The 50 States of America

The people, the places, the history

Tim Glynne-Jones

• Publisher: Arcturus
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781785991431
• eBook ISBN:
  9781784285210
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: History Reference
• Index: History

The 50 States plus Washington DC that make up the USA all play their own unique part in the history and character of the nation. This book is an educational guide that teaches young readers about America's rich and varied history, geography and culture, and the people and places that stand out.

Wyoming

“Campaigning in Wyoming is politics at retail level: it’s done one voter at a time.”

MARY CHENEY, AUTHOR

> ABBREVIATION: WY

> NICKNAME: The Equality State

> ANIMAL SYMBOL: Eastern Goldfinch

> POPULATION: 584,000

> AREA: 97,814 square miles

> TIME ZONE: -7 hours standard time

> CAPITAL: Cheyenne

> STATE ORDER: 44^th

Last but by no means least comes Wyoming, a perfect rectangle of High Plains and Rocky Mountains. If you’re sick of your noisy neighbors, move to Wyoming. It’s big and hardly anyone lives there.

Dick Cheyney did and so did Buffalo Bill Cody and the artist Jackson Pollock, but generally speaking you’re free to keep yourself to yourself in Wyoming. It’s actually the least populous state of all and the second least crowded after Alaska.

Roping and riding: With dust flying in every direction, cowboys chase “wilding” horses in Wyoming.

Equality and energy

For a state with so few people, you would think it might be a little behind the times, yet Wyoming has led the field in various endeavors, notably women’s rights. In 1869 it became the first state to give women the vote and followed this up with the country’s first woman juror, the first woman judge, and, in 1925, the first woman governor, Nellie Tayloe Ross, who was elected to office following the death of her husband, the previous governor. Not for nothing is it called “The Equality State.”

Wyoming was occupied by various tribes, including Cheyenne, Crow, Sioux, and Shoshone, when the first European explorers arrived in the 19^th century. It became part of Spain and then Mexico’s Alta California region before passing to the United States after the Mexican-American War. The Union Pacific Railroad and the Oregon Trail opened it up to white settlers, who began to cultivate crops and rear cattle for beef.

Some precious metals were mined, but it was coal that became the chief mining commodity, with the discovery of huge reserves like those at Black Thunder, the biggest coalmine in the country. Wyoming remains the U.S.’s leading producer of coal.

OLD FAITHFUL

The prime attraction in Yellowstone National Park, Old Faithful geyser is so-called because of the regularity of its eruptions. Wait a couple of hours and you’re virtually guaranteed to see it blow, shooting a column of steam up to 180 feet in the air. In the 19^th century, soldiers used to launder their clothes by placing them in the crater and waiting for the steaming water to shoot them out, clean as a whistle. These days Old Faithful is treated with a little more respect.

DID YOU KNOW?

Henry Longabaugh, aka “The Sundance Kid,” received his nickname while incarcerated for horse theft in the town of Sundance, Wyoming.

Call of the wild

Wyoming’s biggest asset is Yellowstone National Park, a place so incredible that when the earlier frontiersmen reported on what they’d seen there, people thought they must be making it up. When it turned out they weren’t, Yellowstone was made the first National Park in the country, and possibly the world. Today it attracts three million visitors every year.

Grand Teton National Park is to the south of Yellowstone and contains the magnificent rugged peaks of the Teton Range and the valley of Jackson Hole—where Rocky trained before saving the world in Rocky IV. Away from the mountains toward South Dakota, the land is flat with prominent rock formations such as Devil’s Tower, the country’s first National Monument.

Mormon Barn in the Tetons: it’s all that remains of the homestead built between 1912 and 1945 by Thomas Alma Moulton.

In the south, spanning the border with Utah, is Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area, where the Green River has been dammed to create a vast reservoir that offers boating, fishing, hiking, camping, and other activities to millions of vacationers each year.

The Flaming Gorge Recreation Ar...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• The United States map
• Introduction
• Alabama
• Alaska
• Arizona
• Arkansas
• California
• Colorado
• Connecticut
• Delaware
• Florida
• Georgia
• Hawaii
• Idaho
• Illinois
• Indiana
• Iowa
• Kansas
• Kentucky
• Louisiana
• Maine
• Maryland
• Massachusetts
• Michigan
• Minnesota
• Mississippi
• Missouri
• Montana
• Nebraska
• Nevada
• New Hampshire
• New Jersey
• New Mexico
• New York
• North Carolina
• North Dakota
• Ohio
• Oklahoma
• Oregon
• Pennsylvania
• Rhode Island
• South Carolina
• South Dakota
• Tennessee
• Texas
• Utah
• Vermont
• Virginia
• Washington
• Washington D.C.
• West Virginia
• Wisconsin
• Wyoming