Colorado and Wyoming are two extremely similar looking States they're right next to each other they pretty much have the exact same generic rectangular shape and they're pretty similar in size too with Colorado being only the slightly larger of the two both of these states are also mountainous states with the same rocky mountain chain running through each of them so they have very similar geographies both of them are totally landlocked deep within the North American Interior and so both states have very similar climates that are generally dry and windy with cold and snowy Winters and both states have pretty similar levels of Water Resources capable of supporting Agriculture and civilization the Rocky Mountains in general act as sort of the high water tower of North America as many of the continent's greatest Rivers originate from the vast snowmelt taking place high up within them as such Colorado contains the headwaters for the Rio Grande Arkansas Colorado and South Platte Rivers while Wyoming contains many of the headwaters for the Missouri snake Columbia and North Platte Rivers but since the Colorado and Rio Grande rivers run further Downstream to even more arid communities like air Arizona Nevada Southern California and New Mexico and Texas those more arid Downstream States rely on the water those Rivers provide even more than Colorado and so they are legally entitled by the U. S federal government to withdraw more water from them meaning that Colorado must allow most of their Waters to continue on Downstream Wyoming is similarly legally required to also allow most of their River's water to continue Downstream but since their Rivers Don't flow further down to even more arid communities like many of Colorado's Rivers do they're generally allowed to keep more of their waters for themselves and so Wyoming actually is legally entitled to even more freshwater resources than Colorado is but despite all of these apparent similarities and maybe even advantages Colorado and Wyoming differ in one extremely obvious way their populations are wildly different from each other in scale as of 2023 Wyoming still only has a relatively tiny population of just a hair more than 580 000 people while Colorado's population is more than 10 times greater than that at well over 5. 8 million people that means that since Colorado is slightly larger in size Colorado is on average about nine times as densely populated as next door Wyoming is in fact Wyoming's average population density of just 2.
3 people per square kilometer ranks it as one of the most completely empty locations anywhere on the planet for comparison Wyoming is on average even emptier than Australia or Namibia two infamously empty countries that are mostly covered in uninhabitable deserts the only location in Europe that comes anywhere close to matching Wyoming's emptiness are the far Northern reaches of the Scandinavian peninsula in the region of Lapland in Finland where the population density is around 1. 8 people per square kilometer but that's Lapland within the Arctic Circle where the winners are brutally harsh and last for seven months of the year a low population density there is to be expected but it's comparable to Wyoming where the climate is substantially more mild and tolerable it gets even more interesting though because Wyoming really is a pretty major population anomaly within the United States you see Wyoming is the 10th largest state in the country by area but it's also by far the absolute smallest in terms of population every other state in the country has a significantly higher population than Wyoming including the really small ones like Vermont Rhode Island and Delaware put another way there were a total of 119 counties in the United States that have a larger population than Wyoming does including little Tulsa County in Oklahoma and we can still go even smaller there are 29 cities in the United States that have a larger population than Wyoming the smallest of which is just Memphis Tennessee all the mayors of these 29 cities govern over more people than the actual governor of the state of Wyoming a state that has so few people in it that it doesn't even really have any cities of its own the only urban areas in Wyoming are more like towns than cities since there's only four in the entire entire state that even have a population of more than just thirty thousand people most other extremely sparsely populated places in the world still have at least one proper major city Alaska has Anchorage namibia's windhook while Mongolia has Ulan Batar but the largest town in Wyoming has to offer up is just Cheyenne which only has a population of 63 000 people about the same as the 143rd largest city in California Santa Cruz and Cheyenne is barely even in Wyoming either it's in the far Southeastern corner of the state and it's less than 10 miles away from the border with Colorado it's only a 50-minute drive away to Fort Collins which is Colorado's fourth largest city that's three times larger than Cheyenne and it's only a one hour and 45 minute drive away to Denver Colorado's capital and largest city in essence Cheyenne and really most of Wyoming's other towns function more as satellites of Colorado from a transportation and economic perspective because Colorado's population couldn't be any more different with more than 5. 8 million people Colorado alone accounts for nearly 40 percent of the entire population of America's six Rocky Mountain States Denver is by far the largest metropolitan area found anywhere in the Rockies with a total metro-wide population that is nearly 3 million people today which all on its own dwarfs the whole population of Wyoming but Denver's massive size is also strangely located because there's really nothing else like it anywhere near to it the closest other nearby and comparable population Center to Denver is El Paso and Texas which is about 560 miles away a similar distance as between London and Milan with a radius of 560 miles between it and the closest other city of comparable size Denver is therefore the most isolated of all of America's top 30 largest cities so all of this ultimately begs a fundamentally fascinating question why did Colorado and Wyoming despite all of their Geographic geologic hydrologic and environmental similarities each end up with two wildly different Destinies with one becoming one of the most empty locations on the planet and the other becoming basically full of people it's a very interesting story and it all begins with each of their histories you see part of why Colorado is more heavily populated today is simply because it was the first state of the two to actually begin attracting American settlers in the first place gold was discovered in the mountains what would become Colorado back in 1858 along the South Platte River and that triggered a good old gold rush that brought in a flood of thousands of white settlers storming into the territory pretty much all at once the mountains up in Wyoming simply never offered off the same quantities of gold and silver that people came rushing into Colorado for so Wyoming didn't have the same kind of early boost to settlers the Colorado Gods future discoveries of resources like copper lead and coal brought in even more miners to Colorado Auto that eventually LED it to becoming a state in 1876 a full 14 years before Wyoming would become a state as well in 1890.
by the turn of the 20th century in 1900 the mining boom and subsequent agriculture boom had skyrocketed Colorado's population up to 539 thousand which is comparable to what Wyoming's population looks like today more than a century later but back in 1900 Wyoming's population was only 92 000 people which was strangely closer to Colorado's population back then than it is today what ended up happening over the next 120 years to the present is that Colorado's population growth kept out pacing Wyoming's even further and Wyoming's growth gradually petered out and stagnated today Colorado has more than 10 times the population it had back in 1900 while Wyoming only has a bit more than six times as 1900 era population and there were many reasons for why things ended up turning out this way for starters Colorado is just an overall easier place to settle than Wyoming is because they have more flat land to easily settle and develop if you look at a topographical map of the two states this becomes pretty apparent Wyoming's borders were drawn up further to the West than Colorado's meaning that the Rocky Mountains take up a higher amount of the state's territory the Great Plains extend only across the Eastern third of Wyoming but they extend across roughly 40 percent of Eastern Colorado Cheyenne Wyoming's capital and the largest town was founded on The Plains of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains just like the big cities in Colorado further to the South like Fort Collins Denver Colorado Springs and Pueblo because all these towns granted easy access for both of the state's early primary Industries Mining and resource acquisition in the mountains of the West and agriculture in the plains to the east both of which could be exported out of each state by Railway but the narrow gap of plains where Cheyenne is located in between the Rockies and the west and the Nebraska border in the East is considerably narrower than the gap of plains where Colorado's front-range cities are located between the Rockies and the Kansas-Nebraska borders which simply meant that Colorado's farms and cities had more room to expand in and since they're located further to the South they also all have moderately warmer temperature is on average all throughout the year nonetheless both Colorado and Wyoming experienced High rates of population growth in their early years says miners came to each state to seek out their Fortune but Wyoming has experienced Decades of stagnant or even negative population growth while Colorado has literally not a single time ever had a decade of slow population growth since its founding as a state part of that is because Colorado began to diversify their economy away from just Mining and agriculture beginning in the 1940s during World War II the U. S federal government began getting increasingly concerned about enemy attacks on the American West and East Coast and so they began relocating federal Offices and administrations further into the North American Interior so that they could be better defended because Colorado was centrally located within North America and was also easy for Americans to access by rail it became a prime source for these Federal relocations and by the end of the 1940s Colorado boasted more federal government offices than anywhere else in the country outside of Washington DC then during the Cold War Colorado's importance as a center of the federal government increased and several Federal entities continue to have their headquarters in the state to this day like the Air Force Academy in NORAD and Colorado Springs NOAA and encar and Boulder and the U. S Geological Survey in Denver these Federal relocations to Denver brought thousands of government employees and their families to the state and served to diversify Colorado's economy away from mining in agriculture which never happened in Wyoming and yet despite more federal employees moving to Colorado the federal government also owns more of Wyoming than it does Colorado 48 percent of Wyoming's total land areas just owned by the federal government outright and while a lot of that land is dedicated to National and state parks like Yellowstone and Grand Teton which collectively bring in nearly a billion dollars a year in tourism revenue for the state those revenues don't really generate any growth or industry and by contrast only 36 percent of Colorado's total land area is owned by the federal government which means the Colorado is much bigger than Wyoming from a settlement and development perspective It ultimately means that there's only about 51 000 square miles within Wyoming that aren't owned by the federal government and available for private ownership compared to more than 66 000 square miles within Colorado that are available for private ownership that's a difference of about 15 000 square miles which is huge because that's more land than the states of Maryland and Delaware put together and as more people chose to move to Colorado for the better job opportunities in the outdoor recreation lifestyle it generated a sort of positive feedback loop where in Colorado's economy steadily became more and more Diversified than Wyoming Colorado is an especially Denver strategic location made in an ideal center for the Telecom industry to set up large-scale operations in during the 1990s Denver's unique location on the 105th Meridian West and at an elevation of more than one mile above sea level makes it the largest city in America that can offer what's called a one bounce real-time satellite uplink to all six inhabited continents of the earth during the same business day while its location in the Mountain Time Zone further enables communication with both U.
S coasts South America Europe and Asia all within the same business day as well these facts led to huge telecom companies like Comcast dish and Quest all establishing large-scale presences and even headquarters around Denver today 10 Fortune 500 companies are headquartered within Colorado while Wyoming doesn't have any and then there's also more opportunities for Education within Colorado as well Wyoming only has a single public four-year University to speak of and it's located in a small town of just 32 000 people by contrast Colorado has 42 public four-year colleges and universities with more than 23 times as many students currently enrolled in them as in Wyoming and then with a strong education base and plentiful federal office headquarters that primarily have to do with Aviation and Aerospace Colorado proved to be extremely fertile ground for one of the highest concentrations of private Aerospace Industries in North America many large aerospace companies set up their headquarters in the state like ball and maxar while other aerospace companies like Lockheed Martin Raytheon Boeing L-3 and Northrop Grumman all set up major operations in the state that collectively employ more than 240 000 coloradans to today making Colorado home to the largest private Aerospace economy per capita in America Colorado's booming Aerospace economy and strategic location in the center of the United States gave further rise to the establishment of Denver International Airport in 1995 which has since become not only one of the most important airports in the country but one of the most important airports anywhere in the world in Bose 2021 and 2022 Denver International was ranked as the third busiest airport on the planet and the third busiest in the United States by Passenger traffic remaining only behind Atlanta and Dallas Fort Worth part of the reason why is because its central location within North America enables easy flights connections or transfers to pretty much anywhere on the continent the airport serves more than 215 different non-stop Global destinations across both of the Americas Europe and Asia and is a major hub for United Southwest and Frontier Airlines as the years progressed further in Colorado's favor it became increasingly impossible for Wyoming to ever hope to compete the biggest airport in Wyoming has put two scheduled passengers routes to Salt Lake City and to Denver while the regional airport in Wyoming's largest town and capital literally only has scheduled flights to Denver from a transportation perspective Wyoming's towns effectively function as satellites of Colorado because getting out of them by plane most often requires flights into Denver first and there's rarely any alternative so Colorado's well-diversified economy in the 21st century contrasts sharply with wyomings which has effectively remained more or less the same for over a century now Wyoming's economy is still dominated by The Mining and ranching Industries and similarly to Colorado has also enjoined a growth in tourism for the spectacular scenery and outdoor recreation but Colorado has all of those Industries too and even more this ultimately means that Wyoming is significantly more susceptible than Colorado is to boom and bust cycles and shocks in the global prices for minerals coal oil gas and agricultural products when prices are high for these resources times in Wyoming are good but when the prices are low times can get pretty tough this can be seen quite clearly in Wyoming's demographics and rates of growth during the 1970s when oil prices were booming Wyoming's population exploded as tens of thousands of Roughnecks came to the state looking for jobs and opportunities in the industry but then in the 1980s when the global price of oil crashed Wyoming's economy was devastated and the state actually saw negative population growth as more people left than entered or were born which is a stark contrast to Colorado's Diversified economy during this same period which still saw large-scale growth taking place Wyoming saw modest population growth as the price of oil continued to rise again through the 90s and 2000s but then it remained almost completely stagnant throughout the 2010s as the fracking industry came to life in America and attracted most of the oil industry's capital and labor to the newer and cheaper to access Boomtown areas in Texas and North Dakota thus with its fairly undiversified economy that's heavily reliant on the whims of global prices Wyoming's population tends to fluctuate a lot from decade to decade between explosive growth and stagnation while Colorado with its very well-diversified economies continually maintained High rates of population growth every single decade for more than a century and a half this can also be clearly seen when looking at the places where people in each state were actually born Colorado has literally never once in its entire history had a majority of its population who were born within the state still today in 2023 roughly 56 percent of Colorado's population were born somewhere else outside of the state while Wyoming is the complete opposite where about two-thirds of the population were born within Wyoming not a lot of people moved to Wyoming compared to Colorado and it's been that way since the very beginning these days living in Colorado basically just offers all of the upsides of living in Wyoming but with pretty much none of the downsides both states have spectacular natural beauty and Outdoors activities that appeal to people with active Lifestyles both states have very low taxes and low crime rates but Colorado has more jobs for more people and also offers big city amenities that Wyoming will just never be capable of life in Wyoming doesn't have very much to do Beyond The Outdoor scene the third largest town in Wyoming has literally one movie theater and if they're not playing something you want to watch it's more than an hour drive away to the nearest other movie theater by contrast Denver offers all of the big city amenities than most Americans are used to on a daily weekly or monthly basis it's also directly next door to the Rockies for outdoor recreation while Wyoming only has the latter because of the huge Denver airport it's also significantly easier for people and businesses to travel to and from Colorado than it is from anywhere in Wyoming which only encourages even more travel and business in Colorado by 2050 Colorado's population is currently projected to roughly double from what it is today to somewhere between 8.
