How often at night when the heavens are bright with the light from the glittering stars, have I stood there amazed and asked as I gazed if their glory exceeds that of ours. – from the song Home on the Range

One of Wyoming’s legendary boom-bust ghost towns is Jeffrey City.

This little burg sits in the far southeast corner of Fremont County and is famous because its population zoomed to over 4,000 people for a very short time around 1982. It was the uranium mining capital of the state. Today, less than 150 people live there.

         Prior to that boom, the area was known as Home on the Range and it even boasted a Post Office by that name. Postmistress was my old friend (the late) Beulah Peterson Walker.

         Although I never knew for sure, I always thought her town was named after the famous song, which many folks would like to see become the official song of Wyoming.

         Not to be confused with Ragtime Cowboy Joe, which is the official song of the University of Wyoming.

         According to the Internet, our state song is Wyoming by C. E. Winter. Sorry I did not know that off the tip of my tongue. Maybe we should make Home on the Range our state song? Too late, Kansas beat us to it. Are there even antelope in Kansas?

         Which brings me to my subject, this wonderful song!

The things that I thought were unique about the song Home On The Range were that it reminded me of Wyoming and that it could have been the theme song for my late friend Beulah`s hometown.

       Once the uranium boom ended in 1983 and the 4,000 people who used to populate Jeffrey City went away, there was a movement to change the name of the place back to Home on the Range. It was a good idea then and it is a good idea now. With uranium mining starting to come back, it will be interesting if this movement gets any traction again soon.

       But lately, the concept of “home on the range” has a lot more with people moving to Wyoming than it does with a place or a song.

       Wyoming was the fastest-growing state in the union in the last decade, according to the census, percentage-wise.

Now back to my story about the song: When it came to the song Home on the Range, my ideas changed, when actor Wilford Brimley approached the microphone during his speech at a Lander One-Shot Antelope banquet some years ago. Without much fanfare, the grizzled movie veteran stepped up to the front of the audience.

The crowd readied itself for some sage advice or wicked humor from the actor. But not this time. Brimley, a real ex-rancher, who now lives in Greybull, had talked sincerely of his earlier lives as an unsuccessful sheep rancher in Idaho.

He had known hardship and he appreciated the good life he was enjoying now. He had been emotionally moved by his experience in the Wind River Mountain Mountains and the vast Red Desert.

It prompted him to recite some words, which moved the audience immensely.

Brimley recited four lesser-known verses of the song Home On The Range as a poem. Those verses were as follows:

Oh, I love these wild flowers in this dear land of ours, the curlew I love to hear scream, and I love the white rocks and the antelope flocks that graze on the mountaintops green.

Oh, give me a land where the bright diamond sand flows leisurely down to the stream, where a graceful white swan goes gliding along like a maid in a heavenly dream.

Where the air is so pure, the zephyrs so free, the breezes so balmy and light, that I would not exchange my home on the range for all the cities so bright.

Then I would not exchange my home on the range, where the deer and the antelope play; where seldom is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day.

Brimley’s performance caused me to wonder just where the song came from originally. The local library came up with the verses and some history.

A Texan named David Guion, who also wrote Carry Me Back To The Lone Prairie and The Yellow Rose of Texas, popularized the song in the 1920s. It has been called the Cowboy’s National Anthem. But few people ever get past the first verse.

         No specific item to report on this week, but lots of thoughts in my idle mind:

         • The recent heat waves across the southern USA have made predictions come true about electricity blackouts and brownouts.

         It was predicted three years ago that in 2011 and 2012 during the August heat waves that southern utility companies would not be able to keep up.

         In Dallas, the utilities have made special deals with industries to shut themselves down during heat waves so they have enough power to keep the air conditioning on. Dallas went 40 straight days over 100-plus temperatures causing 13 deaths.

         The Dallas-Forth Worth area set up 15 “cooling centers” where people could go to enjoy air conditioning and drink cold water. They recorded 163,000 visits. Amazing.

         Other cities like Atlanta are also cooking in the heat.

         Energy producing states of Wyoming will benefit in the long run from the heat problems being endured by citizens of these states.

         • Meanwhile, a big story in a recent Fortune Magazine was about the energy company EOG, whose leaders have decided to forego their industry-leading natural gas efforts to concentrate on oil.

         They correctly predicted the super abundance of natural gas being produced in America and how prices for that commodity would be dropping. 

         Oil, as predicted, though, is still selling at high prices.

         What does this bode for Wyoming, which is the second highest producing state in the country for natural gas? Well, unless our legislature realizes it needs to modify our severance tax collection system, we could see a big dip in energy taxes.

         • A lot of towns around Wyoming have ubiquitous local deer herds.

         Here in Lander, it appears that our deer have been on some special reproductive drugs. Just about every doe I see has twins and there is even a doe hanging around our place with the very rare triplets.

         Deer can be beautiful but wonderful pests. Not sure what the solution is. We love our deer but I know that at our place the only way we could have a garden is if I built a greenhouse.

         • Folks watching TV last weekend were treated to a wonderful performance by a golfer with lots of Wyoming ties.

         Keegan Bradley won the fourth major of the season, the PGA championship. His dad, Mark Bradley, is the golf pro at the Jackson Hole Golf and Tennis Club, which was mentioned a dozen times during the broadcast of the tourney.

         It was not that long ago that Keegan, who is a pro tour rookie this year, won the Wyoming Amateur in 2005 and finished second in 2006.

         Not too often have the words “golf champion” and “Wyoming” been linked in national news, but this past week, it did occur.

         • We were boating on Flaming Gorge just inside the Wyoming border Saturday when a game warden came zooming toward us.

I assumed we would have to produce our fishing licenses and demonstrate that we had enough life jackets and safety equipment on board.

         But it was not us, he was after.

         We had just watched some folks launch a homemade pontoon raft from the shore. One of the folks with us swore these folks were using shovels as oars.

         The raft was homemade. It was a wooden platform with six 55-gallon drums keeping it afloat.

         A gal was sitting in the middle of the platform in a lawn chair enjoying the weather and probably getting ready to fish.

         But to no avail. The game warden was giving them a pretty good once- over. We watched for a while and then left.

         It did not appear that the raft had a state sticker and I did not see any life jackets on board. Probably good that the warden was there since the water in the Gorge is often more than 200 feet deep.

         It was a wonderful day for boating and in that sense, I totally support these folks in their efforts to get into the water. But it is not nearly so sure that their craft was sea worthy.

         The lake water was just 69 degrees, which would make anyone falling in pretty cold pretty fast.

         • And Laramie has been getting some kudos lately.

         Money Magazine named it first place in the country as the best place to retire.   Second was Ames, Iowa and third was Bozeman, MT.

         Wyoming’s fantastic tax structure plus Laramie’s home to a Division One university were key factors in the selection.

          Everything’s the same, back in my little town.

– Simon and Garfunkel song

         Why does Wyoming lack a small city of significant population?

         This thought first occurred to me while traveling through Boise a few years ago. Most recently, while visiting Anchorage, with its 300,000 people, this question again came into my mind.

         Our largest cities, Casper and Cheyenne, are wonderful places. Both were similar in size to Anchorage and Boise 50 years ago. Not so today.

         It might be easy to conclude that there were unique things that contributed to the growth of Anchorage and Boise. But what? And why? They are isolated places in frontier-like states just like Wyoming.

         One thing I noticed about both places is the obvious signs that big corporations are based there. Years ago, big oil companies had a large presence in Casper and a big airline had its headquarters in Cheyenne. But they moved on.

         Anchorage grew because of the energy explosion in that state. But has not Wyoming seen the exact same thing here over the past 50 years?

         It is also significant to note the difference in the ages of the populations of Alaska and Wyoming. While we are among the oldest in average age, Alaska is perhaps the youngest.

         Today Casper and Cheyenne are both 55,000-plus while Anchorage tops a quarter of a million and Boise tops 200,000.

         Before going farther, I admit that I love our small population and am not yearning for big increases. But it seems odd that somehow Wyoming has avoided developing that one major-sized city that would be an economic incubator for the state.

         The statistics of some other neighboring small cities are even more interesting.

         In 1961, Fort Collins was a tiny little city, as was Rapid City. Today, they are 143,986 and 67,956.

         Greeley was just 26,251 back in 1961. Today its population is 92,889.

         Idaho’s growth of its small cities makes no sense. In 1961, Boise was just 34,378, smaller than both Casper and Cheyenne. Today it is 205,671. Idaho Falls went from 33,095 to 56,813 today. Pocatello went from 28,195 to 54,255.

         Over 50 years, the growth of Casper from 38,665 to 55,316 and Cheyenne’s growth from 43,380 to 59,456 are quite respectable. But neither showed the explosive growth of these other regional cities. Billings, for example, doubled from 52,249 to 104,170.

         Wyoming leaders commented on this situation:

         Several blamed weather for lack of growth in our two largest cities. Steve Mossbrook, CEO of Wyoming.com in Riverton said: “In both Wyoming cities the wind blows all the time, frequently so hard as to make it uncomfortable to be out of doors.  Additionally, Wyoming people are not exactly fond of change. ”

         Randy Bruns, who heads up LEADS economic efforts in Cheyenne, replied: “Anchorage, Ft Collins and Boise all are university towns and they all invested heavily in quality of life amenities two decades or more before Casper and Cheyenne started to wake up. Communities that invest in themselves become attractive to others. In Wyoming we thought things were good enough, thank you very much.”

         Jared Kail of Lander talks about “critical mass” as necessary for a larger city to grow to that level. “It requires a seed of population initially large enough to sustain itself economically through plenty of access to capital and a stable and skilled workforce.

“Once that critical mass is achieved, it behooves companies to relocate from elsewhere enough businesses have stabilized to provide wealth in terms of investments and there are enough employees skilled in a given industry to make a steady stream of valued employment cheap enough to keep profit margins in check.

 “Outlook?  I see Cheyenne on the cusp of hitting critical mass.  I think we are seeing a type of industry forcing happening both by virtue of its strategic importance at the intersection of two major US interstates, and through a (governmental sponsored) high-tech trend growth via NCAR.  I think we could see Wyoming`s first major city emerge.  Which is, of course, yet another reason why I love living in Lander,” Kail concluded.

My personal theory is that both Cheyenne and Casper do have weather considerations that come into play. But the biggest reason for the lack of a major growth is the 20-year bust that Wyoming endured from 1982 to 2002. Wyoming truly languished during this bleak period with a “make do, get by” attitude.

That, and the lack of a four-year university in either city.

What do you think?

         There is a Jackson-based web site called Planet Jackson Hole, which I think is a perfect name for that area.

         The place often seems to have a cultural and physical (and economic) isolation from the rest of the state.

         Here in Wyoming, most of us want to claim Jackson Hole. Who wouldn’t? It has the spectacular Grand Teton National Park, after all.

         It also has a world-class ski area in the Jackson Hole Ski Resort plus the highest rated hotels and restaurants in the state.

         The area boasts more than two million tourists a year. Now that is an awesome number.

         Planet Jackson Hole? Perhaps another reason Jackson gets this extreme reputation is that national news recently portrayed the most expensive home for sale in America was located in Jackson Hole Valley.

         It is priced at $175 million and owned by Richard Fields, of the Coastal gaming company. It consists of 1,750 acres just outside of Jackson.

         Perhaps the biggest draw is not the land or the main house, but a horse barn with 52 stalls, or at it is known, “an equestrian center.”

         It is also noted that the home sale market in Jackson is hot primarily for inexpensive houses just “under one million dollars,” which could only happen at that end of the state.

         In an interesting coincidence, one of the most popular TV shows in the country, Modern Family, has picked Jackson Hole for its opening episode this fall.

         The hilarious show, which is among our family’s favorites, airs on Wednesday nights and is about several oddball families. It is just about the highest-rated situation comedy on TV. It highlighting Jackson Hole will be a big plus for Wyoming tourism.

         Another reason Jackson has been famous in recent years is that is the town where former Vice President Dick Cheney chooses to maintain his legal residence.

         His new book is coming out the end of this month is called In My Time and has an interesting photo on the cover. It shows the former Veep standing in the same location (and wearing a similar tie and coat) to that which was worn by President Barack Obama, when the president announced Osama Bin Laden was killed. Of course, this had liberal media pundits like Rachel Maddow howling.

         HBO is continuing to put together its mini-series on Cheney. The network optioned the book Angler, which is a very detailed tome about Cheney.

Cheney’s wife Lynne was presented with the Louisa Swain Foundation annual award recently. Ray Hunkins emceed the event in Jackson and it honored her for good work over the years in promoting literacy. 

         Everyone in Wyoming should know who Louisa Swain was.

         She was the first woman to ever vote in an election in America. She voted in Laramie on Sept. 6, 1870, some 141 years ago. Yes, we have come a long way, baby.

         In presenting the award, this was said about Lynne:

       “As chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1986 to 1993, she wrote and spoke about the importance of teaching children about the leaders, events, and ideas that have shaped our world. 

       “As a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, she has written six best-selling history books for children and their families, beginning with America: A Patriotic Primer, released in 2002, and most recently publishing We the People: The Story of Our Constitution in 2008. Mrs. Cheney has donated more than a million dollars of the proceeds from her children’s books to charity.

         My favorite joke about the Cheneys is about one time when an interviewer asked Dick how he pronounced his name, Cheeney or Chaney?

         The Veep paused and then told a story about how even he wondered why the name was pronounced like it was. At a family reunion, he approached his oldest relative, Uncle Ben.

Then he asked his uncle about his dog, which was very well mannered. What kind of dog is that?

Another Jackson resident getting lots of air time is Clay James, former head of Jackson Lake Lodge and a former chairman of the Wyoming Travel Commission.

PBS-TV has been running a national program featuring famous lodges in national parks. A feature on Jackson Lake Lodge, which was built by the Rockefellers, featured a long interview with its former long-time general manager.

That lodge was the first of many great hotels to be built on the planet known as Jackson Hole.