Wyoming

Wyoming is the least populous state in the country, with about 580,000 residents spread across 97,813 square miles — the tenth-largest state by area but among the emptiest by density. That gap between land and people explains much of Wyoming's identity: long distances, small cities, large ranches, and a landscape split cleanly between the mountainous western third and the high plains, basins, and energy fields of the east and center.

Cheyenne is the capital and largest city, sitting in the southeast at the I-25/I-80 crossroads; Casper anchors central Wyoming's oil economy, and Laramie's identity is built almost entirely around the University of Wyoming. No Wyoming city reaches 100,000 people — the whole state has fewer residents than metropolitan Reno, Nevada.

Wyoming is known as the Equality State: it was the first US territory or state to grant women the right to vote, in 1869, and elected the country's first female governor, Nellie Tayloe Ross, in 1924. Geographically, the state sits at an average elevation of roughly 6,700 feet, among the highest of any state, with the Rocky Mountains — the Tetons, the Wind River Range, the Absarokas, the Bighorns — dominating the west and the Yellowstone Plateau's supervolcano anchoring the northwest corner.

Wyoming's economy runs almost entirely on mineral extraction and tourism. The Powder River Basin alone produces roughly 40% of US coal, and Wyoming's trona deposits — the world's largest — supply most of the world's soda ash. The state has no personal or corporate income tax, relying instead on mineral severance taxes and property taxes. Yellowstone and Grand Teton together draw more than 7 million visitors a year, making tourism the state's second-largest economic sector, and cattle ranching remains culturally central even where it's no longer the largest employer.

Wyoming's mountains rank among the most dramatic in the continental United States. Gannett Peak (13,804 ft), the state's highest point and the tallest peak in the Rockies between Colorado and Montana, sits deep in the Wind River Range behind a 35-40 mile wilderness approach — heavily glaciated and genuinely remote, it sees only a handful of summits each year. The Grand Teton (13,770 ft) is far more visited and far more photographed: a technical, 5.7-difficulty climb via the standard Exum Ridge route, and the sharp, five-peaked profile rising 7,000 feet above Jackson Hole is one of the most recognized mountain scenes in the world.

Yellowstone

Yellowstone National Park, America's first national park (1872), sits atop one of the largest volcanic systems on Earth — a 45-by-30-mile caldera whose magma chamber feeds more than 10,000 geothermal features. Old Faithful erupts roughly every 90 minutes; Grand Prismatic Spring, 300 feet wide and 160 feet deep, is the largest hot spring in the country, its rings of orange, yellow, and green created by thermophilic bacteria living at different temperatures. The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone drops 1,000 feet, with the 308-foot Lower Falls visible from the Artist Point overlook — one of the most photographed spots in the entire national park system. The park's Lamar Valley, nicknamed the "Serengeti of North America," gives the best wildlife viewing in the continental US: wolves (reintroduced in 1995), grizzly bears, and the largest free-roaming bison herd in the country, more than 4,500 strong.

Grand Teton and Jackson Hole

Grand Teton National Park's Cascade Canyon and Lake Solitude hike — beginning with a ferry across Jenny Lake — is widely considered one of the finest day hikes in the Rocky Mountains, passing beneath the sheer walls of Teewinot and Mount Owen. The Snake River Overlook, where Ansel Adams made his iconic 1942 photograph of the river bending toward the Tetons, remains one of the most recognizable landscape views in American photography. Jackson Lake, enlarged by a dam at its outlet, gives the classic foreground for the range's north face, and the town of Jackson itself — gateway to both parks — anchors the valley with the National Elk Refuge (7,500 elk winter here) and Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, one of the best ski mountains in the country.

The Wind River Range and Beyond

Away from the two national parks, the Wind River Range holds Wyoming's most serious wilderness: more than 40 peaks above 13,000 feet, 300-plus alpine lakes, and the Cirque of the Towers, a horseshoe of granite spires reflected in Lonesome Lake that anchors one of the best multi-day backpacking loops in the country. Devils Tower National Monument, the first national monument in the US (1906), rises 867 feet as a columnar basalt butte sacred to multiple Native nations. And in the center of the state, Thermopolis's Hot Springs State Park claims the title of the world's largest mineral hot springs, with free public bathing at 135°F alongside colorful travertine terraces built up by mineral deposits over centuries.

No Wyoming city reaches 100,000 residents — the entire state has fewer people than metropolitan Reno, Nevada — but each of its small cities has a distinct identity shaped by its economic base.

The Major Cities

Cheyenne (65,000), the capital, sits at the southeastern corner of the state where the Union Pacific's mainline made it historically the most important rail junction in the Mountain West; Cheyenne Frontier Days, the "Daddy of 'em All" rodeo, is the largest outdoor rodeo in the world and draws over 200,000 visitors every July. Casper (58,000), the "Oil City," has anchored Wyoming's oil and gas industry since the Salt Creek field was discovered in 1908. Laramie (32,000) is inseparable from the University of Wyoming, and Gillette (32,000) sits at the center of the Powder River Basin, producing more coal than most countries in the world — an economy that swings hard through boom-and-bust cycles with coal prices.

Jackson and the Smaller Towns

Jackson, the tourism and recreation capital of the state, is also one of the wealthiest small towns in the country — median home prices exceed $1 million, driven by out-of-state wealth migration drawn partly by Wyoming's tax-free environment. Sheridan preserves the state's cattle-era character better than most Wyoming towns, anchored by the century-old WYO Theater and the King's Saddlery, the most important saddlery institution in the American West. Lander, gateway to the Wind River Range, is home to the National Outdoor Leadership School, founded there in 1965 and since responsible for training hundreds of thousands of outdoor leaders worldwide.

The Economy

Wyoming's economy is unusually resource-dependent even by Western standards. The Powder River Basin around Gillette produces roughly 40% of US coal, and the state's trona deposits in the southwest are the largest in the world, supplying most of the global soda ash used in glass and detergent manufacturing. Wyoming has no individual or corporate income tax, funding government instead through mineral severance taxes and property taxes — a structure that has helped make Jackson Hole an unlikely financial hub, home to hedge funds and private equity firms and host to the Federal Reserve's annual Jackson Hole Economic Symposium, one of the most closely watched gatherings of central bankers in the world. Cattle and sheep ranching remain culturally central across the eastern plains, and tourism around Yellowstone and Grand Teton is the state's second-largest economic sector after energy.

Wyoming has only one four-year public university — the University of Wyoming in Laramie — a deliberate consequence of the state's small population. UW is a Carnegie R1 research institution with about 12,000 students, particularly strong in energy resources (its School of Energy Resources is funded directly by Wyoming's energy industry), law, and natural sciences. Around it, Wyoming built one of the best-funded community college systems per student in the country, supported by mineral severance tax revenue rather than tuition: Casper College, Sheridan College, and five others serve the state's geographically scattered communities, and Central Wyoming College even operates a satellite campus on the Wind River Reservation near Ethete, serving the state's Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho communities.

At the high school level, Wyoming's public schools are unusually well funded thanks to the same mineral revenue, and there's no major magnet or selective-school system — comprehensive community high schools are the norm. Natrona County High School in Casper and Laramie High School (which benefits directly from University of Wyoming faculty and dual-enrollment access) rank among the strongest, while Pinedale High School, in a small Sublette County town flush with natural gas revenue, punches well above its size with strong academic competition teams despite an enrollment under 300.

Wyoming's visitor identity is dominated by Yellowstone and Grand Teton, but the state's history-rich towns and vast public lands hold plenty beyond the two parks.

History and Frontier Towns

Fort Laramie, the most important outpost on the Oregon Trail, served as a fur trading post from 1834 and a US Army post until 1890, and hosted the treaty negotiations that established the Great Sioux Reservation — its "Old Bedlam" officers' quarters, built in 1849, is the oldest standing building in Wyoming. South Pass City, a gold rush boomtown that briefly held 2,000 people, is where Wyoming passed its first women's suffrage legislation in 1869 and where Esther Hobart Morris became the first female justice of the peace in the country. Cody, founded in 1896 by Buffalo Bill himself as the eastern gateway to Yellowstone, centers on the Buffalo Bill Center of the West — five museums in one complex, including the finest collection of American firearms in the world.

Road Trips and Family Weekends

The classic Wyoming road trip runs through Jackson into Grand Teton, then north into Yellowstone's 142-mile Grand Loop Road — Old Faithful, Grand Prismatic Spring, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, Mammoth Hot Springs, and the Lamar Valley — a trip worth allowing five to seven days for. The Beartooth Highway, climbing to nearly 11,000 feet between Cody and Red Lodge, Montana, is regularly ranked among the finest scenic drives in the American West. For families, Yellowstone's predictable geyser schedules and roadside wildlife make it an unusually easy park to engage kids with, while String Lake in Grand Teton — shallow, warm, and calm — gives a gentler alternative to the deeper, colder Jackson Lake nearby, and Devils Tower's short, paved Tower Trail is an easy half-day stop with genuine geological and cultural significance built in.