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University of Wyoming
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LARAMIE -- Academics at the University of Wyoming have been discussing the creation
of a Mormon Studies chair at UW for at least seven years.
The idea is that the UW Religious Studies Program already devotes courses to most
of the world's major religions. But in a state where one in nine residents is a
member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, comprising about 11 percent
of the population, there are no courses devoted solely to the Mormon faith ...
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Related Story: The Black 14 Movement - A Low Point for UW and LDS
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LARAMIE -- In the football fall of 1969, 14 black players on the University of Wyoming
team approached their head coach, Lloyd Eaton, and told him they planned to wear
black armbands in an upcoming game with Brigham Young University to protest the
Mormon practice denying priesthood -- that is, full membership in the church --
to anyone with "negroid blood" ...
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One in nine Wyomingites belongs to The Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints. On a percentage basis, Wyoming (11 percent) has more Mormons
than any other state except Utah (65 percent) and Idaho (25 percent). There are
more Mormons than Catholics here, and four times as many Mormons as tribal members
on the Wind River Indian Reservation.
The political, economic and cultural influence of this significant Mormon population
may be even greater than its numbers suggest. Mormon voters helped Republican Cynthia
Lummis defeat Democrat Gary Trauner in the heated 2008 congressional race. The prominent
Call family of Afton has turned its Maverik Country Stores into an innovative, billion-dollar
chain. Who can forget the dramatic victory of Wyoming wrestler Rulon Gardner, one
of the state’s many outstanding Mormon athletes, over previously unbeaten
Alexander “The Russian Bear” Karelin in the 2000 Olympics?
In these articles, Casper journalist/historian Tom Rea explores the important role
that the LDS church and its members play in the Cowboy State.
Mormon History
in Wyoming
About the Writer
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Photo courtesy of Senator Salazar
Senator Ken Salazar
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Okay, Ken Salazar opposed saving the black-tailed prairie dog.
But give President-elect Barack Obama's choice to head up the Interior Department
a break.
After eight years of the Bush Administration's using Interior
to enrich its friends in the energy business, obliterate huge swaths of landscape
– see the Upper Green River Valley -- short-change us on oil and gas royalties,
endanger endangered species, and gut environmental laws, Senator Salazar (D. Colo)
may well be Wyoming's last, best hope ...
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MARTIN'S COVE -- Among the most sacred Mormon sites anywhere is Martin's Cove,
a broad niche in the Sweetwater Rocks near Devil's Gate in central Wyoming, where
a sage-covered sand dune laps up into the granite slopes and boulders ...
Related Story: Mormon History in Wyoming
Related Story:
About the Writer
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Sheridan -- In the past year, the west has watch with grim fascination
as some of the Rocky Mountain's poshest resorts have careened down the black-diamond
slope.
The Yellowstone Club of Big Sky, Montana provides the most spectacular example...
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Casper -- Ever since that day in 1961 that the Craighead brothers, Frank and John,
placed a radio collar around the neck of Marian, a female grizzly bear, bear biologists
have formally designated bears with numbers.
Marian was No. 40 – her life and times and tragic death documented in "Track
of the Grizzly," by Frank Craighead, Jr.
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Casper -- Watching Wyoming voters line up out the polling-place doors earlier this
month, in lusty support of the "drill baby drill" philosophy of natural resource
management, one recalls the bumper sticker prayer from our economically stagnant
1980s and 90s: "Lord, give us one more boom. We promise not to screw it up this
time."
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CASPER -- U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer said in a Friday ruling
that, while he didn't like another federal judge's decision to throw out Yellowstone
National Park snowmobile rules, he wasn't going to fight it.
But Brimmer confused matters by also ruling that "the NPS[National Park Service]
shall reinstate the 2004 temporary rule until such time as it can promulgate an
acceptable rule to take its place."
So what does that mean?
It depends on who you talk to...
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Photo Credit: Jim Peaco
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Casper -- With the winter season closing in and Wyoming snow outfitters in limbo,
Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park officials unveiled a temporary winter
use plan that lowers daily snowmobile numbers by more than 40 percent.
The proposed reduction came after a previous parks service plan, allowing 540 snowmobiles
a day into the parks, was rejected by a Washington, D.C., federal judge in September
as being potentially harmful to the park environment ...
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Cheyenne -- All incumbents who chose to run were reelected to the Wyoming House
and Senate, most by wide margins, in a election season that lacked much drama except
for a handful of House races.
The reelected members include outgoing House Speaker Roy Cohee,
who will return in a non-leadership position. The new speaker is expected to be
Colin Simpson of Cody, taking a step toward what many feel will be a run for governor
in 2010.
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Sheridan -- The ancient Greeks had a word, καιρός
or kairos, which means an era of unique opportunity. It's an unspecified period
of time ripe for taking advantage of changing circumstances.
Wyoming and the energy-rich west have an opportunity to at least
acknowledge such an era: we live in a time where change occurs at an unprecedented
speed ...
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"Shane", the best-known Wyoming movie
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Lander -- If you've ever had an idea for a movie (oh, don't pretend you haven't,
my friend, whether you’re a novelist, a latte sipper, or a pipe-welder), and
you see the wide open spaces of Wyoming as the perfect backdrop for your 'Lonesome
Chukar' screenplay, then you have probably heard of FIFI. If not, well, have I got
a deal for you ...
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Courtesy Image
Cynthia Lummis
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CASPER -- Republican congressional candidate Cynthia Lummis, a
devout Lutheran, said that when she was growing up in Cheyenne many of her closest
friends were Mormons, and during her college years she twice considered converting,
taking all the introductory lessons for membership in the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints.
Locked in a tight race with Jackson Hole Democrat Gary Trauner
for Wyoming's sole US House seat, Lummis is hoping Wyoming's Mormon population --
constituting at least one in ten voters -- will put her over the top against a formidable
opponent.
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Casper -- So, you want to build a coal-fired power plant in Wyoming. How clean do
you want to make it? Because it turns out, it's largely up to you to decide -- no
matter how loudly state regulators and politicians insist that such a plant must
be as clean as possible.
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Courtesy Image
Lori Millin
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Cheyenne -- Democrat state Rep. Lori Millin scored an upset victory here in 2006,
beating five-time Republican incumbent Larry Meuli, a popular retired pediatrician
and Laramie County Health Officer, by just nine votes out of the 4000 cast in House
District 8.
Millin is a prime example of what is touted as the finest characteristic of the
Wyoming Legislature – the citizen legislator. She is 39, the mother of three
and a surgical technician.
In 2006, she had never run for any office, and she entered the District 8 race only
after she was told -- wrongly, it turned out -- that Meuli was not running again.
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"He loved to play the harmonica, listen to the police scanner, and draw cabins with
scenery." ¬From the June 8, 2008 Casper Star-Tribune
obituary of Roy Eugene McMillen, 67.
"It just feels like we're stealing pennies from dead men's eyes."
Former Gillette Journalist and author Ron Franscell.
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Breaking with a century of tradition, the Casper Star-Tribune
-- Wyoming's only state-wide newspaper -- will no longer offer the free, full-length
obituaries that for many daily readers was a revealing, sometimes riveting, view
of the Cowboy State and its people ...
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Courtesy Image
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Gillette -- When I was a kid I remember talking with my father as he erected large
wooden political signs in our front yard. They were of simple design and color,
house-shaped with white base coat and red and blue stenciled letters: "Duffy Jenniges
– House District #32." Although I had watched my fair share of movies and
television in which the underdog wins the game and the geeky guy gets the girl,
I was still skeptical of my dad's chances. He was a staunch Democrat swimming in
a Republican sea. I didn't quite understand why he was making this seemingly hopeless
effort ...
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Sheridan: The leaves are turning. If you're in Sheridan and it's Thursday, it's
time to hie yourself to the Farmer's Market.
But Sheridan, luckily, is not alone in offering fresh produce. Wyoming has 27 farmer's
markets. They're still small potatoes, so to speak, but they're starting to make
a place for themselves among Wyoming's food options ...
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Book Excerpt: Marines Invade Wyoming
From the Halls of Motazuma to the Oil Fields of Teapot Dome
In April, 1922 Albert Bacon Fall, President Harding's Secretary
of the Interior, secretly leased the rich Teapot Oil field north Casper to a newly
formed company, Mammoth Oil. In exchange the grateful head of Mammoth Harry F. Sinclair
had rewarded Fall, who owned a large ranch in Three Rivers, New Mexico, with prize
livestock and close to $300,000 in so-called Liberty Bonds, government-issued bonds
that yielded at least 3 ½ percent tax free. Unfortunately, for Fall and Harry
Sinclair, a rival oil man, Colonel James G. Darden, claimed he owned some of the
Teapot field and by mid-summer had already begun drilling operations.
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Dubois -- How is a more than a century old oil scandal relevant
today? Let us count the ways.
In March, 1921, Warren G. Harding, was sworn in as our twenty-ninth
President. A former U.S. Senator from Ohio and a former small town newspaper publisher,
Harding was little known outside his home state. Still, he had a number of characteristics
that made him attractive as a candidate.
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Laramie -- On May 9, 2008, White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten
issued a memo exhorting all executive branch agencies to "resist the historical
tendency of administrations to accelerate regulatory activity in their final months."
Agencies, he wrote, should "avoid issuing regulations that are unnecessary. Except
in extraordinary circumstances, regulations to be finalized in this Administration
should be proposed no later than June 1, 2008."
Nevertheless, on August 15 the Departments of Commerce and Interior
proposed new regulations that would weaken safeguards required by section 7 of the
Endangered Species Act (ESA), which have been in place for more than 20 years ...
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Casper -- While still on staff at the Casper Star Tribune, I trained for a week
with Bureau of Land Management firefighters in Casper, to earn my Red Card --
an interagency certificate signifying that one is minimally qualified to fight wildland
fires.
I haven't renewed my Red Card for some years -- mostly because as a middle-aged
journalist, I'm really not up for the three-mile hike-in- 45- minutes test, while
wearing a vest weighted with 45 pounds. (I know I should train, lose weight, and
give it another shot, but while the spirit is willing, the flesh enjoys beer too
much.)
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The last remnants of the Vinich race.
Photo courtesy of Gene Tempest.
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Hudson - The touts who handicap political contests nationwide must think the horses
at Wyoming tracks come out of the chutes bucking rather than running – they
assume there are no races here worth watching. No national interest, no money, no
chatter about Wyoming: Even in a year like this, when three state-wide offices are
contested, and the quarter million or so voters of Wyoming will elect one-fiftieth
of the Senate. (Compar | | | |
