Wyoming as America: Celebrations, A Museum, and Yale

WHEN WYOMINGITES CELEBRATED THEIR ENTRY INTO THE UNION ON JULY 24, 1890, they did so in a decidedly forward-looking manner. The celebratory theme was "equality," as was fitting for the first state in the nation to give women the right to vote. The parade that commemorated statehood included the 7^th Infantry Band, two companies of Girl Guards, and the Afro-American Club, of whom the Cheyenne Daily Sun noted, "our colored brothers followed [the Girl Guards], feeling warm and patriotic devotion to the state in which all men and women are free and equal by the terms of its magna charge." The parade also included two popular milkmen and their cows, hardware merchants, agricultural machinery, and the new state flag, presented by Mrs. I. S. Bartlett. "Wyoming . . . celebrates an event significant in the extreme," she declared, "new in the history of our country and without precedent in the world; that is to say, a State, in adopting its constitution, extends free and equal suffrage to its citizens, regardless of sex." In Mrs. Bartlett's eyes, the enfranchisement of women was consistent with progress in its other forms, all of which would move Wyoming along the path away from its isolated, frontier condition to a civilized end:

If we look within the future, our prophetic eyes can see glorious views unfold before us of joy, wealth, prosperity. We can see the sons of Science, Music, Poetry and Art, coming to our grand dominion, in our growth to take a part. We can see the iron monster, rushing fiercely to and fro. We can see the sky over spread with smoke from furnaces below. We can see Wyoming mountains giving up their hidden stores. Tons on tons, by millions pouring, of the base and precious ores. See her towns and cities rising, where the bison used to roam. And along her streams and valleys many a farmer's peaceful home. We can see great halls of learning well endowed and nobly planned, monuments of taste and culture for the children of our land. We can see the spires of churches, pointing upward to our gaze; chiming bells, harmonious sounding, calling us to prayer and praise. See the plains, now dry and barren, where the sage and cactus grow, desert plains, no longer barren, then shall "blossom like the rose." Thirsty lands no longer thirsty filled with moisture wisely stored, bounteous to the happy farmer, noble harvests will afford.

In 1890, it appeared that instead of a state identity dependent on a "western" past, a guarantee of equality would become the distinguishing characteristic of Wyoming, its sobriquet. Fellow speaker Judge M.C. Brown added:

[A]s descendants of the Anglo-Saxon, we view again with proud delight the field of Runnymede, and the English barons wringing from the grasp of a reluctant king the magna charta of human rights. . . . Look again along the line of progress. . . . It was ordained by the people of Wyoming that each citizen of the state should enjoy the same right guaranteed to every other citizen, whether high or low, black or white, male or female. ¹

It would be these lofty principles, then boldly set into law, that would separate Wyoming from eastern states mired in complacency and old traditions. But, for all its loftiness, it was a self-definition that would, in the end, have a very short life.

By 1897, Cheyenne residents again celebrated their distinctive local attributes. They found inspiration, however, not in the future but in Wyoming's past. The original 1897 Cheyenne Frontier Days program noted:

It is especially appropriate that Wyoming, one of the youngest of our states, should celebrate "Frontier Days." The frontier line of advancing settlements has already disappeared like misty shadows vanishing before the Sun's rays. The varied and adventurous life of the early explorers, the hunters and trappers and Indian fighters, the dangers and privations of the first settlers, and the thrilling incidents of their...