This summer explore Wyoming’s history in a new way! We’ve just added a Travel Wyoming Historypage, where we offer articles built around four unique itineraries connecting historic sites across Wyoming. One itinerary features sites on the Oregon Trail, one links sites important to the Indian Warsof the 1860s and 1870s, a third follows a route across southern Wyoming from Cheyenne to Evanstonand the fourth takes the traveler across northern Wyoming from the Black Hills to Yellowstone National Park.
 
The itineraries, linked from the Travel Wyoming History page, also offer travelers the opportunity to download printable, QR-coded, full-color trifold brochures for each of the four itineraries.
 
Later this month you’ll also find these brochures at museums, libraries, chambers of commerce, Wyoming Tourism Office vistor centers and other tourist stops throughout the state. We hope you’ll print some out one or pick some up—and send them by email or snail mail to any friends or family coming to Wyoming this summer!
 
TravelStorysGPS
Also later this month, the Indian Wars itinerary will be further enhanced with GPS-triggered audio segments about each of the sites, available to smart phone and tablet users who download the free appTravelStorysGPS™.
 
TravelStorysGPS™ offers GPS-triggered audio stories synced to passing landscapes and communities. It connects people to places in real time. Tour sponsors, including WyoHistory.org, present high quality audio stories about the history, natural history and culture along roads and trails, at historic sites and other locations of interest. 
 
For support for the Indian Wars travel package we send special thanks to the Homer Scott Foundation of Sheridan, the Wyoming State Historic Preservation Office and the Wyoming Department of State Parks and Cultural Resources. For support of the travel brochures, special thanks to the Wyoming Cultural Trust Fund. 
 
Yellowstone National Park 
Yellowstone, the world’s first national park, was stablished in 1872 and continues to enthrall visitors to its striking scenery, topography, plentiful wildlife and thrilling thermal features. Learn about its founding and the 142 years of changes the park has undergone since in historian Tamsen Emerson Hert’s article, “Yellowstone, the World’s Wonderland,” athttp://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/yellowstone-national-park. As an added feature, the article contains a gallery of a dozen photos taken in the 1870s by the pioneer photographer William Henry Jackson.
 
William Henry Jackson
Casper writer Rebecca Hein’s new bio, “William Henry Jackson, Foremost Photographer of the American West” at http://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/william-henry-jackson-foremost-photographer-american-west, makes a great companion piece to the Yellowstone article. Jackson’s artistic passions began during childhood in upstate New York. By age 15, he was retouching photographs for professionals. His photos, many of them made with the Hayden survey in the 1870s, had an enormous influence on public perceptions of the American West.
 
Coal slurry pipeline
The highly controversial ETSI coal slurry pipeline, proposed in the 1970s to move millions of tons coal from Wyoming’s Powder River Basin to power plants Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana, was never built, due to falling 1980s energy prices and stiff opposition from railroad companies. Read more in journalist Dan Whipple’s article, “Coal Slurry: an Idea that Came and Went” at
http://www.wyohistory.org/essays/coal-slurry-idea-came-and-went.
 
We send special thanks to the University of Wyoming’s School of Energy Resources for support for this article and others coming soon on the history of Wyoming’s energy and extraction businesses.