Serving the Platte Valley since 1888
Serving the Platte Valley since 1888
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While helping out at the Rawlins thrift store, Janice White saw a lot of denim that had served its last tour of duty pass through the doors. Would-be donors approached White holding blue jeans with gaping unpatchable holes or fabric so exhausted and threadbare as to be useless even for crafts projects or as rags. In the past, that material would end up in a dumpster, then a landfill, but this waste bothered White. About three months ago, the Valley resident took to the internet to see if she...
Friday library hours will be returning, and the liquor will keep flowing in Saratoga. With about 15 members of the public in attendance (including incoming council members Steve Wilcoxson and Jennie Lou Ivory), the Saratoga Town Council voted to pitch in $1,500 for the local library and to renew liquor licenses at its Nov. 15 meeting. Carbon County Library System Director Jacob Mickelson petitioned the council for $1,500 so the facility could return to being open on Fridays starting Dec. 1. In...
The river has swelled again, metaphorically speaking. About 40 people, including elected officials, members of the public and representatives from a number of government agencies crowded into Saratoga Town Hall the morning of Nov. 9 for a meeting on the state of the river flowing through town. According to Guy Cameron, Director of the Wyoming Department of Homeland Security (WYDHS), Saratoga has been bailed-out repeatedly for flooding issues in the last half decade. In 2011, the state spent abou...
Although prospects for a long-term river revitalization effort dominated early proceedings at a Nov. 9 meeting on the state of the Platte flowing through town, more pressing plans were also discussed by attendees. The second half of the three-hour meeting was devoted to hashing out the details of two projects officials hope to tackle before spring run-off. The more immediate of these two enterprises is a gravel bar removal project Saratoga Mayor Ed Glode said the town “hope(s) to be done by Chri...
What should “open space” requirements be in a land famed for its big skies and distant horizons? The question was one of the main animating forces of a 90-minute Saratoga Planning Commission meeting attended by about five. Though little was voted on, discussion was far-ranging at the Nov. 8 meeting. Open space ordinances are municipal codes that mandate a certain percentage of new developments be set aside for park space or green belts. Whether or not Saratoga’s Planned Unit Development (PUD)...
Roughly four kilometers from the little farming village I called home in Burkina Faso is something called “the Barrage.” Basically, it’s a dammed-up portion of a seasonal waterway feeding into the Bougouriba River to the north of us, and it’s a very picturesque and tranquil place. I frequently biked there and sat on its south eastern shore, looking at the line of rocky hills lying to the north of the body of water and listening to the gurgling river passing underneath the road. I’m not much...
Two fires from the night before and a forthcoming World Series baseball game were weighing on several minds at a Nov. 1 meeting of the Saratoga Town Council. It was the last meeting of the council before elections Nov. 8 will determine who will replace departing council members Sue Howe and Judy Welton. “I wish some of our fire department was here to thank, but I’m sure they’re all sleeping,” Saratoga Mayor Ed Glode said at the meeting. Two separate blazes had the firefighters working overtim...
Around noon Nov. 4, about 15 different stakeholders gathered in the Platte Valley Community Center (PVCC) for pulled-pork sandwiches and some serious talk. The meeting was a strategy and implementation session arranged by the Prevention Management Organization of Wyoming (PMOW), a public health group. Representatives from law enforcement, medical providers, local businesses, community organizations and area religious groups were present for the powwow, which lasted about two hours. Discussion ce...
Joe Parsons was 17 years old when he signed enlistment papers with the U.S. Marine Corps. "My mom wouldn't sign off on me going infantry, so I figured, 'I'll show her and go field radio operator' –which is basically infantry with a heavier pack," he said. At the time, it would have been easy to dismiss her maternal concern. It was June of 2000 and the U.S. was still riding the tail of a long post-Cold War high that left America's global dominance largely uncontested. Outside of a handful of T...
After lying dormant for months, flood mitigation on the North Platte River is back on the docket in Saratoga. According to Carbon County Emergency Management Coordinator (and former Saratoga Mayor) John Zeiger, officials from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Wyoming State Engineer’s Office will be coming to a meeting 10 a.m. Nov. 9 at the Saratoga Town Hall. “There are some areas on the river that would potentially qualify for some flood mit...
The Saratoga Panthers football team got off the bus at Saratoga High School around 1:30 a.m. Oct. 29. Hours earlier, a 62-0 defeat at the hands of football powerhouse Upton/Sundance had ended the Panthers postseason, but first-year coach Kegan Willford said the players had many reasons to hold their heads high. It was Saratoga’s first post-season football appearance since 2011, and an auspicious debut for Willford’s coaching tenure. Because it had been five years since the team last app...
A gravel bar in the Platte River going through town has been put on notice. At an Oct. 18 meeting of the Saratoga Town Council, director of public works Jon Winter announced details of a long-awaited gravel-clearing operation that’s been slated for the first part of December. About 10 members of the public were in attendance to hear the news. “The goal is to get rid of the big bar (immediately south of the HWY 130 bridge). That’s the primary goal,” Winter said in an Oct. 24 interview with the Su...
The night of Oct. 18 all four Carbon County Commissioner candidates found themselves on the hot seat, with a pair of Rawlins High School students doing the grilling. The occasion was a forum hosted by the Carbon County Higher Education Center (CCHEC), where about 30 people gathered to watch the three Republican incumbents and their lone Democratic challenger vie for three open positions on the board. The forum was also live-streamed on the CCHEC’s facebook feed, where it had generated over 1...
The sun descended in tandem with my hopes of seeing a new part of Burkina, and it was 7:10 when the train finally chugged its way into the station. Workers herded us into a roped-off section of platform, and, like clockwork, pandemonium erupted. For whatever reason (and I spent long hours during my Peace Corps years trying to figure it out) “queuing,” or the social convention of forming lines, is not common in Burkina. Grown men and women, wearing clothes far nicer than mine, threw the...
Like Heartbreak Hill in the Boston Marathon, the Saratoga Panthers volleyball season ended with away games against top-ranked Baggs and Encampment. Losses in both of those challenging matches dashed the Panthers playoff hopes, and spelled the end of the season for Saratoga. "I don't know what to say, we had two of the toughest teams to play our last weekend," coach Shayley Love said. Against Baggs on Friday, Love said, "We didn't play horribly by any means. We put up a fight the first couple of...
A poem was read, then a dozen yellow and purple balloons drifted away into the darkening Wyoming sky last Friday night. It was halftime during a Saratoga High School football game against the Wind River Cougars, and when the six Panther seniors walked out to center field to be honored with their families, they knew it could be their last appearance in pads. In notching a 31-14 victory over Wind River, however, the Saratoga squad forestalled that final day by at least a week. The victory punched...
According to Mira Miller, secretary of the Carbon County Library System Foundation (CCLSF), that organization will be holding a pair of fundraisers. All proceeds will go toward the CCLSF, which provides resources and material support to Carbon County libraries. At 5:30 p.m. Oct. 28 there will be an $20 adult dinner theatre. The next morning there will be a $10 children’s lunch matinee at 11:30 a.m. Both events are at the Shrine Center at 5th and Pine Streets in Rawlins. Miller said entertainment...
After more than 35 years, Kim Lorenzen of Saratoga Aviation has started the process of selling-off his Fixed Base Operator (FBO) business at Shively Field to a new firm, Mountain Flight Services. The transaction was announced and approved at an Oct. 12 meeting of the Saratoga Airport Board attended by about five members of the public. An FBO is the entity in charge of keeping an airport up to Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) standards, and it is also responsible for providing a host of...
One of the biggest problems facing any rural emergency service is how to minimize and compensate for any “gaps” in coverage. For South Central Wyoming Emergency Medical Services (SCWEMS), whose coverage area stretches across thousands of square miles, the problem is acute. As explained by newly appointed SCWEMS chair Jeb Steward, gaps in coverage occur when a community doesn’t have an emergency responder on-duty and able to respond to a call for help. Steward said that in these instances, the n...
When Mikayla Larrow started working as the director of the Saratoga Museum this spring, she inherited what would be a prize-winning artifact–and a mystery. The Wyoming State Historical Society recently named a keepsake box owned by the museum one of the Top Ten Artifacts of 2016, but questions about the box’s provenance remain. The box is an intricately carved wooden piece in the “kerbschnit” style, which involves making deep furrows in wood with a razor or other small blade. The outside...
Once again, the Saratoga Panther volleyball team managed to split weekend matches, but they didn't walk away with the W they really wanted. After taking three of four sets at home against Hanna Elk Mountain Medicine Bow (HEM) Friday, the Panthers were defeated by Farson-Eden in Farson Saturday afternoon. The Farson-Eden match-up was the more important game, because it represented one of Saratoga's final three conference matches of the season. There are now just two of those conference matches...
In Saratoga High School’s Oct. 14 football game against Rocky Mountain High School, in Cowley, Wyo., all of the action came in the first half. Little of it was in the Panther’s favor. Despite a revitalized roster featuring two previously injured athletes, Saratoga fell 55-7 to the Grizzlies, dropping to 1-3 in conference play with one regular season game left. “We started out OK, but I’m not sure exactly what happened,” coach Kegan Willford said afterwards. Indeed, in the first quarter t...
The Saratoga Planning Commission are six laymen armed with three-hundred page binders and charged with a daunting task. With about five members of the public attending their Oct. 11 meeting, the commission continued to grapple with questions of how to order organic growth and impartially direct development. Camping at Copperline Lodge, redefining the town influence area, finalizing a zone-change application from Trivest Enterprises and other repeat issues took up much of the docket. Copperline...
About 40 citizens came to the Platte Valley Community Center (PVCC) Oct. 10 to attend a candidate forum hosted by the Valley Service Organization (VSO). The forum included three candidates for Saratoga Town Council, four candidates for Carbon County Commissioner, one candidate for Wyoming House Dist. 47 Representative and two candidates for U.S. Congress. The forum started at the town council level, with Steve Wilcoxson, Glee Johnson and Jennie Lou Ivory vying for two open slots. Addressing the...
Vacancies on two boards were filled, Saratoga filed final paperwork to receive state and federal funding for an airport project, and the police department transferred old equipment to Encampment. Routine business was the order of the day at an Oct. 4 meeting of the Saratoga Town Council attended by about five members of the public. The appointment of Cindy Talbot to the South Central Wyoming Emergency Medical Services (SCWEMS) board was a sign of progress for the organization, which faced...