Episode Details

EP 2-3 Best Of 2024

Wendy Corr:

Well, hey there folks, welcome to The Roundup. We're a Cowboy State Daily podcast, and we focus on interesting people in the Cowboy State. But today, because it's the last podcast of the year, we are focusing on interesting stories and the interesting people who tell them.

So for today's special episode of The Roundup, we're going to talk to the Cowboy State Daily reporters who have brought you the most interesting stories of the year.

All right, folks, our first guest, our first featured reporter, is actually a features reporter. Her name is Jackie Dorothy. She has been a journalist in the state of Wyoming for many, many years. She and I have known each other. Oh my gosh, Jackie, how many years ago did we meet? Way more than we want to admit to.

But Jackie is a fantastic writer, and she's also a fantastic features writer, and she really loves good historical stories. So Jackie's based in Thermopolis. But of course, her stories cover the whole state. Jackie, where was the story that we're going to talk about today? The best story, your most interesting story, that you feel you've written this year. Tell us about this story. Where was it based?

Jackie Dorothy:

It was based in the Big Horn mountains, not far from where we actually met, which is really a nice coincidence. It's nice because we met back in the day when we were traveling around Yellowstone. And this story takes part just a few miles from that, and it started in the 1930s.

So I was looking for Ghost Stories, haunted Wyoming, and I came across this tale that was told from 1951. This young man, he's 16 years old, a really good hunter, and he got lost in the bighorn mountains.

He was with a group of guys, and he knew all the rules, stay still, build a fire, don't keep walking. Well, he disobeyed those. He had been sent from his father to go three miles back to their camp to bring back the truck. They weren't even that far from the road, and as he's walking, what happened is this fog rolled in.

He got disoriented. He didn't know which way he was going. He didn't recognize the crossings over the streams and nixing. He knows he's lost and he's panicking, and he does everything wrong, just like I said earlier. He did not stop. He kept walking and walking.

And suddenly the fog cleared, and he looked up, and there was a boy in a red flannel shirt. This boy looked at him and pointed the opposite direction. And he shouted at the kid, like, Hey, hello, I'm here. And the fog rolled back in, and the kid disappeared.

And so our young man from 1951, he decided to take that advice, switch directions, and went the direction that this boy had pointed. And within a short while, he started to recognize where he was, and he got to the camp.

Wendy Corr:

That story gives me absolute chills. So, okay, all right. So, so tell me how this ties in, then to a bigger ghost story.

Jackie Dorothy:

Well, I was doing research, and I just knew there was something about this story that just grabbed me. And so as I was going through the old archives, I admit I had been reading for about two hours, and I was ready to give up.

And I was like, Okay, I got the story! Here's a boy, a hunter. He got lost, and then I came across the story of Dylan McKinnon, about 19 years before, in the 1930s. The 17 year old boy was out hunting by himself, another experienced woodsman. He knew the area, same circumstances happened.

And it was actually even worse, a blizzard came in, but it first started with fog. This fog came in and engulfed all of these hunters. And it wasn't just Dylan who was missing. There was hunters and so many lost t