Immigrants Built Wyoming
Immigrants Built Wyoming

Immigrants Built Wyoming

By Phil Roberts, 10-20-24

Wyoming, like every other mountain west state, is a state built by immigrants, Anyone who has read about our history knows this.

But imagine my surprise at reading recently how polls show that many Wyoming people are fearful, with the specter of immigrants living in our state or about to “invade” it. Clearly, those in Wyoming who believe the lies and are fearful of immigrants, must be new arrivals from another state–in essence, “immigrants” themselves to our state. I’m more afraid of them, many in the cult of Trump (a truly scary outsider) than of any real immigrant.

Here is a photo illustrating my point. Taken in the Big Horn Basin, home for me for many years, it shows new immigrants working the sugar beet fields near the new town of Worland about 1920. Likely Germans from Russia, some pictured eventually worked to own their own farms. Others went on to be businessmen, while others continued to be valued employees of area businesses like the Holly Sugar factory or oil companies drilling at Slick Creek or Hamilton Dome. Scary? Only to those fearful of ambition and drive–afraid the immigrants’ hard work would be a threat to their slothful ways.  Photo by Rico Stine, legendary Worland photographer, given to us by a neighbor (whose family is in the picture), when we lived in Worland in the early 1960s

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