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Bed & Breakfast Inns and Ranches of Wyoming |
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| Laramie, Wyoming | ||
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Laramie was named for
French-Canadian trapper Jacques La Ramie. |
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| Established |
1868 |
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| Elevation (ft.) | 7,165 | |
| Population in 2000 | 27,204 | |
| Population in 1940 | 10,627 | |
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The city of Laramie is home to our only state university, and as such offers the Wyoming version of a college town: intellectual, relaxed, fun loving, and a little bit cosmopolitan. It would probably suit Bill Nye, a prominent early citizen who started a newspaper named Boomerang in honor of his mule, and achieved national fame for his poker faced, tongue-in-cheek editorials. "The most quiet, unobtrusive man I ever knew," said Buck Bramel to a Boomerang man, "was a young fellow who went into North Park in an early day from the Salmon River. He was also reserved and taciturn among the miners, and never made any suggestions if he could avoid it. He was also the most thoughtful man about other people’s comfort I ever knew. "I went into the cabin one day where he was lying on the bed, and told him I had decided to go into Laramie for a couple of weeks to do some trading. I put my valise down on the floor and was going out, when he asked me if my clothes were marked. I told him that I never marked my clothes. If the washerwoman wanted to mix up my wardrobe with that of a female seminary, I would have to stand it, I supposed. "He thought I ought to mark my clothes before I went away, and said he would attend to it for me. So he took down his revolver and put three shots through the valise. "After that a coolness sprang up between us, and the warm friendship that had existed so long was more or less busted. After that he marked a man’s clothes over in Leadville in the same way, only the man had them on at the time. He seemed to have a mania on that subject, and as they had no insanity experts in Leadville in those days, they thought the most economical way to examine his brain would be to hang him, and then send the brain to New York in a baking can." Bill Nye in Baled Hay Laramie began as one of Wyoming's wildest railroad towns. Murders and hangings were a daily affair, and a saloon owner named Asa Moore ran the town with the help of a town marshal who had just been acquitted of murder charges in Cheyenne, and an assistant marshal who got caught stealing mules. Men who got called before Moore's court of justice in the back room of his saloon were usually robbed, killed, and buried with great efficiency. A vigilante mob finally killed Moore and tried to clean up the town, but outlaws soon took over the reform committee. Finally, Dakota Territory revoked the town's charter and put it under federal jurisdiction. However, things eventually simmered down and more civilized behavior ruled the day. If you enjoyed this excerpt from Tastes and Tours of Wyoming, click here to purchase your own copy.
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