Wyoming was the first place where women served on juries. Laramie was the site for the first women on a jury (1871), but women also were chosen for jury service in Cheyenne during the period.
Most historians assert that the experiment with women on juries ended soon afterward with no women in Wyoming serving again until the 1950s. This is inaccurate. For example, women served on juries in the Big Horn Basin area in the years immediately after statehood.
Cheyenne Daily Leader, Sept. 17, 1891, p. 3, c.3:
Women Jurymen
(Bonanza Rustler)
“The law case of W. S. Collins vs. E. Minnie Whittington attracted quite a gathering in Bonanza on Thursday. It was notable from the fact that for the first time in the history of the basin the jury was partially composed of ladies, Mrs. Hyatt and Smith being chosen. The defendant appeared in her own defense and the suit ended in a disagreement. It will be retried next Thursday and the jury will be half ladies.”
Other evidence exists of women serving on a jury in the Douglas area about the same time. These items require a reassessment of the commonly held notion that women were barred from jury service in Wyoming soon after the experiment started in 1871 and were not included again until after World War II.