Table of Contents  [ Hide]

Statistics
Towns
Well-known residents of Albany County
History
Creation of Albany County
Organization of Albany County
Woman’s Suffrage
First Courthouse
George W. Ritter
Changes and Growth
Albany County Women in Government

Statistics

Origin of Name: Named by a former resident of Albany, New York, who was a member of the Dakota Legislature.

Total land area: 4, 321 sq. miles, 8th largest in Wyoming

Population

Towns

Well-known residents of Albany County

	Thurman Arnold	lawyer
	Mary Bellamy	1st woman elected to the Wyoming legislature
	June Etta Downey	educator and first woman to head a university psychology department
	Edward Ivinson	banker, philanthopist
	E.B. Long	Civil War Historian
	Samuel H. Knight	geologist, professor at University of Wyoming
	Velma Linford	State Superintendent of Public Instruction and federal government official
	Grace Raymond Hebard	historian, professor at University of Wyoming
	T.A. Larson	historian, professor at University of Wyoming
	Gale McGee	U.S. Senator

History

Albany County was created December 16, 1868, and organized the following month. Like the other five counties across southern Wyoming, Albany County was established soon after the transcontinental railroad was built. In the beginning, it stretched from the Colorado border north to the Montana border, including much of present Converse and Campbell counties. Albany County was named by pioneer Charles Bradley to honor the capitol of his native state of New York. Until 1965, the railroad was the major employer in the county. Since then, the University of Wyoming dominates the local economy.

The vicinity had long been a favorite camp site of Indians, particularly the Arapahoes and Cheyennes who hunted buffalo on the Laramie Plains and spent much of their time in the Medicine Bow area. Here they found the pliable mountain ash "good medicine" for making bows.

Besides the Indians, there were the mountain men, Jacques LaRamie (Laramie) among them. Though his story is largely legendary, he unquestionably trapped beaver on the headwaters of Laramie River and its tributaries, which perpetuate his name.

General W.H. Ashley (1825) and Captain John C. Fremont (1843) camped on the Laramie Plains when they led their expeditions westward. In 1862, because of Indian hostilities, the Overland traffic on the old emigrant trail along the Platte River was rerouted to follow the Cherokee Trail across the plains. Forts were established to protect the travelers.

With the coming of the railroad, the town of Sherman — the highest point on the entire Union Pacific Railroad route — came into being. It lasted until it was abandoned for a lower elevation about 1900. The spectacular Dale Creek Bridge (1867) west of Sherman was first a wooden structure spanning a 720-foot-wide gorge 130 feet deep. 5 This was replaced in 1876 by a more permanent steel bridge, reputed to be the highest of its kind in the world.

Creation of Albany County

Albany County was first created and organized by the Eighth Dakota Legislative Assembly, when the region which was to become Wyoming Territory was a part of the vast Dakota Territory. The enactment designated Laramie City as the county seat, and was a result of the Union Pacific Railroad Company's establishing Laramie City as a railhead for the railroad on May 9, 1868. Union Pacific agents had begun laying out the town site on the Fort Sanders Military Reservation in February 1868.

Organization of Albany County

With the organization of Wyoming territorial government in the spring of 1869, and the election of the First Legislative Assembly of Wyoming Territory in September of that year, Albany County began functioning as a part of the new territory. The first census of Wyoming Territory, taken in July 1869, reported Albany County with a population of 2,027, and on the basis of the census, Albany County was apportioned three seats in the thirteen-member House; and in combination with Carbon County, three seats in the nine-member Council of the First Legislative Assembly.

Chapter 38, Session Laws of Wyoming Territory 1869, enacted by the House of Representatives and the Council on December 13, 1869, set forth the boundaries of Albany County and appointed county officers, who were to serve until their successors were elected and qualified in 1870. The eastern boundary of Albany County was the western boundary line of Laramie County, and the western boundary of Albany County was the eastern boundary line of Carbon County. North to south, Albany County extended from Montana to Colorado.

County officers appointed for the interim, until elections could be held, were county commissioners, H. Wagner, Joseph Mackle, and S.C. Leach; county sheriff, J. W. Conner; county probate judge and ex-officio treasurer, L. D. Pease; county assessor, Charles Hilliker; county clerk, R. S. Kinney; justice of the peace, George Van Dyke; constables, John Barton, D. Shanks, William Carr, and George Young; county surveyor, James Vine; county coroner, Dr. Foose; and prosecuting attorney, Steven W. Downey. A county superintendent of public instruction was not appointed by the act.

In addition to Chapter 38, the First Legislative Assembly of Wyoming Territory passed two other acts which directly concerned Albany County. Chapter 49, Session Laws of Wyoming Territory 1869, legalized the assessment, equalization, and levying of taxes in the county, which had already been done for that year under the laws of Dakota Territory. Chapter 58, enacted by the First Legislative Assembly, established a fence law for Albany, Carbon, and Uinta counties.

Woman’s Suffrage

Early county government in Albany County had both its triumphs and its failures. Woman suffrage, allowing women residents of Wyoming Territory to vote and to hold public office, was adopted by the territory's first legislature on December 10, 1869. Albany County women, as a result of this enactment, became the first women in the world to serve on juries, serving on both grand and petite juries during March and April 1870. The Laramie Sentinel reported that Louisa G. Swain of Laramie City was allowed to vote in the general election held September 6, 1870, before the polls were officially opened, so she would be the first woman in the world to cast a ballot in a general election.

First Courthouse

Albany County was the first county in Wyoming to construct a permanent courthouse, one that would serve the county for sixty years. Early in 1871, the citizens of the county and the county commissioners, Charles H. Bussard, William Crawford, and Henry Wagner, began talking about building a courthouse. Public support for a courthouse increased, and on February 6, 1871, the county commissioners accepted the "plan and specifications for a courthouse submitted by Messers Dupene and Gumry." The commissioners paid a commission of $14.00 for the plans and specifications.

On March 25, 1871, the county commissioners awarded a construction contract for $29,000 to Edward Ivinson and Peter Gumry of Laramie City. Construction of the courthouse began about a month later. Financing the courthouse was difficult for the county, and the county commissioners were forced to borrow money at an interest rate of two percent per month to finance construction, even having to borrow $2,500 from contractor Edward Ivinson in August 1871, to keep construction going. However, the financial difficulties were later resolved when the legislative assembly passed a bill on December 16, 1871, authorizing Albany County to issue bonds in an amount not to exceed $20,000 to pay for the courthouse.

Although the commissioners had to sell the bonds for less than par value, the first Albany County Courthouse was completed and occupied in January 1872. The new courthouse was an imposing red stone and brick structure, 44 x 72 feet. The county jail was in the basement, with the various county offices and vaults for records storage occupying the first floor. The second story contained a spacious courtroom and jury rooms. The citizens of the county were most proud of the cupola, which reached 25 feet into the blue sky over Laramie City. Unfortunately, the brisk winds blowing unfettered across the Laramie plains damaged the cupola, and for safety, it had to be removed from the courthouse in 1883.

George W. Ritter

Paying for the new courthouse was not the only financial problem faced by the Albany County Commissioners during the 1870's. A routine check of the county's financial affairs by the commissioners on January 9, 1871, revealed a shortage of $1,056.93 in the accounts of probate judge and ex-officio county treasurer George W. Ritter. Apparently, Ritter was able to placate the commissioners and to return the missing funds in a matter of a few days so that no action was taken against him.

However, nearly five years later, November 6, 1875, the commissioners ordered a thorough examination of the books of the county treasury. Ritter quickly disappeared from the county, and the auditors soon determined that the county was short from $12,000 to $16,000. Immediately, the commissioners advertised a reward of $1,000 for the capture and return of their former county treasurer. Ritter was eventually apprehended and returned to Albany County. He was tried in the courthouse where he had worked, found guilty of embezzlement, and sentenced to one year at hard labor in the territorial penitentiary, which had been built in Albany County in 1872.

Changes and Growth

Since the first courthouse was built, and the days of George W. Ritter, many, many significant changes have taken place in Albany County. The population of the county has grown from 2,027 in 1869 to 29,062 in 1980. The territorial penitentiary, built in 1872, was abandoned in 1901 when a new penitentiary was opened in Rawlins. The territorial penitentiary grounds and buildings were turned over to the College of Agriculture of the University of Wyoming for an experimental farm for the next 85 years, but they are now being restored as an historic site. The University of Wyoming, established in Laramie City by the Territorial Legislative Assembly in 1886, opened its doors with 42 students in 1887. One hundred years later, the university fills more than four hundred acres with a multitude of buildings, and has an annual enrollment of approximately 10,000 full-time students.

Albany County's boundaries have changed too. In 1886, to make county government more accessible to the mining communities of Centennial, Jelm, and Keystone, the boundary line between Albany and Carbon counties was shifted westward by the legislative assembly so the towns would be included in Albany County. Also, with the creation of Converse County in 1888, Albany County's northern boundary was changed again. In 1869, except for the access that the transcontinental railroad, which crossed Albany County from east to west, provided, the county was extremely isolated with its rugged mountains and high plains. Now, with the development of the federal, state, and county highway systems, hundreds of thousands of people cross the county annually, and during both summer and winter, the county's mountains and plains are a recreational haven.

Albany County Women in Government

In 1911, the people of Albany County elected Mary G. Bellamy to the state legislature, the first woman so honored in Wyoming. Today, and for many years to come, the women of Albany County are actively involved in government -- local community government, county government, and state government. In 1988, women fill the county offices of county clerk, county treasurer, and county assessor, and one woman serves as a county judge. Of Albany County's four representatives to the State House of Representatives, three are women, and one of the county's two state senators is a woman.