- A new season of "Wyoming Chronicle" begins and we're presenting a season preview show to kick things off.

Join us as we explore the 100th anniversary of the giant Gros Ventre Landslide in Teton County.

and the grand old Trail End Mansion in Sheridan, built more than a century ago by Wyoming's richest man.

We'll meet the only woman ever to serve as both Wyoming's attorney general and on the State Supreme Court.

Come along with an expert in Wyoming's wild horses as he takes us to the heart of Wyoming's wild horse country.

And meet the national championship players and coach in Torrington of a new collegiate sports program with a competition based on video games.

A sneak preview show for the new season.

I'm Steve Peck of Wyoming PBS.

This is "Wyoming Chronicle."

(lively music) We went to Teton County to note the 100th anniversary of the Gros Ventre slide, a catastrophic geological happening that rerouted a river, reshaped the landscape, led to the destruction of a town and to the deaths of six people.

It's still the biggest observed landslide in American history.

I wanna give a little bit of context related to the perspective from a much more recent and very well publicized landslide that occurred on Teton Pass on the highway there.

And a big chunk of the highway just gave way and maybe displaced 10,000 to 15,000 cubic yards of material.

Nothing compared to this.

This was 5,000 times bigger than that.

- June 23rd, 1925, and the North face of Sheep Mountain, it fell away catastrophically.

It was almost within the blink of an eye.

It's assumed that 50 million cubic yards.

There were people there at the time who witnessed it.

One of the cowboys was driving cattle on the north side of the valley and he said the winds were so great that it almost knocked him off his horse.

- What's that had been like?

I mean, you thought about that, Todd, the impact and the sort of spectacle of what...

I wonder if they could comprehend what they were seeing even.

- Yeah, and you have to kind of think whether or not too the horse understood something was coming too because a lot of times, they're pretty perceptive.

But definitely he was lucky he had a horse that was fast enough to get out of the way 'cause it was a major close call and he was right there.

- So then the river gets blocked up and suddenly, if you had a ranch property here, you have a lakeside property here now all of a sudden.

- Yeah, the lake was initially about seven miles long and after it was rising, it picked up structures and everything that was down in the valley where there were ranches.

So there were homes, the cabins floating, our horsetail ranger station, forest service ranger station, that was floating.

Initially picture these structures floating until they no longer floated.

So for that short... And there's some really great photos we have on some of our new interpretive signage here.

- [Steve] That guy's sitting up on his roof.

- Yeah, that's Gil Huff.

- That's the guy.

- The guy who outran it with his horse.

His ranch got flooded.

He had a bad day.

- John Kendrick's name isn't familiar anymore to most people in Wyoming, but the beautiful mansion he built more than a century ago in Sheridan has lost none of its stately grandeur or what were its state-of-the-art features for early 20th century living.

Sharie, as we move through the house, the obvious impression is the Kendricks didn't scrimp on anything.

They wanted a nice place to live.

They had nice things in it.

This is the room that was referred to by you as the drawing room.

We might call it the living room.

I think one of the things that people like about touring an old house is imagining what it would be like to live here.

You've spent years in and around this house.

What would it have been like?

- Some older homes have a more formal and a less formal room.

A room to entertain your company.

A room just for the family.

This is it.

So this is for everybody.

It's where they would read, have conversations, play games, entertain their friends, and they've said, we've heard stories that you could see guests anywhere from, you know, politicians to the cowboys that worked on the ranches.

They had everybody here.

- One of the features that is talked about as well that I'm sure interests people, central vacuum.

- Yes.

- And I'm in a room like this, there's lots to vacuum.

How did that work?

- So they had hoses that would plug into wall outlets.

The dirt goes up through the hose, travels through the house, through pipes and ends up down in the basement in a big unit.

- [Steve] There's a great big vacuum generating.

- It weighed 400 pounds.

So it's also called a stationary vacuum.

It's not going anywhere.

But you could choose lots of different attachments because if you have the ability to vacuum so quickly, why not vacuum your radiators and your drapes and your furniture in addition to your floors?

- And it was the height of luxury at the time.

And they wanted it, they could afford it, they installed it.

How long was that in use?

- We know it was in use until probably the 1940s.

- Really?

- One of the former maids told us that by the time she worked here in the '40s, they had switched over to a more modern Electrolux vacuum.

- Which she got to use.

- Yes, she did, yeah.

- I'm sure.

The house also has an intercom system.

And we've got four stories we're talking about and made communications easier.

From the looks of it, it was just a mini telephone system.

Is that?

- Sure, it's a labor-saving device.

They could call five different places within the home, as well as the carriage house across the driveway.

- And do we know specifically how it worked?

Was there a particular ring for particular room or?

- Well, there were dry cell batteries that operated it, first of all.

And then to call someone, you would choose the room, push that button, select ring, and then if you're on the other end and they're calling you say in the basement, you would hit answer and that would connect you.

- I see.

I think I read an old newspaper clipping that said, referring to the outside telephone, as you might call it, there was a telephone exchange in Sheridan.

And I think the clipping said this was believed to be the first house in Sheridan that had more than one telephone in it.

- Yes.

- Sharie, we're in the kitchen now.

I bet you this is one of the super high curiosity portions of the tour for everyone who visits.

For one thing, it's very spacious.

And you said it's strategically placed in the house to stay cooler.

- Yes.

It's on the north side.

So we don't get direct sunlight in here.

The walls are what they called hospital white.

Not only do the tiles stay very cool, but they're smooth and easy to clean.

Sanitation was something that people were considering more.

There's doors that can be closed so you don't make the rest of the house really hot, especially in the summertime.

And then a pass-through.

So you can still get the food out of the kitchen, but keep the heat and the food smells in the kitchen.

- There's a great old, I've heard people refer to it as a range.

It's a stove that had a fuel source in it, which was either coal or wood.

And it has openings and bellows and ways to control heat as best they could.

There's no temperature dial, the way we had now.

There's a stove top.

We see a skillet.

We see like a Dutch oven sort of pot, there's a kind of a griddle we see.

Is that a waffle iron?

- It is a waffle iron.

It's one of my favorite things.

- We started to look at that.

There's a cooling rack for pie.

You could keep a pot of coffee there.

What do we know about how they ate?

Is that survived history?

- Well, we know that Mrs. Kendrick didn't like to cook.

She didn't think she was very good at it, but she loved food presentation.

So we have her notes from when she went to the White House, for example, what did they serve?

How did they, you know, mold the food into some creative design and I think she tried to recreate it here.

Good cooks were really hard to find.

You wanna make sure your cook likes it here.

And they had cooks that stayed for decades at a time.

- This is the dining room.

It is fantastic.

Tell us about it.

- Sure.

So this table's really versatile.

They could have it at its smallest, perfectly round, seats for people.

At its largest, it could seat 20 people because there are eight table leaves that go with it.

- [Steve] 20 people, that's a big tablecloth.

- Three tablecloths probably.

- Three tablecloths just to cover it.

Below us, right by your foot at the moment, an odd looking thing on the floor as well.

What's that?

- That was the servant's call button.

So Mrs. Kendrick would press it with her foot.

She'd always sit near it, no matter how the table was configured.

And a bell would ring in the butler's pantry to let the servants know she needed something.

- She needed something.

Chad Hanson is one of the country's experts on wild horses.

And his beautiful new book shows exactly how and why.

In June he guided us to the heart of Wyoming's wild horse country.

What is a wild horse?

What's a Mustang compared to say the horse in someone's pasture?

- A mustang is a horse that is born out here in the wild.

It's all they know.

And in Wyoming we have several areas on property that's managed by the BLM or the Bureau of Land Management.

In these wild horse herd management areas, when horses are born here out on their own, they are considered wild.

They don't have brands, they live in communities that they create on their own out here by themselves.

And so in areas like this, when you see a horse, it's a wild one, you're looking at a Mustang.

- [Steve] So that means no veterinary care, for example.

No feeding, no shoeing, no breeding under human control.

They're on their own as wild animals.

And they do well.

- [Chad] They thrive.

You said it.

They're on their own every day of the year, winter, summer.

The only shelter is the sky or whatever they can find among the trees and down in valleys and such.

- [Steve] How long have they been here in numbers, say where we are would you guess?

- One fairly recent interesting find the southern part of Wyoming near the Blacks Fork River, there was a skeleton of a horse that was found that was dated to about the year 1640.

And a native people had been, at that point, husbanding horses.

This horse near the Blacks Fork region had been buried in a ceremonial fashion surrounded by an array of coyote skulls.

So we know that as early as 1640 horses had been part of the Wyoming landscape.

- [Steve] One of the fun things about studying and knowing about horses in the, what we'd call the domestic realm, is recognizing different breeds of horses.

A thoroughbred is different from a Morgan, which is different from a Quarter Horse, et cetera, et cetera.

Are the wild horses, the Mustangs identified by breed in any way like that anymore?

- [Chad] Generally speaking, we refer to horses on BLM herd areas as Mustangs.

- [Steve] That is their breed, essentially.

- That's their breed, essentially.

But it's also easy to see.

We have a variety of shapes and colors.

Wyoming is really fortunate in that we have a really diverse group of wild horses.

We have Pintos, we have Appaloosas, which is unusual.

Most states, even states that have wild horses don't typically have appaloosas.

But we do.

You can see Arab traits and characteristics.

Some of the horses in this herd are large enough that it's pretty easy to see that there's draft horse genetics that have been mixed in.

Yeah, so it's a really wide range of horse genetics in this herd and most other Wyoming herds.

And that's a good thing.

Genetic diversity is necessary for the long-term health of these animals.

- [Steve] Yeah, because in the domesticated horse world, it's the breeders who are deciding what a breed is gonna be.

And out here, the horses decide that for themselves.

- They are making those decisions on their own.

Yeah.

They decide.

They live in family bands.

And it turns out that mares actually have a lot to say about which stallions they partner with.

It's a little bit like a soap opera sometimes when you spend time out here watching the family dynamics.

- I read in the book you said, "When I found out that wild horses lived in Wyoming," it changed your life.

- It did.

Full disclosure, when I first moved to Wyoming, I had been bitten by the fly fishing bug.

- Understandable.

- And living in Casper, I thought I was in paradise.

The North Platte River runs right through town.

And so for about the first decade, that seems like that's about all I wanted to do was stand in a river waving a stick.

But when I found out there were wild horses, it did change things.

And now when my wife and I have free time, we tend to spend it in places like this.

- Across Wyoming's 235-year history, just one woman has served both as the state's attorney general and sat on the Wyoming Supreme Court.

We met her just as she was finishing the former job and just as she was about to take the latter.

How's it going the last couple of months as attorney general?

What's involved in the transition that is taking place?

- A lot of it is sorting out with people how we're gonna transition.

It's not going to be complicated.

A lot of the work will just continue on with the attorneys I have on the cases.

- I wondered about that.

Yeah.

- Yeah, the work will continue on with the attorneys I have on the cases I have assigned to them.

And then when a new attorney general is named, they will substitute out my name and substitute in the new attorney general.

The same thing happened when I became attorney general.

They substituted out the previous attorney general, Peter Michael, and substituted in me.

And I just picked up in the middle of some cases, at the start of some cases, at the tail end of some cases.

- Something that I've heard talked about at the national level and sometimes in other states about where a governor will, or in some cases the president, refers sometimes to the attorney general almost as his or her personal attorney.

Are you Governor Gordon's lawyer?

(Bridget laughing) - I am not.

- I didn't think so.

- Not in those terms, not his personal attorney.

As you know, he would have a personal attorney for his personal affairs, obviously, unrelated to his office.

He also has general counsel within his office that advises him on things unrelated to the state of Wyoming, which is what more my role is.

I advise him as an elected official and as the chief executive of the state of Wyoming.

And so when he wants legal advice more along the policy lines and something they should be doing internally within their own office, that's what his general counsel is for.

But when it comes to being an official, an elected official of the state of Wyoming, and having someone appear for you in court, that's the attorney general.

- You talked about advising the governor as an elected official, in some states, the attorney general is an elected office.

I mean, a famous state attorney general in the news recently was Kamala Harris, who was elected twice, I believe, as the attorney general of California, Partisan-elected office.

It seems to me that would complicate the office so much more than it would in your case where you are an appointed official, appointed by the governor.

- The vast majority of the nation has an elected AG.

I believe there's only seven states.

- No kidding.

- That are appointed.

So the vast majority is elected.

But I've been able to see the, I don't know if they're issues, but the difference in those two systems.

Sometimes you have states where you have an elected governor and an elected AG who are not of the same party.

- Yeah.

- And so their views on the policies for the state that they're in are not always aligned.

Whereas here, because we have one chief executive officer, and that is the governor, and he's appointed me, we can have a unified policy.

That said, I agree with your assessment that the attorney general in Wyoming has often stayed out of politics.

And I've strived really hard to do that.

In fact, and I don't think he would mind me telling this, when the governor asked me to be the attorney general, because I've told people this before, he said two things, one, he's policy and I'm the law, which is a good idea because-- - Those are two different things.

- Those are two very different things.

He would be policy, I would be the law.

And that's the deal we struck.

The other was, and I just respect him so much for this, was he said, "Promise me that you will always tell me the truth under the law, even if you believe I don't want to hear it."

- I was hoping you were gonna say it.

- And I said, "Oh, be careful.

If I promise to do that, I will in fact do it."

And he said, "That is what I want."

And that is what I have always done.

- Have you ever thought maybe you were the best at something, really The very best?

A couple of whiz kids from Eastern Wyoming College in Torrington are exactly that, winning the national championship in the popular video game called Fortnite.

We met them and their full-fledged college coach following the National Tournament triumph.

You've had a major accomplishment here in your first year of the sanctioned program, which was winning a national championship.

- Yes, sir.

- What was that in exactly?

- Fortnite, we participate in several different titles, but Fortnite was the one we took the national in.

- I'm hoping that a lot of people watching the show know what Fortnite is, but if someone didn't and we're asking you to define it, what would you say?

- Fortnite is a battle royale third person shooter.

That means that you jump into a group of about 100 different people and you're all competing to be the last person standing.

- [Steve] Why Fortnite in particular?

- We had the players for it, one of the first things.

So the NJCA, who we play through, offers a variety of titles.

- I always stop when I hear people use initials.

- Yes.

- NJCA.

National Junior College-- - Athletic Association.

- Athletic Association.

- Yep, esports, there's an E at the end of it.

- Esports, yeah, so it's the same governing body that the basketball team and the volleyball team both compete under as well.

- Yeah, it's technically a separate kind of branch, but it is part of that same exact.

- Yeah, so I mentioned that just because I wanna establish for everybody who didn't know this or doesn't know it or my question, there's absolute legitimacy here.

This is a sanctioned college competitive esports program and there are dozens and dozens, more than 100, maybe more than that around the country.

- [Interviewee] Yep.

There's three in Wyoming itself actually.

- [Steve] What are the other two?

- Laramie County and then Northwest College.

- I see.

How did you discover your team?

- So I started by making a lot of visits to a lot of the high schools in our service areas.

So the colleges are kind of divided that way.

So I drove up to Douglas and drove up to Upton and Glenrock and down to Yoder and just kind of visited a lot of the ones that would have me and just set up a little table, talked at lunchtime, various things and just, "Hey, this exists now, come to us.

Come show me what you have and we'll talk about it."

- How good were these guys when you found 'em, when they joined your team?

- So Ryder was already unreal.

He was already good at the game.

They'd been playing it basically since it came out for years and years, his whole life through middle school and high school.

Allen was involved in Fortnite in the early days and took a hiatus kind of in the middle and then was kind of starting to taper back into it when I spoke to him and we had him join the team.

- [Ryder] Take their Cybertruck.

- [Allen] Oh yeah, dude.

Wow, huh.

- There's a TIE Fighter right here if you want to take it.

- [Allen] You know what?

Let's do it.

- For the fun.

(player laughing) - [Allen] I'm gonna hit these barrels real quick so I can-- - oh, this might be the one you have to repair.

- [Allen] That's okay.

It doesn't take long.

- Allen, where are you from?

- Torrington.

Here.

- From Torrington.

So you're in your hometown.

- Yep.

- [Steve] And Ryder, you're from nearby, but... - Yeah.

Douglas.

- In Douglas.

- Yes.

- [Steve] Were you at one of these when the coach came to your high school, that's how you learned that this was gonna happen?

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

What'd you think?

- I just saw how much of a big opportunity that could have been and I took it.

- [Steve] And you played a lot already.

- Yes.

- You figured you'd be pretty good at this.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- I think I'd fit right in.

- [Steve] Turns out you were.

Now, Allen, you played, but at that time, you weren't at the level that Ryder was and there's no shame in saying that because his level was incredible at the time.

- [Allen] Definitely.

- How did you find out about the esports program at Eastern?

- When I was registering, I came up here to register for classes right before classes started last fall.

And Caleb, right here was the guy to show me around and he showed me this cool esports lab and said, "There's gonna be an esports team."

And I said, "Sign me up."

- Yeah.

How did you get better?

- Playing a lot with Ryder, honestly.

I've played plenty of other games and I've played plenty of other games competitively as well.

Fortnite was just not one of the ones I'd played competitively.

I've played all sorts of other shooters.

So having that background in other shooters definitely helped out when it came to playing Fortnite.

But being able to play with Ryder and play in these high-ranked lobbies and get used to all of these extremely good players, that's kind of what got me good at this game.

- As a coach, what do you do?

How do you and your team prepare and practice?

- So I start by sitting down with the players and getting to know where they're at skill wise.

With like Ryder and Allen, although at different skill levels, they both had a pretty good understanding of Fortnite as a whole.

If somebody doesn't have a solid understanding, we start with the basics of aiming, movement, tactics, those type of things.

- And you had some players like that?

- Yes.

- They were here to learn.

They're beginners.

- Absolutely, I got some coming in this fall that are more beginners.

Last spring we had Bridger join who was also on the national team, And he already knew the game well.

And so what we worked on with those players is communication, holding your own mentally.

So when you are playing long stints of games, so like in the Nationals, there's times where you're playing a best of five and maybe you're playing two of those back to back.

So you have up to 10 games of Fortnite to play to take home a national title.

And that mental stability performing at that top level consistently over that time period, building that kind of mental and physical stamina with moving the mice and stuff is important.

- Is there any sort of physical training itself of, I don't know what, dexterity or it's strength or quickness or anything like that that comes into this particular game?

Or is it more mental stuff?

- So I like to categorize games in kind of two segments, macro and micro.

Macro being kind of that head knowledge, that grand understanding of the strategy and the ideas behind it that are outside of the game.

And then the micro being your execution in the game.

Fortnite leans towards that micro side of it.

So it's about kind of executing well.

You have to be able to aim at somebody and click and hit the shots on them.

You have to be able to move quickly from A to B without hesitation, without screwing up your inputs.

And it's really, really focused on that.

There is that macro kind of knowledge side to it, but it's much more focused on that execution.

- Is there a part of the game that you think you're, either one of you, you think you're the best at, I'm really good at this, or is it just I'm really good at Fortnite?

I mean, is it aiming, is it shooting, is it recognizing, is it reacting?

- Just trying to be best I can be at all the fields.

If that's aiming, shooting, just call outs, positioning, there's a lot that goes into it.

- [Steve] Yeah.

Allen, when you say you got better by playing with Ryder, what were some of the first things you realized you were getting better at doing, maybe you wouldn't have thought about before?

- Not dying.

(all laughing) Getting used to the maps, the gun style, how everybody plays, being able to build.

It's a whole lot of things that came into play to be able to call myself good at this game.

- [Steve] Do you call yourself good now?

- Oh, definitely, definitely.

- You definitely do.

- [Coach] He should.

- But in terms of the, as you understand, the skill level of the players, how good are they?

- My players are very good.

I think they're not...

Professionals are playing 12 to 14 hours a day.

They have these regimens.

They have foods and nutritionists and the teams bring all these people in to do these things.

We're not there.

But we're not just lounging on the couch playing for funsies either.

We're, I think, pushing towards that professional side where I encourage exercise, I encourage healthy diets, I encourage getting sleep and eating good the couple days before.

- It's not just Doritos and Mountain Dew.

- It's not just Doritos and Mountain Dew.

I don't recommend those before a big match.

(both laughing) - Yeah.

- It's pretty easy to adapt when you feel serious about something to really wanna get behind it and those aspects of it.

- In case any of our viewers are saying, "Well how come you're taking this seriously?"

My answer would be, "How come you're not taking it seriously?"

- The last statistic that I looked at, it was said about half the population on Earth at some point was playing a video game at some level.

Esports itself is looking to be pushing about a $4 billion industry worldwide, walking in for mid-level this year.

- $4 billion is enough to get anybody interested I would think.

- I would hope so.

- Yeah, you could.

That's a sneak peek at our new season.

We'll bring you these stories and many more in the months ahead as we crisscross the state to find Wyoming's interesting people, places, and history.

Join us for "Wyoming Chronicle" on Wyoming PBS.

(lively music)