There is evidence of prehistoric human habitation in the region known today as the U.S. state of Wyoming stretching back roughly 13,000 years. Stone projectile points associated with the Clovis, Folsom and Plano cultures have been discovered throughout Wyoming. Evidence from what is now Yellowstone National Park indicates the presence of vast continental trading networks since around 1,000 years ago.Nash, Gary B. Red White and Black: The Peoples of Early North America. Los Angeles 2015. Chapter 1, p. 6
The Union Pacific Railroad played a central role in the European colonization of the area. Wyoming would become a U.S. territory in 1868. It was the first state to grant women the right to vote in 1869 (although it was then still a territory). Wyoming would become a U.S. state on July 10, 1890, as the 44th state.
Native American settlement There is evidence of prehistoric human habitation in the region known today as the U.S. state of Wyoming stretching back roughly 13,000 years. Stone projectile points associated with the Clovis, Folsom, and Plano cultures have been discovered throughout Wyoming. In the Big Horn Mountains there is a medicine wheel that has not yet been dated accurately due to disruption of the site before the two archaeological excavations of 1958 and 1978.Grey, Don. 1962. Summary Report of the Medicine Wheel Investigation, Seventh Annual Field Conference.Wilson, Michael. 1981. Sun Dances, Thirst Dances, and Medicine Wheels: A Search for Alternative Hypotheses. Calgary: University of Calgary. Original edition, Megaliths to Medicine Wheels: Bolder Structures in Archaeology, edited by Wilson, Road and Hardy, Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual Chacmool Conference, Calgary: University of Calgary, 1981. However, the Big Horn Medicine Wheel's design of twenty-eight spokes is similar to the Majorville Medicine Wheel in Canada that has been dated at 3200 BCE (5200 years ago) by careful stratification of known artifact types.The Majorville Cairn and Medicine Wheel Site, James M Calder, National Museum of Man Series, Archaeology Survey of Canada No. 62, Ottawa, 1977 Throughout the Bighorn Mountains, south to Medicine Lodge Creek, artifacts of occupation date back 10,000 years.Edelman Mining District ClassIII 110 Cultural Survey of the Cloud Peak Wilderness, W. Mc. Matthews, West Zone Archaeologist, Bighorn National Forest, 2013, Bighorn National Forest R2012020206041 Large ceremonial blades chipped from obsidian rock formations in what is now Yellowstone National Park to the west of the Bighorns, have been found in the Hopewell burial mounds of Southern Ohio, indicative of vast continental trading networks since around 1000 years ago. When White explorers first entered the region, they encountered numerous American Indian tribes including the Arapaho, Bannock, Blackfeet, Cheyenne, Crow, Gros Ventre, Kiowa, Nez Perce, Sioux, Shoshone and Ute.
Early European observations
Europeans may have ventured into the northern sections of the state in the 18th century. Most of the southern part of modern-day Wyoming was nominally claimed by Spain and Mexico until the 1830s, but they had no presence. John Colter, a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, was probably the first American to enter the region in 1807. His reports of thermal activity in the Yellowstone area were considered at the time to be fictional. Robert Stuart and a party of five men returning from Astoria, Oregon discovered South Pass in 1812. The route was later followed by the Oregon Trail. In 1850, Jim Bridger located what is now known as Bridger Pass, which was later used by both the Union Pacific Railroad in 1868, and in the 20th century by Interstate 80. Bridger also explored the Yellowstone region and like Colter, most of his reports on that region of the state were considered at the time to be tall tales. During the early 19th century, fur trappers known as mountain men flocked to the mountains of western Wyoming in search of beaver. In 1824, the first mountain man rendezvous was held in Wyoming. The gatherings continued annually until 1840, with the majority of them held within Wyoming territory.
Immigration trails
The route later known as the Oregon Trail was already in regular use by traders and explorers in the early 1830s. The trail snakes across Wyoming, entering the state on the eastern border near the present day town of Torrington following the North Platte River to the current town of Casper. It then crosses South Pass, and exits on the western side of the state near Cokeville. In 1847, Mormon emigrants blazed the Mormon Trail, which mirrors the Oregon Trail, but splits off at South Pass and continues south to Fort Bridger and into Utah. Over 350,000 emigrants followed these trails to destinations in Utah, California and Oregon between 1840 and 1859. In 1859, gold was discovered in Montana, drawing miners north along the Bozeman and Bridger trails through the Powder River Country and Big Horn Basin respectively.
Indian Wars
The influx of emigrants and settlers into the state led to further encounters with the native people there, and settler military presence along the trails increased; military posts such as Fort Laramie were established. In 1851, representatives from the United States and American Indian nations signed the first Treaty of Fort Laramie in hopes of ensuring peace and the safety of settlers on the trails. While the 1850s were subsequently quiet, tensions rose again after settlers increasingly encroached upon lands promised to the tribes in the region. This was the case after settlers, in 1864, blazed the Bozeman Trail through the hunting grounds of the Powder River Country, which the United States had promised to the tribes in the 1851 treaty. As encounters between settlers and natives grew more serious in 1865, Major General Grenville M. Dodge ordered the first Powder River Expedition to attempt to quell the violence. The expedition ended in the Battle of the Tongue River against the Arapaho. In the following year, the fighting escalated into Red Cloud's War, which was the first major military conflict between the United States and the Wyoming Indian tribes. The second Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868 ended the war by closing the Powder River Country to whites. Violation of this treaty by miners in the Black Hills led to the Black Hills War in 1876, which was fought mainly along the border of Wyoming and Montana.
Cattle In 1866, Nelson Story Sr. drove approximately 1000 head of Texas LonghornsSources on the actual number of cattle in the 1866 Nelson Story cattle drive vary widely. The most commonly seen numbers are 1000 and 3000. (Johnson, 1971 500–3000), (Kennedy ~1000), (Brown, 600) to Montana through Wyoming along the Bozeman Trail—the first major cattle drive from Texas into Montana. The Wyoming Stock Growers Association is a historic American cattle organization created in 1873. The Association was started among Wyoming cattle ranchers to standardize and organize the cattle industry, but quickly grew into a political force that has been called "the de facto territorial government"Jackson, W. Turrentine. The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 33, No. 4. (March 1947), pp. 571. of Wyoming's organization into early statehood, and wielded great influence throughout the Western United States.Homsher, Lola M. Archives of the Wyoming Stock Growers' Association The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 33, No. 2. (September 1946), pp. 285. The association is still active to this day, but it is best known for its rich history and is perhaps most famous for its role in Wyoming's Johnson County War. In 1892 the Johnson County War, also known as the War on Powder River and the Wyoming Range War, took place in Johnson, Natrona and Converse County, Wyoming. It was fought between small settling ranchers against larger established ranchers in the Powder River Country and culminated in a lengthy shootout between local ranchers, a band of hired killers, and a sheriff's posse, eventually requiring the intervention of the United States Cavalry on the orders of President Benjamin Harrison. The events have since become a highly mythologized and symbolic story of the Wild West, and over the years variations of the storyline have come to include some of the west's most famous historical figures and gunslingers. The storyline and its variations have served as the basis for numerous popular novels, films, and television shows.
Railroad In 1870, roughly three-eights of Wyoming's population was foreign born, coming primarily from Ireland, Germany and England.Wyoming: A Bicentennial History By Taft Alfred Larson pg. 82 The Union Pacific Railroad played a central role in the settlement of Wyoming. The land was good for cattle ranches, but without transportation it was too far for a cattle drive. The UP railroad companies had large land grants that were used to back the borrowings from New York and London that financed construction. UP was anxious to locate settlers upon the land as soon as possible, so there would be a steady outflow of cattle, and a steady inflow of manufactured items purchased by the ranchers. UP also built towns that were needed to service the railroad itself, with dining halls for passengers, construction crews, repair shops and housing for train crews. The towns attracted cattle drives and cowboys.David F Halass, Hell on Wheels: Wicked Towns Along the Union Pacific Railroad (2013)John C. Hudson, "Towns of the western railroads". Great Plains Quarterly 2#1 (1982): 41–54. online
The UP reached the town of Cheyenne, which later became the state capital, in 1867. The railroad eventually spanned the entire state, boosting the population, and creating some of Wyoming's largest cities, such as Laramie, Rock Springs and Evanston.Robert G. Athearn, Union Pacific Country (1971). The railroad needed coal, which was discovered in quantity in the southwestern part of the state, especially around Rock Springs.David A. Wolff, Industrializing the Rockies: Growth, Competition, and Turmoil in the Coalfields of Colorado and Wyoming, 1868-1914 (2003). In 1885, a murderous riot known as the Rock Springs Massacre broke out when white miners drove out Chinese miners employed by the Union Pacific Coal Company in Rock Springs.Craig Storti, Incident at Bitter Creek: The Story of the Rock Springs Chinese Massacre (1991).
Territory and statehood
The name "Wyoming" was used by Representative J. M. Ashley of Ohio, who introduced the Ashley Bill to Congress to provide a "temporary government for the territory of Wyoming". The name was made famous by the 1809 poem Gertrude of Wyoming by Thomas Campbell.Pflieger, Pat "'Gertrude of Wyoming', by Thomas Campbell (1809)", merrycoz.org, Retrieved on July 3, 2008. "Wyoming" is derived from the Delaware (Munsee) name xwé:wamənk, meaning "at the big river flat", originally applied to the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania.Bright, William (2004). Native American Place Names of the United States. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, pg. 576
After the arrival of the railroad, the population began to grow steadily in the Wyoming Territory, which was established on July 25, 1868. Unlike Colorado to the south, Wyoming never experienced a rapid population boom in the 19th century from any major mineral discoveries such as gold or silver.
Inclusion of women's suffrage in the Wyoming constitution was debated in the constitutional convention, but ultimately accepted. The constitution was mostly borrowed from those of other states, but also included an article making all the water in Wyoming property of the state. Wyoming overcame the obstacles of low population and of being the only territory in the U.S. giving women the right to vote, and the United States admitted Wyoming into the Union as the 44th state on July 10, 1890.
Suffrage