Casper

The Ford Wyoming Center in Casper hosted the 2022 Honest Amish National Beard and Moustache Championships, an event that celebrates facial hair, on Nov. 12. They combined it with Casper’s annual Booze and Bacon Festival, and the combination attracted hundreds of attendees.

The 2022 Honest Amish National Beard and Moustache Championships and the Booze & Bacon Festival are being held on Nov. 12 at the Ford Wyoming Center. The beard and moustache event began in 2010 and has been hosted in cities throughout the country since then while the Booze & Bacon Festival is a local event that's been held since 2018.

McGinley Orthopedics offers medical care for orthopedic issues but is also active in research and development to patent medical devices and technologies that improve patient care and seek to improve this kind of care and how it's practiced in medicine. So far, countries such as Panama and Egypt have adopted McGinley-made technologies with the hospital in Thermopolis approving the use of two technologies. To date, over 125 patents have been issued to McGinley and his operation.

A mobile healthcare unit hopes to open in Casper by the end of the year. The unit will be operated by Wellspring Health Access -- the same organization that was planning to open a healthcare facility that would provide abortion services. But someone set the clinic on fire back in May before it could open.

The Wyoming Community Theater Coalition's first statewide conference is Sept. 16-18 and is hosted by the Casper Theater Company at their location on CY Avenue. An event was planned for last year but was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Organizers are seeking to make the conference an annual event.

The talk will be presented by Dr. Mark Johnson, a retired career Army officer who is currently writing a two-volume history of the Wyoming Army and Air National Guards. The event will be at the Wyoming Veterans Memorial Museum in Casper on Thursday, Sept. 15 at 7 p.m. and will also stream on their Facebook page. This is just one in a series of speakers that have been hosted since January, which the museum seeks to make a regular part of their public offerings.

Casper Pride is collecting donations for a new LGBTQ library. The organization is looking for a physical location for the upcoming free service. They hope the library will help better support Casper's LGBTQ community.

The airport is home to the Wyoming Regional Aircraft Rescue Fire Fighting facility, the only facility of its kind in Wyoming. Emergency personnel from around the state and region conduct annual fire training events in Casper with a large scale disaster event occurring every three years per Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations.

An effort to teach kids how to grow food locally in Wyoming, known as the Casper Community Greenhouse Project, is on the verge of completing its third school greenhouse, at Park Elementary School. LeAnn Miller, the executive director of the project, said their mission is to teach kids where food comes from and how to grow it in Wyoming using a greenhouse.

The state has published two new geologic maps that provide insight into what is happening beneath the ground in the greater Jackson and Casper areas.