Fremont County commissioners first heard about what could become Wyoming's most expensive data center not through a formal application, but through a courtesy letter from the company behind it.

Aethel Energy sent the notice to let officials know it might pursue state permits for a project in the Lost Cabin area, roughly 30 miles northeast of Shoshoni and about 60 miles northeast of Riverton.

The company is already finishing a small 1-megawatt data center there.

Proposed Data Center Plans and County Involvement

At a county commission meeting Tuesday, officials said the larger plans could involve several buildings, potentially phased in as separate campuses and powered by about 500 megawatts of natural gas generated on site. The estimated price tag: USD 66 billion, which would make it the costliest data center ever built in Wyoming.

By comparison, a proposed 5,300-acre development straddling the Goshen and Platte county border carries an estimated cost of USD 26 billion, while Project Tembo, planned on 716 acres south of Cheyenne, is estimated at USD 17 billion.

Despite the scale, the county has almost no role in reviewing or shaping the project. Commissioner Clarence Thomas described the situation in blunt terms.

"It's mind-boggling," he said.

"We can't have any involvement because we don't have anything in the sense of government responsibility or regulations to do anything."

A Choice Residents Have Twice Rejected

The reason for the county's helplessness is simple: Fremont County has no zoning regulations.

Thomas said the question of adopting them has surfaced repeatedly during his two decades on the commission, and twice the county put the matter to its residents and twice received a resounding "no."

"The constituents of Fremont County didn't want anything to do with zoning," he said, explaining that many of the county's ranchers and farmers saw no benefit in it because development pressures like this had never materialized before.

"This is a new step into people learning what can occur if you don't have zoning." With no local land-use rules in place, Thomas worries that data centers could proliferate across the county with little check.

"It's been happening everywhere," he said. "Look at Cheyenne. One day they had no data centers; now they have a huge data center, and nobody had any say in it."

The lack of county oversight also narrows the public's opportunity to comment, since county hearings and permit reviews are the usual venues where residents weigh in on development.

The State, Not the County, Holds the Reins

Planning Director Steve Baumann pushed back on the notion that the project is operating in secret and said that it is following the same path as any other industrial development in the county, with permits handled at the state level.

"It's not like the county doesn't know what's going on," Baumann said.

"With the process that's in place, the folks who are asking for the permit don't have to tell us what their plan is."

Under that process, plans for the larger site would pass through state agencies, including the Department of Environmental Quality, the Industrial Siting Council, and Wyoming Game and Fish, each reviewing different aspects.

Because securing those permits is lengthy, Aethel Energy requested the courtesy notice that gave commissioners their first inkling of the project.

Conservation Group Sounds the Alarm

Donna Birkholz, executive director of the Powder River Basin Resource Council, said the potential USD 66 billion project is part of a pattern she hears about from members across Wyoming: communities discovering major developments only after plans are already well advanced.

"It's time for the people of Wyoming to make their concerns heard," Birkholz said. "This is just another example of a development where the process is proceeding without input from the community."

The Neighbor Next Door Sees Upside

Lost Cabin itself is a sparse, unincorporated community in the high-plains desert, about an hour's drive northeast of Riverton and a few miles from Lysite.

Oil and gas pipelines cross the area, a large natural gas plant operates nearby, and the settlement's most famous feature is the J.B. Okie Mansion, a 1901 sandstone home built for Wyoming's "sheep king."

Zane Fross, who has lived in the mansion since 2009 and spent years restoring it while serving on the executive board of the Wyoming Historical Society, said he would not mind a data center appearing within view of the historic home.

"It seems kind of exciting," Fross said.

"My goodness, this has been such a good old field out here. This whole world just keeps on producing."

He expects the project would channel money into the local economy and eventually into schools and roads, a concern he knows well from his years on the school board.

"I think it'll be good to help the community and keep jobs," he said. While he has encountered fear and skepticism about artificial intelligence, Fross said his son's work in the tech industry has shaped a more hopeful outlook.

"It's kind of the future, you know," he said.

"I'm more like Joshua and Caleb, not like those other ten spies going onto the promised land who were scared."

A County on the Sidelines

As the project advances, Fremont County remains largely a spectator to what could be the largest data center investment in Wyoming history. Whether residents will revisit the land-use control question they twice declined to adopt remains an open one, that for now, the development itself may be forcing the county to confront.