Laramie was settled in the mid-19th century along the Union Pacific Railroad line, which crosses the Laramie River at Laramie. It is home to the University of Wyoming, Wyoming Technical Institute, and a branch of Laramie County Community College. Laramie Regional Airport serves Laramie. The ruins of Fort Sanders, an army fort predating Laramie, lie just south of the city along Route 287. Located in the Laramie Valley between the Snowy Range and the Laramie Range, the city draws outdoor enthusiasts with its abundance of outdoor activities.

In 2011, Laramie was named as one of the best cities in which to retire by Money Magazine, which cited its scenic location, low taxes, and educational opportunities.

Downtown District

Laramie was named for Jacques LaRamie, a French or French-Canadian trapper who disappeared in the Laramie Mountains in the late 1810s and was never heard from again. He was one of the first Europeans to visit the area. European-American settlers named a river, mountain range, peak, US Army fort, county, and city for him. More Wyoming landmarks are named for him than for any other trapper but Jim Bridger. Because the name was used so frequently, the town was called Laramie City for decades to distinguish it from other uses.

Laramie was founded in the mid-1860s as a tent city near the Overland Stage Line route, the Union Pacific portion of the first transcontinental railroad, and just north of Fort Sanders army post. The rails reached Laramie on May 4, 1868 when construction crews worked through town. A few passengers arrived on that same day. The first regular passenger service began on May 10, 1868, by which time entrepreneurs were building more permanent structures. Laramie City (as it was known in early years) soon had stores, houses, a school, and churches. Laramie's fame as the western terminal of the Union Pacific Railroad, acquired when the 268-mile (431 km) section from North Platte, Nebraska was opened in May ended in early August 1868 when a 93-mile (150 km) section of track was opened to Benton, 6 miles (9.7 km) east of present-day Sinclair, Wyoming.

Laramie suffered initially from lawlessness. Its first mayor, M. C. Brown, resigned his office on June 12, 1868 after six turbulent weeks, saying that the other officials elected alongside him on May 2 were guilty of "incapacity and laxity" in dealing with the city's problems. This was due to the threat to the community from three half-brothers, early Old West gunman "Big" Steve Long, Con Moyer and Ace Moyer. Long was Laramie's first marshal, and with his brothers owned the saloon Bucket of Blood. The three began harassing settlers, forcing them to sign over the deeds to their property to them. Any who refused was killed, usually goaded into a gunfight by Long. By October 1868, Long had killed 13 men.

The first Albany County sheriff, rancher N. K. Boswell, organized a "Vigilance Committee" in response. On October 28, 1868, Boswell led the committee into the Bucket of Blood, overwhelmed the three brothers, and lynched them at an unfinished cabin down the street. Through a series of other lynchings and other forms of intimidation, the vigilantes reduced the "unruly element" and established a semblance of law and order. 

In 1869, Wyoming was organized as Wyoming Territory, the first legislature of which passed a bill granting equal political rights to women in the territory. In March 1870, five Laramie residents became the first women in the world to serve on a jury. As Laramie was the first town in Wyoming to hold a municipal election, on September 6, 1870, a Laramie resident was the first woman in the United States to cast a legal vote in a general election. Early businesses included rolling mills, a railroad-tie treatment plant, a brick yard, a slaughterhouse, a brewery, a glass manufacturing plant, and a plaster mill, as well as the railroad yards. In 1886, a plant to produce electricity was built. Several regional railroads were based in Laramie, including the Laramie, North Park and Pacific Railroad and Telegraph Company founded in 1880 and the Laramie, North Park and Western Railroad established in 1901.

Late 20th century to present

The city was covered by international media in 1998 after the murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming. His murder generated an international outcry. It became the symbolic focus for a nationwide campaign against gay hate crimes. Federal hate crimes legislation was signed into law in 2009. As of January 2011, Wyoming does not have a hate crimes law. Shepard's murder was the subject of the award-winning play, later adapted as a movie, The Laramie Project.

In 2004, Laramie became the first city in Wyoming to pass a law to prohibit smoking in enclosed workplaces, including bars, restaurants and private clubs. Opponents of the clean indoor air ordinance, funded in part by the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, immediately petitioned to have the ordinance repealed. However, the voters upheld the ordinance in a citywide referendum which was conducted concurrently with the 2004 general election. The opponents challenged the validity of the election in court, claiming various irregularities. However, the judge ruled that the opponents had failed to meet their burden of showing significant problems with the election, and the ordinance, which had become effective in April 2005, remained in effect. In August 2005, Laramie's City Council defeated an attempt to amend the ordinance to allow smoking in bars and private clubs.

Laramie, 1908

Medicine Bow is a town in Carbon County, Wyoming, United States. The population was 284 at the 2010 census.

History 19th and 20th century

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Medicine Bow, like many other towns across southern Wyoming, was established as a result of the construction of the transcontinental railroad in 1868. The railroad located a tie boom on the nearby Medicine Bow River and built a depot, water stop, and coal-loading facility. Later, livestock loading-pens were built and Medicine Bow became an important livestock shipping center. The first load of cattle shipped to the Union Stockyards in Omaha came from the Medicine Bow area. The town grew up around the railroad facilities. In the middle 1880s, Philadelphia lawyer Owen Wister stopped in town and wrote a description in his journal. He later used the historic setting of Medicine Bow as a backdrop for his novel The Virginian, which is considered to be the first novel of the "Western" Genre. In the early 1900s Medicine Bow was one of the automobile stops on Old Lincoln Highway (Junction of Hwys 30/287 and 487). August Grimm built the Virginian Hotel to accommodate travelers. On June 26, 1909, the city was incorporated.

In the early 1970s, the town suffered as a result of the opening of Interstate Highway 80 that bypassed the town, some 35 miles to the south. An economic boom began in the middle 1970s when uranium mines opened north of town and coal mines west of town expanded production. In 1976, as a bicentennial project, local civic groups helped relocate the Owen Wister Cabin, built by the Wister family in the Grand Tetons in northwestern Wyoming, to a site next to the depot. David L. Roberts (b. Lusk, Wyoming, 1954) founded the Medicine Bow Post newspaper in 1977, editing and publishing it until the early 1990s. Ownership of the original Union Pacific Depot, which had burned in the early 20th century and was replaced in 1978, was transferred to the City of Medicine Bow, and the town museum was started in the structure.

Medicine Bow is one of the windiest places in America. South of town, the first experimental giant wind turbines in Wyoming were built under contract from the U. S. Bureau of Reclamation in the early 1980s. Utility-operated wind farms provide electricity from windy points near Medicine Bow.

History 21st century

In December 2007, plans were announced for construction of a large coal gasification plant to be built southwest of town. As of April 2011 construction was to begin on the concrete pad. Completion date was originally estimated for 2014. According to an article on WSJ 11/5/2012, China Petrochemical Corp is planning to build an advanced facility here that will convert coal into gasoline. The cost will be around $2B, and it will produce 2300 construction jobs and 400 full-time jobs when the facility goes into operation. China Petrochemical will gain the technological know-how through this project and will use Chinese made materials to build the plant to gain the cost advantage.As of Feb 2015, this project has been put on indefinite hold due to the low cost of crude oil in the US Hanna Headlamp.

The plant on 200 acres "a few miles up County Road 3 from Elk Mountain and about a dozen miles south of Medicine Bow" would use coal from the nearby underground Saddleback Hills mine and Elk Mountain surface coal mine, turning it into 11,700 barrels of gasoline and carbon dioxide each day. The company plans to use the carbon dioxide "for sale and use in oil recovery". In 2013, Houston based DKRW Advanced Fuels had submitted new construction plans for the $1.75 billion plant, and announced a construction start date of July 1, 2014.

Expected temporary works to the town is an average of 972 workers per quarter over a four-year build, and when the plant is complete 435 full-time workers to operate the plant (285 in the coal mine and 150 in the coal-to-gas plant) The company estimates to spend about $35 million for the payroll and $200 million on operations and maintenance annually.

The town celebrated its 100th anniversary of incorporation on June 26, 2009.

Aerial view of Medicine Bow