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.

The Tongue River in northern Wyoming must have been as beautiful as it is now when George Bent saw it in 1865, with big, lazy curves under cottonwoods, the grass thickening on its banks and the trees sending out their first green shoots in early May. Nowadays, irrigated hay fields and the tiny towns of Dayton and Ranchester lie along the river. In May of 1865, however, one stretch of it was packed with human beings. That month, there was as large a town on the Tongue as that river has ever seen.

When completed in June 1909 on the North Platte River, 47 miles southwest of Casper, the granite Pathfinder Dam was a triumph of early 20th century design. It was one of the earliest federal Reclamation Service dams in the West, and convinced agency officials of their ability “to do great things.”

Park County, Wyo., was officially formed in 1909, but settlers began arriving in the area much earlier and creating several communities that are well-known today. Cody, the county seat, was named for Col. William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody of Wild West fame, who promoted nearby Yellowstone National Park—founded in 1872—as a “Wonderland.” The Pitchfork Ranch near Meeteetse, one of the oldest ranches in the region, was founded in 1879. Dude ranching began in the early 1900s, early oil discoveries came soon afterward, and tourism and oil and gas continue as mainstays today. In the mid-1940s, the Heart Mountain Relocation Camp, where many Japanese-American families were interned during World War II, was located between Cody and Powell.

In 1943, Cpl. Leon Tebbetts and three other soldier-artists were among the thousands of troops stationed at the U.S. Army Air Base in Casper. They created 15 murals showing major events in Wyoming history on the interior walls of the Servicemen’s Club. The colorful murals have been well preserved and can still be seen today at the same place—now the Wyoming Veterans Memorial Museum.

Owen Wister’s enormously popular novel, The Virginian, published in 1902, was set in Wyoming and established the cowboy in American literature as the noble, competent, humorous, laconic hero still familiar today. Wister, a Philadelphian, first came to Wyoming in 1885, looking for stories and better health. He visited the state 14 more times between then and 1900, writing and publishing western stories and books of stories before The Virginian made him famous and rich, and set a pattern for thousands of western novels and films to come.

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

Ruts carved two to six feet deep in a sandstone ridge on the south side of the North Platte River about a half mile south of Guernsey, Wyo., provide striking physical evidence of the route followed by hundreds of thousands of westbound emigrants the Oregon Trail during the years 1841-1869.

Elwood Mead was only 30 in 1888 when Territorial Gov. Thomas Moonlight hired him to bring order to Wyoming’s water law. As territorial engineer Mead did just that, and his ideas were written into the state constitution adopted in 1890. Mead spent only 11 years in Wyoming, but all his life carried with him what he learned in the state.

The history of Niobrara County, Wyo., organized in 1913 and Wyoming’s smallest by population, includes early-day dinosaur discoveries, successful oil drilling and agricultural activities. The county seat, Lusk, earned that status only after extended controversy. The Wyoming Women’s Center, the state’s only prison for women, is located in Lusk.