Residents of Clark don’t want it to grow
CODY — “Please indicate your level of agreement with the following statements,” said a petition that became available for Clark residents to fill out on Sunday, June 21.
The survey, which was received by several Clark residents and circulated by Allie Hall, Nicole Forsberg, Martin Kimmet and Jeff Litteer, allowed area residents to give feedback about the proposed Park County DSR draft for the community.
It featured questions such as, “If limited commercial zoning is appropriate for Clark, where should it be located?” and allowed for residents to provide comments or rank the preference between one (Strongly Disagree) to five (Strongly Agree).
The survey brought in 73 responses – or roughly 25% of the area, considering Clark’s population is 300-400 full-time residents. Of those who took the survey, 70 strongly disagreed with the proposed reduction of minimum lot sizes; 65 strongly disagreed with the location and scope of the proposed limited commercial zones; and 44 responded, saying that limited commercial zoning is inappropriate for Clark altogether.
As the survey represented, many in Clark are concerned about what further development will do to the small community with concerns ranging from light pollution to the availability of water.
From the answers on the survey, a good portion of the unincorporated town wants to stay exactly as it is.
Proposed changes to zoning in Clark have left some residents worried that the town could allow for parceling of land, and allow more housing and business development.
“It’s intentional that you live in Clark. I don’t know if I’ve met anyone who just kind of accidentally ended up here. If you’re in Clark, it’s because you want to be in Clark because it’s rural, you have your own space, it’s quiet, it’s beautiful,” said Allie Hall, a four-year resident of Clark, originally from Oklahoma.
Hall came to Clark because her parents moved to the area. She only wishes she’d known about it earlier, adding, “If I knew about it 15 years ago, I would have moved here then.”
But she, like many Clark residents, likes it just the way it is and worries how development would change the town, which consists of a rec center, two churches, the Edelweiss Riverhouse, Clark Fire Hall, open spaces and only hundreds of residents.
Water concerns
“I tell everybody it’s not for the faint of heart to live in Clark,” said Nicole Forsberg, who moved to Clark over 20 years ago, inheriting property from her parents, and, like Hall, couldn’t imagine living somewhere else. “Nature is our biggest impact on what’s happening,”
In the high desert environment of Clark, having enough water is a constant challenge. In her two decades of living in Clark, Forsberg has run out of water twice. Forsberg’s water comes from a well over 500-feet deep. With the possibility of more development, Forsberg wonders if she and other Clark residents will be faced with further water shortages, especially during a drought that has already wreaked havoc on the state.
“Where you are matters, there are places in Clark with a fabulous aquifer,” said Martin Kimmet, a 42-year resident of Clark. “And there are places in Clark where it’s very difficult to find water. We don’t know what the effects will be and they’re going to vary from spot to spot.”
Lloyd Thiel, who moved to Clark when he was seven and whose family has been in the area for generations, doesn’t know how much water is in Clark. A Park County commissioner, Thiel said that the state’s engineer’s office plans to compile evidence to prove depletion of aquifers and whether it’s climate-related or development-related, though he’s unsure if the state will compile data for Clark.
“We all, as commissioners, understand that there are restrictions to growth and development, and those are water, septic, those types of things,” said Park County commissioner Dossie Overfield. “We usually try to make sure that adequate water can be achieved. That’s not always an easy thing to do.” She pointed to three wells being drilled in a subdivision between Cody and Powell to check their levels of production as a way to test Clark’s water availability. But she also said, “I don’t think we can protect everybody.”
“That’s one of the things that is absolutely essential to life: water,” said Hall. “In the high desert, there’s just not a lot of it, so if you bring more folks out here, more business, more infrastructure in general, yeah, that takes up more water.”
Subdivision
Subdividing the land has become a major concern for Clark residents, and there has been some confusion about what subdividing would look like and allow.
“The confusion is that it is not a change that we’ve had in mind and it comes specifically from lot size averaging,” said Thiel. “Because if you had 80 acres and you are in GR 20 (general rule, 20-acre minimum) you could break that into four chunks, and with the lot size averaging, you could go down to two-acre (lots). That’s the way it currently is.”
That, Thiel continued, is “not a change; that’s the way it currently is. There can’t be more houses, they can just be on different-sized lots. If you have 80 acres, you can still only have four lots – whether three of them are on two (acres) and one is on 76, there’s still four.”
When Clark residents look at DSR drafts and see references to “two-acre lots,” many have interpreted it as an open invitation for high-density subdivisions that could ruin the rural landscape, exhaust local aquifers and crowd county roads. The Park County commission recently rolled back proposed map changes. The DSR had attempted to rezone certain neighborhoods to “five-acre” or “10-acre” categories simply to reflect subdivisions that were already carved up decades ago.
“I think the little bit of a misunderstanding about lot size averaging is where people are afraid,” said Overfield. “Where it says if you have a GR 20 lot, the minimum you can have is one acre, that doesn’t mean you can have 20 1-acre lots. It means, number one, you have to average 20 acres, so you’ve got to have 40 acres before you could even have two lots. Those two lots could be a 2-acre lot and a 38-acre lot, but there has to be a large offset with having a lot size averaging, and we’re going to try to better explain that.”
Clark residents have expressed confusion about zoning and what is being proposed versus the current rules, many in Clark simply don’t want more people in the area, and that applies to business as well.
“Overwhelmingly, if you look at those 75 surveys, people wrote in their comments, we do not want commercial (building) in Clark,” said Forsberg. “You start building commercial buildings, there goes your dark skies, there goes your quiet.”
Those who stay in or move to Wyoming do so often because of the state’s small population and open land. “I think that’s true everywhere in Wyoming,” said Overfield regarding the typical Wyomingite’s preference for space and privacy.
Winds of change
“When I came to Clark 42 years ago, there wasn’t anybody there. So one of the things I don’t like about Clark is all the people that have moved in – but that’s evolution, that’s progress. You can’t stop that,” said Kimmet.
“The hypocrisy of those comments piss me off and you can quote me on that,” said Thiel, regarding those who want Clark to remain the same size. “So they have theirs and no one else can come in.”
For Thiel, the issue is a matter of freedom as to how private property can be used. His family has owned land in Clark for generations and he’s flummoxed by residents who haven’t been there as long wanting to keep things the way they are.
“I have no plan to subdivide. I don’t want to subdivide. I hope my kids don’t, my grandkids don’t,” he said. “But I definitely don’t need — and I’m going to just say it — an outsider that just moved here telling me what I can do when I have four generations on that ranch.”
Kimmet reflected on conversations he’s had with newer Clark residents: “New people that have moved in that I visited with, they said, ‘You know, we like it, we don’t want any more change,’” he said. “I told them, ‘It changed when you moved here, so it’s going to change again.’ You don’t have to like it or dislike it, you just have to try to make it the best thing that you can.”
This story was published on June 29, 2026.
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