Politics & Government

Esther Hobart Morris, appointed justice of the peace in South Pass City in 1870, was the first woman in the nation to hold public office. While she is notable for that and for her longtime advocacy for women’s rights, much of her fame comes from something she almost certainly didn’t do.

Suffragist and temperance orator Theresa Jenkins delivered a key address at Wyoming’s statehood celebration on July 23, 1890. Later, she spoke widely in Colorado and other states, promoting Wyoming’s example in women’s rights, and spoke at the 1920 W.C.T.U. World's Convention in London.

When Wyoming became the 23rd state to ratify the amendment, on January 24, 1973, supporters decorated Esther Hobart Morris’s statue at the Wyoming Capitol with flowers. The amendment has yet to become part of the U.S. Constitution.

Some delegates drawing up a new state constitution in 1889 feared that, once Wyoming’s statehood came before Congress, continuing to allow women to vote would jeopardize Wyoming’s chances of becoming a state. And they were right.

Estimates of the numbers of women who voted in the principal towns of Wyoming Territory, and a review of the methods used to make those estimates.

A look at the law, an anecdote from the election and some population statistics.

Not only was Wyoming Territory the first government in the world to pass a law allowing women unrestricted voting rights—the territory and state can claim a number of other firsts as well. See the list for dozens more firsts for Wyoming women.

According to newspapers at the time, Louisa Swain, 70, of Laramie, was the first woman in Wyoming Territory to cast a vote under the new law granting full suffrage to women.

Authorized by the territorial legislature in 1886 and designed initially by architects from Ohio, the Wyoming State Capitol in Cheyenne has been expanded twice and, beginning in 2016, totally renovated. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1973, it is among the best of Wyoming’s historic buildings.

Chester A. Arthur, the first president to visit Yellowstone, traveled there in 1883 by stage and horseback from the railroad at Green River through the Shoshone Reservation and Jackson Hole. The trip generated political pressure to preserve the park in its natural state—and to stave off commercial development. ​​