Welcome To Let’s Talk Wyoming

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Good morning and welcome to Let's Talk Wyoming. I'm Mark Hamilton, your host, and today we'll be taking a look at our weather and some other happenings around the state of Wyoming. Of course, we'll talk data centers. We'll talk about the price of fuel and maybe prices in the store that are going to go up considerably. Finally, we'll talk about the start of Wyoming. Roads started being built, vehicles started showing up, and we haven't looked back since. Thanks for joining us today and hope you enjoyed the show. Just about got April in the books. Getting to that point. Weather is kind of back, as I always say, unusual, but we've had our coolest weather the last 10 days. We've had two snowstorms. Of course, uh always say in Wyoming seems like that's our Wyoming rain is snow in the spring. And uh slushy, cold, had a water line out on the irrigation system freeze and had the water shut off, but there was still enough water there that caused it to crack and found out when I turned it back on. But um it getting cold and kind of dreary and just unsettled weather, uh, moisture, any little bit we get. Both these storms have had a little rain and I think I had six tenths on my rain gauge, but then it turned to snow both times. I did finally rescue my snow shovel out of the barn so I could get the back deck cleaned off for the dogs going in and out. A little easier that they don't bring in half the snowfall into the house. So again, it's been cool and cool. We are just waiting for, I guess, everything to warm up. It's really gonna be a lot of work then. Our the weed, especially, will really take off and grow. The grass really hasn't started to really grow in spots, I guess, just because of this weather. But it'll take off as soon as we start getting warm. It will definitely start growing and have to start uh trying to keep everything up. So the same here in this area. Of course, we haven't got any big rainfalls or anything to help with this lost moisture or our dry or drought, but we are every little bit, nobody's gonna complain. But just the cool weather. It's probably been as cool and uh as nasty now than it has been all last winter with the weather. So that's what happens. We just never know. Maybe this is the new norm. I don't know if we'll have, maybe we won't have any more winter. We'll just have in between time and get a little bit of rain and snow and stuff in April, and then we'll just suddenly turn to summer before we know it. So other happenings around our area in the state. We're getting closer and closer to tourist season. Just waiting. I have not heard yet whether the park's been open. I I've kind of lost track of that, and I need to make a note. I'll make a note of that. If Yellowstone Park has gotten opened up, it should be any time. I know it's gonna take a while before they get the going, the sun road going, or excuse me, um Beartooth Pass. I had to think a minute. Going to the sun is in a different part of the country. It's up in northwest Montana, across from Browning and across to Kalispell in that area. Beautiful area up there. So tourists will start showing up. Went um last Friday night to one of our local establishments, my wife and I. One Eyed Buffalo. That's a really popular place in the town of Thermopolis. We've got uh a couple other uh restaurants and One Eyed Buffalo, which is kind of like the more modern, it has alcohol license um brewery type uh stuff. Good meals. They always have a good meals there. And walked down, decided to go down, it was about eight o'clock. And figure on Friday night by then it would kind of slow down a little bit. Well, our main street was packed, uh, car after car. Of course, they were all from out of town and out of state. A lot of forerunners, if you know where I'm going with that, and walked in and saw people milling around outside of one-eyed buffalo and went in, and there had to be 30, 40 fly fishermen in there from different groups that are in town. As I've said before, Thermopolis has turned into the fly fishing capital of the state of Wyoming with the growth of all the fly shop guide services here in town. The drift boats are just right and left. It kind of reminds me, I'm gonna tell some old stories, when I first went up to Cutbank, Montana, right out of college. And if you've ever been to Cutbank, it's in the very northern part of Montana. You're getting pretty close to Canada. I wondered what the people up there had these little houses in the back, homemade wood structures in the back with their pickups everywhere. Oh, that's kind of strange. What are they doing there? Well, we never ice fished around here in our country at that time. Nobody ice fished. But up there, that's the big sport. So all the pickups driving around all winter long have an ice house in the back of their truck. I guess that's the status symbol. Just like here, you're pulling a drift boat, and that means you're somebody. You're a fly fisherman and you're out there on the water. So asked the our waiter about the traffic going through there, and he said, no, it's just not Friday nights. Summer hits, it's that way all summer long. But it is really taking off with the fishing here. The amount of people that are fishing that river daily is just I'd like to have a toll booth on that thing. Now you could probably retire. If you could charge a toll someplace along the way, but it's gotten really popular, so it's really supporting our town. But fly fishing capital, and boy, it certainly was going on at One Eyed Buffalo, had a good supper there. The next day we uh went up and saw my uh mother-in-law, and so we went to uh uh Lisa's in Grable, Wyoming, and had a good meal. So went out twice. That's uh the record, kind of taking in the places here in the state of Wyoming, supporting the locals at all these places. We're getting to that point, getting into May. We're in that busy time here in the state on the high school levels, as of course they're finishing up their track. Track's been kind of rough with this weather, with the winds and cool weather, but it's getting into that tail end of the track season. Boys and girls soccer going. There is some fast-pitch softball on the state now. On top of that, with the month of May, by about the middle of May, graduations will be taking place. Got to go to a graduation up at Riverside High School 16th, I think. 16th or 17th. I'm gonna have to check my calendar on the Sunday. They will have graduation up there, but the graduation for all the students in the state is gonna start accelerating. Those seniors are at the tail end of their high school career. I can remember so long ago when graduating, you kind of graduate from high school, wondering what you're gonna do next. And I think that's the same issue today. How many kids and where they're gonna go with their lives? It's uh always an interesting time. It's uh can be kind of scary for these kids. You just don't know what you're gonna do. And if you're gonna get out and go someplace and have at it and go out and grow up, I guess is what it is. So busy time in the month. Also with the tourist season coming around, it's gonna be very active here. Be active here in Thermopolis again with the fly fishing, and we just get the general traffic through here. A lot of people on the way up to Cody, Wyoming. Cody will start picking up, especially when the park opens up. There'll be a lot of people. Just was up in the Bighhorns, up at uh the camp up there, doing some work on a water system. Pretty soon it'll be also our summer, but it'll also be road construction season here in the state. They take advantage of that. I did see the report on US 16 from over a 10 sleep across to Buffalo on the east side of the Bighorns, on the Buffalo side, they're gonna do 20 plus miles up the Bighorn Mountain Road there on US 16. They're gonna be repaving it, so that'll be some delays. It'll be rather interesting, especially with those motorhomes and such getting stuck and in traffic and then having to take off and go. It can be a really trying time. And then they're doing stuff on the way up to Cody out of Thermopolis. They're starting to work there. The interstates uh are always busy. The Interstate 25, I should say, from Casper to Cheyenne area, they have always something going on in it. And bridges are what are taking place now, a lot of bridge work and doing a lot of bridge work probably across the country, trying to keep up with our infrastructures. So it'll be a fun time. It's gonna warm up one of these days, and then we'll be complaining how hot it is. So in the state, it's gonna get busy, it's gonna be a fun time. You always like that because before you know it, you got Memorial Day, and the right after that is the 4th of July, and then Labor Day and summer's over. It goes quick anymore. So enjoy it if you can. Come to our state, take it in. And other news here in Wyoming, I hate to be a broken record, but I'm gonna talk about data centers. It seems like that the people in Cheyenne have finally woken up. I think that they've been kind of sleeping on data centers down there because they have the the one there, they've they've like I said, they have 20 of some variety of a data center, smaller ones down there. But Microsoft has bought 3,200 acres. 3,200 acres. You realize how much that's 30, that's five sections of gram. That's a lot of wild and gram that's never gonna have an animal or anything on it. Just gonna be a big slab of machinery. And they also, with this activity going on, boy, it's amazing with the people out and about. And then the city was trying to pull a fast one. There were 1200 acres out on the west end of Cheyenne on the Kurt Gowdy Road there out that way. And they um, or I should say the Happy Jack Road. Gotta know Cheyenne better. Sorry for those Cheyenne people, but they were trying to annex in this 1,200 acres because lo and behold, yes, it's gonna be a data center. They want to bring it into the city limit so they can bring in the city services, and a lot of stuff is happening. They also talked about that the one that they were gonna build, they wanted the city to build a man camp to handle 5,000 workers. And they would bring in these man camps. And if you've ever been around these heavy construction areas right now, the ones that I'm familiar with or have been in the oil field because that's where I came from. Up in North Dakota, they'd have man camps and across the country, whenever there's a big boom, it seems like that these big booms are in place where there's not a lot of facilities. So the companies contract with companies to come in with temporary housing, they feed the guys, they all live together. And so the one that they were gonna put up in Cheyenne was gonna be on the east end near the schools there. And people are like, this ain't gonna work. Uh, unfortunately, most of the construction crews come from out of state, which they are in this case. Maybe sometimes, maybe not the greatest people, probably a lot of good hard workers, but people were a little concerned about it uh suddenly. And why are we footing the bill to house these people? Why are we building these? Everybody's got looking around, going, what were we thinking? What's going on? And I did hear some figures across the country that over half of the data centers in the country right now have been put on the kiosh. Uh they're kind of running into the same roadblock across the country. People are just saying, nope, it's not gonna happen. I did see an article where the one they didn't even have contracts yet for the data center, so maybe it's something that they're gonna build. But one thing about it, when they build these, uh when it goes kaposh and it doesn't work, guess what's gonna happen? They're gonna walk away from that thing. What are we gonna do with all this equipment? What's gonna happen? Especially the same thing happens with these windmills and solar panels. You put a solar farm, some type of these solar panels in on a section of ground, they take a lot of work, a lot of cement goes in the ground, a lot of cable. It's quite a situation, and when they're done, they just walk away. Most of the time, by then the company you can't even find them. You're never gonna use that ground again. You're never gonna be able to tear out all those solar panels. What are you gonna do with them all? Where are you going with them? So, Cheyenne did wake up. Solar panels, windmills, and hopefully data centers will be put on a little bit of a kiosh and maybe take a little better look at this. These city councils and government people look at well, hey, this is really gonna bring in some money, and then they're starting to find out that it really isn't. It's a short-lived little bang, but you're gonna pay for it for a long time. Kind of what we have across our state, we've been like this forever with the oil booms, uh, uranium, talking about Jeffree City, kind of a boom and bust with everything across our state. How many times have we had an oil boom that went bust and then back again? Stuff grows and people come in and work, and then everybody leaves, and it just has an impact, uh, this yo-yo effect on our economy. So we'll see what happens with data centers, but Cheyenne is waking up. And finally, uh, just want to talk about the price of fuel. If you're not keeping track of stuff, don't uh if you're faint of heart, you might not want to look at the price of fuel right now. Here it is really gone up with all the situation and everything that's going on in Iran and and across the world right now. So I've been looking at uh Teslas. I'm not that a person that's a opposed to anything from Tesla. My daughter owns a Tesla. And so I've been looking at Teslas and trying to determine how they were gonna work in here in the state of Wyoming. Our one drawback is we don't have a lot of charging stations. Very few and far in between. The ideal way is to put some type of a charger in your home to where you're plugging in there and getting enough miles to get out to areas around. One's you'll you'll look at anywhere from two hundred or three hundred mile range on the on the Teslas, and that will pretty much get you to Casper. Hopefully you can get to Billings someplace in between and find a charging station. So looking at Teslas to see if that would help this price of fuel, it's just gonna have a real major impact on us. And it's gonna have a brilliant impact on all of our lives. As this fuel goes up, the useful prices are even about a duck, one dollar higher. And I can see, you know, toxic it up in the five, six, seven dollar range, and what it's gonna do with everything in our lives. Our way of life will be totally changed. Everything we consume will go up in price where it's already hard enough for people. So you might want to get prepared. Take a look around and see what you can do, maybe stock up on some stuff that you need. Start thinking about how we're gonna be able to handle this if the prices go up. But watch those uh fuel prices, keep an eye on it, and start making plans now. It's better now to be prepared than boy suddenly waking up and and you've missed the boat. But maybe stock up. Look at some maybe different um transportation, maybe cut out some stuff. But it's a time to be prepared here in the United States of America and also here in the state of Wyoming. Next story we'll talk about we have to drive a lot of miles here to get to anything. So we do get impacted by any type of increase in fuel costs, so it will have an impact here on our state of Wyoming. Today in our history section, we have an article on the Bighorn Basin Roaring Twenties, progress and but no jazz. And this is by John Bernheisel. As the 1920s began, the Bighorn Basin was still a relatively isolated place here in the state of Wyoming. World War I had just ended and the Spanish influenza still lingered in memory. The region depended almost entirely on farming, ranching, and mining. Most families traveled to church and school by wagon. Roads over the Bighorns were little more than muddy trails, passable only for brief windows in the summer. The route from Cody to Yellowstone's east entrance was rough, often requiring pack horses and a guide. By the middle of the decade, the Bighorn Basin was roaring, but not in the way of the Great Gaspy with champagne and city lights. The roar here came from the road construction. Men with picks and shovels, horses, pulling graters, and early gasoline tractors. It was the sound of blasting, bridge building, and carving roads through the forest. By the end of the decade that sound had shifted to the steady hum of automobiles, reshaping everyday life. It wasn't just the wealthy. Farmers hauled products, families went camping, couples, honeymoon, and even European royalty came west staying in a dude ranches. The sound carried over the mountains of the Bighorn Mountains, through the Wind River Canyon and into Yellowstone, from Pahaska Tepe at the entrance to the park, to Shell and from Franny to Thermopolis, everything was transformed through Buffalo Bill's vision, aggressive local commerce clubs, and a woman legislature willing to invest in roads. Highways replaced wagon trails, mountain passes became drivable routes, the Wind River Canyon, once a barrier, became a gateway, and most importantly, Yellowstone's east entrance became a viable route for tourists. The Lincoln Highways establishment in 1913 was the nation's first transcontinental automobile road. Though it did not pass through the basin, it funneled Americans into Waming and onto its new roads. Just fifty years before, Warming was something that Americans had to get across, headed to Oregon, Utah, or California. But now a new pattern of migration was established. Towns like Tensleep and Shell followed the pattern. The process was not carefully planned, but it reflected the best of the American dream. A small town with little more than a post office and a church, if it was lucky enough to sit along a highway to somewhere began to change almost overnight. When a few cars a day started passing through, transformation followed. A roadside stand appeared, then a woman with a vision opened a small cafe. A man with a mechanical skill started a repair shop. A rancher with a bit of extra life. Lamb charged a few quarters for travelers to camp. As for traffic increased, small motels were built and gas stations soon followed. Over time, travelers realized that Wyoming was more than a way west. It was a way of life they loved, and they never left. Communities adapted in practical ways. One report noted tensely farmers expanding into beans because they were compact and can be transported to the market quite cheaply. While others turned to turkey production, making the town a general farming locality of importance to the state. Roads were reshaped, both daily life and livelihoods. The stories of those early travelers mixed hardship and wonder. We rattled and we bounced half the way, one visitor wrote, but by heaven we made it over the mountains in a motor car. Another noted every mile of road felt like a victory, and every turn showed us a country most folks had never seen. What had once been a barrier for becoming attractions. Those hills used to keep people out. Now they're bringing them in. For many Yellowstone was the destination, but Wyoming became the experience. We came for the park, one tourist admitted, but the ride through Wyoming was the real surprise. Along the way, strangers became neighbors, we camped by the road with dozens of other families, all thus sharing the same adventure. Some stayed longer than planned. We meant to stay one night, and we're still here forty years later. As one traveler put it, the West didn't get louder with music and parties, it got louder with engines. Beyond cafes and garages, towns grew, grocery stores, bakeries, and auto dealerships appeared. Cali had an opera house, Matizzi and Deaver had their own newspaper. Manderson had a Ford dealership, and Grable had a semi pro baseball team. Near every town also had a hidden bar to skirt prohibition enforcement. Was it too much? Too fast? Historians will debate the air forever. But the prosperity of the Roaring Twenties did not last. Almost exactly a decade after World War One, the stock market crash of October of nineteen twenty nine and the Great Depression brought uncertainty communities across the country. As you are reading this a hundred years later, we are the beneficiaries of the vision and impossible hard work of those who came before us. They conquered distance, carved through mountains, built bridges over rivers, and laid down the highway we still rely on today. The question is no longer what they built or the legacy they left, but what we will leave behind. How will our children and grandchildren look back from the roaring 2120s and measure what we have created for them? That is a great story of the development of the state. And I've had other stories and T.A.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

Larson had talked in extensive um on this and a lot of people and ever the impact it's had.