University of Wyoming: The Only Game in the State

The University of Wyoming in Laramie holds a distinction that no other flagship state university can claim: it is literally the only public university in Wyoming. Founded in eighteen eighty-six, three full years before Wyoming even achieved statehood, the institution opened its doors to students in eighteen eighty-seven on a mission rooted in the Morrill Land-Grant Acts of eighteen sixty-two, which Lincoln signed to bring practical higher education to the American West.

The setting is striking. Laramie sits at roughly seven thousand two hundred feet elevation on the Laramie Plains, ringed by the Medicine Bow Mountains to the west and the Laramie Range to the east. For generations it was a rough-edged railroad and cattle town, and the university had to prove itself against that skepticism. Its early programs focused on agriculture, engineering, and the sciences, knowledge the state's ranchers, miners, and homesteaders actually needed.

Over the decades, UW earned a Carnegie Research Level One classification, placing it among the top tier of American research universities despite its relatively small size and remote location. The geology and atmospheric science programs are particularly respected, suited to a state sitting atop the Rockies.

The university's alumni roster ranges across American life. Dick Cheney earned his bachelor's degree here in nineteen sixty-five before his long career in Washington as Secretary of Defense and later the forty-sixth Vice President. Jerry Buss, the real estate magnate who bought the Los Angeles Lakers in nineteen seventy-nine and guided the franchise to ten NBA championships, was a Wyoming man.

For a state with one public university, the institution does a lot of lifting.