Wyoming and the Louisiana Purchase

The Louisiana Purchase was one of the most exceptional real estate deals in American history. The United States wanted to buy New Orleans and the delta area of the Mississippi. Napoleon had other ideas; he needed money, money for his army. He offered the entire Louisiana territory; the area later called the Louisiana Territory, for $15,000,000. What a bargain!

President Thomas Jefferson had a great interest in the area, although he had never been to the west. Jefferson’s longest journey west was fifty miles from his home at Monticello. After the purchase, he sent Lewis and Clark to see what he had bought. According to some historians, Jefferson had hopes that long-extinct animals, like the woolly mammoth, might still be alive and well in the unknown West. Indeed, part of the job of the Core of Discovery was to record flora and fauna as they traveled through the west.

They recorded everything from wildflowers to wolves

Not all, but a large part of Wyoming, was part of the newly gained area. Of course France, the United States, and the totality of the purchase, completely ignored the fact that dozens of tribes and tens of thousands of native people had a prior claim to the land. 

Many things to look at and record in the west

Wanted: Enterprising Young Men

To enterprising young men. The subscriber wishes to engage one hundred young men to ascend the Missouri River to its source, there to be employed for one two or three years. For particulars enquire of Major Andrew Henry near the lead mines in the county of Washington who will ascend with and command the party; or of the subscriber near St. Louis, signed William H. Ashley.

 The Missouri Republican, St. Louis Mo., March 20 1822

And so begin the tails of the great American West, set in the area of the Louisiana Purchase.

Wyoming the Leftover State

I remember reading once about Wyoming being a pass-through state. No one stopped, they just passed through. It might also have been the last of the west, everything left over from western expansion and settlement.

Wyoming was not only part of the Louisiana Purchase, a portion was part of Texas at one time and the south west a part of the Mexican Cession. Parts of Wyoming were in Oregon, Washington, Nebraska and Dakota at one time or another. It became so confusing that the famous camp at Fort Laramie was Fort Laramie, Nebraska, Idaho, and Dakota before it was Fort Laramie, Wyoming.

The east was settled, the west was settled, and the south and the upper Midwest settled long before there was a Wyoming. In 1854, travel on the Oregon Trail was heavy but travelers just kept passing through. Much of Wyoming is high desert climate, not suitable for agriculture and people wanting a new life, more often than not, were dependent on agriculture.

It took quite a while but here is how Wyoming became Wyoming.

Ø 1854- Northeast Wyoming belonged to Washington and eastern Wyoming was part of Nebraska

Ø 1861- Colorado territory was formed ending with its northern boundary, it would become Wyoming’s southern boundary

Ø 1861- Nebraska territory was divided and Dakota Territory was formed separated by the continental divide from Washington territory.

Ø 1863- Idaho Territory

Ø 1863- Wyoming Eastern boundary established

Ø Idaho Territory at this time would have been all of the present states of Idaho, Montana and a large part of Wyoming

Ø 1864- Montana Territory created

Ø 1865- Congress sets up a temporary government for the Territory of Wyoming-even though the territory had not yet been created

Ø 1867- Wyoming’s first county was created, Laramie (county seat Fort Sanders) later another county, Carter, was created – all would have been part of Dakota Territory at the time

Ø 1868- Government set up for Lincoln, later changed to Wyoming, this bill also added southwest Wyoming giving the state its four perfect corners.

Ø 1869- Finally – The Territory of Wyoming

Ø 1890- Statehood