100 Fun Facts About Wyoming

Roughly how many people live in Cheyenne, Wyoming's capital and most populous city?

Cheyenne had about 65,000 residents at the 2020 census, ahead of Casper at roughly 59,000; the whole state has fewer people than the city of Denver.

Wyoming joined the Union in 1890 as which numbered state?

Wyoming became the 44th state on 10 July 1890, a week after Idaho entered the Union as the 43rd.

Wyoming ranks where among the US states by population?

Last, the least populous state is Wyoming: fewer people live there than in Vermont or Alaska, although it ranks tenth-largest by area.

Wyoming's official nickname, the Equality State, comes from what 1869 decision?

Giving women the vote came first in Wyoming Territory: Governor John Campbell signed the suffrage act on 10 December 1869, and Albany County seated women jurors in March 1870.

Who became the first woman to serve as governor of a US state, taking office in Wyoming in January 1925?

Nellie Tayloe Ross won a special election after her husband William died in office, took the oath on 5 January 1925, and later directed the US Mint for 20 years.

Esther Hobart Morris became the first American woman to hold what office in 1870?

Esther Hobart Morris was appointed justice of the peace for South Pass City in February 1870; her statue has stood in the Capitol's Statuary Hall since 1960.

Yellowstone, the world's first national park, was created in which year?

President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Yellowstone Act on 1 March 1872, a year after Ferdinand Hayden's survey documented the region's geysers.

Roughly what share of Yellowstone National Park lies within Wyoming?

Some 96% of Yellowstone lies in Wyoming; the rest is a narrow 3 percent strip in Montana along the north and west edges and about 1 percent in Idaho.

Roughly how many geysers are found in Yellowstone National Park?

Yellowstone has more than 500 geysers, the largest concentration on Earth, among at least 10,000 hydrothermal features including hot springs, mudpots and fumaroles.

Old Faithful, the first geyser in Yellowstone to be given a name, erupts on average about how often?

Old Faithful erupts on average every 92 minutes, with intervals ranging from about 60 to 110 minutes; the 1870 Washburn expedition named it, and eruptions reach up to 185 feet.

The bison of Yellowstone Park hold what distinction?

Yellowstone's bison are the oldest and largest public herd in the US: the park is the only place in the country where bison have lived continuously since prehistoric times, and the herd numbers several thousand.

Devils Tower became the first US national monument in 1906 under which president?

Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed Devils Tower the first national monument on 24 September 1906, months after signing the Antiquities Act; the Lakota call it Bear Lodge, and climbers are asked to stay off it in June.

Which 1977 film used Devils Tower as the setting for its climactic scenes?

Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind made Devils Tower the landing site for its alien mothership; the tower's columns of phonolite porphyry cooled from magma about 40 million years ago.

What is the highest mountain in Wyoming?

Gannett Peak, in the Wind River Range, is Wyoming's highest summit and carries the largest glacier in the American Rockies; the Grand Teton is second.

How tall is the Grand Teton?

The Grand Teton stands 13,775 ft, the second-highest summit in Wyoming, rising about 7,000 feet above the floor of Jackson Hole.

Jackson Hole is a valley between the Teton Range and which other range?

The Gros Ventre Range closes the valley on the east; 'hole' was mountain-man slang for a big valley, and this one was named for fur trapper David Jackson.

Which Federal Reserve bank hosts the annual August symposium at Jackson Hole?

The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, whose district includes Wyoming, has hosted the symposium at Jackson Lake Lodge since 1982; Fed chairs have used its speeches to signal policy shifts.

The National Elk Refuge outside Jackson shelters roughly how many elk each winter?

About 7,500 elk winter on the refuge in a typical year; Boy Scouts have gathered the shed antlers for auction since 1968, and Jackson's town-square arches are built from them.

In which year was the first Cheyenne Frontier Days held?

Cheyenne Frontier Days debuted in September 1897 as a one-day celebration; nicknamed 'The Daddy of 'em All', it serves more than 100,000 free pancakes over its week.

Wyoming's official state sport is what?

Rodeo became Wyoming's official state sport in 2003, fitting for the state whose license plates have carried a bucking horse and rider since 1936.

Which animal is Wyoming's official state mammal?

The American bison, the animal on the state flag, became Wyoming's official mammal in 1985; the state bird is the western meadowlark and the gemstone is jade.

Which dinosaur is Wyoming's official state dinosaur?

Triceratops, the horned Cretaceous herbivore whose fossils turn up in Wyoming's Lance Formation, was named the official state dinosaur in 1994.

The bucking horse and rider that has appeared on Wyoming licence plates since 1936 is a registered what?

Wyoming holds the Bucking Horse and Rider as a registered trademark of the state, licensed through the Secretary of State to businesses and the University of Wyoming; the design was first stamped on plates in 1936.

The University of Wyoming's athletic teams go by which name?

The Cowboys and Cowgirls wear brown and gold; their War Memorial Stadium, at 7,220 feet, is the highest-elevation stadium in top-division college football.

The name Wyoming derives from a Munsee word meaning roughly what?

Wyoming comes from the Munsee Delaware xwé:wamənk, 'at the big river flat', the name of Pennsylvania's Wyoming Valley, which Ohio congressman James Ashley proposed for the new territory.

Which two other states, like Wyoming, are bordered entirely by straight lines?

Colorado and Utah are the other two; on a map Wyoming looks like a rectangle, but the meridians converge, so its north edge is slightly shorter than its south.

How many states share a border with Wyoming?

Six states touch Wyoming: Montana to the north, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Utah and Colorado to the south, and Idaho to the west.

What was the lowest temperature ever recorded in Wyoming, at Riverside in February 1933?

Riverside Ranger Station hit -66 °F on 9 February 1933; the state's record high, 114 °F, was set at Basin in July 1900.

How many counties does Wyoming have?

Wyoming has 23 counties; the most populous, around Cheyenne, has about 100,000 residents, while Niobrara County has fewer than 2,500.

Wyoming produces more of which fuel than any other state, mostly from the Powder River Basin?

Coal: Wyoming mined 375.8 million short tons in 2015, about 42 percent of the national total, nearly all of it from the Powder River Basin's surface mines.

The world's largest known deposit of trona, used to make soda ash for glass, lies near which Wyoming town?

Green River, in Sweetwater County, sits over the Green River Basin's layered evaporite beds, whose mines supply about 90 percent of the soda ash made in the US.

Emigrants on the Oregon Trail hoped to reach Independence Rock in Wyoming by which date?

Reaching Independence Rock by July 4 kept wagons ahead of the mountain snows; so many emigrants carved their names that Jesuit priest Pierre-Jean De Smet called it the Register of the Desert.

At roughly what elevation is South Pass, the Continental Divide crossing used by the Oregon Trail?

South Pass tops out near 7,400 ft, a broad, gentle sagebrush saddle many miles wide rather than a mountain notch, which is why wagons could cross the Continental Divide there.

Fort William, an 1834 fur post that later hosted two Plains treaties, stands where the North Platte meets which river?

The Laramie River joins the North Platte there; the Army bought the post, by then known as Fort Laramie, in 1849, and the Fort Laramie Treaties of 1851 and 1868 take their name from it.

Wyoming's capital was founded in 1867 as a junction along which railroad?

Union Pacific surveyors platted Cheyenne in July 1867 as the railroad pushed west, and the town grew so fast it was nicknamed the Magic City of the Plains.

What did F. E. Warren Air Force Base, the Air Force's oldest active base, operate in 2025?

The base fielded Minuteman III missiles in 2025 as home of the 90th Missile Wing, which with Malmstrom and Minot fields the nation's land-based ICBMs; it began as Fort D. A. Russell in 1867.

The Wind River Indian Reservation is shared by the Eastern Shoshone and which other tribe?

The Northern Arapaho were placed on the Shoshone reservation in 1878, supposedly for a single winter, and never moved; a grave at Fort Washakie is claimed to be Sacagawea's.

The Johnson County War of 1892 was a range conflict between which two groups?

Big cattle ranchers and small settlers clashed when Wyoming Stock Growers Association barons hired 23 Texas gunmen to kill alleged rustlers; President Harrison sent the cavalry, and the story became Heaven's Gate.

Butch Cassidy served 18 months in the Wyoming State Prison for what crime?

Horse theft: Cassidy was convicted in 1894 of stealing a horse near Lander and served 18 months of a two-year sentence before Governor William Richards pardoned him in January 1896; he went straight back to outlawry.

The Teapot Dome scandal of the 1920s took its name from an oil field in which Wyoming county?

Natrona County's Teapot Dome field, north of Casper, was Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 3; Interior Secretary Albert Fall leased it without bids and became the first cabinet member sent to prison.

Which retailer opened its very first store, called the Golden Rule, in Kemmerer, Wyoming, in 1902?

James Cash Penney ran it with his wife and infant son; the town is also famous for its Eocene fossil fish.

Which northwestern Wyoming town is named after the Wild West showman who helped found it?

Cody was platted in 1896 by William F. 'Buffalo Bill' Cody and partners; he opened the Irma Hotel there in 1902, named for his daughter, with a cherry-wood back bar.

Which abstract expressionist, famous for his drip technique, was born in Wyoming in 1912?

Jackson Pollock was born in Park County, Wyoming, on 28 January 1912, though his family left for Arizona and California while he was an infant; his birthplace town keeps the claim.

Which future vice president represented Wyoming's single at-large seat in the House from 1979 to 1989?

Dick Cheney, who grew up in Casper, held the seat until becoming George H. W. Bush's defense secretary in 1989 and later served as George W. Bush's vice president from 2001 to 2009.

The Heart Mountain camp, which held over 10,000 Japanese Americans in World War II, briefly ranked as what?

At its peak of 10,767 internees Heart Mountain was Wyoming's third-largest town, behind only Cheyenne and Casper; nearly 14,000 people passed through before it closed in November 1945.

Casper, Wyoming's second-largest city, is officially spelled with an 'e' because of what?

A typographical error at registration turned Caspar into Casper when the town was platted in 1888; it was meant to honour Lt. Caspar Collins, killed in 1865, and Fort Caspar; the nickname is The Oil City.

The city that is home to the University of Wyoming is named after Jacques La Ramée, who was what?

A trapper who vanished in the 1820s, Jacques La Ramée was probably killed near the river that took his name; the city itself was founded in 1868 as an end-of-track railroad town.

The Great Divide Basin in Wyoming's Red Desert is unusual because its rainwater does what?

The Great Divide Basin drains to no ocean at all: the Continental Divide splits and runs around it, so its scant rain and snowmelt evaporate or sink into the sand of a closed basin.

What is the Colorado's chief tributary, which rises in Wyoming's Wind River Range and fills Flaming Gorge Reservoir?

The Green rises among the Wind River Range's glaciers in Sublette County, west of the Continental Divide, and runs some 730 miles to join the Colorado in Utah's Canyonlands.

The Bighorn Medicine Wheel, a stone circle 80 feet across, has how many spokes?

The wheel's 28 spokes radiate from a central cairn to a rim about 80 feet across; it sits at 9,642 feet in the Bighorn National Forest and has been a National Historic Landmark since 1970.

Fossil Butte National Monument preserves fossils from an ancient lake of what age?

Fossil Lake existed about 50 million years ago, in the early Eocene, the smallest of the great lakes then covering parts of Wyoming, Utah and Colorado; its fish, bats and a dog-sized early horse survive in the rock.

Which Wyoming town bills its Big Spring as the world's largest mineral hot spring?

Thermopolis, whose name means 'hot city', bills the Big Spring in Hot Springs State Park as the world's largest mineral hot spring; an 1896 agreement with the Shoshone and Arapaho kept part of it free to the public.

Although Brokeback Mountain is set in Wyoming, where was the 2005 film almost entirely shot?

Ang Lee shot the film in southern Alberta, around Kananaskis Country and the foothills near Cowley and Fort Macleod, adapting Annie Proulx's 1997 short story.

The television series Longmire is set in which fictional Wyoming county?

Absaroka County is the fictional Wyoming county Sheriff Walt Longmire polices in Craig Johnson's novels, which began with The Cold Dish in 2004; Robert Taylor, who plays him, is Australian.

Wyoming Territory was created in 1868 from lands taken from which three territories?

Dakota, Idaho and Utah territories each gave up land when President Andrew Johnson signed the Organic Act on 25 July 1868; statehood came 22 years later.

The Wind River Range in west-central Wyoming has how many peaks above 13,000 feet?

Over 40 named peaks in the range top 13,000 feet, including the state's highest summit, and the range holds the largest glaciers in the American Rockies.

Roughly how much of Wyoming's land is owned by the federal government?

Just under half, about 48 percent, of Wyoming is federal land, the sixth-highest share among the states; national forests, BLM range and the national parks make up most of it.

Which Lewis and Clark veteran first described the Wyoming region in English, in 1807?

John Colter left the Corps of Discovery in 1806 and crossed the Wyoming region alone in the winter of 1807-08; his tales of boiling springs and geysers were dismissed as 'Colter's Hell'.

What was Wyoming's population in the 2020 census?

The 2020 census counted 576,851 people in Wyoming, fewer than the city of Denver, spread across nearly 98,000 square miles.

Which Wyoming national forest, created in 1891, was the first in the United States?

Shoshone National Forest began as the Yellowstone Park Timberland Reserve, set aside by President Benjamin Harrison in March 1891, making it the first national forest in the United States.

What is Wyoming's official state motto?

Equal Rights was adopted as the motto in 1955; it also appears on the Great Seal of Wyoming, whose central figure is a woman holding a staff with a banner reading Equal Rights.

Which plant is Wyoming's official state flower?

Indian paintbrush, Castilleja linariifolia, became the state flower in 1917; its scarlet 'petals' are actually coloured bracts, and the true flowers are small and green.

Which species is Wyoming's official state fish?

The cutthroat trout, named for the red slash under its lower jaw, became the state fish in 1987; native subspecies swim on both sides of the Continental Divide.

Which animal is Wyoming's official state reptile?

The horned lizard, often called a horned toad, became the state reptile in 1993; the spiny sagebrush dweller can squirt blood from its eyes to startle predators.

Where is Wyoming's lowest point, roughly 3,100 feet above sea level?

The Belle Fourche River valley, where the river leaves the state's northeast corner for South Dakota, is the low point, so even Wyoming's bottom is higher than the summits of Florida, Illinois or Ohio.

Unlike most states, Wyoming does not levy which tax?

Wyoming levies no personal income tax and no corporate income tax either; the state runs largely on a 4 percent sales tax, mineral severance taxes and federal mineral royalties.

How many votes does Wyoming cast in the Electoral College?

Three is the constitutional minimum: two senators plus a single at-large House seat, which gives each Wyoming voter outsized weight in the Electoral College per capita.

When did Wyoming last vote for a Democratic presidential candidate?

Lyndon Johnson's 1964 landslide was one of only eight Democratic wins in Wyoming since statehood; George W. Bush later took 69 percent there in 2004.

What is the single telephone area code that covers the whole of Wyoming?

307 was one of the 86 original area codes AT&T created in 1947; Wyoming, like Alaska, Delaware and a handful of other states, has never needed a second one.

Which group ran the 1916 contest that produced Wyoming's bison state flag?

The Daughters of the American Revolution sponsored the contest; the $20 prize went to Verna Keays, a recent Art Institute of Chicago graduate, and her bison flag became law on 31 January 1917.

Which painter joined the 1871 Hayden survey whose images helped make Yellowstone a park?

Thomas Moran travelled as a guest of financier Jay Cooke alongside photographer William Henry Jackson, and his watercolours, shown to congressmen, helped persuade Congress to create the park.

Buford, an I-80 hamlet with one resident, was auctioned in 2012 to buyers from where?

Pham Dinh Nguyen, a businessman from Vietnam, paid $900,000, renamed the trading post PhinDeli Town Buford and sold imported Vietnamese coffee there.

What form does the Ames Monument, honouring two railroad financiers, take in southeastern Wyoming?

The monument is a granite pyramid 60 feet tall, designed by H. H. Richardson with Saint-Gaudens portrait medallions of Oakes and Oliver Ames; the railroad moved its tracks in 1901, leaving it alone on the prairie.

The 1885 Rock Springs massacre targeted immigrant coal miners from which country?

The miners were from China, hired by the railroad's mine operator at lower pay than white miners; at least 28 were killed and 78 homes burned, and no one was ever prosecuted.

Tom Horn, hanged in Cheyenne in 1903, had earlier worked for which detective agency?

Tom Horn had worked as a Pinkerton agent in the early 1890s before hiring out to cattlemen; convicted of shooting 14-year-old Willie Nickell, he was hanged on 20 November 1903, the day before his 43rd birthday.

Governor John Osborne wore inaugural shoes made from what part of outlaw Big Nose George?

Osborne had the shoes made from his skin after the outlaw was lynched in Rawlins in 1881; they went to the Carbon County Museum, and the skull cap served as an ashtray.

Outlaw Harry Longabaugh took his nickname from which Wyoming town, where he was jailed?

Longabaugh became the Sundance Kid after 18 months in the Sundance jail for stealing a gun, horse and saddle in 1887; he later joined Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch.

'Gillette syndrome', named for the Wyoming city, describes social problems caused by what?

Rapid boomtown growth is the cause: psychologist ElDean Kohrs coined the term in 1974 for the rising crime, strained services and frayed community bonds in towns that swell overnight around mining and drilling booms.

Hell's Half Acre, a badland near Casper, played which planet in 1997's Starship Troopers?

The 320-acre scarp of ravines and caves doubled as Klendathu, the Arachnid homeworld; it sits beside US 20/26 about 40 miles west of Casper.

Jackson Hole Airport is the only US commercial airport located inside what kind of place?

It is the only commercial airport inside a national park: the 1950 expansion of Grand Teton National Park absorbed the airfield, and the park sets strict noise limits on the jets using it.

When it opened in 1910, Buffalo Bill Dam on the Shoshone River held what global distinction?

At 325 feet the concrete arch was the tallest dam anywhere when finished in 1910; it was raised another 25 feet in the early 1990s, and its reservoir sits in Buffalo Bill State Park.

The Old Faithful Inn, opened in 1904, is the world's largest building of what kind?

The Old Faithful Inn is billed as the largest log hotel in the world, built of local lodgepole pine and rhyolite; architect Robert Reamer was 29 when he designed it.

Which Yellowstone feature is the tallest active one of its kind in the world?

Steamboat's major eruptions can top 300 feet, but they are wildly unpredictable: it sat dormant from 1911 to 1961, then fired more than 40 times a year in 2019 and 2020.

Where does Grand Prismatic Spring rank among the world's hot springs by size?

Third largest: only Frying Pan Lake in New Zealand and Boiling Lake in Dominica are bigger; its rainbow rings come from heat-loving microbes that thrive at different temperatures.

Roughly what share of Yellowstone burned in the great fires of 1988?

About 36% of the park, nearly 794,000 acres, burned; on 8 September the whole park closed for the first time ever, and only autumn snow finally put the fires out.

In which year were gray wolves reintroduced to Yellowstone's Lamar Valley?

The first 14 wolves, trapped in Canada, were released in the Lamar Valley in 1995; the park's last native wolves had been killed in 1926 under a predator-control programme, leaving elk unchecked for seven decades.

The 1927 failure of a landslide dam near Jackson Hole wiped out which small Wyoming town?

Kelly was swept away when the natural dam failed on 18 May 1927, killing six people; the 1925 slide had sent 50 million cubic yards of Sheep Mountain across the river below, creating Lower Slide Lake.

The 1866 Fetterman Fight near Fort Phil Kearny, costing 81 soldiers, was part of what?

Red Cloud's War was the Lakota fight to close the Bozeman Trail; ten decoy warriors, among them Crazy Horse, lured the column into an ambush, the Army's worst defeat on the Plains until the Little Bighorn.

The 1854 Grattan fight, which started the First Sioux War, began over what?

A stray cow belonging to an emigrant on the trail was butchered by a Lakota; when Lt. Grattan tried to arrest him, a soldier shot Chief Conquering Bear, and all 29 men of the detachment died.

Which group took over Fort Bridger in 1855, claiming to have bought it for $8,000 in gold?

Mormon settlers under Lewis Robison took possession, and the church said it had paid $8,000; Jim Bridger denied selling, and a Utah militia had tried to arrest him in 1853 for trading guns and alcohol to Native Americans.

Owen Wister's 1902 novel The Virginian, the first true Western, is set around which town?

Medicine Bow, where Wister first stepped off the train in 1885, is the novel's setting; the line 'When you call me that, smile!' comes from its card game, and its climactic walk-down showdown became a genre fixture.

Who cast the first vote by an American woman in a general election, in 1870?

Louisa Swain, a 69-year-old Quaker, cast her ballot on 6 September 1870; legend says she was out buying yeast with a tin pail when the polls opened.

Which NFL quarterback went seventh overall in the 2018 draft after playing for Wyoming?

Josh Allen, a junior-college transfer from Reedley College, had only two scholarship offers and the other was withdrawn; the Buffalo Bills took him seventh overall in 2018.

Afton-born wrestler Rulon Gardner won 2000 Olympic gold by beating which unbeaten Russian?

Aleksandr Karelin had won Olympic gold in 1988, 1992 and 1996 and had not lost internationally in 13 years when Gardner upset him 1-0 in the 130 kg final; Gardner credits his strength to the family dairy farm.

Singer Chris LeDoux won the 1976 world championship in which rodeo event?

Bareback riding was his event, the 1976 PRCA world title; he retired to a ranch at Kaycee and sold some 250,000 self-released albums from his truck before Garth Brooks name-checked him in a 1989 hit.

In 1969 Wyoming's coach cut 14 Black players for planning a protest against which rival?

The 'Black 14' wanted to wear armbands against BYU over the LDS Church's exclusion of Black men from its priesthood; the team was 4-0 when coach Lloyd Eaton dismissed them in October 1969.

Fort Washakie, in western Wyoming, was the only US military post named for what?

The post was renamed in 1878 for Chief Washakie, a Native American chief of the Eastern Shoshone, who at his death in 1900 was given a full military funeral.

In 1920 the town of Jackson made national news for electing what?

An all-woman government, dubbed the Petticoat Government, took office when Grace Miller won the mayoralty alongside four councilwomen; they then appointed women as town marshal, clerk and treasurer, fifty years after Wyoming women first voted.

Which billionaire founded TerraPower, the company behind the Natrium nuclear plant at Kemmerer?

Bill Gates founded TerraPower in 2006; its sodium-cooled Natrium reactor was sited beside Kemmerer's retiring Naughton power plant partly so that plant's workers could move across.

One theory says French trappers named the Teton Range les trois tétons, meaning what?

The three breasts: tétons is French for teats, which is what the trappers saw in the Grand, Middle and South Tetons; a rival theory credits the Teton Sioux, and the Shoshone name Teewinot, 'many pinnacles', survives as a peak.