Cities, Towns & Counties

Journalist Merris Barrow arrived in Douglas, Wyo., in 1886 to treat readers to a newspaper “written to be read”—Bill Barlow’s Budget. It needled the powerful and tickled its readers, all while boosting the town. Barrow’s monthly Sagebrush Philosophy circulated nationwide. He died in 1910, just 53 years old.

Two highly educated families of African-American farmers founded Empire, Wyo., near the Nebraska line northeast of Torrington in 1908. At one time it boasted school, church and post office. But drought, low crop prices and, evidence shows, the racial prejudices of their neighbors drove the people away; all were gone by 1930.

The onset of Prohibition in 1919 not only didn’t stop drinking in Wyoming, it added new layers of lawlessness—bribery, corruption, murder. Enforcement officials had to battle crime in their own ranks, too. One high-profile federal case charged corruption at all levels in Casper, but the jury refused to convict.

Early mail pilots eyed roads and railroad tracks as they flew. Soon, the U.S. Airmail built a transcontinental system of night beacons and landing fields. In 1931, low-frequency radio signals from Medicine Bow were the final link–like the railroad’s golden spike 62 years before—in a navigational chain allowing on-schedule, cross-country, all-weather flight.

The mining town of Kirwin, Wyo., once a thriving concern, held promise of gold and other riches during its heyday in the late 1800s, but went into decline in the early 1900s. The scenic beauty of the area drew aviatrix Amelia Earhart to the Double Dee Ranch nearby in the 1930s, but her dreams of a vacation cabin there were never realized.

In the early 1900s, Jewish families came from eastern cities to Goshen County, Wyo., seeking a better life in the West. They farmed, raised families, founded schools and worshiped in private homes. Many were discouraged by the harsh farm life, however, and nearly all left by the 1930s.

The great Wild West showman, Buffalo Bill, failed as a capitalist leading large irrigation projects in northern Wyoming but succeeded in founding the state’s tourist industry and his namesake town, Cody—where the tourist dollar still sustains life.

Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin was still largely unsettled in 1900 when irrigation-minded Mormon colonizers from Utah established the towns of Byron and Cowley, expanded Lovell and began digging the Sidon Canal on the Shoshone River. Their influence settled and stabilized a previously lawless part of the state. 

The final Wyoming Territorial Legislative Assembly created Weston County in March 1890. Thirty years later, the discovery of oil at Osage, Wyo., halfway between the county seat of Newcastle and the small town of Upton, led to a number of cyclical economic booms and busts. Today, the county’s industries include agriculture and oil refining.