Around the 307
News, commentary, and other items of interest from the greater Wyoming landscape.
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For the week of December 17th, 2023 here are a handful of Cowboy State news items of interest:
At the beginning of the week we learned that Ryan Pasborg, an oil field worker from Sweetwater County Wyoming, was awarded North America’s highest civilian honor for heroism—the Carnegie Medal. In February 2022, Pasborg saved a Green River woman and her young son from a burning home. Read the press release from the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission here.
On Tuesday, December 19th, the Unita County Herald reported that a Federal grant of $26.6 million awarded to the Wyoming Department of Transportation will be used to construct additional semi-trailer parking lots on Interstate 80 (I-80) between exits 6 and 10 near Evanston. Big-rigs often stack up around the border city of Evanston when winter road closures of I-80 occur. The additional parking facilities have been in the works for a while and local officials are pleased the project is finally moving forward. Read the full story here.
On Thursday, December 21st, Grand Teton National Park announced it will delay Teton Park Road grooming operations until more snow falls. From November 1st through the end of April the road is closed seasonally to vehicle traffic from Taggert Lake Trailhead to Signal Mountain Lodge. In most years grooming operations for skiing and snowshoeing get going around mid-December and continue through mid-March. You can get updates for the status of Teton Park Road grooming by visiting this page of the Grand Teton National Park Foundation website.
In the meantime, perhaps some offerings to Ullr are in order! Where is the snow?!?! For a rather lengthy treatise on Ullr, the Winter God of Norse mythology, check out this recent article by James Hardy.
Also, this week the University of Wyoming Wyoming Migration Initiative announced the film series My Wild Land was selected as the First Place Winner by Two Percent for Conservation’s 2023 Conservation Media Awards. These films were also previously named as official selections of the Wyoming International Film Festival and the Wild & Working Lands Film Festival. If you haven’t seen these short films you should take the time to do so and can find them all here.
My Wild Land—three ranches, three films, three stories… Lastly, in case you missed it—Cowboy State Daily also included a story this week on last month’s mountain lion activity at Star Valley Ranch. You can read the full article here.
Thank you for reading. Merry Christmas ya’ll!
Photo courtesy of Hudson England, Star Valley, Wyoming.
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