19 Things That Make Wyoming Damn Interesting

No matter if you are just visiting Wyoming or have lived here all your life, there are some things about this state that make it DAMN interesting.

I can't name them all in one article. There are too many things. I'll just give you the top 19, in my opinion.

1. The name of the state of “Wyoming” comes from the Lenape Indian word mecheweami-ing, which means “at (or on) the big plain.”  That tribe did not live in the area we no call Wyoming. The tribe lived in northeastern Delaware, New Jersey, and eastern Pennsylvania

2. In 1869 the Wyoming territory became the first in the nation to grant women the right to vote.

3. The country’s first female governor was also elected in Wyoming. After Nellie Tayloe Ross's husband, Governor William Bradford Ross, passed away, she was elected to finish his term. She was later appointed by FDR as the director of the United States Mint. She is still the only female governor Wyoming has ever had.

4. Wyoming is the least populated state but the 10th largest by area. That's 5.85 people for every square mile.

5. Wyoming calls itself "The Equality State" after the pioneering women’s suffrage law from 1869. The motto was officially adopted in 1955.

6. You know of Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid. The outlaw Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, a.k.a. The Sundance Kid, took his nickname from the town of Sundance, Wyoming. He was arrested there at age 15 for stealing a horse.

7. Most of Yellowstone, the nation’s first National Park, lies within the borders of Wyoming. Almost all of it in fact. Wyoming might be the least populated state but over 4 million people a year visit the park.

8. Abstract expressionist painter Jackson Pollock was born in Cody, Wyoming, The town of Cody is named after William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody.

9. There are only two escalators in the entire state. Both are located in the town of Casper. Currently, neither of them are working.

10. The mythical creature known as the jackalope was invented in the 1930s in Douglas, Wyoming, Douglas Herrick and his brother Ralph decided to add antlers to a dead jackrabbit they had taxidermied. Don't tell anyone that they are not real. Wyoming loves to fool the tourist with it.

11. Devils Tower was declared it the nation’s first National Monument as a part of the Antiquities Act of 1906. The tower was made famous again the movie Close Encounters Of The Third Kind.

12. Since the mid-1800s, Dinosaur hunting has been big in Wyoming. Bones are everywhere and digging for them still goes on today.

13. There is only one public four-year educational institution in the state, the University of Wyoming. 

14. Buford Wyoming has a population of 1.

15. Old Faithful, is located in Yellowstone. Named because the geyser erupts about every hour and a half, on average.

16. Tiger Woods, Harrison Ford, Sandra Bullock, Charles Schwab, and Wyoming native Dick Cheney, just to name a few, own real estate in Jackson Hole for that view of the Grand Tetons. 

17. Nearly half of the state (48 percent) is owned by the federal government.

18. 1902 in Kemmerer, Wyoming the first JC Penny store opened.

19. Wyoming may be in the middle of the country and considered a high planes desert. But there are 32 named islands within the state’s borders.