Pronghorn antelope all but outnumber people in wide-open
WYOMING , the ninth largest but least populous
state in the union, with just 460,000 residents. Above all, this
is classic cowboy country - the inspiration behind
Shane, The Virginian and countless other Western novels - where
the days of the open range are evoked by rodeos, country-and-western
dance halls and ranchwear stores. The state emblem, seen everywhere,
is a hat-waving cowboy astride a bucking bronco.
Northern Wyoming is the prime tourist
goal, with well over three million per year heading for the simmering
geothermal landscape of Yellowstone National Park ,
and the craggy mountain vistas of the adjacent, and equally outstanding,
Grand Teton National Park . Wedged in between
Yellowstone and South Dakota to the east are the helter-skelter
Bighorn Mountains , likeable Old West towns such
as Buffalo , and the otherworldly outcrop of
Devils Tower .
The meager supply of buffalo in early Wyoming caused
fierce intertribal wars over hunting grounds and kept the
Native American population down to around 10,000. However,
Sioux, Cheyenne and Blackfoot combined to inflict notable defeats
on the US Army before it could clear the way for pioneer settlement
in the 1870s. The cattle ranchers and sheep-farming homesteaders
who followed engaged in violent range wars over
grazing rights to the wiry grasslands.
Unlikely as it may seem, this rowdy, heavily male-dominated
state was the first to grant women the vote in 1869 - a full half-century
before the rest of the country, on the grounds that the enfranchisement
of women would attract settlers and increase the population, thereby
hastening statehood. A year later Wyoming appointed the country's
first women jurors, and the "Equality State" elected
the first female US governor in 1924.
The absence of rivers to irrigate farmland has effectively
put a lid on agricultural and population growth. These days, any
weather-beaten, denim-clad stranger is more likely to be an oil
roustabout than a genuine cowboy, fuel and mineral extraction
having replaced livestock as the mainstay of the economy in the
early part of the twentieth century
