Home to Native American tribes, including the Arapaho and Shoshone who now reside on the 1.7-million-acre Wind River Indian Reservation, Wyoming was opened up to settlers in the 1860s after the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad.

In 1869 legislators granted women 21 years and older the right to vote and hold office – 50 full years before anyone else in the USA! Although Wyoming was later dubbed the ‘Equality State, ’ we’re not sure the lawmakers cared all that much about the women’s rights movement. Many state officials instead saw it as a clever ploy to attract much-needed female settlers!

In the late 19th century, disputes that sometimes erupted into shoot-outs arose between big cattle barons and the small-time ranchers on the frontier. The Johnson County Cattle War of 1892 remains one of the most contemplated events in the region’s history. In 1903 infamous range detective Tom Horn (who worked for the cattle companies) was hanged in Cheyenne for a murder that many still say he did not commit.

The 20th century saw economic development for the state based largely on extractive industries, such as mining. Uranium was discovered in 1918; trona was found in 1939. An economic mainstay for Wyoming and its surrounding states has long been Yellowstone National Park, which has lured large wads of tourist dollars since the end of WWII.

Today Wyoming remains a rural state where most folk either work on the family ranch or have jobs in the energy agency. One of the hottest issues in the state today pertains to trying to keep the younger generation in the state following university – and recent census numbers show Wyoming’s under-50-year-old population is quickly declining. To entice people to stay, or to interest other 20-somethings to move to the state, politicians are offering cheap plots of land if residents agree to live and work in small towns for a set number of years. The state is also concentrating on boosting tourism revenues.

By the mid-1920s the state ranked fourth in the nation in the production of crude oil, but the valuable finds at Teapot Dome are probably remembered best as the symbol of corruption in the administration of President Warren Harding. Under the New Deal, Wyoming was well served by national soil conservation programs, which benefited dry farmers who had extended operations into semiarid regions and had suffered severely in the drought years beginning in the late 1920s. The cooperative movement in agriculture also gained ground in this period and has since grown.

One of the most important events in the state since World War II was the discovery of uranium. New oil finds also helped to offset economic losses resulting from a disastrous four-year-long drought in the 1950s. The decade from the early 1970s to the early 1980s was a boom period for Wyoming as high energy prices boosted the state’s coal, oil, and natural gas industries. By the mid-1980s, however, energy prices were falling and the economy was hurt by its lack of diversity, but tourism and recreation subsequently developed as an important sector of the economy. Wyoming also has suffered from the injurious environmental effects of the energy industry, and pollution has become a serious problem in some mining towns. Although its population rose by almost 9% between 1990 and 2000, the state is still the least populous in the nation. With the increase in energy prices in the early 21st cent. Wyoming again found itself in an economic boom.