 or its employees. Letters to the editor can be submitted by emailing editor@oilcity.news.
Dear Gillette,
I am writing this letter because I am fed up with being forced to make impossible decisions just to live and work in Gillette.
We are constantly told that Campbell County is a great place to build a life, but the reality on the ground is exhausting. We are facing a double penalty here: a dwindling, high-cost economy and an almost non-existent dating scene. I am tired of having to choose between paying outrageous rent for a basic apartment or moving away from friends and community because I cannot find a genuine, long-term partner.
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The dating pool in Gillette feels more like a shallow puddle. Many of us are doing everything right — working hard, staying stable — yet we are coming up empty-handed due to limited public social spaces and transient culture that isn’t conducive to long-term relationships.
It is disheartening to see the “Wyoming Advantage” disappear while we are stuck in a dating desert. Rising costs and limited supply make housing a heavy burden, with residents struggling to find affordable options. Skyrocketing fuel, utility and grocery prices have put families under extreme financial pressure.
I am tired of sacrificing my personal happiness and financial stability to live here.
We need more than just industrial growth; we need quality of life that allows us to find love and build a future here, not just by a paycheck.
Kevin McNutt Gillette
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Rich Renner always knew he had pretty good neighbors, but he found out just how good when his new rescue dog from California got himself lost in a Wyoming whiteout.
Renner had taken the goldendoodle named Charlie out ahead of this past week’s storm to relieve himself. There was some snow on the ground at the time, but Charlie wasn’t having a thing to do with that strange, cold, white stuff on the ground.
At least not at first.
“I had taken him out to the barn, but he was staying under the overhang,” Renner said. “He wouldn’t go out to the snow.”
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Given the dog’s reluctance, Renner decided to shovel a path from the barn to the house to make it a little easier for the pooch to get around.
While Renner was doing that, the dog finally decided maybe the snow wasn’t so bad after all.
“He kind of got the zoomies,” Renner said. “So, he was running around and went around the corner, out of sight. I had boots on, so I followed after him.”
By the time Renner turned the corner, there was no sign of Charlie.
A dog named Charlie a Wyoming couple rescued from a California shelter running off with a whiteout blizzard on the way triggered a 24-hour search. It was a miracle, Charlie’s owners believe, that a newlywed couple in the middle of nowhere found him. (Courtesy Rich and Barb Renner)
A California Dog Meets His First Wyoming Whiteout
At first, Renner wasn’t too concerned. It wasn’t the first time the dog had done a little bit of exploring around the house.
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Normally, he came back on his own.
But this time was different. There was a huge snowstorm expected later in the day, and the forecast was for temperatures in the range of 25 degrees.
Charlie is a rescue dog fresh from California, which means the goldendoodle didn’t have much in the way of fat stored in his body. Nor was he yet acclimated to the cold.
Renner followed his dog’s tracks down to a forested edge, and there saw what had captured Charlie’s attention.
“There were deer tracks all over,” Renner said. “Boom, he was gone.”
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Renner was at first more worried about the deer than the dog.
He’d just put an AirTag on the dog’s newly arrived collar right before they went outside that morning. The collar also had the couple’s names and phone numbers.
“An hour later, that AirTag pinged at a neighbor’s house about a half mile away,” Renner said. “So I zoomed down there on a four-wheeler and I saw tracks, but no Charlie.”
Renner roamed around on his four-wheeler for about an hour, looking for and calling for Charlie. Then he had to go to work.
“My wife, Barb, stayed home all day and worked off and on and looked for him some, too,” he said.
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A dog named Charlie a Wyoming couple rescued from a California shelter running off with a whiteout blizzard on the way triggered a 24-hour search. It was a miracle, Charlie’s owners believe, that a newlywed couple in the middle of nowhere found him. (Courtesy Rich and Barb Renner)
A Long, Cold Night
Once Renner returned home, he and his wife did more searching until about 10:15 p.m. that night using a headlamp to see.
“I thought I’d see his eyes somewhere with that headlamp,” Renner said. “But to no avail.”
By this time, a sick feeling was growing in the pit of his stomach.
He was thinking about how the dog had chased after an animal three times his own size and how sometimes deer had charged, unafraid, at the couple’s older husky.
Maybe Charlie had been hurt. And Wyoming’s famous winter winds were picking up.
Was his California pooch stuck somewhere outside in this Wyoming whiteout, where the temperature was just getting colder and colder?
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“It had snowed all day,” Renner said. “It was just a lot of snow.”
That snow covered the dog’s tracks, making him impossible to track.
The AirTag was proving next to useless as well, suggesting the dog had gone somewhere very rugged, some place with little to no data to transmit a signal.
Tuesday night, Renner could barely sleep thinking about Charlie, lost in this heavy snowstorm, with temperatures forecast to get into the lower 20s that night.
“Since we didn’t find him, I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, he’s not going to survive the night,’” Renner said. “I kept waking up a lot and thinking about him. Like, ‘Oh my gosh, what’s he experiencing right now? Where’s he at? Did a mountain lion get him?’”
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The next day, Renner and his wife were both exhausted but had not lost hope they would yet find Charlie.
They were looking, their neighbors were all looking. They even hired a drone company to come look for Charlie using an infrared camera.
A dog named Charlie a Wyoming couple rescued from a California shelter running off with a whiteout blizzard on the way triggered a 24-hour search. It was a miracle, Charlie’s owners believe, that a newlywed couple in the middle of nowhere found him. (Courtesy Rich and Barb Renner)
Neighbors Rally As Storm Deepens
The Renners had been putting messages out on Facebook and social media about Charlie, asking for the community’s help to find him.
Renner was amazed at how his neighborhood sprang into action.
It seemed that everyone he knew — and even some people he didn’t know yet — were looking for his pet, who he feared was too skinny to survive another night out in the cold, much less the cold, wet snowstorm that continued into Wednesday.
“Before, I lived in Cheyenne for a lot of years, and you didn’t even hardly know your neighbors,” he said. “You maybe said ‘hi,’ to them when there’s a snowstorm and you’re shoveling your snow at the same time.
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“But other than that, we didn’t even know our neighbors.”
Mountain Meadows, though, proved to be a different kind of friendly — the kind that doesn’t smile and wave in passing; the kind that shows up on the doorstep and asks, “How can I help?”
“There were probably six different vehicles or side by sides at different times looking for him Tuesday night,” Renner said. “And then people were passing the word on through Facebook and emails and everything.
“And just everyone was praying for him. I mean the number of prayers that went up for Charlie is just amazing.”
A Blind Date, A Snowy Hike, And A Lost Dog
While a small army of neighbors continued to search for Charlie with drones and side-by-sides, a newlywed couple the Renners had never met were on a surprise date.
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Jada, a Laramie native, and Collin Szymanski, from Utah, are newlyweds.
Since Collin is new to Wyoming, Jada has been making a point of showing him some of her favorite places.
That day, she’d decided on a literal blind date, complete with blindfold, to one of her favorite places in Curt Gowdy State Park — Hidden Falls.
The falls are a couple miles from where the Renners live as the crow flies, and maybe 10 miles or more away in twisting, winding, dog-chasing-a-deer miles.
By the time Jada and her husband arrived at the Hidden Falls Trail, snow was picking up speed and Jada was starting to question the idea of hiking that afternoon.
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“There was, like, snow everywhere,” Jada said. “I was like, ‘Oh man, I thought it was going to be a little less snow than this.’
“So I unblindfolded him and I was like, ‘Should we still go?’”
The couple are young and in love, so of course the answer to that question was, “Yes!”
As they hiked into the thick carpet of new snow, they soon found themselves with a new-but-stand-offish friend.
“All of a sudden we see this little dog running around,” Jada said. “We’re thinking, ‘Oh well, his owners must have decided to go on a hike in the snow, too.’”
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A dog named Charlie a Wyoming couple rescued from a California shelter running off with a whiteout blizzard on the way triggered a 24-hour search. It was a miracle, Charlie’s owners believe, that a newlywed couple in the middle of nowhere found him. (Courtesy Rich and Barb Renner)
The Sound Of Loneliness
When they got to the end of the trail, though, there were no owners around.
That was when Charlie began to howl, a haunting, lost sound.
“You could tell he was so sad,” Jada said. “So we were trying to get to him, but he was a little scared of us.”
Once Jada managed to get close enough to see Charlie’s collar, things changed. The second she said his name, the dog immediately calmed down and came over to them.
It was remarkable, given that Charlie had only had that name for about four weeks. But it clearly meant everything to the dog to hear that one word.
These were friends, Charlie decided, because somehow they knew his name.
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An Answer To A Prayer
By noon, with no further sight or sign of Charlie, the Renners’ hopes were dwindling.
Their property backs up to some very rugged country with deep draws and thick timber. It’s a maze of places to get lost.
It’s also a maze full of obstacles and dangers much larger than Charlie — mountain lions, deer, moose. Then there are box canyons easier to get into than out.
Their skinny California dog, chasing a deer in a full Wyoming whiteout, could easily become lost, trapped, or hurt. More and more, it seemed like that’s what had happened.
Just as they were about to give up and call it a day, Renner got a phone call from a man he didn’t know.
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“Hey, are you guys missing a dog?” the man asked.
Relief flooded through Renner at those words as the man told him he’d just found a golden-colored dog at Hidden Falls in the box canyon.
Thanks to the collar, which had the Renners’ number on it, he’d been able to immediately call from the canyon.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Renner said, noting that calls from the canyon are usually impossible to make.
It felt like a minor miracle.
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Charlie had spent all day and night Tuesday in a snowstorm that got down to about 25 degrees, and had somehow managed to bump into what were the only other hikers on the Hidden Falls Trail, somehow none the worse for his adventures.
Soon, Renner and his wife were headed in their cars to go pick up Charlie from the Szymanskis, meeting halfway between their home and Hidden Falls.
For Rich, who describes himself as a person of faith, all these details add up to something bigger than coincidence.
“I know that God makes things happen,” he said.
Jada felt that as well, considering how things happened.
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“Their whole neighborhood had been looking for him,” she said. “He told us he had just been praying so hard. We felt like we got to be the answers to those prayers.”
A dog named Charlie a Wyoming couple rescued from a California shelter running off with a whiteout blizzard on the way triggered a 24-hour search. It was a miracle, Charlie’s owners believe, that a newlywed couple in the middle of nowhere found him. (Courtesy Rich and Barb Renner)
Celebrity Life On A Leash
Back home, Charlie acts as if nothing miraculous has happened at all.
“He’s happy to be home for sure,” Renner said. “He spent yesterday in the barn, and he’s in the barn today.”
But he’s not going outside any more for a while without a leash, Renner said, as he remains just a little too fascinated with Wyoming wildlife, particularly moose, which are 100 times heavier than he is.
Renner is looking into electric fences to keep Charlie and his moxie corralled so that the pooch’s future adventures won’t be quite so harrowing.
“We’re chuckling now, because he’s like a celebrity,” Renner said.
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For all the worry and all the searching, what’s really sticking with the Renners is how his Wyoming neighbors were there when needed, crawling the snowy hills in their trucks and side-by-sides, looking for a California pooch with no idea what a Wyoming whiteout really means.
“That’s the real story,” Renner said. “It’s the community, the neighborhood, how everyone just rallied behind this to help.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
CASPER — Discarded rocks thrown outside the geology department at an upstate New York college in the 1920s became gems in the eyes of the boy who picked them up.
They were also stepping stones to a career and life that led to 68 years of leading the growth of Wyoming’s — and America’s — mining industry.
Politics and philanthropy also helped John Wold earn accolades like Wyoming Man of the Year in 1968 and Oil/Gas and Mineral Man of the 20th Century in 1999.
But the longtime Casper resident left that century behind and kept going to work in his downtown office, pursuing new ideas and enterprises nearly until his death on Feb. 19, 2017, at age 100.
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Peter Wold, 78, remembers his dad as a man who was “driven” and focused, but who always made time for his wife and children.
As he co-leads the oil and gas business started by his father back in 1950, Peter said his dad’s portrait on the wall reminds him of the principles and “purpose” that guided his life.
“I think that he motivated me, and I would say the same for my brother and my sister,” he said. “We’ve all tried to stay engaged in community activities and philanthropy and be good fathers and a mother.”
He not only contributed to the evolution of Wyoming’s energy industries, his financial generosity endowed a geology chair and two chairs of religion at Union College in Schenectady, New York.
He also endowed the Centennial Chair of Energy at the University of Wyoming and his lead 1994 donation to Casper College became the Wold Physical Science Center.
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U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, who characterized Wold as a “legend” when he died in 2017, said even though nearly a decade has passed since then, his legacy is all over the Cowboy State — even if younger generations now don’t recognize his name.
“As a professional geologist, John’s contributions to the mining industry revolutionized the way our nation extracts minerals today,” Barrasso said. “Casper College students continue to benefit from John’s generosity and are reminded of him every time they walk through the Wold Physical Science Center.
“John passed on his love for Wyoming and his energy expertise to his family,” the senator added. “He would be so proud of how his children and grandchildren carry on the family business and his tradition of giving back to the state and people he loved so much.”
John Wold, right, was a busy man but always took time for his family, Peter Wold said. (Courtesy Peter Wold)
Big Into Rock
Peter Wold said his dad’s successes in part came from his education, continuous learning and ability to compartmentalize and head for the goal — something he loved to do on the hockey rink as well.
Born in New Jersey, John Wold grew up on the Union College campus where his father, Peter I. Wold, was a distinguished physics professor. The family lived on campus.
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While growing up, a young Wold became fascinated with the excess rocks being tossed out by the college’s geology department and started his own mineral collection.
Following graduation from high school, the Eagle Scout attended Union College and became an exchange student at St. Andrews University in Scotland.
While at Union College, he played on the hockey team, and he graduated with a bachelor of arts in geology and went on to Cornell University to earn a master’s degree in geology as well.
Prior to World War II, Wold worked in Oklahoma and Texas for an oil company, but in 1941 he volunteered to help the U.S. Navy’s Bureau of Ordinance researching magnetic mines.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, he was sent to Midway Island as a physicist involved in degaussing or demagnetizing submarines to protect them from magnetic Japanese mines.
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Navy Man And Inventor
Although he never officially attended Navy officer training school, Wold was given a commission and went on after his Midway assignment to serve as a gunnery officer and executive officer on destroyer escorts.
Peter Wold said his dad’s wartime ship assignments did not involve any significant battles.
It was while in the Navy that Wold had an idea to improve the masks of divers while watching them work.
He applied for a patent in July 1946 for his improved “underwater goggle.”
“The purpose of this invention is to provide an efficient underwater goggle, simple of manufacture, which is of such form that it will fit with water-tightness the contours of most faces without alteration or tailoring by the wearer,” he wrote on the application.
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Wold wrote that the design was meant to be flexible enough that it could be worn “across or below the nose of the diver with equal water-tight integrity.”
The inventor received his patent in Casper on Oct. 3, 1950, and it was something he was always proud of.
Peter Wold said he kept it framed on his office wall during his business career.
John Wold loved Wyoming and enjoyed fishing, skiing, and outdoor activities. (Courtesy Peter Wold)
John and Jane Wold on parade during his political career. (Courtesy Peter Wold)
John Wold served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and worked demagnetizing submarines as well as serving as an officer on destroyer escorts. John Wold and his wife Jane in their later years. (Courtesy Peter Wold)
The Oil Field Calls
After the war, John Wold married his wife, Jane, and worked for Barnsdall Oil on the Gulf Coast.
By 1949, Peter was born, and that winter the Wold family was sent to Casper to establish an office for Barnsdall Oil.
The family drove from Houston to Denver and found the roads north had been blocked by the infamous blizzards of 1949 for the previous two weeks.
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Peter Wold said his dad liked to tell the story of how he only had enough money for one night in a Denver hotel.
The next day, his dad said it was like a “miracle” and the road opened, allowing them to reach Casper. The highway shut the next day and stayed closed for two more weeks.
In 1950, Wold launched his own firm, Wold Oil Properties, as a consulting petroleum geologist, and never looked back.
A search of Wold in old newspapers shows his progression of accomplishments in both his business life and Republican politics in Wyoming.
Ahead Of His Time
In 1953, in addition to growing his new business, he was a member of the Natrona County Republican Party Executive Committee.
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He ran for and won a state House seat in 1956. In 1960, he became the state Republican chairman, as well as a member of the nation’s Republican National Committee.
In 1964, he was the Republican nominee for Wyoming’s U.S. Senate seat to run against Sen. Gale McGee.
His political office high point culminated in his election as Wyoming’s U.S. House representative in 1968 as Richard Nixon was winning the White House.
He was the first professional geologist ever elected to the U.S. House. While there, he authored and sponsored the National Mining and Minerals Policy Act of 1970.
That legislation was instrumental in laying the groundwork for Wyoming’s and the nation’s mining industry.
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It directed the U.S. to develop a stable domestic mining industry that’s economically sound and encourages private investment. It also called for standards to dispose of and reclaim mining waste and land to mitigate environmental impacts.
While he was proud of his time in Congress, the scientist and businessman who liked to get things done was stymied there.
“He recognized that he was one of 435 congressmen and that frustrated him,” Peter Wold said. “He said, ‘I’m going to go for the Senate.’”
In 1970, he took on McGee again and lost, as Republicans took a beating in the Nixon midterm election.
Peter Wold said his dad never ran for office again but stayed interested in politics.
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On the business side of his life, John Wold excelled and was able to use his geology, chemistry and economics savvy to see opportunities that others might miss.
He also could see when those opportunities were turning south.
During his lifetime, Wold started companies that got involved in pursuing coal, uranium, trona, and coal gasification. But each of those sectors came at different times of his life and career.
“When he focused on something he focused primarily on that project,” Peter Wold said. “He was active in the coal business, in the uranium business. But he did those separately, compartmentalized.
“You have to be really good at what you are doing.”
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John and Jane Wold at their ranch property. (Courtesy Peter Wold)
John Wold poses with his extended family. (Courtesy Peter Wold)
John and Jane Wold left a legacy that continues through the next generations of the their family. (Courtesy Peter Wold)
Business Ventures
A joint venture with Peabody Energy and Consolidation Coal Co. (now CONSOL Energy) put Rocky Mountain coal in the spotlight.
In 1973, he started Wold Nuclear Co. and was a co-discoverer of the Christensen Ranch uranium ore deposit in the Powder River Basin.
He also became the principal in the development of the Highland uranium mine in Converse County, which once was the largest uranium production operation in the U.S.
Peter Wold said his dad used a technique with paper cups and a tiny piece of film on the bottom of each cup that would be buried for a few days on potential uranium lands.
While he did not invent the technique to detect radon gas, he used it on a huge scale.
“They wanted to see what radiation penetrations there were,” Peter Wold said. “They laid thousands of those cups all over Wyoming, New Mexico, and Texas.
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“With that information they were able to determine there were uranium ore bodies.”
Wold’s holdings of potential uranium lands in south Texas led to an unforeseen talc mining opportunity, so he created American Talc Co., which became one of the largest talc operations in North America. It was sold to Daltile in 2017.
Wold’s interest in trona mining in the southern Green River Basin led to patents on solutions-based mining processes that he worked to create and develop with a Colorado firm.
But several years of work and roadblocks led him to sell the reserves he bought. The technology he helped develop, however, helped transform the trona industry.
Wold also bought a coal gasification idea during the first decade of this century and became chairman and CEO of GasTech.
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The company sought to develop gas from deep layers of coal in the Powder River Basin through pumping oxygen down into the beds and setting them on fire.
He worked with an Australian company that had pioneered a similar concept in Australia.
A demonstration plant never came to development.
Peter Wold said his dad’s efforts to develop coal and coal gasification in Campbell County came from his understanding that the coal, natural gas, and oil in the county held more BTUs of energy than all of Saudi Arabia’s oil.
During his life, John Wold’s expertise was sought by many companies that recruited him for their boards.
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Hole In The Wall Ranch
Outside of energy, Wold enjoyed Wyoming’s outdoors and sports.
In 1977, he bought the Hole in the Wall Ranch southwest of Kaycee where the notorious Hole in the Wall Gang left their hoofprints fleeing the law.
Peter Wold said his dad did not buy the land because of the history.
“It was because of the fishing,” he said. “The Hole in the Wall Ranch has the Middle Fork of the Powder River as it comes out of the Bighorn Mountains and it runs through the ranch. And it is really good fishing.
“Dad loved to recreate and he loved fishing and one thing led to another and he said, ‘We ought to buy this place,’ so we did.”
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While his dad was not that interested in cattle ranching, Peter Wold is.
Today, the ranch runs 600-800 head of Black Angus cattle.
Wold also was key to the development of the Hogadon Basin Ski Area on Casper Mountain and helped support the building of the Casper Ice Arena, where he coached young hockey players.
As he grew older, macular degeneration, a trait that ran in his family, started to take Wold’s eyesight.
Peter Wold said his dad’s loss of vision frustrated him. Even though he couldn’t see well, he kept driving a car into his mid-90s.
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“He didn’t like being dependent on someone to take him to the grocery store or bring him down to the office,” Peter Wold said. “The macular degeneration was very discouraging to him.”
Before he died, John Wold put money toward finding a cure for his blindness that became the Wold Family Macular Degeneration Center at Oregon Health & Science University’s Casey Eye Institute at Oregon Health and Science University.
The institute touts the center as a “central hub” for ongoing research and clinical care efforts as well as a “catalyst for further discovery and innovation by having research, clinical care and clinical trials all in one place.”
Throughout his life, the former college athlete never stopped moving and working to stay fit.
Wold would do leg lifts and stomach crunches before getting out of bed. In his 90s, he was still running down his street even on ice and snow.
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He continued to challenge himself mentally and never retired.
Peter Wold said carrying on the legacy of his dad’s business success means he thinks a lot about what would make John Wold proud. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily)
Legacy Of Giving
As Peter Wold and his brother Jack continue to work in the oil business started by their father, they and their sister, Priscilla Longfield, also continue the legacy of giving launched by their parents.
Peter Wold said the family foundation donates about $3 million a year.
The foundation’s directors include his brother, sister and himself, but John Wold’s eight grandchildren are now involved in choosing who the benefactors will be as well.
While his dad could be a “taskmaster” who wanted his children to have purpose and goals, Peter Wold said he also instilled a desire for them to make a difference in their time.
Peter Wold agrees he feels a “weight” and responsibility that flow from his dad’s accomplishments, and he thinks about that.
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“How can I live up to his expectations? What should I be doing that would have him proud?” Peter Wold said. “He left a wonderful legacy that our whole family is proud of.”
When John Wold died at 100, the Casper Star-Tribune dubbed him Wyoming’s “citizen of a century.”
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
