Wyoming State Historic Preservation Office

Historic Context

Wyoming Homesteading, Ranching, and Farming: 1860-1960

Wyoming Will Be Your New Home:
Ranching, Farming, and Homesteading in Wyoming,
1860-1960

Michael Cassity

In order to understand the significance of individual historic properties, we need to look at them in their historic context, to understand the broader patterns of which they were a part. By doing so, we can relate individual historic resources—buildings, structures, objects, sites, districts—or groups of resources, to what was going on around them, to what came before, and to what came after them.

The following study prepared by Michael Cassity for the Wyoming State Historic Preservation Office examines Wyoming farming, ranching, and homesteading from around 1860 to 1960 in an effort to identify the patterns with which many of the rural properties of the state can be associated and evaluated. That history is not just a disjointed series of episodes, but an ongoing process of social and economic transformation in the lives of people who sought to make their home on the land in Wyoming.

Download the Full Historic Context Study PDF.