Wyoming: A Pennsylvania Name on a Mountain State

How a Lenape word, a colonial massacre, and a congressman’s sense of poetry gave the Cowboy State its name — from nearly 2,000 miles away. This is Day 1 of our State Names Theme Week.

Before Wyoming was Wyoming, it was a word from Pennsylvania. Here’s the strange, winding journey of a name that traveled westward on the back of a poem — and ended up on a state it was never meant to describe.

The name begins in Lenape country

The word “Wyoming” traces back to the Lenape language, spoken by Indigenous people of the northeastern woodlands. Linguists generally render it as something like “at the big river flat” or “large plains” — a sensible description of the Wyoming Valley in northeastern Pennsylvania, near present-day Wilkes-Barre, where broad flatlands open alongside the Susquehanna River.

That valley became well-known throughout the colonies in 1778, and not for pleasant reasons. In July of that year, a force of British soldiers and Iroquois warriors attacked the valley’s American settlements, killing hundreds of soldiers and civilians in what came to be remembered as the Wyoming Massacre. The event sent shockwaves through the colonies and lodged “Wyoming” firmly in the American consciousness — a name now weighted with grief, heroism, and romantic longing.

In 1809, poet Thomas Campbell published Gertrude of Wyoming, a long narrative poem set in the valley that romanticized both its pastoral beauty and its violent history. The poem was widely read on both sides of the Atlantic, ensuring the name would echo through the century.

A congressman’s poetic instinct

Flash forward to 1865. Ohio congressman James Ashley was tasked with naming a newly organized western territory. He proposed “Wyoming” — reportedly struck by the poetic sound of the word, and almost certainly influenced by Campbell’s famous poem. Never mind that the territory lay nearly 2,000 miles from the Pennsylvania valley. The name had resonance. It had feeling. It stuck.

There’s an irony in there worth savoring: the Lenape word originally described flat river plains, and while Wyoming does have plains in its eastern reaches, it is far more celebrated for the Rocky Mountains, Yellowstone, and its high-elevation prairies. The name was a geographical mismatch in Pennsylvania, then exported to a place with entirely different geography.

A crossroads of trails and rails

Indigenous peoples had inhabited the region for thousands of years before European contact. The opening of the Oregon, Mormon, and California trails brought vast numbers of pioneers through the territory, spurring the establishment of forts like Fort Laramie — today a National Historic Site and one of the state’s most evocative landmarks.

In 1867, the Transcontinental Railroad drove a route through southern Wyoming, supplanting the wagon trails and bringing a new wave of settlers. Along with them came founding towns, including Cheyenne — which would become the state capital when Wyoming was admitted to the union on July 10, 1890, as the 44th state.

The Equality State — and it means it

Wyoming’s official nickname is “The Equality State,” and it earned it. As a territory in 1869 — more than fifty years before the 19th Amendment — Wyoming became the first place in the United States to grant women the right to vote. It followed that by becoming the first to allow women to hold elected office, and later the first state to elect a female governor. The state motto, fittingly, is simply: Equal Rights.

Firsts in the national parks

Wyoming holds two extraordinary firsts in American conservation history. Most of Yellowstone National Park lies within its borders — and Yellowstone, established in 1872, was the first national park in the nation, predating the National Park Service itself by 44 years. Last year it welcomed over 4.7 million visitors, making it the second-busiest year on record.

The state is also home to Devils Tower National Monument, the first national monument in the United States, designated by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906.

Coal, pronghorn, and the mythical jackalope

Economically, Wyoming runs on minerals and tourism. It is the largest coal-producing state in the country, and also extracts significant quantities of natural gas and oil. Agriculture contributes barley, hay, sugar beets, wheat, wool, and livestock.

On the wildlife front, Wyoming is home to the largest pronghorn antelope population in North America — often exceeding 500,000 animals. Pronghorn are the second-fastest land animal on Earth (after cheetahs) and the fastest in the Western Hemisphere, capable of 60 mph sprints. Every year they migrate 150 miles each way between the Upper Green River Basin and Grand Teton National Park, one of the longest land migrations in the lower 48 states.

Wyoming is also home to the jackalope — a jackrabbit with antelope horns. The story traces to two hunters in Douglas, Wyoming, who taxidermied a rabbit with antlers and started selling both the creatures and the tall tale. The jackalope has since been nominated three times for recognition as Wyoming’s Official Mythical Creature. It has not yet won. The bar for official mythical creatures is apparently quite high.

So there it is: a name born in Pennsylvania from a Lenape description of flat riverbeds, carried westward by tragedy and verse, and now attached to a state of mountains, geysers, pronghorn, and jackalopes. Wyoming contains multitudes — starting with its own name.