Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years
Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years
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Worland High School’s Speech and Debate team has competed in two meets already this year, and according to Coach Rick Dorn they have shown promise at both. Dorn is joined again this season by Assistant Coach Emily Myers. He said, “In the early season, we’re not too worried about results. We want kids to get familiar with their material; finding new pieces that work, start learning them, cutting them as needed, all that stuff. Later in the season is when it counts.” Despite his words, his team has gone ahead and gotten results already, too. Th...
Hot Springs County School District No. 1 Business Manager Jessica Benefiel detailed her plan to change the funding source for the construction of the district’s teacherage project during the board meeting Nov. 14. Benefiel stated that Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) money is currently funding the project’s $1.2 million cost, but due to conflicting information she is not sure about using it for this purpose anymore. Benefiel said that she was previously advised by two Wyoming Department of Education officers that The...
As winter quickly approaches, now is a good time to remind residents about snow removal procedures in the area. City of Worland Public Works Superintendent Nick Kruger said, "Our criteria is usually three inches... there's some variability in there but usually at about 3 or 4 inches we'll start [snow removal]." He continued, "We do the main routes first, the highways coming through town. The secondaries are where we start tying into roads like West River Road and South Flat, secondary highways....
Ten Sleep School Principal Robert Griffin shared Wyoming Test of Proficiency and Progress test results from the 2022-2023 spring semester during the Washakie County School District No. 2 Board of Trustees on Monday, Nov. 13. All students in grade levels three through 10 take this summative assessment each year in English language arts (ELA) and math. Students in grades four, eight and 10 are tested in science. Results included: •73% of Ten Sleep students tested as proficient or advanced in ELA, compared to 74% last year. •65% scored proficient...
Veterans Day is on Saturday, Nov. 11 this year, and veterans will be honored all around the Big Horn Basin. American Legion The American Legion Post 44 will be hosting a breakfast buffet followed by a flag disposal ceremony on Saturday, Nov. 11. Veterans and their families are invited to 129 South Seventh Street in Worland for breakfast from 7 to 10:30 a.m. A flag disposal ceremony will take place at 1 p.m., where American flags that are fit to retire will be burned. This will be open to the public, and people are invited to bring their flags...
The Worland High School Drama team will be performing two one-act plays in the Worland High School Little Theatre this week that they will be taking to the State Thespian Festival at the end of November. The drama team, directed by Rick Dorn and assistant director Phillip Nelson, will be performing "What they Saw," an original devised play written by the team on Nov. 9 and 10 at 7 p.m., followed by "Swagger," an arena play by Eric Coble. Tickets will be available at the door. "What they Saw"...
Although uplifting messages were shared, with the subject matter of mental health and suicide in Wyoming, the atmosphere at Governor Mark Gordon’s Mental Health Town Hall at the Wyoming Boys’ School on Oct. 25 was a somber one. In the wake of the news of House Bill 65 replacing the permanent funding plan for the 988 Wyoming Suicide Prevention Hotline with a biennial funding system, the future of mental health activism in Wyoming has become uncertain. To be transparent and combat this uncertainty, Governor Gordon held a mental health Town Hal...
The Oct. 24 meeting of the Washakie Medical Center Board of Directors began with the board receiving thanks from the Washakie Hospital Foundation. Representatives of the foundation Keith Van Brunt and Mary Jo Hake came to the meeting to express thanks to hospital employees who participated in an optional payroll deduction campaign to raise donation funds for the organization. Van Brunt said, “Our initial goal was for employees to have 5 percent participation and raise about $2,000. But we have such an amazing community that we had almost 29% pa...
So far, I’ve tackled subjects of horror that hinge on either the paranormal or extraterrestrial to deliver the fear factor. These work in the moment, but I find that as an adult I don’t fixate on the scary bad guys like I used to as a kid; I wouldn’t lose sleep for days if I watched “Jeepers Creepers” today. But, what if the object of fear is a cave? Caves are already intrinsically scary to me. They are dark, claustrophobic, largely unexplored and unpredictable. Before I had ever seen “The Descent,” the furthest I had walked into a cave was th...
Brothers Carter Arnold, 16, and Bridger Arnold, 13 were awarded their Eagle Scout badges from their Scout Master, Dr. Jim Nelson, D.D.S., at a ceremony on Oct. 8 at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Worland. The boys both climbed through six Scout ranks before Eagle Scout and acquired at minimum 14 required silver badges and seven gold elective badges. On reaching this goal at such a young age, Bridger said, “There’s a certain number of kids like me who are determined to get it done fast, but I don’t really know how many....
At least for a while, Dwain Christopherson, his family, and his business Performance Auto in Otto were characters on Motortrend's "Roadkill" show after filming in June and airing in a brief segment of an episode. Christopherson said that in June, he was being repeatedly tagged by friends in a Facebook post about the show "Roadkill," a web series hosted on MotorTrend+ about outlandish project cars. The show's crew would be travelling to Billings, Montana, and then drive to Denver, Colorado, and...
Community member Beth Lewis addressed the Hot Springs County School District No. 1 Board of Trustees during their Oct. 19 meeting about alternatives to cancelling elementary overnight field trips. The district is planning to phase out these field trips due to safety concerns that have presented themselves from incidents that have occurred on such trips in the past. Lewis said, “Field trips bring the classroom to life and build lasting memories while developing connections within student cohorts … We live in a community where the exp...
When you think of commercial crops grown in the Big Horn Basin, you most likely think of sugarbeets, barley, alfalfa, corn or beans. Bill Pennington is looking to add hops to this list. His company, Hillcrest Hops, is still in its infancy – having their hops' first brew just last month – but Pennington believes there will come a day when he provides for himself solely with his bitter crop. A pilot by trade, Pennington had an unusual career path to commercial agriculture. He moved with his wif...
Originally a two-part operation, a Big Horn Regional Joint Power Board plan that would both increase the capacity of the water line from U.S. Highway 16 to the Worland Municipal Airport and install a water tank in the town of Kirby to supply the Lucerne area with water reserves is splitting into two projects Big Horn Regional Joint Powers Board Director John Joyce said in an interview last week said that he planned to announce to the board at the Oct. 18 meeting the drastic change in plans for their upcoming water projects. Joyce said, “That w...
“Annihilation” flew under my radar for a long time, actually. I have no idea how, because when it popped up on my recommended queue on Netflix, I read the description about Natalie Portman being a soldier/biologist and I hit play. That sounded like a good movie by itself, honestly. Really, “Annihilation” is ultimately an action movie about an all-female cast heading toward an unknown threat. I think that just at that level alone the movie functions very well; there’s more than enough gunfighting and explosions to satiate fans of the genre. To...
In September of this year Erich Berryman, a Worland firefighter who has served for 23 years, took a crew of himself, Taylor Horath of Worland and Clemens Abbott of Thermopolis to Redding, California, to fight fires. They were there on severity levels where there is perilously low number of firefighting personnel to assist with the fires in the area. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection staged them in the Sierra National Forest as part of their initial attack. The first...
Kendyl Garza wasn't a stranger to Worland before she moved here, and now she's happy to call it home after getting hired as a first-year second grade teacher at South Side Elementary School for the 2023-2024 school year. Garza grew up in Powell, where she graduated high school. She didn't know what she wanted to do after high school, and instead of going to school she went on a mission with the Christian organization Youth With a Mission. She said, "I spent three months with that program in...
The State Shooting Complex Oversight Task Force met last Wednesday, Sept. 27 in Riverton to continue discussion of creating a state-of-the-art shooting sport facility in Wyoming. Survey results and criteria for scoring site proposals were on the agenda for this meeting. The meeting included both legislators and members of the public. Representing Worland’s interests in the facility were Mayor Jim Gill and Worland Shooting Complex Board of Directors Chairman Tom Outland. Outland said that the meeting was preliminary in nature. They spent the f...
October holds a special significance for me, more so than any other month of the year. There comes a noticeable shift in weather over a short period time; the cold brought on by night begins to linger into the day. Brisk winds and sporadic rainstorms become reason to spend less time outside. Ambient noises of the summer fade away, with the insects falling silently to the ground after completing their life cycles. At the exact right time to maximize food production and minimize water loss, trees let their leaves die in a dramatic synchronized di...
On Sept. 21, Ray Witt visited Brandon Vicker's social studies classroom at Worland High School to talk to his outdoor adventure students. As the owner of The Outdoorsman, a retail store for all things outdoors in Worland, Witt was invited to offer his insight to help students with their "Hunting Trip of a Lifetime" assignments. Students were tasked with planning a mock hunting trip given a set budget. They could go anywhere in the world, but had to work out the logistics of how to get there,...
Hot Springs County High School Principal Catelyn Deromedi and Middle School Principal Darren Luebbe got in front of the Hot Springs County School District No. 1 Board of Trustees on Sept. 21 to share the testing results of Thermopolis students last year. An “accountability rating” was assigned to the cumulative performance of the students of all three school levels using three parameters: achievement, growth and equity. Achievement is a simple measure of proficiency, growth is a measure of proficiency from one year to the next, and equity is...
Jeff Mackay had an unusual day of work in May, when he was convinced to go to Sheridan to pick up a van that didn't exist and ended up at the annual Wyoming Trucking Association Convention. On May 12, Mackay won Driver of the Year 2022, and he had his picture on the cover of The Wyoming Trucker magazine. Mackay said of the experience, "Our safety team, Bart [Richardson] and Brian [Mathews], they had me fill out an application for this award but didn't tell me they nominated me for it, so I...
On May 12, Zach Richard, a mechanic for Admiral Transport Corporation in Worland, won the 2023 Mechanic of the Year award at the Wyoming Truckers Association's Annual Convention in Sheridan. When asked if he was surprised by the award, Richard said, "A little. My wife isn't very good at keeping secrets." Richard said that before the convention, Brian Mathews took him along on the errand of delivering vehicles. He said, "Brian was asking a whole bunch of questions that led me to believe that...
In August, Desiree Ross was selected as a competitor in a nationwide contest held on Facebook where fans vote for one person to be that year's "Face of Horror." The winner will receive a $13,000 cash prize, paid travel expenses for a three-day trip to Los Angeles, California, for themselves and one guest, and an exclusive photo shoot with Kane Hodder – an actor known for his role as Jason in the "Friday the 13th" series – for Rue Morgue magazine. The photo shoot will take place in the Woo...
An unusual request crossed the table during the Sept. 11 meeting of the Washakie County School District No. 2 Board of Trustees. Participants of a wedding planned for Nov. 4 asked to lease one of the district’s school buses to shuttle the wedding party throughout the day. The route will go from Ten Sleep, to Buffalo, to Meadowlark Lake and back to Ten Sleep. The party would be responsible for costs related to mileage and the driver. As this circumstance is covered under the district’s liability insurance, the board saw no issues approving the l...