Abbreviated as WY by ABBREVIATIONFINDER, Wyoming is a state in the United States. The state is centrally located in the western part of the country and is also defined by the United States Census Bureau as part of the Western United States region. The two western thirds of the sparsely populated state are mostly covered by mountain ranges and pastures at the foot of the eastern Rocky Mountains, while the eastern third of the state consists of a high-altitude prairie called the High Plains.

Wyoming is the tenth largest state in the United States and the least populated. The number of inhabitants in 2010 was 563,626, which is an increase of 14.1% since 2000 [ 2 ]. The capital is Cheyenne, located in the southeastern part of the state, which with a population of just under 60,000 people is also the state’s largest city, before the second largest city Casper located in central Wyoming. The state’s name is of Native American origin and comes from the Xwé : wamənk of the Munei language which means “on the flat side of the great river” which was the name of the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania.

The state’s motto “Equal Rights” is based on the fact that its predecessor, the Wyoming Territory in 1869, held the first general elections in the United States where women had the right to vote. The state was also the first with female jurors and justice of the peace ( Esther Hobart Morris, 1870) and with a female governor ( Nellie Tayloe Ross, 1925–1927). Wyoming therefore officially calls itself “Equality state”.

History

The area was inhabited before the arrival of European settlers by various ethnic groups of the North American indigenous population, including crow Indians, arapahos, lakota and shoshones. During colonial times, Wyoming was a borderland between New Spain, British North America and the Louisiana Territory. In 1848, the area became entirely American through the peace of Guadalupe Hidalgo after the Mexican-American War.

The area was explored by French-Canadian fur hunters in the late 18th century, which French toponyms such as Téton, La Ramie, and others. still reminiscent of. The region was described by John Colter in 1807, a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition led by Frenchman Toussaint Charbonneau and his young shoshone wife, Sacajawea. Colter’s description of the Yellowstone region was widely dismissed as fiction at this time. Robert Stuart and five companions discovered the South Pass in 1812, and later the Oregon Trail was drawn along this route. In 1850, Jim Bridger discovered what is today known as the Bridger Pass, near the line that both Union Pacific’s first trans-American railroad was drawn in 1868 and Interstate 80 later drawn in the mid-20th century. Bridger also explored Yellowstone, but like Colter’s reports, his descriptions were seen as exaggerated.

After the trans-American railroad reached Cheyenne, settlement in the area gained momentum, which led to the US government establishing the Wyoming Territory on July 25, 1868. Unlike Colorado, Wyoming was poorer in gold and silver deposits, which led to the area attracting fewer settlers. In 1867, South Pass City south of present-day Lander underwent a short-lived gold rush after the Carissa mine began producing gold. Copper was also mined in the area between the Sierra Madre Range and the Snowy Range near the Grand Encampment.

The first government-funded expeditions to Yellowstone came to confirm Colter and Bridger’s earlier reports, and the government decided in 1872 to establish Yellowstone National Park, then the world’s first national park. Most of the national park is located in sparsely populated northwestern Wyoming, which through the national park has largely been protected from exploitation.

In 1869, women gained the right to vote in the territory, which thus became the first in the United States to hold general elections in which women had the right to vote. On July 10, 1890, Wyoming became the 44th state of the United States. From 1925 to 1927, Nellie Tayloe Ross was the first female state governor of the United States.

Politics

Wyoming has in recent decades been a conservative state and one of the Republicans’ strongest strongholds. The state has elected the Republican presidential candidate in every election since 1968. This includes Republican Dick Cheney, who was Vice President of the United States between 2001 and 2009. At the state level, the state has had a stable Republican majority in the state Senate since the 1930s and in the state House of Representatives since 1970s; however, since the 1970s, the state has elected democratic governors for more than half of the terms. At the local level, there are liberal exceptions with a democratic majority, partly the rich and tourism-dominated Teton County and partlyAlbany County, which is the seat of the university.

Wyoming’s 32nd governor since 2011 is Republican Matt Mead. Wyoming lacks a deputy governor and the state secretary of state is also the governor’s deputy. The Secretary of State since 2015 is Republican Ed Murray.

Like all states, Wyoming has two members of the U.S. Senate, but due to its small population, the state has only one member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Congressman since 2009 is Cynthia Lummis and senators are Mike Enzi and John Barrasso; all are Republicans.

• CountryAAH: Offers a full list of cities and towns in Wyoming, together with postal codes for each of them, and including capital city of Wyoming.

Wyoming has three votes in the Electoral College, which gives the state a relatively large influence in the presidential election in relation to its population. As an example, Montana, with a population of just under one million inhabitants, has as many electoral votes.