The Voice of the Community Since 1909, Serving Moorcroft and Pine Haven, Wyoming
The Voice of the Community Since 1909, Serving Moorcroft and Pine Haven, Wyoming
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HDR Engineering's Mike Oakly brought Pine Haven's council up to date on the progress of the pedestrian path through the south part of town at last week's workshop. "In the feasibility study, we took the town's existing plan for future pathway projects and got it to about a 30% design," he said. After completing the study, Oakley reported, "WYDOT liked the way everything was progressing and the town has now received the newer grant to do the design of it." Following the advice of the state, HDR...
Moorcroft's derelict and abandoned houses and trailers are again the forefront of discussion among the town's elected officials and homeowners who have to live next to these properties. Many of these buildings are believed unsafe – gutted by fire, rodent infested, with rotting holes in the roof and floor, etc. and have continued to decay for several years with little to no interest from the owners. At a recent meeting of the town council, resident Sam Burke, fiancé Jerry Hildeman and ne...
When Moorcroft's Public Works Director Cory Allison and his crew noticed a loss of pressure in the Madison water line Wednesday morning, crewmen traveled along the pipeline and soon discovered water on the ground about halfway between town and the Madison well, east of Wind Creek Road, indicating a leak in the line. Allison called Travis Dewey, owner of Tri-City Excavation Inc. in Carlile, WY. "They dug it up and figured out what was wrong Wednesday afternoon and we had it going by noon on...
Budget talks have officially begun and Moorcroft department heads have made their wish lists known. At the same time, the governing body must also look at the price raise of electricity feeding town owned properties. Mayor Ben Glenn later said of the council's budget focus with this growing concern, "We're trying to tighten up a little bit as we move forward. There are some large electrical costs we did not fully anticipate." Glenn went on, "Of course, with all of America, everything is going...
Furthering their efforts to make the north baseball field an actual game ready facility next summer, the Moorcroft Town Council is working with RHEX of Wright, WY to truck an as-yet-undetermined number of tons of unused proppant material to the Westview Park, more than enough to cover the infield. The advantage of laying this product is, according to Mayor Ben Glenn, “[The ground] won’t be such a hard surface, it will be a little more granular so it’s a little softer.” Proppants are composed of sand or similar particulates used in frackin...
A special meeting was held last Wednesday to discuss in executive session employee evaluations, but first, the council took the opportunity to transfer the deed for part of the playground area within the Moorcroft Town Center (MTC) property to Moorcroft Interfaith Community (MIC) leaders Monte Reichenberg and Randy Blakeman. In December 2023, when the MIC first approached the governing body about the possibility of purchasing this space to better facilitate food storage and distribution to...
With the introduction of the Global Positioning System (GPS) on Moorcroft’s police and public works vehicles, the decision has been made by the council to designate oversight of the system to department heads Cory Allison, Public Works Director, and Bill Bryant, Police Chief, in association with Mayor Ben Glenn. Town Attorney Pat Carpenter advised at a meeting a couple of weeks ago that direct oversight available to more than the department head and one council member could lead to problems. The mayor will then print reports to share with h...
After some quality time working together on the upper baseball field in Westview Park on Saturday, Moorcroft Mayor Ben Glenn, Councilwoman Heidi Humpal, a couple invested parents, brothers Joey and Brian Mefford of Newcastle’s baseball club, Rage baseball managers Travis Arney and Darin Morgan as well as the Krissy Hinkhouse of the Moorcroft Baseball Club met to start the cleanup and rehabilitation of the field. According to Chuck Reynolds, husband of Moorcroft Baseball’s Courtney Reynold’s, who attended the informal event to help, the group...
Last week, the Moorcroft Council met with Town Attorney Pat Carpenter to discuss an ordinance to create a definition for commercial property within town limits. In their continuing efforts to create a more equitable meter system, Moorcroft's council is exploring dividing water rates between residential and commercial regarding multifamily units; currently, this specifically means, mobile home parks and apartment buildings. Generally speaking, commercial is everything not residential... It's too...
Rage Baseball spokesperson Travis Arney and associate Darin Morgan attended last week's regular meeting of Moorcroft's town council to answer questions regarding their year-long absence from Moorcroft's Westview Park upper baseball field and their future plans – including how to deal with a particularly stubborn weed. Arney expressed his wish to avoid speaking to the past, "Obviously, with things that have transpired with all this, I think we just need to stick with facts moving forward rather t...
With a delivery date of May 1 set for the long-anticipated playground equipment for Pine Haven's next kids' play area, Harwood Park, the town is planning for an assembly/installation day and is seeking volunteers to help. The same approach was utilized for the slide set in Waters Park, where the old adage, "many hands make light work" was proven true with the assistance of many volunteers. Mayor Karla Brandenburg opined during a recent conversation, "There's a lot of stuff that needs to be...
Sandy Stevens, Executive Director of North East Wyoming Advocacy Resource Center (NEWARC) has been visiting municipalities in Crook and Weston Counties to ask for funds to assist victims of domestic violence. This year, she is advising the councils with whom she speaks that, while things are running relatively smoothly now, in the 2025/2026 fiscal year, Victims Of Crime Act (VOCA) funding is anticipated to be cut across the board 40%. However, she and her associates are already making plans to adapt to the changing situation. “The Division o...
With the loss of Moorcroft postmaster Kim Watson, long time local resident Ann Shutt is moving from the Rozet post office back home, to Moorcroft. After starting her career in Upton as a part-time flex employee and working there for five years, Shutt transferred to Gillette and worked there part time until 2000, when the postmaster position opened in Beulah, WY. "I loved it, it was fun and I was grateful to be there," she says. "I did that for a year and the Moorcroft Post office came open,"...
Crook County Commissioners Fred Devish and Kelly Dennis, with their hired consultant, Jayna Watson, spoke to the assemblage at Friday's Pine Haven Council workshop regarding the next steps of their efforts to better manage growth within county limits. The commissioners allowed their consultant to take the lead in the conversation. Watson was first introduced to town and county residents in January as she conducted opinion polls and disseminated information about the possible need for further...
KO Construction is getting closer to an acceptable project completion on the C-Bar subdivision and Pine Haven Mayor Karla Brandenburg looks forward to reincorporating municipal waterlines. “We want to flush and we want to check our pressure and we need to get that done fairly soon,” she said. When The Water Guy, Duaine Fawcett attempted to pressure test the lines running through C-Bar a few weeks ago, the air in the lines that had gained entrance through myriad breaks by previous construction work on site. These caused the test to fail. How...
In May of last year, Rage Baseball spokesmen Travis and wife Devin Arney visited a Moorcroft Council workshop to speak about the team making Moorcroft's upper ball field their home sports ground. Arney, at the time, assured the council of the potential for money coming into town via the games and the increase of value by upgrades to the field, paid for by team sponsors, though he did not share any names or details regarding these sponsors. The council listened to schedule recommendations,...
Recently, a question arose about the process when someone calls 911 for an ambulance. With many community residents having never been in such a situation, Brad and wife Lexi McKee, owners of K.A.R.E. EMS Solutions, the company that is taking the lead in administrative support for Moorcroft's ambulance service, considered this an opportunity to talk about the procedure for this area, hopefully making this a less stressful situation. Using as an example a possible heart attack, you have called...
Krissy Hinkhouse, who has taken on much of the event planning after the resignation of long time Moorcroft Area Chamber of Commerce (MACC) volunteer Elaine Buckmiller, spoke to Moorcroft's council last week, sharing the decision to discontinue the long held Spring Cleanup Day "due to a lack of a dump." The aforementioned lack of a landfill, though, was set aside as the conversation turned to last year's unsuccessful event. At that time, the town's public works had to pick up the streetside...
Wednesday's presentation on Moorcroft's beginning and the events that influenced this little town was West Texas Trail Museum director Cindy Mosteller's first foray into this type of informational entertainment, but certainly won't be her last. Twenty-two guests listened as Mosteller shared her numerous discoveries about the birth of Moorcroft, the theories and facts regarding the origins of the name and other interesting and revealing connections unknown by many today. "It was about an hour...
While the second phase of the Powder River Project is projected to break ground this summer, Moorcroft’s council has applied for a separate grant for the Little Horn Replacement Project. According to Mayor Ben Glenn, “It’s just a short section on the north end of Little Horn Avenue. It’s all HC pipe still and it’s pretty old." "We’ve had a couple band aid breaks there and we’re going to get that fixed,” he adds. This smaller project is not yet scheduled....
Sheriff Jeff Hodge commends the 16 Pine Haven volunteers who recently qualified from the open water rescue class hosted by the Crook County Sheriff's Department. Six of the volunteers are now certified for the water rescues as well as vital shore support and ten others specifically for supporting the crew from the shoreline. "This will have more people at the lake, ready to respond to any kind of incident until we get there if we're not in the area. It ups the county's response time to the...
Moorcroft Councilwoman Heidi Humpal has been pushing for plug-in GPS tracking tools in all town-owned highway vehicles. “We’ve been discussing it back and for the for a while and we just want to be able to track some work progress, looking at different things that there may be questions about – it’ll just be real easy to tell for more productivity,” she said. Her fellow councilmen agreed at last week’s regular meeting to a trial period. The town will be ordering and installing the simple plug-in tracking systems for the maintenance and police...
A grant established by the Wyoming Business Council through the Community Facilities Rehabilitation Grant Program was touted by those with whom town officials and staff worked on it as a sure thing for the Moorcroft Town Center (MTC). Moorcroft Mayor Ben Glenn later said, “Everybody we talked to said it was easy, it was perfect, this is what the grant’s for, you guys are in great shape.” The assurances convinced the council and HDR Engineering’s Heath Turbiville to meet in October of last year to discuss, in detail, what would be done with the...
The plan for a splash pad at Noonan Park seemed, for a time, stymied due to unstable soil. But after researching the best approach to the problem, HDR Engineering was able to bring a solution to Moorcroft’s council involving smaller slabs of concrete. The group discussed this possible answer at length at a recent workshop and are now ready to proceed with two smaller pads, “So they can float if they need to instead of breaking or cracking,” Mayor Ben Glenn stated Monday. However, the anticipated grand opening of the attraction that had been...
Pine Haven Fire Chief TJ Gideon reminds residents to use the municipal slash pile responsibly. “We have a lot of building going on… the slash pile is not for clearing lots on new construction. If we allowed that, we will not be able to keep up with it,” he says. The chief explains the purpose of the slash pile: “For cleaning up the established properties and keeping them fire safe....
