Wyoming's Enduring Rural Western Image Was Created by Cultural

Wyoming's enduring rural western image was created by cultural forces as longstanding and national in scale as the forces that left Wyoming economically underdeveloped. State promotion of Wyoming's traditional image in the interests of economic development is not nostalgic under these circumstances. diversified economy, including both rural and urban development, were rapidly and consistently accompanied by cultural images of the state as "western." For insiders and outsiders alike, these images identified Wyoming with beautiful natural scenery and the world of the range cowboy-in short, as an undeveloped, even undevelopable place. The cultural forces that shaped Wyoming's state identity have been as powerful, longstanding, and national in scale as the economic forces that tapped Wyoming's resources but failed to plant large urban manufacturing centers there. Any successful effort to create new images of the state and to develop a viable economy must begin by understanding the national scope and resonance of Wyoming's cowboy image. After a hundred years, Wyoming state officials were left holding the bag of antici- pated progress that never materialized. Why did this happen?State economic planners have grappled with the question, but their answers have traditionally laid the blame on economic forces that were either beyond the state's control, or were misshapen by state tax and economic development policies.' Contemporary state planners have focused on identifying what is structurally wrong with Wyoming's economy, emphasizing-for obvious reasons-what the state could do differently to promote business, to create new kinds of jobs (especially in telecommunications and information --"--------""--" FRIEDAKNOBLOCHteaches American Studies at the University of Wyoming. She thanks Robert Johnston, Catherine Stock, and many UW colleagues for their close reading. T. A. Larson, History of Wyoming (1965; reprint, Lincoln, 1978). Larson returns to the theme of unrealized progress throughout the book. See his discussion of post-World War Two economic development assessment, 506-10. Western Historical Quarterly 32 (Summer 2001): 201-221. Copyright 02001, Western Histow Association. 202 SUMMER 2001 Western Historical Quarterly technologies), and to redistribute the tax burden from the minerals industry to other industries.' State planners today quietly concede that, in addition to economic face tors, the state's rural culture may be to blame for lack of de~elopment.~In May 1998, the New York Times reported that state officials: "have to deal with Wyoming's standoffishness about change," a "stubborn streak. captured by the image of a cowboy on a bucking bronco," a mythical image belied by the "reality . that only 4 percent of residents work on ranches or farm^."^ The state's economic policy makers have been criticized for clinging nostalgically and ineffectively to the state's "wild west" image in its quest for development. A "native" wrote anonymously in The Economist in 1998 that "Wyoming clings to the Hollywood version of its history," and maintains "old-West nostalgia as legitimate public policy."5 But images of promotional value that identify the state's rural culture represent what has been economically realized in Wyoming more accurately than nineteenth- and twentieth-century genuflection to urban, industrial progress ever could. Wyoming's "undeveloped" rural culture was in fact created, not by misguided Wyoming insiders, but by the same American industrial development that linked Wyoming's resources to commercial and industrial centers elsewhere. Romantic responses to American industrialism-originally from outside Wyoming and pronounced after 1890- created enduring cultural associations of Wyoming as rural. Wyoming's chronic under- development and cowboyification happened simultaneously in the last decades of the nineteenth century. In 1868, Wyoming territorial organizers had every reason to expect the rapid growth of urban settlements and economic activities. They believed they were on the cutting edge of the expansion of industrial development, not waiting in a rural backwater for industry to come their way; industry, in the form of Union Pacific railroad construction and maintenance, precipitated political organization. Territorial Governor John Campbell noted that "[flor the first time in the history of our country, the organization of a territorial government was rendered necessary by the building of a railroad. Here- tofore the railroad has been the follower instead of the pioneer of ci~ilization."~The earliest issues of the Cheyenne Leader, begun in September 1867 just before the arrival of the Union Pacific tracks, give some indication of the forms of progress early Wyo- ming citizens grandly imagined. Cheyenne was an "infant prodigy, and railroad city of --..-"-".""-""-....-" """- ' Steering Committee for Business Development, "Vision for a New Economic Future." Available [Online]: <http://commerce.state.wy.us/STEA/steerqorthm [6 June 19981. ' Ihid., 6. James Brooke, "Wyoming is Left Out of the Rockies' Boom," New York Times, 23 May 1998, A8. ' "The Wyoming Paradox," The Economist, 18 July 1998, 29. The native did not remain anonymous: Tom Western, professor and writer from Sheridan, Wyomlng, wrote the article. Tampbell, quoted in Larson, History of Wyoming,36. Frieda Knobloch the west," and the editor implored residents to support the paper with advertisements, the "cordial support which we know will spring from persistent and effective labors for the commercial growth of our ~ity."~ How the Leader placed Cheyenne in the contexts of western development and American history reveals an emerging civic identity encompassing the territory at large, which was American and entrepreneurial, not simply western. The rapidity with which Cheyenne was built-more than one hundred houses in the first six weeks- attested to the "vigor with which American people set about important undertakings." In the fall of 1867,the city was a boomtown in a "handsome location," with abundant water and coal deposits nearby.s And booming businesses needed labor. "The whole [Wlest wants it-Dakota, Colorado, and Montana-Utah, alone, is supplied," an en- viable accomplishment. The land near Cheyenne offered resources "of almost illimit- able extent, explored and unexplored," while "the mountains are full of treasures, and these broad plains and valleys wait but the hand of skillful and persistent husbandry." Newspapers like the Leader, the editor continued, were "increasing the productive labor of the country" (not just the region, or any territory) by reporting opportunities that would attract labor.9 Close by in "the famed Black Hills" was "the most gigantic enterprise in the world-the Union Pacific Railroad," whose work was "gigantic and important, beyond conception or description."'He closed an editorial with the breathless and formulaic: "Westward the star of Empire takes its way!"" The editor's hyperbole marks the significance of the Union Pacific in creating this place as a seed- bed of industrial development, linking this promising setting with its own hinterland, connected to other cities and growing markets. Political organization spread outward from Cheyenne. City government was immediately necessary in August 1867,a month after the first settlers arrived in anticipa- tion of the Union Pacific. In September, a larger county organization was proposed because the "rapid increase in . population . and the constantly multiplying and increasing transfers of real estate," lawsuits between citizens, and crime throughout the surrounding area made courts with jurisdiction beyond Cheyenne desirable.12 In October, the Leader broached the subject of territorial organization for the first time, noting that the territorial seat at Yankton was seven hundred miles away, and emphasizing Wyoming's progressive potential, which was directly related to railroad construction: "Dakota is a slow coach; we travel by steam."13The territory organized in ... " . -. "-""-.".-... Cheyenne Leader, 19 September 1867, I "bid., 4. Ibid., 26 October 1867, 1. '"bid., 2 November 1867, 1 " Ib~d.,26 October 1867, 1. Ibid., 28 September 1867,4. l3 Ib1d.,22 October 1867, 1. 204 SUMMER 2001 Western Historical Quarterly 1868 was willingly given up by Dakota because the Union Pacific connected Wyo- ming more directly to other territories than it did to Dakota itself, and subdivision of the "illy-proportioned and extensive area of Dakota1' was "ine~itable."'~Wyoming citizens had a political and economic vehicle to promote their interests as distinct from the interests of citizens elsewhere. An early and comprehensive promotional document, Laramie newspaper editor Robert Strahorn's 1877 Hand-Book of Wyoming, indicates that the seeds of Wyoming's later identity germinated immediately, but alongside the now-common associations of the place with mountains and plains and natural resources, lay the fervent belief that many thousands of people would come to build cities and factories. "The natural capa- bilities of few regions are so generously and favorably diversified as in that embraced within the limits of Wyoming," Strahorn wrote. "Forest and [pllain, mountain and valley, water-course and upland alternate and unite to furnish the most accessible field for the speedy creation of a large and prosperous ~ommonwealth."'~ Cataloguing the existing resources and industries of the territory, Strahorn de- scribed "what inducements her great natural wealth has held out to capitalists."

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