A State That Never Was in Wyoming

[Story]

By KIRK JOHNSON
Published: July 24, 2008

SHERIDAN, Wyo. — In early 1939, as talk of war in Europe clouded the horizon and hard economic times gripped the nation, a group of business and political leaders in this northern Wyoming city hatched an audacious, if not quite ridiculous, plan to break off huge chunks of Wyoming, South Dakota and Montana and form a new state.

Editors at the Depression-era Federal Writers’ Project, which happened at the time to be combing the country for local color (and for writers as well, for a series of travel guides about the United States that are now coming online and enjoying a public revival of sorts), included the story in the Wyoming guide, published in 1941, as an example of ten-gallon cowboy eccentricity.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/us/24wpa.html

 

[Nighthawk]

...plan to break off huge chunks of Wyoming, South Dakota and Montana and form a new state.

Eh, not very unique. There is and has been such talk all over the United States. Here in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, people have been talking about splitting off with northern Wisconsin for over 30 years. In Vermont, I remember reading about people wanting to secede from the Union (I think) over a hundered years ago, or something like that. Same with Rhode Island. And just go to Alaska, you'll see what I mean if you start talking to the locals. There are of course those wanting independence in the states that were part of the former Confederacy. Many Native Americans would like a few changes as well.

NH