The Laramie Plains is an arid highland at an elevation of approx. in south central

Wyoming Wyoming () is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the southwest, and Colorado to t ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

. The plains extend along the upper basin of the

Laramie River The Laramie River is a tributary of the North Platte River, approximately long,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed March 21, 2011 in the U.S. states of Colorado and Wyomin ...

on the east side of the Medicine Bow Range. The city of Laramie is the largest community in the valley. The plains are separated from the

Great Plains The Great Plains (french: Grandes Plaines), sometimes simply "the Plains", is a broad expanse of flatland in North America. It is located west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, a ...

to the east by the

Laramie Mountains The Laramie Mountains are a range of moderately high peaks on the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains in the U.S states of Wyoming and Colorado. The range is the northernmost extension of the line of the ranges along the eastern side of the R ...

, a spur of the Front Range that extends northward from

Larimer County, Colorado Larimer County is a county located in the U.S. state of Colorado. As of the 2020 census, the population was 359,066. The county seat and most populous city is Fort Collins. The county was named for William Larimer, Jr., the founder of Denver ...

west of

Cheyenne The Cheyenne ( ) are an Indigenous people of the Great Plains. Their Cheyenne language belongs to the Algonquian language family. Today, the Cheyenne people are split into two federally recognized nations: the Southern Cheyenne, who are enr ...

. The high altitude of the region makes for a cold climate and a relatively short growing season. Unsuitable to most cultivation, the plains have historically been used for

livestock Livestock are the domesticated animals raised in an agricultural setting to provide labor and produce diversified products for consumption such as meat, eggs, milk, fur, leather, and wool. The term is sometimes used to refer solely to ani ...

raising, primarily of

sheep Sheep or domestic sheep (''Ovis aries'') are domesticated, ruminant mammals typically kept as livestock. Although the term ''sheep'' can apply to other species in the genus '' Ovis'', in everyday usage it almost always refers to domesticate ...

and

cattle Cattle (''Bos taurus'') are large, domesticated, cloven-hooved, herbivores. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae and the most widespread species of the genus '' Bos''. Adult females are referred to as cows and adult ...

Geography

In 1842 and 1843 John Charles Fremont explored in Wyoming and submitted reports and maps to Congress afterward. He apparently followed local usage and labeled the plains surrounded by mountains in southeast Wyoming “Laramie Plains.” His 1842 map used the term twice at the northern and southern extremes: just south of the Laramie Mountains near Red Buttes (roughly ten miles south of Laramie) in the north and straddling the

not far from the future site of Laramie in the south. In 1843 he camped on Laramie Plains, at the base of Elk Mountain. This usage was followed in subsequent commercial maps such as the 1876 Rand McNally, and finally the U.S. Geologic Survey’s Geographic Names Committee adopted the name in June 2004.

History

The Laramie Plains in the 19th century were not occupied by any one tribe but instead utilized by the Northern Arapaho, Northern

Oglala The Oglala (pronounced , meaning "to scatter one's own" in Lakota language) are one of the seven subtribes of the Lakota people who, along with the Dakota, make up the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Seven Council Fires). A majority of the Oglala live o ...

Sioux The Sioux or Oceti Sakowin (; Dakota: /otʃʰeːtʰi ʃakoːwĩ/) are groups of Native American tribes and First Nations peoples in North America. The modern Sioux consist of two major divisions based on language divisions: the Dakota and ...

, Eastern

Shoshone The Shoshone or Shoshoni ( or ) are a Native American tribe with four large cultural/linguistic divisions: * Eastern Shoshone: Wyoming * Northern Shoshone: southern Idaho * Western Shoshone: Nevada, northern Utah * Goshute: western Utah, easte ...

, and White River Utes. Sources state that the Laramie Plains “fell outside what would be considered the home territories of the tribes that used it.”. The territories of these tribes abutted on the Plains. Francis Parkman relates in his book, The Oregon Trail, how he accompanied a band of Oglala on a buffalo hunt on The Plains in 1846, recording their fears of war parties. He was told that a ten-man Oglala war party led by the son of the band's chief was wiped out there near the Laramie Mountains in 1845 by a Shoshone war party ranging almost into Sioux territory. The plains also furnished a convenient transportation route through the region for trails that ascended through the mountains along the

Cache la Poudre River The Cache la Poudre River ( ), also known as the Poudre River, is a river in the state of Colorado in the United States. Name The name of the river () is a corruption of the original Cache à la Poudre, or "cache of powder". It refers to an ...

, such as the Cherokee Trail, by which Cherokee from Indian Territory (Oklahoma) traveled to California. Captain Howard Stansbury, U.S. Army Topographical Engineer, was exploring a route back from the Great Salt Lake over Laramie Plains in the summer of 1849 when his party encountered stampeding buffalo near the present city of Laramie, which was taken to be a sign of Indian hunters. His guide, the celebrated mountain man Jim Bridger, walked out to meet with them and negotiate in sign language, learning they were Sioux and feared Stansbury’s party might be a Crow warriors. The Sioux invited Bridger and Stansbury to their village camped nearby for a feast. At the end of his exploration, Stansbury recommended the route from Fort Bridger in western Wyoming through Laramie Plains to the forks of the Platte (just west of modern North Platte, Nebraska), which later became part of the

Overland Trail The Overland Trail (also known as the Overland Stage Line) was a stagecoach and wagon trail in the American West during the 19th century. While portions of the route had been used by explorers and trappers since the 1820s, the Overland Trail was ...

and Overland Stage Line. East-West communications – the

Pony Express The Pony Express was an American express mail service that used relays of horse-mounted riders. It operated from April 3, 1860, to October 26, 1861, between Missouri and California. It was operated by the Central Overland California and Pike ...

, the transcontinental telegraph line, and the transcontinental stage line carrying the mails – followed the

Oregon Trail The Oregon Trail was a east–west, large-wheeled wagon route and emigrant trail in the United States that connected the Missouri River to valleys in Oregon. The eastern part of the Oregon Trail spanned part of what is now the state of Kans ...

Fort Laramie Fort Laramie (founded as Fort William and known for a while as Fort John) was a significant 19th-century trading-post, diplomatic site, and military installation located at the confluence of the Laramie and the North Platte rivers. They joined ...

and over South Pass until 1862, when Indian attacks forced the stage line to reroute to the Overland Trail. A detachment of soldiers from Fort Laramie cut across The Plains and built Fort Halleck at the base of Elk Mountain to protect the line.''Fort Laramie and the Pageant of the West, 1834-1890'', by

LeRoy R. Hafen LeRoy Reuben Hafen (December 8, 1893 – March 8, 1985) was a historian of the American West and a Latter-day Saint. For many years he was a professor of history at Brigham Young University (BYU). Biography He was born on December 8, 1893, in ...

and Francis Marion Young, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London, 1938, Page 308 In 1868 the plains were traversed by the route of the Union Pacific Railroad as part of the

First transcontinental railroad North America's first transcontinental railroad (known originally as the "Pacific Railroad" and later as the " Overland Route") was a continuous railroad line constructed between 1863 and 1869 that connected the existing eastern U.S. rail netwo ...

. The building of the railroad caused a boom in the valley population, with the establishment of "Laramie City", which later became the site of the University of Wyoming. U.S. Highway 30, an all-weather route from coast-to-coast, was built along the railroad and was known as the

Lincoln Highway The Lincoln Highway is the first transcontinental highway in the United States and one of the first highways designed expressly for automobiles. Conceived in 1912 by Indiana entrepreneur Carl G. Fisher, and formally dedicated October 31, 191 ...

. Today,

Interstate 80 Interstate 80 (I-80) is an east–west transcontinental freeway that crosses the United States from downtown San Francisco, California, to Teaneck, New Jersey, in the New York metropolitan area. The highway was designated in 1956 as one ...

also follows the Overland Trail, coming very close to the site of Fort Halleck (Wyoming) near Fremont’s 1843 campsite at the base of Elk Mountain.

References

{{Coord, 41, 14, 17, N, 105, 44, 53, W, display=title Landforms of Albany County, Wyoming Landforms of Carbon County, Wyoming Plains of the United States

Geography

History

See also

References