The Story of Wyoming.
The Crow, Eastern Shoshone, Northern Arapaho, and Lakota Sioux all held parts of what is now Wyoming before American contact, and the Shoshone and Arapaho still do — on the Wind River Reservation, where they were placed as nominal enemies and have coexisted, uneasily, for 150 years. John Colter, a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition who stayed behind in the mountains, became the first American to see Yellowstone in 1807. He described geysers and boiling mud pots and was widely disbelieved.
Fort Laramie was established in 1834 as a fur trading post on the Laramie River, and by the 1840s it had become the most important waypoint on the Oregon Trail. Between 1843 and 1869, roughly 400,000 emigrants passed through Wyoming on their way west, following the Platte River across the high plains and through South Pass in the Wind River Range. The trail cut ruts in the soft stone that are still visible today. The emigrants were not passing through so much as passing over — few stayed.
Wyoming Territory was established in 1869, and in December of that year the territorial legislature granted women the right to vote — the first government in the United States to do so. The decision was partly principled and partly pragmatic: Wyoming had almost no women and needed to attract them. But the law held, and when Wyoming applied for statehood in 1890, Congress tried to make repeal a condition. Wyoming refused. The state entered the union on July 10 with its women’s suffrage provision intact.
In 1872, President Grant signed the bill creating Yellowstone as the world’s first national park. The idea that land should be preserved rather than extracted was genuinely new, and Wyoming became its proving ground. Devils Tower was designated the first national monument in 1906. The Grand Teton range was added to the park system in 1929 after a prolonged fight with the ranchers who grazed its valley floor. Conservation and extraction have been Wyoming’s two defining arguments ever since.
The Powder River Basin in the northeast contains the largest and most economically significant coal deposits in the United States — strip-mined on a scale that makes traditional coal country look artisanal. Wyoming produces more coal than any other state and has for decades. It also produces significant oil and natural gas. The revenue funds state government so thoroughly that Wyoming has no state income tax. As coal demand declines and wind energy rises — Wyoming has among the best wind resources in the country — the state faces an economic transition it has been reluctant to acknowledge.
Colter Sees Yellowstone
John Colter becomes the first American to see Yellowstone’s geysers and hot springs. He reports what he found. Nobody believes him for decades.
Fort Laramie
A fur trading post is established at the confluence of the Laramie and North Platte rivers. It becomes the critical waypoint on the Oregon Trail for the next thirty-five years.
Women Vote First
Wyoming Territory grants women the right to vote on December 10 — the first government in US history to do so. Wyoming will keep the law as a condition of statehood twenty-one years later.
Yellowstone
President Grant signs the bill creating Yellowstone as the world’s first national park. The idea of preserving land rather than extracting it is new. Wyoming becomes its test case.
The 44th State
Wyoming enters the union on July 10. Congress tried to require repeal of women’s suffrage as a condition. Wyoming’s reply: “We will remain out of the Union a hundred years rather than come in without our women.”
Devils Tower
President Roosevelt designates Devils Tower the first national monument in the United States — an 867-foot igneous column rising from the Black Hills that the Lakota called Bear Lodge.
First Female Governor
Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming becomes the first female governor in US history, winning a special election to fill her late husband’s term.
The Strip Mines Open
Large-scale surface coal mining begins in the Powder River Basin. Wyoming will eventually produce more coal than the next four states combined.
Wind Energy Arrives
Wyoming’s first large wind farm comes online. The state with the best wind resources in the country begins a slow, contested transition away from the fossil fuels that have funded it for a century.
