Frank Lucas took over as acting Governor upon Governor Ross' death and filled that post until the election of 1925.

The Casper Army Air Base was built quickly in 1942 to train bomber crews for World War II combat. The facility trained more than 16,000 men before the end of the war. Its population grew to a third of the size of Casper’s, bringing prosperity and a lively social life to the town. The base closed in 1945, when the war ended.

Gerry Spence, born, reared and educated in Wyoming, is recognized nationwide for his powerful courtroom victories.

On Wyoming’s border with Nebraska, Goshen County and its economy have long been stabilized by farming and ranching. Today, sugar beets and cattle are the main products. The area is traversed by the Oregon Trail and the North Platte River, is the home of Fort Laramie, and was well known to Euro-Americans by the 1830s. The Burlington Railroad arrived in 1900 and a Union Pacific line in the early 1920s, both providing impetus to the birth of many small towns, a few of which survive and thrive. Goshen County now supports a population of about 13,500.

Notorious outlaw Butch Cassidy and his Wild Bunch frequently crossed and hid out in Wyoming when on the run from the law. Cassidy’s 18-month incarceration at the Wyoming State Prison in Laramie, 1894-1896, is a definite fact. Other than that, stories place him and his gang all over the map, from Sundance to Brown’s Hole, and Powder Wash near Baggs to Hole in the Wall near Kaycee. Stories persist as well that Cassidy returned to Wyoming decades after his reported death in Bolivia in 1908, but no hard evidence has yet turned up.

Was she a hard-drinking, swashbuckling mule skinner and Indian fighter? Or an alcoholic prostitute, stuck in menial jobs in a life both dreary and mundane? Calamity Jane's life is two stories: the facts of her biography, and the romantic tales that came to comprise the Calamity Jane legend.

Since it first entered the state in 1890, the Burlington Railroad has helped connect Wyoming with the world. Burlington officials were drawn here by Wyoming’s marketable natural resources and by its geography: Wyoming offered the best routes for transcontinental lines from the Midwest and South to the Pacific Northwest.

The U.S. Army established Platte Bridge Station in 1862 to protect the Oregon/California/Mormon Trail crossing of the North Platte River and the new transcontinental telegraph. After Lt. Caspar Collins was killed there by Cheyenne and Lakota Indians in 1865, the post was renamed Fort Casper, misspelling his first name. The fort was abandoned two years later, but reconstructed in 1936—and renamed Fort Caspar—with funds from the Works Progress Administration. Fort grounds and a museum are open to the public.

As its name suggests, Hot Springs County, Wyo., draws many visitors to the world-famous thermal mineral waters located in Thermopolis, the county seat. But the area also provides stunning scenic views for those who travel through the Wind River Canyon and gives fascinating glimpses into prehistoric times at the Legend Rock petroglyphs and the Wyoming Dinosaur Center.

Wyoming's fossils have been important to science since the 1870s and continue to be useful today. Remains of Triceratops, Diplodocus, Tyrannosaurus and others have helped answer—and raise—many questions about the ancient history of the planet and have captured popular imagination with their size or fierce appearance. The scientific value of these fossils and the public interest in them has brought collectors who excavate fossils and ship them to museums all over the country for further study and display. Only a few major finds from Wyoming have remained in the state.