Wyoming is a gorgeous cowboy state within the United States of America.  It is a great plateau broken up by green, luscious mountain ranges that were once filled with Native American Tribes such as the Crow, Arapaho, Lakota, and Shoshone.  As part of the Louisiana Purchase, the land that now makes up the eastern part of the state was aquired by the federal government from France in 1803. Western portions of Wyoming were obtained by the United States through the 1846 Oregon Treaty with Britain and as part of the land deal that ended the Mexican War of 1848.

In 1865, the chairman of the Committee on Territories, Ohio Republican Rep. James M. Ashley, introduced a bill to Congress that would provide a “temporary government for the territory of Wyoming.” It was to be carved out of portions of the Dakota, Utah and Idaho territories. But the bill didn’t make it past committee. But in 1868, the Senate took up the issue successfully and began discussing names.  Some of the names discussed for the territory were Shoshoni, Arapaho, Sioux, Platte, Big Horn, Yellowstone, Sweetwater, Lincoln and Cheyenne.  Cheyenne eventually became the name of the state capital. By this time the name Wyoming was already in common use and remained the most popular choice.  The word Wyoming comes from the Delaware Indian word that meant “at the big river flat,” originally applied to the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania, which was made famous by the 1809 poem Gertrude of Wyoming by Thomas Campbell.

Finally, on July 10th 1890 the United States admitted Wyoming into the Union.