Last in the Union, both alphabetically and in population.
Wyoming is a landlocked state in the Mountain West region of the United States, bordered by (clockwise from the west) Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Colorado, and Utah. With a population of just 580,000, it's the least populous state in the Union and has been since Alaska's population boom in the late 20th century. Its capital and largest city is Cheyenne, with just over 60,000 people, located the very southeast of the state near the border with Colorado. Other significant cities are Casper, Laramie and Gillette.
The Wyoming Territory was established in 1868, taking its Non-Indicative Name from a Pennsylvania valley that in turn got its name from a Lenape word meaning "at the big river flat." In 1869, it became the first jurisdiction in the United States to grant suffrage to womennote , followed by Utah the next year. Cheyenne became a major rail hub during the construction of the first transcontinental railroad connecting the East and West Coasts, which brought large numbers of settlers to the region — inevitably provoking conflict with the local Native Americans, who waged guerrilla campaigns against settlers and US Army troops before ultimately being defeated and scattered, the remaining indigenous people being forced onto remote reservations.
Wyoming was admitted to the Union as the 44th state in 1890. While it was never very populous — it only had 69,000 residents upon statehood — it didn't become last in population until the 1980s, as it never experienced the population booms that its fellow tail-enders Alaska and Nevada did. Today, its economy is largely focused on mining, energy production, and tourism, the latter having become increasingly important recently. Wyoming is home to a lot of unique geological/ecological features, most prominently in Yellowstone National Park, that bring in millions of tourists every year—for much of the year, tourists outnumber permanent residents in the state.
Politically, Wyoming's reliably Republican and has been since the 1960s, although Democrats held statewide office into the 2010s. The only Democratic strongholds are wealthy ski town Jackson and college town Laramie note . However, conservatives from the state can bend populist-to-libertarian. Alan Simpson, the state's senator from 1979-1997, denounced anti-gay discrimination and money in politics. Dick Cheney, who represented the state in the House from 1979 to 1989, has come out in favor of gay marriage. Expect the state's disproportionate representation in the U.S. Senate to be brought up whenever someone is arguing the merits of statehood for Washington, D.C., which has a significantly larger population despite its much smaller land size.
It has the fewest four-year colleges of any state, with exactly one public institution (University of Wyoming in Laramie) and one private (Wyoming Catholic College, a tiny school in Lander founded in 2005).
In fiction, the Wyoming Territory is very popular with historical Westerns, with its vast expanses of remote wilderness, history of conflicts between settlers and natives, and importance to the transcontinental railroad — see The Hateful Eight and Hell on Wheels. Modern Wyoming is also a popular setting for the New Old West, with works like Longmire, Brokeback Mountain, and Wind River taking advantage of its geography and low population density to impart a feeling of isolation on the audience.
Oh, and it's also the topic of the most common American answer to the Bielefeld Conspiracy, that it doesn't exist at all. This isn't true. Probably.
