Juvenile Dies After Fall From Moving Pumpjack In Park County Oil Field

A young person died Saturday after falling from a moving pumpjack in the Silvertip Oil Field north of Powell, the Park County Sheriff’s Office reported Monday. Dispatchers were notified Saturday morning after someone walked into the Powell Police Department and said his juvenile friend had died after climbing onto a moving pumpjack and falling off. The age, identity, and gender of the victim were not released.

Deputies, along with Park County Search and Rescue ground teams and a fixed-wing aircraft, searched the Elk Basin area because the reporting party did not know the exact location of the accident. The juvenile was located shortly after 1 p.m. and pronounced dead at the scene. Investigators believe the victim died from blunt force trauma sustained in the fall. An autopsy was scheduled for Monday.

For retired oil field worker Eugene Brown, pumpjacks were just part of growing up in Wyoming. Brown spent what he calls his “second childhood” in the oil patch, building a 40-year career that took him to nearly every corner of the state. He said seeing kids climb on pumpjacks was never unusual. “For some people, it’s a rite of passage,” Brown said. He noted that oil fields are a common part of daily life in places like Elk Basin, and people can lose sight of how dangerous the equipment actually is.

Pumpjacks—the large, rocking “grasshopper” machines used to extract oil—often sit in wide-open areas visible from roads, ranchland, and small communities across Wyoming. “Most likely they were just above the horse’s head, which is easy to slide right off,” Brown said, referring to the curved front end of the pumpjack’s massive moving beam. He said many young people growing up around oil fields view the machinery less as industrial equipment and more as part of the landscape. “It’s easy to forget how dangerous they can be,” he said, adding that he wonders if the juvenile was a local or a tourist. “The oil companies don’t do enough to educate people on that. I doubt they knew just how dangerous climbing on them was.”

Cowboy State Daily reached out to the Wyoming OSHA Consultation Program and the Petroleum Association of Wyoming for comment about oil field safety and whether incidents involving non-workers around pumpjacks are a concern. Neither organization responded before publication. Elk Basin, straddling the Wyoming-Montana border north of Powell, has been part of Wyoming’s oil industry for generations. Active pumpjacks dot the landscape throughout the area. “They’re powerful machines,” Brown said. “People just don’t realize how fast something can go wrong.” The investigation remains active, and the Park County Coroner’s Office declined to release the victim’s identity.