Even after 25 years of selling real estate in Casper, a city of more than 46,000, Proctor wasn't quite prepared for what awaited her in the town of 500 about 65 miles northeast of Gillette.
"We knew stuff was going on," Proctor said, "but we didn't dream of this."Since opening a real-estate office, Proctor has received calls daily from people wanting to move to Hulett. The home-seekers run the gamut from retirees looking to take advantage of Wyoming's low taxes and other costs of living to new workers at the newly revamped and expanding Devil's Tower Forest Products sawmill.
But as in other communities in the state, the demand for housing is high and the supply is low.
Some mill workers commute daily from other Wyoming towns and neighboring South Dakota.
"There is one house for sale. I'm in the process of listing it now," Proctor said. "I have no doubt it will sell in two weeks."
While housing demand doesn't rival the extreme situation during Wyoming's mineral boom of the 1970s and 1980s, real estate agents, business people and city officials say it has reached crisis proportions in some areas.
"There's a critical housing shortage - no question," said David Reetz, president of Powell Valley Economic Development Alliance.
Powell and Cody have formed task forces to identify their housing needs as part of an outreach program by the Wyoming Community Development Authority. The program brings real estate agents, local officials, builders and others together to determine how to deal with housing shortages.
"What we're wanting to do through this effort is to stimulate the private market," said Reetz, the marketing and economic development officer for a Powell bank.
Powell and other communities in northwestern Wyoming, a prime farming area, are attracting refugees from more hectic lifestyles elsewhere in the nation.
Economic development efforts also have paid off, with more small businesses moving to the Powell area, Reetz said, adding that active recruitment has been halted because of the housing problem.
In southwestern Wyoming, where oil and gas workers in the 1970s and '80s were forced to live in tents and trailers along Interstate 80, a new influx of residents is also reducing available housing.
Den Costantino, director of the Sweetwater County Economic Development Association, said the inventory of houses on the market in the county is the lowest in years, and apartments are almost impossible to find, he said.
As in much of Wyoming, housing construction in Rock Springs has been minimal, officials said.
"I can't blame the local contractors," Costantino said. "They went through boom and bust and got stuck with inventory."
Sweetwater County has established Wyoming's first housing task force to address the problem.
The Wyoming Community Development Authority, which provides financing for first-time homebuyers and administers most of the state's Housing and Urban Development funds, launched an outreach program to urge creation of local housing task forces.
Casper, the center of Wyoming's once-thriving oil industry, was hit hard by the energy bust of the mid-1980s. Now, the real estate market is livelier than it has been in more than a decade, said Steve Willoughby, president of the Casper Board of Realtors.
There are about 400 homes available for sale, the lowest inventory in about 10 years. Homes are selling faster than they did a few years ago, Willoughby said.
"We're looking at 79 days on the market," he said. "That figure is probably half of what we experienced three or four years ago."
An influx of new residents and homeowners moving up to larger houses help explain Cheyenne's active real estate market, said Lee Carroccia, president of the Cheyenne Board of Realtors.
But "it's not a big, big huge change that everybody thinks," she said.