Wyoming was the first state to have a county public library.

The popular Columbia Pictures film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, was filmed on location at Devil’s Tow-er.

Middle Jurassic dinosaur footprints that are 165 million years old were found near Shell in 1997.

Dinosaur skull and bones discovered at Alcova Lake were found by a local

elementary class on field trip.

Any person who fails to close a

fence in Wyo-ming is sub-

ject to a fine of up to seven h u n d r e d and fifty dollars.

The first b o o k

printed in Wyoming, in

1866 was the Dictionary of the Sioux Language.

In 1872, Yellowstone was designated as the first National Park in the nation. Not only is Yellowstone National Park the first in the nation, but also the first in the world.

The largest coal mine in the USA is Black Thunder located near Wright.

The first Dude Ranch in Wyoming was the Eaton Ranch, near Wolf. The Eaton’s also came up with the term “dude”

The horse on the Wyoming license plate has a name, “Old Steamboat.” It is named after a bronco that could not be ridden in the early 1900’s.

Wyoming has the lowest population of all 50 United States.

In Cheyenne, residents are not allowed to take showers on Wednesdays.

Wyoming leads the country in coal production in 1994 with 3 million tons per week

The majority of Yellowstone National

Park lies within the boundaries of Wy-oming , with smaller portions in Idaho and Montana.

The second largest traveling sand dunes in the world -- the Killpecker Dunes, are located north of Rock Springs.

In Wyoming , it is illegal to wear a hat that obstructs people’s view in a public theater or place of amusement.

The first business west of the Missouri River was a trading post established at

the confluence of the Laramie and North Platte Rivers by veteran fur traders William Sublette and Robert Campbell.

In Wyoming, you may not take a pic-ture of a rabbit from January to April without an official permit.

The Wind River actually changes its name in the middle of the stream be-coming the Big Horn River at a site at the north end of the Wind River Can-yon, where each year the Native Amer-icans hold a ceremony depicting the “Wedding of the Waters.”

WYOMING Wyoming Fun Facts & Trivia Legends

Clay Allison, after sitting in a dentist’s chair in Cheyenne, Wyoming, forcibly pulled one of the dentist’s teeth when he doctor drilled on the wrong molar. He would have continued pulling the dentists teeth, but the screams of the dentist brought in people from the street.

In Jackson, Wyoming it is against the law to spit on the sidewalks or in the streets. Should you carry out this of-fense in front of a lady, you could be arrested and jailed for no more than three days and required to pay restitu-tion to the woman.

Cody, Wyoming is named after Wil-liam “Buffalo Bill” Cody.

It is against the law for junk dealers to transact business with anyone who is drunk.

The state name came from the Del-aware Indian word, meaning “mountains and valleys alter-nating.”

When the Wyoming Territory was organized in 1869, Wyoming women became the first in the nation to obtain the right to vote.

Bigfoot has been allegedly sighted several times in Wyoming in the Wind River Mountains, Yellowstone, Teton Forest, and Snow King Mountain near Jackson.

Harry Longabaugh became known as “the Sundance Kid” because he served a jail term for horse stealing in Sundance, Wyoming .

The Ames Pyramid is A sixty foot tall, stone-block monolith, called the Ames Pyramid, stands on the otherwise empty plains just east of Laramie.

Using a firearm to fish in Wyoming is strictly forbidden by law. Wyoming boasts the first national forest, Shoshone National Forest, de-clared in 1891 by an Act signed by President Benjamin Harrison. Wyo-ming now has nine national forests.

The J.C. Penney stores were started in Kemmerer.

Tom Horn, lawman turned outlaw, was hanged in Cheyenne for shooting 14 year old Willie Nickell in 1903.

The Red Desert in south central Wyo-ming drains neither to the east nor to the west. The continental divide splits and goes around the desert on all sides leaving the basin without normal drainage.

Any new commercial buildings constructed at a cost of more than $100,000 are required to spend a mini-mum of 1% of those funds on artwork for the building.

In 1925 Mrs. Nellie Tayloe Ross be-came the first woman governor in the United States.

Wyoming has one of the lowest vio-lent crime rates in the nation. Strange-ly, it also has one of the highest rates of domestic violence in the nation.

Old Faithful at Yellow-stone National ParkYel-lowstone National Park has more geysers than any other geyser field in the world.

An ordinance in New-castle, Wyoming, specifically bans cou-ples from having sex while standing inside a store’s walk-in meat freezer.

Wyoming prohibits “fat” people, de-fined as 100 pounds overweight, using playground or park equipment.

At the Carbon County Museum in Rawlins, are the remains of an outlaw by the name of George Manuse who was more familiarly called “Big Nose George.” Howev-er, one doesn’t see a skeleton here, but rather a pair of shoes that a lo-cal doctor made from the dead man’s skin and the top of his skull, that was used as both a doorstop and an ashtray. The doctor, John Osborne, would later wear the shoes when he became the Governor of Wyoming. Devils Tower was designated as

the first National Monument in 1906.An old law on the Wyoming books makes it illegal for women to stand within five feet of a bar while drink-ing.

The only known monument in the United States built in honor of a pros-titute is located south of Lusk, Wyo-ming . Called the Old Mother Feath-erLegs Shepard Monument, it was erected in 1964.

Skiing under the influence of alcohol is against the law.

The Jackalope, thought by many to be a mystical creature, is actually said to exist in Wyoming . One of the rarest animals in the world, it is a cross be-tween a now extinct pygmy-deer and a species of killer-rabbit.

One of the newest mammals known to man was recently discovered in a Wyoming petrified tree stump. Living some 65 million years ago, the shrew like mammal is the smallest recorded to date, weighing 1.3 grams.

The town of Kemmerer is known as the Fossil Fish Capital of the World. Kemmerer is home to over 100 Pronghorn Ante lope , about 3,000 people, and over 100,000 fish fossils.

Wild Bill Hickok married Agnes Lake Thatcher in the First United Meth-

odist Church in Cheyenne in 1874.

Article Courtesy ofLegends Of America.com

© Kathy Weiser/Legends of America