Wyoming

In 1869, Wyoming gave women the right to vote, 51 years before the rest of the country caught up.

When Congress later threatened to block Wyoming's statehood unless women's right to vote was removed, the territory sent back a telegram: "We will remain out of the Union a hundred years rather than come in without the women." Congress backed down, and Wyoming became the 44th state in 1890.

Arapaho, Cheyenne, Crow, Shoshone, and other Native peoples lived here for thousands of years. The Shoshone and Arapaho still share the Wind River Reservation, the only reservation in Wyoming today.

Mountain men like Jim Bridger and Kit Carson roamed the Rockies in the 1830s trapping beaver. Their trails helped open the routes that hundreds of thousands of pioneers later followed west on the Oregon Trail.

In 1807, explorer John Colter described boiling mud pots, shooting geysers, and steaming rivers in a place nobody believed was real. People called it "Colter's Hell." Sixty-five years later, Congress set the area aside as Yellowstone, the world's first national park.

Wyoming's open range made it cattle country, and cowboys drove huge herds across the plains. In 1892, wealthy cattle barons hired gunmen to attack small ranchers they accused of stealing cattle in what became known as the Johnson County War.

Wyoming is still the least populated state in the country, with fewer than 600,000 people. There are more pronghorn antelope here than humans.

Watch Old Faithful erupt at Yellowstone and hike beneath the towering peaks of Grand Teton National Park. See Devils Tower, the country's first national monument, and stop in Cody for the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.