Uncovering America's Heritage... Coin by Coin

Wyoming Quarter

Howdy!  Here's Wyoming's quarter, new this year, and I’d say the West doesn't get much wilder than this!  This outline of a bucking horse and its rider has been used in Wyoming for nearly a century, since World War I.

This image has appeared in all kinds of ways throughout the state, including on car license plates.  The horse in the image may be a famous rodeo horse from the early 1900's named "Steamboat."  Steamboat was known as "the horse that couldn't be ridden."

What else is great about Wyoming?  The state's Web site mentions Yellowstone, for one thing.  Lewis and Clark had barely passed through the area when John Colter found the steaming geysers and huge waterfalls of Yellowstone in 1807.  In 1872, Yellowstone National Park became the first national park in this nation or any other!

There's also "Buffalo Bill" Cody, a quite famous Wyoming citizen.  Buffalo Bill took his Wild West Show around the country, to Great Britain, and to Europe at around the turn of the century to give people a glimpse of the vanishing Western frontier life.

Wyoming's quarter also shows the state's motto, "The Equality State."  Wyoming women were the first in the nation to vote, serve on juries, and hold public office.  It was only 1869 when Wyoming's territorial government became the first to grant "female suffrage" (allowing women to vote in state elections).

In 1924, now a state, Wyoming was the first state to elect a woman governor.  Governor Nellie Tayloe Ross is also famous in the world of coins.  Know why?  She went on to become the first woman Director of the United States Mint!

—Bill