Laramie Plains

The Laramie Plains is an arid highland at an elevation of approx. 8,000 feet (2,400 m) in south central Wyoming in the United States. The plains extend along the upper basin of the Laramie River on the east side of the Medicine Bow Range. The city of Laramie is the largest community in the valley. The plains are separated from the Great Plains to the east by the Laramie Mountains, a spur of the Front Range that extends northward from Larimer County, Colorado west of Cheyenne. The high altitude of the region makes for a cold climate and a relatively short growing season. Unsuitable to most cultivation, the plains have historically been used for raising, primarily of sheep and cattle.

In 1842 and 1843 John Charles Fremont explored in Wyoming and submitted reports and maps to Congress afterward. He apparently followed local usage and labeled the plains surrounded by mountains in southeast Wyoming “Laramie Plains.” His 1842 map used the term twice at the northern and southern extremes: just south of the Laramie Mountains near Red Buttes (near present day Casper) in the north and straddling the Laramie River not far from the future site of Laramie in the south. In 1843 he camped on Laramie Plains, at the base of Elk Mountain. This usage was followed in subsequent commercial maps such as the 1876 Rand McNally, and finally the U.S. Geologic Survey’s Geographic Names Committee adopted the name in June 2004.

The Laramie Plains in the 19th century were not occupied by any one tribe but instead utilized by the Northern Arapaho, Northern Cheyenne, Oglala Sioux, Eastern Shoshone, and White River Utes. Sources state that the Laramie Plains “fell outside what would be considered the home territories of the tribes that used it.”. The territories of these tribes abutted on the Plains. Francis Parkman relates in his book, The Oregon Trail, how he accompanied a band of Oglala on a buffalo hunt on The Plains in 1846, recording their fears of war parties. He was told that a ten-man Oglala war party led by the son of the band's chief was wiped out there near the Laramie Mountains in 1845 by a Shoshone war party ranging almost into Sioux territory.

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