Wyoming Scavenger Hunt
Wyoming is a land that does not shout its significance—it simply endures. To cross its wide skies and lonely ranges is to feel the steady thrum of the American story underfoot. Here is a state where mountains rise with mythic resolve and the wind carves memory into stone. It is not populous, but its presence in the national imagination is outsized—Yellowstone, the first national park; the Bucking Horse & Rider, stamped on license plates, quarters, and consciousness; the open plains where the Cold War stood ready underground.
From the earliest people who followed game along the Wind River to the railway crews who split the granite with dynamite, Wyoming’s sparse terrain has been etched by effort. You see it in the ghost towns that dot the hillsides and the modern windmills that echo a Halladay design. The cowboy here is not a costume, but a continuation—a figure in motion who never left when the stories stopped being written down.
This is where suffrage for women took its first governmental hold, and where the national parks movement rooted itself not only in the thermal vents of Yellowstone, but in the timber of CCC-built cabins and concrete wings of Mission 66. Wyoming holds history that’s both fossilized and fiercely alive—from Jurassic bones to uranium towns, missile silos to botanical wonders.
As you begin this scavenger hunt, don’t expect grandeur in golden domes or crowded avenues. Look instead for subtle defiance. Find the grace in a rusting barn or a bronze sculpture mid-buck. Listen for the hush of a canyon or the whoosh of tram cables stretched taut against the sky. Wyoming does not merely tell history—it inhabits it.
The photos and stories collected for this scavenger hunt are a fast and fun way to learn the explanations behind the quirks, the traditions and the secrets that make Wyoming uniquely Wyoming. Who was the only Indian ever given a full military funeral? Solved. What did Buffalo Bill Cody want most to do in Wyoming? A mystery no more. What is the first structure ever built in a national park? Identified. Where did Butch Cassidy serve his only time in jail? Revealed. Did Tom Horn shoot and kill Willie Nickell? No one knows.
Where oil men schemed with a Washington nod, And leases were inked with a wink and a fraud. Yet still flows the crude through this century span— Seek scandal and strength at the Refinery’s plan.
No need to wander to pick a new site, Cheyenne was the choice—none put up a fight. Gold dome and sandstone since statehood's bright birth— Find the Capitol’s claim to legislative worth.
No need to wander to pick a new site, Cheyenne was the choice—none put up a fight. Gold dome and sandstone since statehood's bright birth— Find the Capitol’s claim to legislative worth.
A Prairie Cathedral that towers so tall, With murals that speak of Powell’s civic call. From grains to great warnings of water and war— It’s a seeded salute to the West’s tug-of-war.
With fairness and thrift as its corner display, J.C. Penney built trust the old-fashioned way. His first humble shop is still open and bright— The Golden Rule’s glow is still shining with light.
Where wood turned to gold in the form of black dust, And kilns baked the fuel that the smelters could trust. Now beehives of stone where the piñons once burned— Seek Byrne’s old ovens where the town never returned.