UNBOXING WYOMING: What It's Like Living in WYOMING

does everyone in wyoming chew tobacco did everybody in wyoming vote for trump and could a wyoming woman beat you up now we're going to answer those questions and more so grab the whiskey because we're going to darn 2 and unbox the great state of wyoming huh would you look at that they're extracting coal coal is a big deal in wyoming there's a one out of three chance the energy used to power your home was mined in wyoming there's also a 10 chance the natural gas you use was tapped here too wyoming's full of energy riches and energy is what's defined this state for decades lots of people here in wyoming rely on the energy sector for their jobs and way of life but wyoming isn't all coal and uranium miners or gas extractors in fact as we'll see later wyoming's in trouble financially and it's going to need to diversify itself if it wants to prosper now if we really want to get a feel for what wyoming's like we got to get out of these coal fields and check out other areas of the state too that way if you're thinking of moving here you'll know where to go this is wyoming okay so maybe there isn't a lot going on here i lied it's actually quite boring i mean there's only 578 759 people here and it's the 10th largest state that means there's only six people per square mile in wyoming a lot of that's because of the state's landscape which includes high rugged terrain valleys planes and large flat treeless basins because of this the state cities and towns are really spread out so if you don't like people and you want some space this is the perfect place that is if you can stand lots and lots and lots of wind but it's really pretty and there's a lot to see in the state we're going to begin over here in the northwest part of wyoming most of the state of wyoming can be divided up into either mountains or plains here in this part of the state it's dominated by the rugged rocky mountains up here is yellowstone national park the second largest national park outside of alaska here you're going to find amazing mountains forests the largest concentration of mammals in the lower 48 and of course all the bison half of the world's hydrothermal features are found here too everybody knows about old faithful but it's not as faithful as you might think it doesn't erupt every hour like it used to steamboat geyser is actually way bigger but what you really have to worry about is volcanoes one of the largest active volcanoes in the world is underneath these lands it's a super volcano and rumor is when this thing erupts again it might wipe out large parts of wyoming montana and idaho too and that would be a bad thing it would also affect our global climate for decades if the volcano doesn't kill you lightning might wyoming ranks first in the country for lightning deaths per capita down here is where all the good skiing in wyoming is this whole valley here is called jackson hole and there are several communities up here where you can waste your days away sipping whiskey and staring out into the rugged wilderness teeny tiny places with a history of fur trapping places where the average home price is well over a million bucks jackson's the biggest such place in this valley it's home to 10 000 people and has one of the best ski resorts in the nation it's also the most liberal place in this whole state where about 6 and ten people's a democrat can you believe that here in wyoming it's also a place with really expensive second homes it's super rich here the top one percent make about 16 million a year and the average person still makes 122 grand here it's been called the most economically unequal place in the nation some say the billionaires have chased the millionaires out of this part of wyoming another big chunk of this part of the state is taken up by the wind river reservation home to the shoshone and arapahoe native american tribes it's the seventh largest reservation in the country there's actually 26 000 people within this reservation land but the city of riverton makes up almost half that of course there's a lot of poverty in drugs and casinos here up here is cody there's about 10 000 people here and homes are around 350 grand and in many cases you get a lot of land up here although you'll probably find wyoming land prices and home prices aren't as cheap as you might expect and cody is an example of that cody is where the real frontier men lived way out west and this city still celebrates its pioneer and cowboy past they like to call themselves the rodeo capital of the world here big deal rodeos take place in cody every damn night in the summer months so if you're into that you'd like it i guess cody's really safe and a good place to be if you don't need fun things in your face all the time but for the most part there's really nothing to do up here for entertainment and there aren't many jobs it's kind of a touristy town but you'd likely be getting your clothing at walmart now there's a whole internet subculture that thinks wyoming simply doesn't exist and they're not kidding there's all sorts of websites and social media groups which talk about wyoming as if it's a fake state or something these wyoming deniers say have you ever been to wyoming no well do you know anybody from wyoming no well then wyoming doesn't exist over here in the northeast part of the state it's a lot different than it is out west this is where you're going to find wyoming's wide open brown and yellow plains but there is one geographical stand out a note it's the devil's tower this big giant rock is 1200 feet tall or about as tall as the empire state building it's worth seeing once or twice but you can't live here i think it's protected areas of note over here the sheridan metro area and gillette sheridan proper has about 18 000 people which is actually big for wyoming it's actually a pretty good and safe place to live way out here near the montana border lots of rich old people here so if you're rich and or old you'd fit in it too has a whole ranching cowboy pioneer vibe to it now gillette though is a big place to live there's 32 000 people here fella this is a big old mining town boy somewhat called gillette a dirty filthy blue collar town with a bunch of man camps and i don't think people in gillette would be offended by that they have some big buildings here too which were paid for with coal money gillette's relatively safe and it's not too expensive either homes can be purchased for well under three hundred thousand dollars but you'd be hard-pressed to meet anybody up here in these parts that isn't connected to the coal industry gillette calls itself the energy capital of the nation with all the coal dug out of the land nearby wyoming's powder river basin has six of the ten largest coal mines in the united states the largest coal mine in the world by reserves is the north antelope rose shell coal mine and the powder river basin here near gillette but wyoming's in transition coal jobs have been the foundation for wyoming's economy for nearly 50 years most of wyoming's infrastructure and schools were built using coal money and most of the high-paying jobs in this data related to mining especially in the smaller towns wyoming's coal industry is collapsing much faster than people could predict mostly because the world's shifting to alternative energy wyoming's been aware of that and has allowed some wind farming companies to come in and create new wind farms here but there's been pushback for one this is a very republican state so now talk about global warming here fella people also complain about these wind turbines are ruining the pretty views and wyoming state government they've imposed huge taxes on wind farms thus throttling their development but if wyoming did go in on wind power they'd crush it due to the state's unique terrain the bottoms of the mountain ranges here produce a steady wind that's always around it's the windy estate actually where there's a constant wind of 13 miles an hour on average that's every day so if you're a skinny person moving to wyoming you should probably get some ankle weights so we know wyoming has a lot of minors and rough necks who toil in the very manly energy fields it's a tough bunch i mean you know what they say wyoming where men are men and so are the women but a lot of the states made it cowboys and ranchers too farming is small mostly hay and sugar beets wyoming's 38th in the nation for farm output but cattle is a billion dollar a year industry here in wyoming there's twice as many cattle in this state as people there's a lot of sheep here too wyoming ranks second in the country for a production of wool i mean this state's never really lost its whole cowboy vibe since well it was a state i mean it is the cowboy state i would love to live in wyoming i would be a real cowgirl yeah i'd have a horse named isabel i'd have a pony too i'm sure you guys would little whippersnappers being out here on these planes is tough weather-wise summers are hot it'll get to 103 degrees in august but then four months later it's 140 degrees colder winters are long and bitter but relatively sunny which is nice you wouldn't fit in here if you don't like snow drifts you also wouldn't fit in here if you drive a hybrid vehicle wear a yarmulke have any obvious tattoos or piercings have colorado license plates fish with worms listen to hip-hop eat vegan sort your recyclables or wear levi's because everybody knows wrangler is the only game in this town here comes wrangler and he's one tough customer he's hard to beat when he takes his c and when he says he means wrangler the typical dress for your average wyoming is super tight jeans flannel shirts and cowboy hats guns are an accessory here too wyoming ranks second in the country just behind montana for a number of guns per capita two-thirds of all folks here have at least one gun at home some wyoming heights have a gun for every day of the week and worth mentioning is wyoming is the ninth safest state as well you can bet that's because a lot of people here are afraid the other guy has a damn gun there's even a law in wyoming that if you try to restrict the second amendment you could be punished criminally they're trying to pass what they're calling a second amendment preservation act which would make federal gun laws nolan void in this state so you definitely want to be here if the country turns to [ __ ] since everybody here has closets full of bullets and guns besides guns and cattle ranchers and oilmen wyoming has a lot of drinkers in many small towns in this state all you really have are bars and trout i mean what else does a wyomingite really need whiskey that's what they drink the third most whiskey of any other state here moving on we come to the southwest part of the state which is can you guess come on yes more mountains and coal mines there's really nothing going on here rock springs is another mining town with good hockey teams because for some reason mining towns have the best hockey teams here it's boring and cold and you just wouldn't fit in trust me there's 23 000 people in rock springs and homes cost only 240 dollars so you would live a cheap boring life maybe you would fit in evanston's over here it's a town of eleven thousand people that used to enjoy oil production now it's mostly a boring place with little opportunity you'd have to drive all the way to salt lake city for some real fun because wyoming is spread out pal wyoming people drive more miles each day than anybody else in the country like they don't measure things in miles they measure it in time drive in the winter and you should pack an emergency kit cause you don't know if you're gonna get stuck and if anyone's gonna come around for a day or seven there's only 12 walmarts in this whole place this isolation might be a reason for wyoming's high suicide rate the state ranks second in the country for suicide deaths and some experts call this part of the country the suicide belt the high number of suicide deaths can be attributed to isolation low access to mental health care and a tough cowboy culture where your pride means failures are hard to admit i wish i knew how to quit you being way out in no man's land also means you better have a first aid kit and some snake anti-venom and a couple of guns on you when you're out about these parts a hospital is probably going to be hours away wyoming actually ranks last in the country for emergency response times but it's not just rattlesnakes here that'll get you the jackalopes will gore your legs or you might be stampeded by a bison bison kill people here every year so bison selfies are not a good idea that's a buffalo not a bison it is no way buffalo are much larger and live in africa bison look like this oh okay so there's a bison thanks mappy hey would you ever live in wyoming heck yeah i love using my gun but i don't think karen would move here heck no i wouldn't there's not any fancy shopping anywhere in this state who cares what she wants look she's gone oh mappy's in trouble now sorry mappy he's gonna get it later ah little cowboy kid cute stop crying kid okay so you can shoot out a bison which is this also in wyoming you can shoot at pronghorn elk moose deer bighorn sheep black bear mountain lion wolves mountain goats and turkey people in wyoming just love to hunt just a bunch of tough hunter folks who are white in fact 92 percent of the population in wyoming is some shade of caucasian no moving on we come to the last part of the state down here in the southeast corner now this is where all the people are like half the state's population is in this section of wyoming alone but there's still some small towns in these parts take for instance lost springs which has a population of one everyone one person and look there's a bar there let's call them and find out what it's like in a teeny town of one person in the middle of nowhere wyoming hi is this the last bar it is can i help you yeah hey i'm doing a youtube video on wyoming and i happen to notice that you're located in a town with one person in it is that true no that's not true and i'm on my way to a meeting jeez hope she feels better but enough this small town stuff there's three main areas of interest here in this corner of the state laramie's here it has a population of 32 000 people of all major cities in wyoming laramie's perhaps the most expensive where the average home price is well over 300 thousand dollars some say laramie is a good mix between the old west and the new west laramie is perhaps the most liberal part of this whole state after jackson but that's understandable since it's a college town home to the university of wyoming no pokes college football is a big deal in wyoming and most people support the cowboys it's the only real sports team the state has though there's a lot of broncos fans and nuggets fans and avalanche fans but those are all based in colorado which is funny because people in wyoming do not like colorado people they call them greenies because they're green license plates colorado people bring in their liberal politics and are driving up the cost of living here and all their weeds blown over the border in case you didn't know wyoming's a very red state and there's only one other state and that's mississippi where people are more conservative in fact some people who move here they don't even register because they know their vote will be wasted or the liberals who move here just suck it up and register as republicans so they can have a say in the elections wyoming has a lot of room to grow when it comes to political diversity the state ranks last in gender equality it's last when it comes to female representation at the government level and it's the least gay state in the nation where only 0.06 percent of the population's gay that's compared to nevada the most gay state which has about nine times as many gay residents so it's safe to say that it's okay to talk about politics at a wyoming dinner because everybody's republican casper's over here some say casper snobbish i don't know why that's just what people say for wyoming casper's pretty dangerous statistically but the whole city here only had two murders last year two murders people the whole state only had 13 last year there were 13 murders in chicago since yesterday if you were to stick casper in a state like florida it would look like they were all behaving so crime and casper is really nothing you also wouldn't find any homeless tents here as you would likely not find them in the rest of the state either and then we come to cheyenne which is the capital of this state there's 63 000 people here now we're talking like just about every other city we discussed it's just a quiet laid-back place with a strong cowboy culture it's pretty safe overall and there's a great food scene the south side of cheyenne's the worst side the north end is nice and while this is a major city you go two miles outside of town and you're gonna find a lot of homes with mile long dirt driveways that's just how it is here it's wyoming jobs wise it's slim pickens here as you can imagine just like it is around the rest of the state there's an air force base here and some government jobs and a decent number of blue collar jobs like railroading the lack of white collar jobs here is enough to keep all the city slickers away or is it i mean in today's world cheap wide open spaces is kind of all the rage and while every single western state's exploding i mean all of them utah arizona nevada colorado idaho montana wyoming really isn't it's just kind of existing there isn't a lot of tech growth here nor are they scrambling to build new communities and as the coal and oil jobs leave you're going to see a bigger exodus of the energy folks in places like texas or new mexico so while many of us are looking for that small town feel it seems like wyoming isn't on anybody's radar at least not yet but ask anybody in wyoming how they feel about that and i'm sure they tell you we're just fine with being anonymous they don't want you or i to come no they're fine the way they are wyoming arts are a unique bunch communities here are small tight-knit groups working together to survive the way they want to life's a lot more simple here you have to be a resourceful self-reliant type ready to jump in and help your neighbors people just keep their heads down here and block the wind and look forward the next time nothing happens because in wyoming nothing happening is a good thing alright so i think we did a pretty good job of unboxing the state of wyoming didn't we yes there's a bunch of other smaller communities we could have talked about too places that are worth going into but we ran out of time is wyoming a place that you could move to could you handle the boredom and the isolation and the wind well 579 752 people seem to think it's pretty great yeah they sure do a throwback to the old wild west wyoming is that's good enough for a catchy little song [Music] you can really still get away in wyoming it's pretty much the last day where you can still be free they don't put up with a lot of crap in wyoming none of that stuff that you would see in a state like yours wyoming is a place that you should just go they need you you need them it's so perfect so come shoot your guns and ride a horse in wyoming there's a lot of land where you can bring your whole damn family wyoming is so big there's a lot of room so much sky so much space not much fun for you you can be anything you want to be in wyoming come be a cowboy come be a man come be a cowboy come be a man come be a cowboy come be a man life is calling you wyoming's [Music] big a special shout out to maya who lives in wisconsin she's a big fan of the show and i wanted to thank her for watching and say hello hi maya mappy says hi too i thought of wyoming as the last free state in the nation when i see all the legislation taking place in other states all the clampdowns on freedom of activity freedom of speech [Music] freedom of movement i guess that's activity but um you know like i say i think of us as just being normal people living our lives and we pretty much do what we want to do within the law and that's uh that you know from there we just do whatever we want to do like i say the people i know we just we move here we work and raise our families and uh i mean in a lot of ways we're very boring but boring makes for a nice life it may not be exciting but what's the old chinese curse may you live in interesting times it may not be very interesting here but it makes for a nice daily life you know i work and i come home and i cook and i uh i don't generally worry about people breaking into my vehicles or into my home um it's just very dull in a lot of ways but that has its appeal after you know living in some exciting places why is nobody moving to wyoming in droves like they are the other western states that is a really really good question um i would say one it just wyoming calls to specific types of people who really like the outdoors because wyoming is the most like rugged outdoorsy middle of nowhere like it is like full of tundra maybe only like north dakota or alaska have more of that than wyoming but i would say like hunters really like wyoming and really not a lot of other people necessarily if you identify with cowboy culture it's huge there but i would say i would guess that's the reason why not a lot of people go to wyoming is because wyoming is not it does not cater to really anyone else except outdoors people hunters and cowboys so give give people an idea of what it's like to live wyoming somebody that's gonna move to wyoming what should they expect when they move there don't quote me on okay hold up what should they expect so uh weather-wise expect it to be colder than warmer because of the high elevation throughout the entire state it will snow in june it it happens a lot um yeah wonky weather um you're not gonna really find much of stuff to do for younger folks unless you like going to the bars a lot i mean cheyenne's pot packed full of bars um yeah it's it's a it's a decent place if you want to raise a family it's it's a pretty laid back place for that um if you have a decent job already and you're transferring it's another great state for that um it's you just got to be adaptable if you move to wyoming and i think most people who live there are adaptable hey guys so if anything i just talked about upset you or made you sad or mad well then do something about it call your local leaders and demand change chip in and help those in need make your community better because communities don't get better without hard work and determination america is a great place it just needs some more love and pride this is sage nyx manager this has been a corner house entertainment production

Channel: Nick Johnson

Views: 133,011

Rating: 4.7836604 out of 5

Keywords: living in wyoming, wyoming, what is wyoming like, wyoming research, i live in wyoming, wyoming travel, wyoming food, what is wyoming, wyoming trivia, why do people live in wyoming, wyoming map, wyoming residents, wyoming culture, wyoming cost of living, moving to wyoming, wyoming realtor, wyoming mortgage loan, cowboys, ranching, cheyenne realtor, whats casper like, coal mining, casper, laramie, cheyenne, cody, rock springs, yellowstone national park, gillette, is wyoming cheap

Id: bgkYgCJxH14

Length: 22min 57sec (1377 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 23 2021