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The New Deal and Wyoming Agriculture, Part 3: Returning homesteads to ranchland

When the New Deal arrived in Wyoming, federal policy divided the state in two. In the west, the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 brought the public range under federal regulation for the first time, creating grazing districts and permit systems that permanently reshaped who could graze and how many animals. In the east, a more disruptive transformation was underway: federal programs concluded that much of the land homesteaded on the Great Plains should never have been farmed and set about moving the people who lived there off the land, returning it to grazing.

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The New Deal and Wyoming Agriculture, Part 2: Killing Cattle to Raise the Price

When the New Deal arrived in Wyoming in the 1930s, federal agents fanned out across the state buying and slaughtering cattle and reducing crops to combat the Depression-era crisis of overproduction. This article examines how the Agricultural Adjustment Administration’s production controls played out on Wyoming’s ranches and farms.

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The New Deal and Wyoming Agriculture, Part 1: Drought, Depression and Despair

When the stock market crashed in October 1929, Wyoming’s farms and ranches were already struggling. What followed—collapsing markets, failing banks, and years of devastating drought—pushed the state’s agricultural economy to the breaking point. The Franklin Roosevelt administration’s New Deal offered relief, but it also brought federal power directly into Wyoming’s rangeland in ways that would permanently reshape the relationship between ranchers and the land they grazed.

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James W. Byrd: Wyoming’s Pioneering Police Chief

In January 1966, James W. “Jim” Byrd became the first Black police chief in Cheyenne—and in Wyoming. Over a 25-year career he helped modernize the Cheyenne Police Department and went on to serve as a Wyoming highway safety director and U.S. Marshal. Read more about this quiet trailblazer in Wyoming public life.

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The Life of Alan K. Simpson

On a freezing New Year’s Eve in 1978, a handful of friends gathered at Christ Episcopal Church in Cody, Wyoming, to watch Alan Simpson sworn into the U.S. Senate by candlelight. Only about twenty people attended the midnight service, but the moment vaulted Simpson ahead in seniority and launched a career that would make him one of the most recognizable—and quotable—political figures in Wyoming history.1

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The New Deal: Returning homesteads to ranchland
The New Deal: Killing Cattle to Raise the Price
The New Deal and Wyoming Agriculture, Part 1
James W. Byrd: Wyoming’s Pioneering Police Chief
The Life of Alan K. Simpson

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“We the People”: Heart Mountain Interpretive Center Explores Japanese American Identity Behind Barbed Wire

More than 10,000 Japanese Americans lived behind barbed wire at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Park County during World War II. A new exhibit at the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center, “We the People: Exploring American Identity,” tells their story through artifacts that reveal how incarcerees built full lives despite unjust confinement. As America marks its 250th anniversary, their experience offers a powerful lens for examining what it truly means to be American.

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Medal of Honor with imagery of soldiers and wording, "Nisei Soldiers of World War II / Go for Broke"

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