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Faculty and family gathered Saturday night to honor the Class of 2015. The seven high school graduates from Encampment K-12 School were decked out in their red and black gowns and caps as they took the stage, each holding a tiger lily, the class flower. Class President Brett Ralston gave the welcoming address followed by the Salutatorian address by Luke Pantle. Liz Wood, publisher of the Saratoga Sun, gave the commencement address to the class where she reflected on her years covering the...
Once Riverside gets the go-ahead from the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) the town’s Bio-Dome project is ready to hit the ground running so that it can get the domes installed into the bottom of its two wastewater lagoons. The Bio-Domes will help to grow the bacteria that breaks down wastewater is fed into the lagoons and keep the process going during the winter months when the bacteria would normally become dormant under the ice. The relatively new technology would be the first of its...
By the end of the month, if all goes as planned, the nursing home formerly known as Valley View and Deseret Health and Rehab will be under new management. According to Kim Deti, information officer for the Wyoming Department of Health (WDH), a lease agreement between Deseret Health Group and Health Management Services has been reached. Health Management Services has asked for a license and WDH has sent an application for them to complete. “We are cautiously optimistic,” Deti told the Saratoga Sun Monday afternoon. Health Management Ser...
Pam Kraft and her students wrapped up a week of showing their silk art pieces at Encampment's Red Wagon thrift store and coffee shop last Wednesday night. Fruit, cheese, and beverages were served to guests as they examined the vibrant and contrasting styles that Kraft was able to bring out of her students. "I'm really happy about the way it turned out. I'm very proud of it. Pam's a great teacher," said Krissy Whitacre, one of Kraft's students in the class. "I helped (Krissy) out with the colors...
Wyoming Department of Health (WDH) Director Tom Forslund, held a last-minute press conference on Friday where he announced that at the direction of Gov. Matt Mead, his department was taking over temporary management of the Rock Springs and Saratoga nursing homes. The nursing homes are owned by Deseret Health Group (DHG), which has seen similar closures of its facilities across several states in the last few weeks. While the state and federal rules require an entity such as DHG to give 30 and 60... Full story
The Kaiser Foundation announced it has awarded fifteen $3,000 scholarships to outstanding graduating seniors of Wyoming high schools. These scholarships may be renewed for an additional four years for those students who continue to meet academic standards. The recipients were selected on the basis of merit with special consideration given to their academic, extracurricular, and community service achievements. This year, one of the scholarship recipients was Veronica Lincoln, a Saratoga High...
By H.B. Lawson On Friday afternoon Deseret Health and Rehab Administrator, Anita Mills received a call from Carbon County Commissioner Sue Jones. Jones informed Mills of a call the commissioner's office had just had concerning the possible imminent closures of Saratoga's Deseret health care facility as well as the Rock Springs Deseret facility. Both the Saratoga and Rock Springs facilities, as well as several others across Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska and Utah are owned by the Deseret Health... Full story
When Gene Roddenberry pitched his idea for “Star Trek” to paramount pictures he called it “Wagon Train to the Stars”—a twist on a popular western television series in the 50s called “Wagon Train” which chronicled the drama of intrepid pioneers that ventured into the unknown mystery of the wild west. Roddenberry’s idea was that someday in the future there would be a next generation of explorers and frontiersmen that would set out across the vast expanse of space to homestead new worlds. In the...
Parents and teachers roped in the wee members of next year's kindergarten class during Saratoga Elementary's annual Kindergarten Round-up last Thursday. The matriculating pre-schoolers were brought in to meet with their kindergarten teachers. The future students were given an assessment by the kindergarten teachers who were on hand to check the preschoolers knowledge of basic shapes and colors before being given speech tests by Deborah Kimber and vision tests by various members of the...
8th grade student, Morgan Dale from Encampment was one of the six essays chosen from over 100 submissions, and placed third in the Division One 7th-9th grade in a regional essay contest sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League. Dale chose to write her essay on Susan B. Anthony, the famed women's rights pioneer, since this year's theme was, "A Tribute to Moral Courage: Standing Up Against Injustice." Dale immediately thought of Anthony as the subject of her essay, "She is so inspirational because...
Future scribes scribbled their way to several awards last week when students from Encampment, Medicine Bow, and Saratoga were announced as the 2015 District Young Authors Winners for Carbon County School District #2 (CCSD#2). The Wyoming Young Authors contest is a writing contest for grades Kindergarten through 12th grade and is sponsored by the Wyoming Reading Council. Students are invited to write original, creative non-fiction, fiction and poetry. According to Encampment english teacher...
Red Cross workers noticed something interesting in Louisiana as they were responding to the Hurricane Katrina disaster; many of the college students in their shelters had grabbed a pillowcase and filled it up with basic necessities when they had evacuated from their dorms. Ten years later the idea has evolved into a Disney-sponsored program by the Red Cross to teach emergency preparedness to children aged nine to 11 all across America. Ari Denson of Americorps, was at the Saratoga Elementary...
Composer Peter George is returning to his first love after 35 years away from the piano. George has always loved the piano, which he considers to be a "virtual orchestra", but had to set his passion aside while pursuing a successful career as a front-of-house sound engineer. Finally, according to George, it was time to get back on the bench. "Every moment it was eating at me to get back to the piano," George said of the decision to pursue his interest in using the piano to go through a story...
The Encampment Lady Tigers Relay team broke their school record by six seconds on April 22 when the Encampment Tigers track and field team competed at the Rawlins Invite. The relay team members, Ashlynn Johnson, Cassidy Little, Micaiah Pantle, and McKenzie Powell took first place on the 4x800 meter relay with their time of 11 minutes 13.66 seconds which also pre-qualified them for state competition. Other notable finishes for the girls team were Ashlynn Johnson’s second place finish in the 1...
Saratoga Elementary School staff invited moms to come in Tuesday morning and share treats and promote a love of reading....
Friday morning volunteer fire department and ambulance crews responded to a chimney fire at the home of Joe Parsons who had returned to his home just in time to discover the fire and alert emergency crews. Parsons girlfriend, Cheena Deakins had also just come home and said Parsons first noticed the fire in the chimney and called the fire department before taking steps on his own to stop the fire and remove some personal property from the home. "He grabbed the hose and started pulling the siding...
The Saratoga Planning Commission held its monthly meeting on Tuesday April 14 where among other items on the agenda, it met with Dave Johnson about his Dec. 9 request for review of his plans to divide his property at 118 N 2nd St. The variance in question would be for Johnson’s lot to be divided at a 50-foot width instead of the 60 feet required by the municipal code because it would cut into Johnson’s back porch if he were to divide the property at the required 60 feet. Johnson is req...
The South Central Wyoming Emergency Medical Services (SCWEMS) Joint Powers Board met on April 8, to discuss several issues facing the constantly evolving service that provides emergency services to the towns of Elk Mountain, Medicine Bow, Saratoga, Riverside, Encampment and Carbon County. SCWEMS also holds a separate year-to-year agreement with the town of Hanna. The board met for nearly five hours at the Elk Mountain station where they were able to finally confirm that in its last meeting on...
The Encampment Town Council met Thursday to approve the Fire Department’s sale of an old ambulance and purchase of a Ranger Crew 900 plus a water tank and pump to assist in getting crews into hard-to-reach areas this fire season. The council also approved going forward with its sewer lagoon ultrasonic system project. The system would help to aerate the lagoon. The council approved hiring Doug Tieszen as a part-time clerk and to make a donation to the Carbon County Youth Crisis Center. The n...
The Riverside Town Council Thursday, where they approved to go ahead with the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) application for a permit to allow the town to proceed with its plan to have Bio-Domes installed into the effluent waste lagoons. The Bio-Domes will help breakdown the bacteria that live in the wastewater. The effluent is filtered through the system and keeps the bacteria active during the winter months when the lagoon would normally freeze over. If the project moves forward it...
"It's weird because I've never held a job this long," jokes Margaret Weber when asked how it feels to mark her seventh year as owner operator of the Bear Trap Cafe and Bar. Under Weber's ownership, the Bear Trap will be celebrating its "copper anniversary" from 7-9 p.m. on Friday with musical guest Screen Door Porch. Weber estimates that over the course of seven years, she has re-invested around $200,000 in improvements and repairs back into the restaurant and bar. "I could actually make a prett...
There was a buzz in the skies around Saratoga this weekend when Dennis Koontz and eight of his fellow pilots landed their aircraft at Shively airfield Saturday morning and walked down to the Wolf for some of Doug Campbell's famous green chili. Actually, the Wolf's "secret" green chili recipe was created and written down by Dennis' father, Bill Koontz, and then given to Campbell when the elder Koontz retired from the restaurant business. Depending on who you ask, Koontz and his friends have been...
The Encampment Tigers track team headed to Cheyenne East last week to compete in the Okie Blanchard Invite. The meet was between Cheyenne East, Cheyenne South, Laramie, Torrington, Southeast, Saratoga, Hanna Elk Mountain (H.E.M.), Encampment, and Rock River. The boy’s team placed 10th overall with 15 points. Gage Bartlett took seventh place in the triple jump with a distance of 34 feet 3/4 inches and took fifth place in the 3200-meter run with a time of 12 minutes, 17 seconds. The girls team t...
While refereeing a volleyball game in Saratoga last season, Rawlins soccer coach Christian Mills was approached by Saratoga High School freshman Kennison Spiering about joining the Rawlins high school soccer team. "I just asked him if I could come up and play soccer with them," Spiering said. Mills was excited with the young freshman's enthusiasm and supported the idea since he had been instrumental in lobbying for and starting up the Rawlins high school program several years back "(Coach...
Last week you may have read the Saratoga Sun piece on the proposed road decommissions. In the article, District Ranger Melanie Fullman was quoted as saying, “I just don’t find those big meetings, which tend to get out of control to be very useful, ... I’m trying to make the most of my time.” Perhaps you heard the subsequent interview the local radio station did with Fullman the following day. If you did, then you would have heard the apparent disdain Fullman has for public meetings. In the rad...