Wyoming

Prehistoric hunters and gatherers probably arrived from Siberia by way of AlaskaAlaskaAlaska is the largest U.S. state by area and borders Canada to the east; its capital is Juneau and its largest city is Anchorage. Alaska was admitted to the Union on January 3, 1959, as the 49th state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 733,391.Open the full entry more than 20,000 years ago. Clovis people were present about 12,000 years ago, the Folsom culture about 10,000 years ago and the Eden Valley culture about 8,000 years ago; mixed hunting-and-gathering groups lasted until about 500 CE.⁠[1][2]

When the first well-documented white explorers arrived, the region’s population probably did not exceed 10,000. At the start of the 19th century the Shoshone were the largest group, with smaller numbers of Arapaho, Crow, Cheyenne, Atsina, Arikara, Nez Percé, Ute and Oglala and Brulé Dakota (Sioux).⁠[1]

In 1742–43 François and Louis-Joseph de la Vérendrye, searching for a route to the Pacific, reached the northeastern corner of present-day Wyoming.⁠[1][3]

The Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–06) missed Wyoming by 60 miles (97 kilometers). John Colter, a member of the expedition, later trapped in northern Wyoming and in 1807 became the first known white American to enter present-day Wyoming, exploring the area that became Yellowstone.⁠[1][3][2]

In 1811 Wilson Price Hunt’s party, the first organized expedition through Wyoming, crossed the region on its way to Astoria, OregonOregonOregon (officially the State of Oregon) is a state on the Pacific coast of the western United States; its capital is Salem and its largest city is Portland. It was admitted to the Union on February 14, 1859, as the 33rd state. Its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 4,237,256.Open the full entry. In 1812 Robert Stuart and the returning Astorians crossed the Continental Divide near South Pass and built the first known cabin in Wyoming, near Bessemer Bend.⁠[3][3]

In 1824 William H. Ashley’s men rediscovered South Pass, and the fur trade rendezvous period began in 1825. From 1825 to 1840 the economy depended heavily on trappers and traders such as Jim Bridger, William Sublette, Jedediah Smith and Thomas Fitzpatrick, though there were never more than about 500 fur traders in the region at one time. In 1832 Captain B. L. E. Bonneville took the first wagons through South Pass.⁠[3][3][3][1]

In 1834 William Sublette and Robert Campbell established Fort William, the first Fort Laramie and the first permanent trading post in Wyoming. The American Fur Company bought it in 1836 and in the summer of 1841 built Fort John of adobe, commonly called Fort Laramie. In 1849 the U.S. Army bought Fort Laramie to protect emigrants on the Oregon Trail, and it served as a military post until 1890, when the army was ordered to leave and the buildings were sold at public auction.⁠[3][4]

In 1836 Narcissa Whitman and Eliza Spalding became the first white women to cross the Oregon Trail to the Far West. Between 1841 and 1868 as many as 400,000 emigrants crossed Wyoming on the Oregon, Overland, Mormon, Bozeman and Bridger trails, an estimated 55,000 of them in 1850 alone; 1852 was the peak year of Oregon Trail emigration. Jim Bridger and Louis Vasquez established Fort Bridger, the second permanent settlement, in 1843, and in 1847 the Mormon migration to UtahUtahUtah is a U.S. state bordered by Idaho to the north, Wyoming to the northeast, Colorado to the east, Arizona to the south and Nevada to the west, with its capital at Salt Lake City. It was admitted to the Union on January 4, 1896, as the 45th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 3,271,616 residents.Open the full entry began and a Mormon ferry was set up on the North Platte River.⁠[1][3][3][3][3]

On September 17, 1851, the United States and the Plains tribes concluded the Fort Laramie Treaty, also called the Horse Creek Treaty, at the mouth of Horse Creek about 30 miles east of Fort Laramie, near the present Wyoming–NebraskaNebraskaNebraska is a state of the United States bordered by South Dakota to the north, Iowa and Missouri to the east, Kansas to the south, and Colorado to the southwest, with its panhandle bordering Wyoming to the west; its capital is Lincoln and its largest city is Omaha. It was admitted to the Union on March 1, 1867, as the 37th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 1,961,504.Open the full entry border. More than 10,000 Native Americans gathered, among them Oglala and Brulé Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow, Assiniboine, and Mandan and Hidatsa. The treaty gave the United States the right to build roads and military posts through tribal lands and was the first attempt to record tribal territories on paper; in return the United States promised $50,000 a year, a term Congress cut from fifty years to ten before ratification. Only one annuity payment was made, and by 1864 settler demand for land had pushed the Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho into war.⁠[5]

From April 1860 to October 1861, Pony Express riders, among them William F. Cody (“Buffalo Bill”), carried mail across Wyoming; the transcontinental telegraph was completed in 1861 and the Pony Express was discontinued.⁠[1][3]

In 1865 Lieutenant Caspar Collins was killed at the Battle of Platte Bridge, and the station was renamed Fort Caspar; the same year General Patrick E. Connor led the Powder River Indian Expedition. In 1866 Fort Phil Kearny was established on the Bozeman Trail, followed by the Fetterman Fight; the Red Cloud War lasted from 1866 to 1868. The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 did not last: after gold was discovered in the Black Hills in 1874, the United States broke it.⁠[3][3][4]

In 1867 the Union Pacific RailroadUnion PacificUnion Pacific Corporation is an Omaha-based U.S. railroad holding company whose Union Pacific Railroad runs freight trains in 23 western states. In 2025 it agreed to merge with Norfolk Southern.Open the full entry entered Wyoming, Cheyenne was founded, and Fort D. A. Russell (now F. E. Warren Air Force Base) was built 3 miles (5 kilometers) west of present-day Cheyenne. In November that year the first Union Pacific train reached Cheyenne, whose population passed 6,000 in its first year, mostly living in tents and shacks. The railroad entered Utah in 1868. Gold was also discovered in 1867, giving rise to South Pass City.⁠[3][1][2]

Congress created Wyoming Territory on July 25, 1868. The same year the Wind River Reservation was established for the Shoshone by treaty. The first territorial governor, John A. Campbell, took the oath of office on April 15, 1869, the territorial government was formally inaugurated on May 19, and the first territorial legislature convened that year.⁠[2][3][6]

On December 10, 1869, territorial governor John A. Campbell signed the act granting women the right to vote, which the state describes as making Wyoming the first government in the world to do so. On February 17, 1870, Esther Hobart Morris became the first woman appointed a justice of the peace; in March that year women first served on a jury, in Laramie; and on September 6 Louisa Swain cast the nation’s first equal-suffrage vote in Laramie.⁠[2][3]

On March 1, 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act, creating the world’s first national park. The Yellowstone area lay across three territorial boundaries, and disputes between Wyoming and MontanaMontanaMontana is a state in the northwestern United States, with the Rocky Mountains in the west and the Great Plains in the east; its capital is Helena and its largest city is Billings. Montana became the 41st U.S. state on November 8, 1889, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 1,084,225 residents.Open the full entry territories led to its being placed under federal control.⁠[7]

In 1877 an agreement with the Shoshone allowed the Arapaho to move onto the Wind River Reservation. The Shoshone chief Washakie died in 1900 at the age of 102 and was buried with full military honors at the Fort Washakie post cemetery.⁠[3][3][2]

Before statehood Wyoming developed a thriving cattle industry and was the terminus for cattle drives from TexasTexasTexas is a U.S. state in the south-central United States, with its capital at Austin and its largest city Houston. It was admitted to the Union on December 29, 1845, as the 28th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 29,145,505 residents.Open the full entry; in 1880 wealthy cattlemen built the Cheyenne Club. In 1885 the Chinese Massacre took place at Rock Springs. In 1886 the territorial legislative assembly enacted the first county library law in the United States, and the first county library opened in Cheyenne.⁠[1][3][3][3]

The University of Wyoming was founded in 1886, while Wyoming was still a territory, and opened in 1887. The Capitol was authorized by the territorial assembly in 1886; its cornerstone was laid on May 18, 1887, the building was completed in 1888, and its wings were finished in 1890 and 1917.⁠[8][3][3][2]

In 1888 the territorial assembly petitioned Congress for admission to the Union. Delegates to the constitutional convention were elected on July 8, 1889, and in September 49 delegates met in Cheyenne to write the constitution, which voters approved on November 5, 1889, by 6,272 to 1,923. It was the first constitution in the world to grant women full voting rights and the right to hold public office.⁠[2][1]

The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Wyoming statehood bill on March 27, 1890. The first state governor was Francis E. Warren. The 1890 census counted 62,555 people in Wyoming.⁠[2][6][9]

In 1891 Shoshone National Forest was named the first national forest in the United States. On September 24, 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed Devils Tower the first national monument in the United States.⁠[6][8][3]

The Johnson County Invasion took place in 1892, and violence among cattlemen, homesteaders and sheepherders continued well after 1900. Owen Wister drew on his experience of turn-of-the-century Wyoming for his novel The Virginian (1902).⁠[3][1]

In 1894 Estelle Reel was elected State Superintendent of Public Instruction, one of the first women in the United States elected to a state office. In 1910 Mary G. Bellamy became the first woman elected to the Wyoming legislature; that year the first amendment to the Wyoming Constitution was ratified, and the Wyoming lawyer Willis Van Devanter was named to the U.S. Supreme Court.⁠[3][3]

Uranium was discovered near Lusk in 1918, the Salt Creek Oil Field opened in 1922, the state adopted a sales tax in 1935, and trona was discovered in Sweetwater County in 1939.⁠[3][3][3][3]

Nellie Tayloe Ross (1876–1977) won the governorship in 1924 and took office on January 5, 1925, as the first woman elected governor of any U.S. state, serving until January 3, 1927; from 1933 she was Director of the U.S. Mint, the first woman to hold the post.⁠[2][1][10][3]

In 1942 the Heart Mountain Relocation Center was established in Park County.⁠[3]

Fort D. A. Russell was renamed Fort Francis E. Warren in 1930 and became F. E. Warren Air Force Base in 1947; on February 1, 1958, the base was transferred to the Strategic Air Command and became the world’s first Atlas ICBM base.⁠[3][3][3]

In 1974 mineral severance tax legislation was approved.⁠[3]

In 1988 the Yellowstone Park fires burned more than one million acres, and in 1995 wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone.⁠[3][3]

On April 26, 2021, the Census Bureau delivered the 2020 census apportionment results to the President, in which Wyoming was the least populous state. It kept its single seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, at 577,719 people per seat by apportionment population; after the 2010 census it also had one seat, at 568,300.⁠[11][12]

Based on the 2020 census, Wyoming has three electoral votes in the 2024 and 2028 presidential elections.⁠[13]

The state legislature is the Wyoming Legislature; Article 3, Section 1 of the state constitution vests legislative power in a Senate and a House of Representatives. The Senate has 31 members serving four-year terms and the House 62 members serving two-year terms, 93 in all. General sessions in odd-numbered years begin on the second Tuesday of January and last no more than 40 legislative days; budget sessions in even-numbered years begin on the second Monday of February and typically last 20 legislative days.⁠[14]

As of November 2026 the governor is Mark Gordon, who was sworn in on January 7, 2019, as Wyoming’s 33rd governor; his term runs until 2027. He previously served as State Treasurer from 2012 to 2018, is the son of Wyoming ranchers and graduated from Middlebury College in VermontVermontVermont is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States; its capital is Montpelier and its largest city is Burlington. It joined the Union on March 4, 1791, as the 14th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 643,077.Open the full entry. The other statewide elected officials are Secretary of State Chuck Gray, State Auditor Kristi Racines, State Treasurer Curt Meier and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder.⁠[15][8][16]

In the Census Bureau’s state area measurements (boundaries as of January 1, 2010), Wyoming has a total area of 97,813 square miles (253,335 square kilometers): 97,093 square miles (251,470 square kilometers) of land and 720 square miles (1,864 square kilometers) of water, all of it inland.⁠[17]

The highest point is Gannett Peak at 13,804 feet and the lowest is on the Belle Fourche River at 3,100 feet. The mean elevation of 6,700 feet is the second highest of any U.S. state, and average annual precipitation is 14.5 inches. The state has 23 counties.⁠[18][8]

The Census Bureau estimates Wyoming’s population at 588,753 on July 1, 2025 (Vintage 2025), up 2.1% from the April 1, 2020, estimates base of 576,872. Population density in 2020 was 5.9 people per square mile, on a 2020 land area of 97,088.76 square miles.⁠[19]

Census counts show Wyoming growing from 9,118 in 1870 to 145,965 in 1910, 290,529 in 1950 and 563,626 in 2010, with a decline from 469,557 in 1980 to 453,588 in 1990. In the 2020 census the resident population of the 50 states and the District of Columbia totaled 331,449,281, of which Wyoming accounted for about 0.17%.⁠[9][20]

U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis data put Wyoming’s nominal gross domestic product at $52,491.2 million in 2025, up from $51,455.4 million in 2024. Mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction contributed $6,057.3 million in 2025 and $6,923.2 million in 2024 (nominal values).⁠[21][22]

The name “Wyoming” comes from two Algonquin words meaning “at the big plains” or “large prairie place.” It was proposed by J. M. Ashley of Ohio, who introduced a bill in Congress in 1865.⁠[6][8]

Wyoming’s nicknames are the “Equality State,” the “Cowboy State” and “Big Wyoming”; “Equality State” reflects the rights Wyoming women traditionally enjoyed, as the first in the nation to vote, serve on juries and hold public office. The state motto, “Equal Rights,” was adopted in 1955.⁠[18][6]

The state seal was adopted by the second legislature in 1893 and revised by the sixteenth legislature in 1921; its dates, 1869 and 1890, mark the organization of the territorial government and statehood, the motto “Equal Rights” appears on a banner, and the number 44 is on the star.⁠[18]

The state flag was designed by Mrs. A. C. Keyes of Casper (formerly Miss Verna Keays of Buffalo) and adopted by the fourteenth legislature on January 31, 1917; the Great Seal is at its center.⁠[18]

Other state symbols include the state flower, the Indian paintbrush (January 31, 1917); the state bird, the meadowlark (February 5, 1927); the state tree, the plains cottonwood (adopted February 1, 1947, amended 1961); the state gemstone, jade (January 25, 1967); the state mammal, the bison (February 23, 1985); the state fish, the cutthroat trout (February 18, 1987); the state dinosaur, Triceratops (March 18, 1994); and the state sport, rodeo (2003). The state songs are “Wyoming,” with lyrics by C. E. Winter and music by G. E. Knapp (February 15, 1955), and “Wyoming Where I Belong” by Annie Smith and Amy Smith (July 1, 2018).⁠[18]

State of Wyoming: Official website: https://www.wyo.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[23]