Wyoming
Wyoming Wildfires Burn Homes, Force Evacuations Around The State
The calendar turns to August soon, a time when weather forecasts start using the words “haze” and “smoke” alongside meteorological terms like partly cloudy.
It’s wildfire season in the West, and Wyoming tends to live in the ash of its Western neighbors until the Equality State itself is battling its own wildfires.
Hundreds of residents in tiny Upton, Wyoming, on the border of Crook and Weston counties, were chased from their homes Monday as a fast-moving grassfire threatened subdivisions along Barton Road.
Just west of Gillette, the Campbell County Fire Department battled 50 mph winds whipping a grassfire into a frenzy that consumed mobile homes, campers and several pets over the weekend.
Meanwhile, an innocent lightning strike in the heart of the Shoshone National Forest 11 days ago has ballooned into a 1,000-acre wildfire that briefly closed the east entrance to Yellowstone over the weekend.
The Clearwater Fire is shaping up to be a problem.
Burning in remote and rugged terrain, more than 100 firefighters are trying to keep it away from two popular campgrounds along Highway 14/16/20 between Cody and Yellowstone National Park.
Both have already been evacuated.
Clearwater Fire Threatens East Entrance
The Clearwater Fire is the state’s top priority at the moment. Hampering suppression efforts is the extreme difficulty in reaching the fire with equipment or personnel.
The blaze is located on a ridgeline between Elk Fork and June Creek drainages about a mile south of Clearwater Campground and 11 miles west of Wapiti, Wyoming. Increased activity this week from high winds associated with approaching weather fronts is anticipated.
Monday, the fire made a significant run north up Elk Fork canyon and is being funneled straight toward the Highway 14/16/20 corridor. That prompted evacuations of Elk Fork campground, Wapiti campground, the Wapiti Ranger Station and area summer homes.
“The fire activity we saw [Monday] was prompted by winds up the canyon taking the fire toward the highway. Some of those gusts were around 45 mph,” said Kim Hemenway, spokesperson for a Wyoming Type III incident response team.
With firefighting operations and heavy smoke in the area, Wyoming Highway Patrol temporarily closed the highway from the East Entrance to Wapiti. That closure has been lifted and the highway is open. Motorists can expect to encounter numerous WYDOT electronic signs addressing smoke in the area and reduced visibility.
No structures have been lost. Firefighters were able to protect vehicles left at various corrals in Elk Fork. The fire also hasn’t crossed the highway to the north, and spread down the canyon to the south has been minimal.
Aerial reconnaissance was flown Monday night. Preliminary results suggest the fire is at 1,047 acres. A Type 3 Wyoming team led by Jon Warder is in command of the incident with 101 assigned to the fire. A Type 1 helicopter is also being used to make water drops.
A change in weather systems is expected Thursday that could bring gusty and erratic winds with an increase in isolated thunderstorms.
Fire danger was upgraded to “Very High” in Yellowstone over the weekend prohibiting all campfires in the backcountry, including those in established fire rings.
Upton Residents Evacuated
Another red flag warning day in Weston County caused a scare Monday.
Extreme winds pushed a grassfire out of Crook County straight toward Upton to the southeast. Crook County Emergency Management warned its Weston County counterparts to evacuate residents in subdivisions along Barton Road.
Announcements were made on social media, radio and on alert broadcasting networks. Wyoming Highway Patrol, Weston County Sheriff’s Office and members of the Upton Fire Department went door to door to assist people leaving their homes.
The Wyoming Office of Homeland Security was notified and shelters were opened at the Upton Community Center and Upton High School. American Red Cross of Wyoming was put on standby notice.
Weston County came together. Offers of assistance, resources and places to put horses were shared throughout the community from as far away as Newcastle.
Local firefighters were able to coax the Dogman Fire into an area that was blade-lined (cleared), where it ran out of fuel. Affected residents were cleared to return to their homes by 10 p.m.
Several Structures Lost Near Gillette
In Campbell County, a handful of people were left without homes to return to after erratic winds shifted direction Saturday and thrust a grassfire onto Peaceful Valley Drive just west of Gillette.
Several structures, including two homes, and vehicles were completely consumed in the blaze believed to have been started by a downed powerline. Area residents joined Campbell County firefighters in trying to contain the wildfire.
Dozens of pets, horses, goats, chickens and other animals were saved, but some dogs were reported killed.
County fire officials praised volunteers who came alongside their efforts with everything from heavy equipment to garden hoses.
Willie and Carol McPheeters were among those displaced by the fire. They helped their neighbors move cars, pets and belongings until they couldn’t. One final gust sent flames straight at their home. They barely made it away only to watch it go up in smoke.
“It left them with nothing but the clothes on their backs,” said close friend Dora Conzelman, who is organizing a financial recovery effort for the McPheeters on GoFundMe.
The following day, the Beaver Creek Fire off Napier Road southwest of Gillette was another grassfire that pushed its way across open farm and rangeland.
State Sen. Eric Barlow was seen lending a hand on the Beaver Creek incident, dousing hotspots with a water tank off the back of a rusty Chevy pickup. A video by Aaron Layman shows a slurry bomber laying down fire retardant as Barlow looked on in the foreground.
Campbell County Fire Marshal Stuart Burnham confirmed “some air support” in both the Peaceful Valley Road and Napier Road fires.
“We’ve had a really busy weekend and are now looking at another week of red flag warnings. We just hope for the best and for people to me smart,” Burnham said.
Jack Creek
The Medicine Bow National Forest is dealing with the Jack Creek Fire burning 20 acres about 20 miles southwest of Saratoga. The wildfire was first spotted Monday afternoon around 5:19 p.m. Its cause has not yet been determined.
Carbon County Sheriff Alex Bakken asked travel in the Joe’s Park and Jack Creek area, popular with campers and hikers, be avoided for the time being.
No structures have been lost or damaged. The incident is being handled by Carbon County firefighters with assistance from the BLM Rawlins Field Office and resources from the Medicine Bow National Forest.
Five potential fires in the area have been detected by NOAA radar. They could be spotting as a result of the Jack Creek Fire.
The Mowry Peak Fire burned in the same general north Sierra Madre area in 2020.
Contact Jake Nichols at jake@cowboystatedaily.com
Jake Nichols can be reached at jake@cowboystatedaily.com.
Wyoming
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)
CLASS 3A
Final Score: Lyman 40 Mountain View 26 (conference game)
CLASS 4A
Final Score: Evanston 41 Riverton 39 (conference game)
Final Score: Natrona County 42 Kelly Walsh 38 (conference game) – Peach Basket Classic
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)
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 10 Scores 2026
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WyoPreps Girls Basketball Week 9 Scores 2026
WyoPreps Coaches and Media Basketball Polls 2-11-26
WyoPreps Girls Basketball Week 8 Scores 2026
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WyoPreps Girls Basketball Week 7 Scores 2026
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Nominate A Basketball Player for the WyoPreps Athlete of the Week Honor
WyoPreps Coaches and Media Basketball Polls 1-21-26
WyoPreps Girls Basketball Week 5 Scores 2026
WyoPreps Coaches and Media Basketball Polls 1-14-26
WyoPreps Girls Basketball Week 4 Scores 2025-26
WyoPreps Coaches and Media Basketball Rankings 1-7-26
WyoPreps Girls Basketball Week 3 Scores 2025-26
WyoPreps Coaches and Media Basketball Rankings 12-24-25
WyoPreps Girls Basketball Week 2 Scores 2025-26
WyoPreps Coaches and Media Basketball Rankings 12-17-25
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)
#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)
Buffalo at Glenrock, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)
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)
Wyoming Boys 4A Swimming & Diving State Championships 2026
4A Boys State Swim Meet for 2026 in Cheyenne
Gallery Credit: David Settle, WyoPreps.com
Wyoming
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.”
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.
“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.
“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.
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.
“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.”
Wyoming
Wyoming man reaches plea deal to avoid jail time in wolf-abuse case
A Sublette County man who captured and brought an injured wolf into a bar in February 2024 has struck a deal with prosecutors that could keep him out of jail, reports WyoFile.
A signed plea agreement filed with the Sublette County District Court and acquired by WyoFile on Wednesday afternoon means that Cody Roberts, 44, would likely no longer face trial. It had been set to begin March 9.
Under the deal, Roberts withdraws his earlier not guilty plea and changes that plea to guilty or no contest for felony cruelty to animals.
The deal calls for a prison sentence of 18 months to two years that would be suspended in favor of 18 months of supervised probation and a $1,000 fine. Additionally, agreed-upon conditions of his probation include: no hunting or fishing; no alcohol, presence at bars or liquor stores; and a requirement that Roberts follow recommended addiction treatment.
As part of the deal, the parties are asking that a “pre-sentence investigation report” be ordered by the court.
Roberts allegedly acquired a wolf by striking it with a snowmobile, leaving it “barely conscious” on Feb. 29, 2024. Photos and video from that night showed him posing for pictures with the animal and even kissing it. The wolf’s behavior suggests that it was gravely injured, according to biologists who’ve reviewed video of the muzzled animal while it was prone and barely moving on the floor of the Green River Bar.
The Wyoming Game and Fish Department initially handled the incident, issuing Roberts a $250 fine for possession of warm-blooded wildlife. The state agency declined to seek stiffer penalties or jail time, and Game and Fish officials maintained that predatory animals, including wolves, were exempted from felony animal cruelty laws.
Sublette County law enforcement officials disagreed. In August, prosecutor Clayton Melinkovich convened a grand jury that indicted Roberts for felony animal cruelty. That crime could have put Roberts in jail for up to two years, though his plea agreement averts mandatory time behind bars as long as he successfully completes probation.
WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.
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