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 prior to the two archaeological excavations of 1958 and 1978. However, the Big Horn Medicine Wheel's design of twenty-eight spokes is similar to the Majorville Medicine Wheel in Canada that has been dated at 3200 BCE (5200 years ago) by careful stratification of known artifact types. Throughout the Bighorn Mountains, south to Medicine Lodge Creek, artifacts of occupation date back 10,000 years. Large ceremonial blades chipped from obsidian rock formations in what is now Yellowstone National Park to the west of the Bighorns, have been found in the Hopewell burial mounds of Southern Ohio, indicative of vast continental trading networks since around 1000 years ago. When White explorers first entered the region, they encountered numerous American Indian tribes including the Arapaho, Bannock, Blackfeet, Cheyenne, Crow, Gros Ventre, Kiowa, Nez Perce, Sioux, Shoshone and Ute.
Early European observations
Europeans may have ventured into the northern sections of the state in the 18th century. Most of the southern part of modern-day Wyoming was nominally claimed by Spain and Mexico until the 1830s, but they had no presence. John Colter, a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, was probably the first American to enter the region in 1807. His reports of thermal activity in the Yellowstone area were considered at the time to be fictional. Robert Stuart and a party of five men returning from Astoria, Oregon discovered South Pass in 1812. The route was later followed by the Oregon Trail. In 1850, Jim Bridger located what is now known as Bridger Pass, which was later used by both the Union Pacific Railroad in 1868, and in the 20th century by Interstate 80. Bridger also explored the Yellowstone region and like Colter, most of his reports on that region of the state were considered at the time to be tall tales. During the early 19th century, fur trappers known as mountain men flocked to the mountains of western Wyoming in search of beaver. In 1824, the first mountain man rendezvous was held in Wyoming. The gatherings continued annually until 1840, with the majority of them held within Wyoming territory.
Immigration trails
The route later known as the Oregon Trail was already in regular use by traders and explorers in the early 1830s. The trail snakes across Wyoming, entering the state on the eastern border near the present day town of Torrington following the North Platte River to the current town of Casper. It then crosses South Pass, and exits on the western side of the state near Cokeville. In 1847, Mormon emigrants blazed the Mormon Trail, which mirrors the Oregon Trail, but splits off at South Pass and continues south to Fort Bridger and into Utah. Over 350,000 emigrants followed these trails to destinations in Utah, California and Oregon between 1840 and 1859. In 1859, gold was discovered in Montana, drawing miners north along the Bozeman and Bridger trails through the Powder River Country and Big Horn Basin respectively.