As a boy, John Contos would sit on his grandfather’s shoeshine stand, located across from the historic Mayflower Cafe, to watch the Cheyenne Frontier Days parades as they passed by, before attending the events with his family. Little did he know he’d one day be in charge of the state’s premier event.

Unlike many small Wyoming towns that are struggling to grow their economies, Upton is undergoing an economic revival. Dubbed the “best town on earth,” the northeast Wyoming town of just under 900 people — with one restaurant, one grocery store and two gas stations — is chugging forward with business development.

Jim Facinelli knows a thing or two about Wyoming. Born and raised in Lander nearly 84 years ago, he moved to Cody in 1964 and has called the area home ever since. And for 53 years, he’s served on the Cody Stampede Board of Directors, helping to put on what the town rightly calls “the longest running and only nightly rodeo in the world.”

The soaring mountain range is hardly the sole gem in the crown of Grand Teton National Park; the area’s wildlife is one of the most significant draws for visitors from around the world — of which there were 2.8 million in 2022. The park is also home to a small team of wildlife biologists who study the animals throughout the landscape and keep a close eye on whether they’re thriving or not.

Cybercrimes and internet-related theft are on the rise in Wyoming. Losses to citizens and businesses statewide have more than tripled in three years, soaring from $5M in 2020 to just under $18M in 2022, according to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center.

Overseeing five state prisons and a biennial budget of $262 million is no easy task. But it’s a rewarding one for Dan Shannon.

When Dan Shannon accepted a job as a corrections officer in Pennsylvania in 1985, he was 21 years old and just looking for secure work. Little did he know it would morph into a lifelong career.

The Wyoming State Geological Survey’s slogan is “Interpreting the past, providing for the future.” Simply put, it means understanding earth’s features and processes, which existed long before humans showed up, and analyzing how the knowledge can be applied to our modern lives.

Tens of thousands of Americans die each year from fentanyl, the powerful synthetic opioid that is now the primary cause of overdose fatalities. Over 70,000 of the record 107,000 overdoses last year involved the drug, which is up to 50 times more potent than heroin. To put this in perspective, that’s one fentanyl death in the U.S. every seven minutes, or more than all those killed in the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

Substance use disorder is often an unexpected trap. It can begin innocently enough, but then quickly lead to dependency. The drug hijacks and rewires the brain, tolerance grows and the desire for ever-stronger substances becomes too great to overcome.

Dave Wolfskill and Marki Davis have spent a lot of time together in the trenches. The two met in 2012 on a social media platform centered on locating missing youth. At the time, both were private investigators in their own practices and a shared passion for helping bring missing people home.

The road to recovery for anyone struggling with substance use disorder can be long and difficult. Deciding to enter treatment itself is a huge hurdle, and invariably, the relapses and obstacles along the way can make it appear that sobriety is unreachable. While strategies for drug treatment and recovery support services continue to evolve, there are already programs in place in Wyoming to help people reach this goal.

Drug overdoses are now a leading cause of death in the United States, with nearly 107,000 fatalities alone over the past 12 months. Yet, the addiction and overdose epidemic has been building for two decades in which nearly one million Americans have died in every corner of the country—including in Wyoming.

Scott Hoversland, executive director of the Wyoming Community Development Authority (WCDA), is no stranger to crisis. Within two years of joining the nonprofit in 2005, Hoversland and his team helped families navigate the housing market during the Great Recession.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic three years ago, mixed messages from public health professionals have occasionally left Americans confused about the best course of action, leading to political and social disagreements about everything from mask policies to vaccine incentives to business reopenings.

On March 11, 2020, the Wyoming Department of Health announced the state’s first lab-confirmed case of “coronavirus disease 2019,” long before anyone knew how devastating the COVID-19 pandemic would turn out to be.

Attorney Donna Sheen, founder of the Laramie-based Wyoming Children’s Law Center, has devoted her career to advocating for children’s legal needs in special education, education services and the juvenile justice system.

Sheen recently spoke with the Wyoming Truth, noting the need for new approaches to juvenile justice, beginning with alternatives to arrest. The first set of excerpts from the conversation covered how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted juvenile justice in Wyoming, the need for better data collection and sharing and whether youth who are wrestling with addiction should be arrested.

Wyoming had the fourth highest juvenile incarceration rate in the nation in 2019, locking up 239 out of every 100,000 juveniles that year—outranked by Washington, D.C., West Virginia and Alaska—according to the latest Easy Access to the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement report.

TikTok has been in the crosshairs in recent months as at least a dozen states, including Wyoming, banned the social media app from all state-owned electronic devices and networks. Critics cite security risks related to the popular social media app’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party and its potential to influence foreign governments among its concerns.

For many young boys, growing up to be a cowboy and rodeo star is the ultimate dream. But for Abe Morris the dream became a reality, leading him to a new home in the Mountain West, a successful bull riding career and a life filled with adventure.