Wyoming

The Mountain West area of the Western United States includes Wyoming. Contiguous United States' 10th-largest and least densely inhabited state.

South Dakota, Nebraska, and Idaho are to the east; Idaho and Utah are west and southwest; while Colorado and Wyoming are north. It has a population of 576,851 in 2020, making it the least populated state in the United States. With a population of 63,957 people in 2018, Cheyenne is both the state capital and the largest city in the state.

Western Wyoming is dominated by the Rocky Mountain ranges and rangelands, whereas Wyoming's eastern half is covered by the High Plains, a high-elevation grassland. It has a more continental climate with bigger temperature extremes, making it drier and windier than the rest of the nation. It's estimated that the federal government owns around half of Wyoming's land. The state is the fifth-largest by land area and the sixth-largest by federal land ownership. National parks, recreation areas, monuments, national forests, historic sites, fish hatcheries, wildlife refuges, and other federally protected properties make up the majority of the land in the United States.

The area has been home to indigenous people for thousands of years. Among the several federally recognised Indian tribes are the Crow, Lakota, and Shoshone, among others. The Spanish Empire was the first to "claim" Southern Wyoming during European discovery. It became a part of the Mexican Republic after the country's independence. In 1848, Mexico relinquished this land to the United States after its loss in the Mexican–American War.

In 1865, a measure was submitted in Congress to establish a temporary administration for the territory of Wyoming, and the area was given the name "Wyoming." For the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania, colonists used xwé:wamnk, which means "at the large river flat" in the Lenape language Munsee.