Known as the “Highway of Death,” the stretch of U.S. Route 287 between Laramie and the Colorado border has seen hundreds of crashes in recent years. Twenty-five years ago on Sept. 16, it claimed the lives of eight cross country runners from the University of Wyoming (UW) when a pickup truck driven by a drunk driver collided with them early that morning.
Wyoming Public Radio’s Ellis Iurilli-Hough spoke to Doug McGee with the Wyoming Department of Transportation (WYDOT) about how the highway has been made safer since the accident. Included in the conversation are responses from the victim’s families, filmed by McGee and his team after the accident in part one and part two.
Editor’s Note: This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
Ellis Iurilli-Hough: How did you find out about the accident that occurred in 2001?
Doug McGee: Actually, I was a new employee in 2001. I started in July of that year, so I had not been here too long in the public affairs office. At that time, I was a videographer on the team. The next day at work, our team was made aware by leadership here that this crash had occurred and just how tragic it really was. As a new employee at the department, not having a lot of experience in the world of highway safety and crashes, it was difficult news to hear, for sure. I think it was for everyone.
EIH: After you found out, what happened then? What was your role in that?
DM: My role was videographer, and I worked closely with our photographer for the department. Primarily, we shot photos and video of highway projects. We would work on highway safety messaging, very planned sort of stuff.
Later on, my role was to go to the site with the team photographer. Maintenance was doing work out there, meeting with the family. Some of the families wanted a memorial on site, and they were able to get a memorial set up there. So we wanted to capture that moment and visit with the families.
Clip from video: I just kept crying and yelling and said, “I know he’s not – he’s just hurt. You just tell me where he’s at. What hospital? He’s not dead, I know that.
DM: I shot some of that video and talked to some of those folks. It was a very moving thing to be present for and visit with those folks as they did that.
EIH: Being part of the Department of Transportation , what work has been done on the Wyoming side of Highway 287 since that accident occurred?
DM: Since the early 2000s, a number of fatal crashes have occurred on that route south of Laramie. WYDOT began what we would call programming, the widening of that road, of U.S. 287 south of Laramie to the Colorado border, to a four-lane divided highway. With the goal being eventually to have the entire length of that be a four-lane divided highway to increase safety and improve the flow of traffic.
For the first 10 miles of that corridor, a project was started and completed between 2009 and 2013. Then there were about 11 miles remaining that were programmed. But in what we call the STIP [State Transportation Improvement Program], due to funding limitations, we moved to a pavement preservation mode. Which is only pertinent here because it did delay any further work. But right now, there's a segment closest to Laramie that's being widened to five lanes, so there's a center turning lane.
Then in the relatively near future, it is in our STIP to complete that last couple sections. So by 2031, we should have four lanes divided from Laramie to the border.
EIH: I've still read that some of the families have felt that some of the safety improvements that have been made since that accident haven't been enough. What is your response to that?
DM: We do understand that folks are ready for that to happen. These things take a great deal of time. Even when we determine to do a project, it enters our STIP, as I mentioned before. That process takes six years, sometimes seven, to plan that, to design it.
Then we have to evaluate the funding across the state. We have needs in every community. As it is, being grossly underfunded for our mission, we make very difficult decisions every year, every day, on where the funding will go. We are addressing it as quickly as we can.
EIH: The 30-mile section of the highway stretch from Fort Collins to the Colorado state line – and of course, you can't speak for them – has seen 570 crashes, including 15 fatal wrecks since 2019, and at least 15 students from the University of Wyoming have died since 2000. Why is this road so dangerous for drivers?
DM: I think more often than not, unfortunately, driver behavior is often what's dangerous. We have two college communities connected by that road, and I think that comes into play. There are a lot of factors out there for weather. There's very little wind break out there. The wind moves across that road surface at high speed, and you add in some winter conditions, some moisture, some freezing, some high winds, and we've got very slick roads. So there are a lot of factors there that have people driving between those communities for various social or sporting events at late hours, maybe after having had a few drinks.
Like in the example of the UW 8, the young man that struck them was driving drunk. A lot of those factors can be improved through the projects we've got going on, and should be improved. We are looking forward to that.
Denise Johnson from video clip: I think that’s been one of the hardest things to learn to live with, was that the drunk driver that killed them didn’t give them a chance to live.
EIH: How can you ensure that these precautions will be taken over the next couple of years so that the parents of more students, of more young men and women, don't have to worry about this kind of thing happening in the future?
DM: We're constantly trying to maintain and improve safety. We're trying to educate the public. What I would ask of all families in Wyoming, or any families who are going to choose, and I think very wisely, to send their kids to Wyoming for a higher education, to visit with those kids about making safe choices, about safe driving behavior, about how to use our 511 tools to know as much as you can before you get on the road and to help you decide if it's a good day to travel at all.
I think we all have to do our part. I think just about everybody across Wyoming, eventually we all heard about it, whether we worked at WYDOT or were just living in Basin or somewhere else. Could have been our kids, could have been our friends.
Deborah McLeland from video clip: It’s harder to remember a list of eight. And I want people to remember all eight of these kids. I want them to know who they were and what we lost.
DM: I think it was very, very moving, and very challenging for everybody. And I think it changed all of us, and tragic is not a good enough word to explain just how terrible that was. But the department is committed to making all of our roads as safe as we possibly can and doing everything we can.
I would ask folks, if you wanna increase safety, we appreciate that. We appreciate your support. And I'd say talk to your legislators, and let's get WYDOT the funding we need to keep our motorists safe.
