History of Wyoming
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.
Evidence from what is now Yellowstone National Park indicates the presence of vast continental trading networks since around 1,000 years ago.
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.
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.
[4][5] Throughout the Bighorn Mountains, south to Medicine Lodge Creek, artifacts of occupation date back 10,000 years.
[6][7] 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.
[1] 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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"[10] of Wyoming's organization into early statehood, and wielded great influence throughout the Western United States.
[11] 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 1870, roughly three-eights of Wyoming's population was foreign born, coming primarily from Ireland, Germany and England.
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.
[21] 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.
In 1871, Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden led a formal geological survey of the area, the result of which ultimately convinced Congress to set aside the region.
Tensions rose to a boiling point in April 1892 as an armed conflict known as the Johnson County War, fought between the large cattle operators and smaller ranchers and homesteaders.
Coe wished to celebrate the values of the Western United States in order to meet the threat of communism.
