Wyoming's Wealth; A History of Wyoming

Basin, Wyoming: Big Horn Book Company, 1976. Second printing [stated]. Hardcover. Good. R. E. Corothers, Harold Hopkinson, and Glen Hopkin. xiii, [1], 237, [5] pages. Decorative cover. Some soiling and wear to cover. Illustrations (some in color). Map. Includes chapters on Geography, Ancient Man, Indian Wyoming, Mountain Men, Emigrants to Wyoming, Communication and Transportation in Wyoming, Topography of Wyoming, Stormy Wyoming; Civil War Wyoming; The Bozeman Trail; Railroad Wyoming; Territorial Wyoming; Cattle Wyoming; Guns and Gold; Let Us Have Statehood; Wyoming Sheep-Wyoming Oil; Wonderful Growing Wyoming; Expanding Wyoming 1945-1976; and Changing Wyoming. William "Bill" Bragg Jr. became a historian, teaching Wyoming history at Casper College for two decades before turning to writing towards the end of his life. He won the Spur Award from the Western Writers Association in 1984. The author wrote this book because, as a teacher of Wyoming history at Casper College, he could not find exactly the right kind of textbook on which to base his courses. Several Native American groups originally inhabited the region now known as Wyoming. The Crow, Arapaho, Lakota, and Shoshone were but a few of the original inhabitants white explorers encountered when they first visited the region. What is now southwestern Wyoming became a part of the Spanish Empire and later Mexican territory of Alta California, until it was ceded to the United States in 1848 at the end of the Mexican-American War. French-Canadian trappers from Québec and Montréal went into the state in the late 18th century, leaving French toponyms such as Téton and La Ramie. John Colter, a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, itself guided by French Canadian Toussaint Charbonneau and his young Shoshone wife, Sacagawea, first described the region in 1807. The Oregon Trail later followed that route. In 1850, Jim Bridger located what is now known as Bridger Pass, which the Union Pacific Railroad used in 1868-as did Interstate 80, 90 years later. Bridger also explored Yellowstone and filed reports on the region that, like those of Colter, were largely regarded as tall tales at the time. The region acquired the name Wyoming by 1865, when Representative James Mitchell Ashley of Ohio introduced a bill to Congress to provide a "temporary government for the territory of Wyoming". The territory was named after the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania, made famous by the 1809 poem Gertrude of Wyoming by Thomas Campbell, based on the Battle of Wyoming in the American Revolutionary War. The name ultimately derives from a Munsee word, meaning "at the big river flat". The region's population grew steadily after the Union Pacific Railroad reached the town of Cheyenne in 1867, and the federal government established the Wyoming Territory on July 25, 1868. On December 10, 1869, territorial Governor John Allen Campbell extended the right to vote to women, making Wyoming the first territory and then United States state to grant suffrage to women.