Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
Have you ever noticed that the grocery store in a town you’re visiting is always better than the one at home? The produce is fresher, the meat department has more variety and at better prices, and overall, it’s just a brighter, fresher feel to the foreign store. The only problem with this situation is that visitors to your town feel the same way. There’s something about shopping in a different supermarket that appeals to the senses.
Without becoming overly political, that’s true of the opportunities other communities put forth for their youth in comparison to what we offer in Riverton.
Riverton has a reputation for not caring a whole lot about the youngsters in the community. It wasn’t always that way. Once upon a time there was a bright blue swimming pool in City Park throughout the summer.
The city abandoned it when the new Aquatic Center (new four decades ago) was built. The city promised to jointly support Fremont County School District 25 in the maintenance, staffing, and upkeep of the pool. That didn’t last long. Soon after opening, it became the sole responsibility of the school district.
You can argue separation of powers, complain about the eternal “poor” economy of Riverton, or perhaps blame the situation in City Park for the departure of the city from children’s and largely adult recreation as well. There just isn’t much effort made by the elected officials of Riverton to offer what other communities do in the way of recreation centers.
Citizen groups and businesses have banded together trying to create a rec center for Rivercity, but so far, they’ve fallen short when the city doesn’t want to play.
This all came into focus on a family vacation to Pinedale last weekend. Sue and I had the pleasure of taking all four grandchildren and three of their four parents to the little Sublette County town that was once part of Fremont County for two awesome days at an Airbnb.
The focus of our trip was the rec center in Pinedale. The three granddaughters, Jayne, 8, Norah, 6, and Morgan, 3, all love to swim.
Pinedale has a magnificent rec center, and it’s adjacent to Pinedale High School. If you walk out of either the men’s or women’s locker room, you can turn left to the recreational pool or right to the Wrangler Aquatic Center, where Pinedale High School holds its swim meets.
The recreational pool features a huge yellow submarine complete with fountains and a diving board, a lazy river, and a large tube slide with adjoining cold and hot tubs. It is a magnificent use of public funds, and it was full the entire time we stayed there.
No doubt, many of you reading this will think, “Well, see what energy money can do,” and you’d be correct. Energy and property tax on the nearby Jonah Field funded much of this extravagance. Just as it does in Gillette, Casper, and Rock Springs.
Others will claim it’s the wealthy people moving to Buffalo, Jackson, Sheridan, and Cheyenne that make their recreational facilities top notch.
Ok, take your pick. Riverton is not a wealthy community, but if you adhere to the “energy sure buys a lot” theory, why don’t we have anything?
From the late 1950s to the early 1980s, Riverton boomed thanks to the uranium industry. What do we have to show for it in terms of youth recreational facilities? We’ve experienced boom and bust in oil and gas for years. When there’s a bust, we always cut back. When there’s a boom, the city fathers and county commissioners always hedge their bets, always preparing for the inevitable bust and never taking advantage of the good times.
The result is what we have, nothing from our elected officials.
The facilities we do have were all organized, developed, and built by volunteers or private organizations, devoid of help from elected officials. Yes, they sometimes step up to water and mow the grass at the parks and ballparks. One thing Riverton does exceedingly well is fertilize, water, and mow the hundreds of acres of grass in the various parks around the town. That’s what we call “recreation” in Rivercity. The grass is nice from May to early October, but once recreation goes indoors, there isn’t much of it aside from physical education in the K-12 schools or participation in middle school and high school athletics.
Lest we play the “we’re too small to have these things” card, Pinedale, one-fifth the population of Riverton, not much larger than Dubois, has them. So does Lusk and Upton, two very isolated, very small communities that take pride in their outdoor pools in the summer and recreational offerings year-round.
It does get discouraging.
The county commissioners have announced that public libraries in Fremont County may close in the near future, due to the loss of property tax revenue.
I do a lot of work at the Riverton Museum and the Pioneer Museum. The nature of my research is going to change as well, with the commissioners calling on the museums to cut staff and begin charging the public for research and access to the photo archives. Don’t we as citizens of Fremont County already pay sizeable amounts in taxation for the right to read and use these historical records? Isn’t it double-taxation if a fee is added to something you’ve already been charged for?
In all my travels to 49 of the 50 states (Alaska remains), I’ve seen few facilities as kid-friendly and innovative as Jaycee Park in Riverton. Lander’s frontier-based park is wonderful as well, but Jaycee Park, with its little kid section, castle, slides, swings, drawbridge, and adjacent picnic facilities, is a testament to what a community can do when they all come together to fill a need.
Why can’t we have more Jaycee Parks? The baseball fields, Babe Ruth, Roy Peck, and the Honeycutt and Saban Complexes are all great facilities for softball and baseball, facilities created by individuals and civic groups.
Gone are the days of Little League in City Park, at the far end of the Wilford Mower Track, and at Teeter Park. Those were community fields maintained by the city when Riverton was young, innovative, and strong. They’re gone now.
We can’t just jump in and fix this, but the next time the boom hits, try to remember to “make hay while the sun shines.” Always glooming and dooming, even in the light of an economic boom, leaves us right here where we are.
If other small towns can do it, why can’t we?