For centuries Wyoming was a land no one wanted—high, dry, and remote—more often a thoroughfare on the way to some place else than a final destination. Many of the sweeping developments that overtook the rest of the nation simply passed it by, leaving Wyoming to sit in lonely grandeur behind its granite walls and silent snows. The problem, explains T.A. Larson in this history, was people—and how to get them there.
The settlers who came to Wyoming stayed to build a special way of life. It is with them that important choices now rest. "The country where the wind blew in primeval purity will now breathe new odors," says author Larson, unless short-term profits can be balanced by long-term gains. If the right decisions are made, he concludes, it should be possible for Wyoming to "emerge from its primitive isolation in such a way that its greatest values are preserved and its old way of life left for those who choose to follow it."