Wyoming-the West-and Daniel Webster

As early Wyoming started to grow,  slowly, a few visionaries saw all of the west as a part of the United States one day. Trappers were working the area by 1820, and traders were not far behind. We were only a few years away from the mass movement west on the Oregon and Morman Trails. But not everyone in power was for westward expansion. The Whigs, led by two of the most powerful men in the United States political history, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster like Abraham Lincoln a few years later, wanted to deepen the economy, not expand it with the addition of new states. Daniel Webster famously said on the floor of the Senate.

What do we want with this vast, worthless area? This region of savages and wild beasts, of deserts of shifting sands and whirlwinds of dust, of cactus and prairie dogs? To what use could we ever hope to put these great deserts, or those endless mountain ranges, impenetrable and covered to their very base with eternal snow? What can we ever hope to do with the western coast, a coast of three thousand miles, rock-bound, cheerless, uninviting, and not a harbor on it? What use have we for this country?  

I Like It In The West - Lots of Places To Go and Things to See

Years later the quote found in many high school history books changed somewhat, tacking onto the end -

Mr. President, I will never vote one cent from the public treasury to place the Pacific coast one inch nearer to Boston than it is now.

Maybe Those Opposed to Westward Expansion Should Have Taken a Look at a Wyoming,
 North Platte River Valley, Sunset

From reading the Webster sentiment, it is hard to believe that Wyoming and all of the west, ever became part of America.

Oh, I forgot to mention, he never said it. The quote, one of the most famous in opposition to westward expansion, was made up. By who? No one knows, but I would suspect whoever it was, likely did not see a need for more states, especially out here in the west. 

Not A Bad Place to Live - Here in the Great American Desert