The Two Laramie's

The two greatest roads for westward expansion, the Oregon/Mormon Trail, and the Transcontinental Railroad both passed through Laramie. But not the same Laramie.

Fort Laramie of trapper and Indian wars fame sits on the Laramie and North Platte Rivers in east-central Wyoming.

Fort Laramie

Laramie the city, once actually called, Laramie City, is in the southeast corner of the state.

University of Wyoming - Game Day

Today the two Laramie’s are often confused in print. Most of the confusion results from people thinking that Fort Laramie and Laramie, the home of the University of Wyoming, are one and the same, but they are not. Every once in a while I run across something that confuses the two.

I lived and taught at Laramie High School for many years retiring from teaching in 2012. Now I live just minutes away from Fort Laramie, where I used to live before moving to Laramie City. That should help clear everything up.

Easy to remember which is which – wagons to the west passed through Fort Laramie and Rail cars to the west passed through Laramie City.

Why the name? I have posted here before about early Wyoming trapper and explorer Jacques La Ramie. La Ramie was a free trapper in and around Fort William, later to become Fort John and then Fort Laramie. He either died, was killed or was lost and never heard from again in 1820 or 21. Many things are named after him in the southeast part of the state including the small river running through Laramie the city and Fort Laramie.

Laramie River near the Fort

I have posted other parts of Jacques La Ramie legend from time to time, but this is the first I have blogged about the confusion with all things Laramie.

So where did all this start? A recent book where a man, riding the all-new transcontinental RR, got off at Fort Laramie. Oops!

Break time in the park

Laramie Wyoming

What a crazy place I live in.
No, not that way crazy, but a crazy name.

Laramie, named after a French-Canadian trapper, Jacques LaRamie. He came to Wyoming Territory to trap no earlier than 1816 and was killed by the Arapaho in the winter of either 1818 or 1819. According to Jim Bridger who came to the area a few years later LaRamie was well liked and respected as an honest trader by Indians of the area.

So why was he killed? No one knows but likely for whatever possessions he had with him at the time. And no one can say with absolute certainty that it was Arapaho who killed him, although most stories back up this belief.
Today the city of Laramie is named after him along with: Laramie Peak, the Laramie Plains, and the Laramie Range of the Rockies, Laramie County (Home of Cheyenne, Wyoming’s state capital), the Laramie River, the Little Laramie River, and maybe others I cannot think of right now.

So what did he do that warranted naming more things after him than any other person except James Bridger? No one knows, but Laramie City was a true wild and wooly Wild West town in the late 1860s when the railroad first came to town. Jacques LaRamie, a true symbol of the times long past seemed to be a fitting name for an area changing so rapidly.

LaRamie was a pioneer, trapper, explorer and trader in this area and we don’t even know his real name. There were many Jacques with French last names during this time in history so somewhere along the way historians assigned him Jacques as his first name. LaRamie may have been one of many trappers who went by only one simple name (and to think people today think, Elvis and Cher came up with this idea). Not sure why historians thought he needed anything other than just LaRamie.

-N-