Episode Details

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming, for Wednesday, June 19th. I'm Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - Presented by Cheyenne Frontier Days - starting July 19th, from sun-up to sun-down - there's something for everyone! Check it out at C-F-D RODEO DOT COM!

An end may be in sight for Jackson workers who live in Idaho and have had to add hours of extra travel a day to get around a "catastrophic" failure of Highway 22 that has kept Teton Pass closed for a week and a half.

Bob Hammond with the Wyoming Department of Transportation told Cowboy State Daily's Leo Wolfson that officials hope to have a temporary rerouting of the road paved by the middle of next week and the road opened to traffic soon after.

"The road is expected to be paved, possibly as early as this weekend and then by the middle of next week people could be traveling on that road. They're creating a kind of a detour on the road. It's not going to be the permanent fix. But it is a temporary fix… Hammond told me they've been literally working to 12 hour shifts every day. So literally 24 hours a day through the clock to get this work done."

Since the road collapse on June 8, people have had to detour through Swan Valley to Alpine and then up the Snake River Canyon, a distance of 85 total miles, to cover the 24 miles between Jackson and Victor, Idaho, over the pass.

Yellowstone National Park's next major road project will include blasting nearly 100,000 tons of rock that remains from a prehistoric volcanic explosion, and the feds are giving the park $22 million to do it.

Cowboy State Daily's Andrew Rossi reports that starting in fall 2025, the Federal Highways Administration money will be used to significantly transform Golden Gate Canyon in northwest Yellowstone to make the corridor to Mammoth Hot Springs more scenic, safe and accessible.

"Yellowstone superintendent Cam Sholly said that it's a lot of money for a short stretch of road, but these improvements are overdue… they're going to remove rock from the Three Noses as they call them… these three outcrops of rock that stretch out over the highway. So it's not going to remove the character of the canyon, but it is going to make it safer and mitigate rock falls. There's also going to be two new parking areas, a new pit toilet and a pedestrian pathway to provide a better view of Rustic Falls."

Golden Gate improvements are part of nine projects totaling more than $370 million in Infrastructure Act money to replace bridges and roads in Yellowstone, including the ongoing replacement of the Yellowstone Bridge, expected to be completed in 2026.

It was 2019 when the Gittleson family members saw the first wolf on the ranch property they lease in northern Colorado, roughly 12 miles from the Wyoming state line. While at first, it seemed like no big deal, since then the ranch has lost 11 cattle to wolves.

Cowboy State Daily's Mark Heinz reports that the Gittleson place seems to be right in the middle of where wolves are traversing back and forth from both Colorado and Wyoming.

"I spoke with the ranchers directly and they said it wasn't really a big deal when the adult wolves showed up. They pretty much kept to themselves - but then they had a litter of pups, and they had to teach them how to hunt, and of course, what's available and easy to hunt right there? Well, cattle, so they started losing cattle to those wolves."

Kim Gittleson said her family has dealt with other predators, such as bears and mountain lions, for decades. But wolves are turning out to be something different. And so far, non-lethal deterrents have produced mixed results.

U.S. Rep. Harriet H