When the New Deal arrived in Wyoming, federal policy divided the state in two. In the west, the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 brought the public range under federal regulation for the first time, creating grazing districts and permit systems that permanently reshaped who could graze and how many animals. In the east, a more disruptive transformation was underway: federal programs concluded that much of the land homesteaded on the Great Plains should never have been farmed and set about moving the people who lived there off the land, returning it to grazing.

When the New Deal arrived in Wyoming in the 1930s, federal agents fanned out across the state buying and slaughtering cattle and reducing crops to combat the Depression-era crisis of overproduction. This article examines how the Agricultural Adjustment Administration’s production controls played out on Wyoming’s ranches and farms.

When the stock market crashed in October 1929, Wyoming’s farms and ranches were already struggling. What followed—collapsing markets, failing banks, and years of devastating drought—pushed the state’s agricultural economy to the breaking point. The Franklin Roosevelt administration’s New Deal offered relief, but it also brought federal power directly into Wyoming’s rangeland in ways that would permanently reshape the relationship between ranchers and the land they grazed.

In January 1966, James W. “Jim” Byrd became the first Black police chief in Cheyenne—and in Wyoming. Over a 25-year career he helped modernize the Cheyenne Police Department and went on to serve as a Wyoming highway safety director and U.S. Marshal. Read more about this quiet trailblazer in Wyoming public life.

On a freezing New Year’s Eve in 1978, a handful of friends gathered at Christ Episcopal Church in Cody, Wyoming, to watch Alan Simpson sworn into the U.S. Senate by candlelight. Only about twenty people attended the midnight service, but the moment vaulted Simpson ahead in seniority and launched a career that would make him one of the most recognizable—and quotable—political figures in Wyoming history.¹

A long, slender valley lies in western Wyoming along the Idaho border. Four to six miles wide and twenty-one miles long, Star Valley drew its first settlers, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, because it was hard to get to—and it wasn’t in Idaho.

How did a subtropical cattle ranching practice make it into Wyoming? Wyoming’s cattle ranching industry has deep roots in the Tamaulipas area of Mexico, the Carolinas, and Texas. Read more about how this system got established in Wyoming, who profited from it, and what happened when it met the harsh reality of Wyoming winters.

In the 1870s and 1880s, the cattle ranching industry in Wyoming operated mostly on neglect with one exception: the roundups. For most of the year, cattle were left to roam and graze untended. But twice a year, they were rounded up—sometimes as far as 100 miles away from their home ranch. Read more about the roundups on Wyoming’s Open Range.

Dressed as a cowboy and donning a large stick-on mustache, graduate student Don Bogdan quickly became recognized as the “loudest and most obvious Cowboy fan at University of Wyoming sports events.” His portrayal of Pistol Pete became a staple at sporting events at University of Wyoming. Learn more about the man behind the mustache and the origins of Wyoming’s most beloved icons.

In 1893, young geologist Thomas Jaggar joined Arnold Hague’s expedition to map the Absaroka Mountains east of Yellowstone. Their 77-day journey through Wyoming’s rugged terrain documented the geology of what would become Shoshone National Forest, producing some of the earliest photographs and scientific records of this remote region.