For years growing up in sight to the Grand Tetons to the west and Gros Ventre Range to her east, Dawn Kent kept her eye out on the landscape along the Gros Ventre River in Kelly, Wyoming, for a post office safe.
It washed away 98 years ago in the Kelly Flood, and her grandfather, Raymond C. Kent, was postmaster for the small Wyoming community at the time.
“There were two safes that were lost in the flood,” she said. “One at the Kneedy home and one at the post office. The Kneedy safe was found about 30 years ago, about 2 miles downstream in the river bottom.
“But the post office one was never found, although I was always told there really wasn’t much in it that mattered.”
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It’s been a century since the rumble of collapsing boulders, dirt and shale created an estimated 50 million cubic yards of debris that formed a natural dam on the Gros Ventre River in Teton County on June 23, 1925.
Two years later, heavy rains and snowmelt collaborated to breach the barrier and unleash a flood, leaving behind memories and landscape scars.
Kent, 71, believes her family may be the sole remnant with blood links in Kelly to the pioneers who were around when the dam let loose and washed out about 75 buildings and killed six people May 18, 1927. That includes homes, outbuildings and much of the town.
“Gros Ventre River Flood Takes Huge Toll in Life and Property,” the Jackson’s Hole Courier newspaper headline reported Thursday, May 19, 1927. “Death and destruction came down the Gros Ventre River yesterday morning in a great wall of water that snuffed out at least six lives, wiped the town of Kelly off the map and swept away several hundred head of livestock.”
Kent said to understand the flood, one has to go back to the natural dam formed when a large part of the north side of Sheep Mountain in the Gros Ventre Range slid down into the valley below blocking the river.
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Her grandmother, Anne Kent lived in Kelly in 1925, helping run the local store and post office with her husband, Raymond.
In 1940, Anne wrote an account of both the slide and the flood that her granddaughter keeps filed in a book.
The Episcopal Church in Kelly was one of three buildings that survived the flood. (Courtesy Wyoming State Archives)
Anne Kent and her husband, Raymond, ran the store and post office in Kelly at the time of the flood. She wrote about the event in 1940 and her granddaughter, Dawn Kent, still has the original document. (Courtesy Dawn Kent)
The location of the town of Kelly, Wyoming, prior to the 1927 flood. (Courtesy Wyoming State Archives)
The scar on Sheep Mountain in the Gros Ventre Ranch on the east side of Jackson Hole still shows the scope of slide in May 1927. (Courtesy Google Earth)
A Google Earth view of the current location of Kelly, Wyoming, and Lower Slide Lake, which was created in the 1925 by a slide of rock, shale, and debris off Sheep Mountain. (Courtesy Google Earth)
Written Remembrance
“There was a big landslide just four miles east of the settlement. That slide was an enormous thing, hundreds of tons of earth break off from the north hillside, filling the canyon for one-half mile, making a dam just that thick and 200-feet high,” Anne Kent wrote. “It shut off the river and backup up the water, taking about 12 or 15 days in making a lake seven miles long.”
Anne Kent wrote that “miraculously,” no one was caught in the slight and that only shortly before the slide, cowboys had put the last of their range cattle through the canyon.
“The last two riders were so close to the edge of that moving mass they were covered with dust,” she penned.
Jackson’s Hole Courier reported Thursday, June 25, 1927, that the Gill Huff ranch was almost totally inundated and that Huff lost a “fine new $10,000 home underwater.”
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It also reported the Card ranches were lost and another rancher, Ed Russell, was also threatened.
The slide followed a similar event in 1909 that first created the original “Slide Lake,” which thereafter would be “Upper Slide Lake” while the new lake was dubbed “Lower Slide Lake.”
The newspaper reported that prior to the slide there had been a “number of light earth tremors” felt in the Jackson Hole region.
A visit by Wyoming State Engineer Frank Emerson in July 1925 found that things had settled down and the river was flowing through the center of the 180-foot-high dam. The lake behind the dam was about 5 feet from the top of the fill.
He estimated that water levels would eventually decrease below the fill to about 25 feet. The natural dam was holding, and people should not be afraid to enter Yellowstone National Park from the southern entrance.
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“A person would probably be safer in any traveled region of the Jackson Hole region today than he would be upon the streets of any of our large cities,” Emerson wrote.
Floating Hayrack
However, in May 1927, with melting snows and rains feeding the lake, a ranger noticed an old hayrack that had been floating on the lake for two years suddenly floating down the river.
He realized the dam was weakening and water was topping it. He rode to Kelly to warn people to get out.
Dawn Kent said her father, who was 14 at the time, was in school. Her grandfather ran to the school and told all the students to go home.
Her grandfather instructed her dad to go home and let the horses out, but not to take any time collecting tack and just to head to high ground.
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Her mother, who lived on a ranch north of town, was 7 years old at the time and witnessed the wall of water descend when the dam broke. Kent’s grandmother in her account of the flood wrote that the Gros Ventre River had become muddy and swollen.
“Sometime in the forenoon, the dam gave way and by 11:30 the town of Kelly was washed away,” Anne Kent recorded. “The residents had realized that a large amount of water was coming and most of them left for high ground.
“One family of three was caught and drowned, also three others who lived on the river below the town.”
Kent’s grandmother estimated that 75 buildings were washed away along with all the possessions and materials inside them, including bedsteads, kitchen ranges, ice boxes and two safes.
“A marriage certificate, Mr. Kent’s and mine, was afterwards found covered with mud,” Anne Kent wrote. “Several pieces of thin cut glass, a wedding gift to one couple, was later found with not a nick or a scratch.”
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Flood waters went all the way to Wilson and ranch land, cattle and buildings along the river between Kelly and the junction of the Gros Ventre and Snake rivers were destroyed.
The destruction was estimated to be 3 miles as its widest point.
The Star Valley Independent newspaper in Afton, Wyoming reported on the loss of lives and property in Kelly, Wyoming in its may 20, 1927 edition. Although the headline proclaims seven deaths, only six people died in the flood. (Newspapers.com)
Jackson’s Hole Courier newspaper carried the Sheep Mountain slide on its front page in the June 25, 1925, edition. (Courtesy Newspapers.com)
Jackson’s Hole Courier had the story of the Kelly flood the next day on its front page. (Courtesy Newspapers.com)
Casualties
In Kelly, the Kneedy family — Henry Milt Kneedy, his wife, and adopted son, Joe — died as did a pioneer schoolteacher, Maud Smith, and her sister, May Lovejoy.
Rancher Clint Stevens tried to ride a hayrack through the surging waters and drowned.
Many in the estimated 50-member community narrowly escaped death. The Jackson’s Hole Courier reported that Charles Rhinehart pulled himself to safety through a grove of aspen, that a Mrs. Almy and an unidentified man pulled themselves out of the surging water just below Kelly, and Chester Simpson lost his car in the flood as he was trying to start it.
“Henry Francis (carried) him to safety behind his saddle,” the newspaper reported May 19, 1927.
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Only the Episcopal Church, its parsonage and the school were left standing in Kelly. Overall, an estimated 40 families in the region were displaced.
Dawn Kent said her grandparents moved the store and the post office to the church building. And the store continued to be operated by her family until 1971 when the building burned.
As a girl working at the family store in the 1960s, she said people would ask about the flood, and the family became adept at repeating the story for tourists and others.
One story from the flood is that a woman when she evacuated town right before the flood to higher ground took her wind-up victrola player and one record. The record was the “Wreck of Old ’97.”
“And so, they sat up there on the bench and listened to the ‘Wreck of Old ’97,’” Kent said.
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In the years following the flood, debris that had sunk in the mud would surface.
Kent said as a girl she saw rusted cars along the river she assumes were from the flood. Old bottles, tin cans and other rusted debris once buried and sticking out of the ground in the river region were always suspected as remnants from the disaster.
A Safe
In 1999, fisherman Ernie Wampler Sr. saw a piece of metal poking out of the riverbank while fishing in late November.
Upon investigation, it turned out to be a safe. The safe was dug out and taken to the Jackson Hole Historical Society and Museum for a public opening.
“Artifacts from inside the safe include a silver pocket watch, a pair of eyeglasses, a glass jar, many coins and tokens dating from 1920 and earlier, leather pouches, purses and wallets, wads of paper embedded in mud and other items,” the Jackson Hole News reported Dec. 8, 1999.
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It was determined to have belonged to the Kneedy family.
Each year, Kent said Kelly residents gather in May to remember the flood and share photos and interesting articles. They just wrapped up their annual meeting earlier this month.
On June 7, Kent said that as part of National Trails Day, a commemoration of the 1925 slide is planned by the Friends of the Bridger-Teton nonprofit. The group is planning work at the Gros Ventre Slide Geological Area to rehab trails and pull invasive species plants from 9 a.m. to noon. A special commemoration of the slide with speakers is planned.
Kent said the slide and flood are important to remember for history’s sake as well as how it changed the landscape of the area and impacted so many lives.
Shaking continues in the region from time to time and other minor slides have happened over the years.
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But Ken said she continues to watch for the piece of history that can be traced back to the post office her grandfather oversaw.
“I’ve always had my eyes open, hoping that someday I might find that other safe,” Kent said. “But of course I never have … but it still could happen. Everyone was surprised when Ernie found the other one.”
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
CASPER, Wyo. — Two Wyoming residents died and a third was injured in Arapahoe, Wyoming, on Friday after their vehicle went airborne and struck a pole, according to the Wyoming Highway Patrol.
The crash was reported around 10:39 p.m. May 8 near Goes In Lodge and Mission roads south of Riverton. According to the WHP’s investigation, the Dodge passenger vehicle was driving at a high speed north on Mission Road and failed to make a left-hand curve, driving off the road.
“The Dodge drove up the roadway embankment toward Goes In Lodge Rd and vaulted approximately 154 feet,” the WHP said. The Dodge rolled end-over-end about three times, struck a utility pole while airborne and came to rest on its wheels, where it caught fire.
23-year-old Wyoming residents Kalvin Yellowbear and Rosario Lopez were killed in the crash. Another passenger was injured. No seat belt use was indicated for the deceased.
Speed and other factors are under consideration by investigators, the report said.
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There have been 40 highway fatalities so far in 2026, the WHP said, compared to previous years to-date:
34 in 2025
27 in 2024
46 in 2023
This story contains preliminary information as provided by the Wyoming Highway Patrol via the Wyoming Department of Transportation Fatal Crash Summary map. The information may be subject to change.
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.
