History of Wyoming
history of the U.S. state of Wyoming
There is evidence of prehistoric human habitation in the region known today as the U.S. state of Wyoming stretching back roughly 13,000 years. Stone projectile points associated with the Clovis, Folsom and Plano cultures have been discovered throughout Wyoming. Evidence from what is now Yellowstone National Park indicates the presence of vast continental trading networks since around 1,000 years ago.
The Union Pacific Railroad played a central role in the European colonization of the area. Wyoming would become a U.S. territory in 1868. It was the first state to grant women the right to vote in 1869 (although it was then still a territory). Wyoming would become a U.S. state on July 10, 1890, as the 44th state.
Native American settlement
There is evidence of prehistoric human habitation in the region known today as the U.S. state of Wyoming stretching back roughly 13,000 years. Stone projectile points associated with the Clovis, Folsom, and Plano cultures have been discovered throughout Wyoming. In the Big Horn Mountains there is a medicine wheel that has not yet been dated accurately due to disruption of the site before the two archaeological excavations of 1958 and 1978.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “History of Wyoming” is history of the U.S. state of Wyoming. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through History, Wyoming and history, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “history of the U.S. state of Wyoming” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5867280. The Library of Congress control number is sh85148714. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1868, 1869, 1890 and 1958.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “History of Wyoming” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.