Politics & Government

Frank Mondell’s popularity and political wit propelled him to represent Wyoming on the national stage for 13 terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. Yet his legislation and political maneuvering concerning irrigation, dry farming and tribal land appropriation left a murky legacy. Read more about his life in politics.

Agnes Wright Spring believed women’s stories were “filled with romance and color;” the story of her life is no different. Undaunted by sexist barriers, Spring served as Wyoming state librarian, director of Wyoming’s Federal Writers’ Project and Colorado state historian. Read more about her dedicated and deliberate life.

“WOMAN MAYOR IS JAILED, CHARGED WITH BEATING MAN,” read the headline following 1922’s Fourth of July in tiny Cokeville, Wyo. How had the town’s new mayor, elected just a month earlier on a Prohibition and law-enforcement ticket, found herself in the middle of a street brawl?

Historical monuments and markers often enrich our travels with information on a local place, person, or event—but each marker also hints at the thinking of whoever set it there in the first place. The formal marking of historic spots in Wyoming dates back before statehood, and the process continues today.

Thomas Twiss, West Point class of 1826, came to Fort Laramie as a civilian in 1855, tasked with keeping government promises to tribes and keeping peace in all directions. He had an Oglala family on Deer Creek in addition to a family back East—and lived in two worlds for decades.

Wyoming traces its outfitting industry to an 1899 law requiring out-of-state hunters to hire guides. Guiding clients like Charles “Spend-a-Million” Gates eventually became good business, bringing wealth to the West and protecting wildlife from the slaughter of earlier generations, all while starting a gradual, statewide shift toward tourism and service economies.

Black strikebreakers were imported to the company coal town of Dana on the Union Pacific line in February 1890, but may instead have joined a strike there against unfair pay. Their presence made Dana the only coal town ever in Wyoming with a Black majority. Later, many settled in Hanna and Rock Springs.

Invented by Samuel F. B. Morse in the 1830s, the telegraph was already maturing when it crossed what soon became Wyoming in the 1860s. From the early days of settlement and through the railroad period, Wyomingites—and the nation—relied  on it.

Under a Cold War-era U.S. government program, University of Wyoming faculty taught vocational agriculture and engineering at Kabul University and other schools in Afghanistan, and Afghan exchange students studied in Laramie. At least one personal account survives, a shrewd, engaging memoir by faculty wife Ruth Southworth Brown.

The Americans with Disabilities Act was far in the future when a group of Lusk, Wyo. residents first met to propose statewide legislation to make buildings, sidewalks and other public areas accessible for disabled people.