The city was founded in the mid-1860s as a tent city near the
Overland Stage Line route, the
Union Pacific portion of the
first transcontinental railroad, and just north of Fort Sanders army post. The rails reached Laramie on May 4, 1868, when construction crews worked through town. A few passengers arrived on that same day. The first regular passenger service began on May 10, 1868, by which time entrepreneurs were building more permanent structures. Laramie City (as it was known in early years) soon had stores, houses, a school, and churches. Laramie's fame as the
western terminal of the Union Pacific Railroad, acquired when the section from
North Platte, Nebraska, was opened in May, ended in early August 1868 when a section of track was opened to Benton, east of present-day
Sinclair, Wyoming. The frontier town initially suffered from lawlessness. Its first
mayor,
M. C. Brown, resigned his office on June 12, 1868, after six turbulent weeks, saying that the other officials elected alongside him on May 2 were guilty of "incapacity and laxity" in dealing with the city's problems. This was due to the threat to the community from three half-brothers, early
Old West gunman "Big" Steve Long, Con Moyer and Ace Moyer. Long was Laramie's first
marshal, and with his brothers owned the
saloon Bucket of Blood. The three began harassing settlers, forcing them to sign over the deeds to their property to them. Any who refused were killed, usually goaded into a gunfight by Long. By October 1868, Long had killed 13 men. The first Albany County
sheriff, rancher
N. K. Boswell, organized a "Vigilance Committee" in response. On October 28, 1868, Boswell led the committee into the Bucket of Blood, overwhelmed the three brothers, and
lynched them at an unfinished cabin down the street. Through a series of other lynchings and other forms of intimidation, the vigilantes reduced the "unruly element" and established a semblance of law and order. in Laramie, 1908 By the end of the decade, Laramie became the cultural and economic center of the newly organized
Wyoming Territory. As Laramie was the first town in Wyoming to hold a municipal election, on September 6, 1870, Laramie resident
Louisa Swain was the first woman in the United States to cast a legal vote in a general election. Early businesses included rolling mills, a railroad-tie treatment plant, a brick yard, a slaughterhouse, a brewery, a glass manufacturing plant, and a plaster mill, as well as the railroad yards. In 1886, a plant to produce electricity was built.
Late 20th century to present The city was covered by international media in 1998 after the murder of
Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming. His murder generated an international outcry. It became the symbolic focus for a nationwide campaign against gay
hate crimes. Federal hate crimes legislation was signed into law in 2009. As of May 2023, Wyoming does not have a hate crimes law, having failed to pass its most recent attempt at a hate crimes law in March 2021. Shepard's murder was the subject of the award-winning play, later adapted as a movie,
The Laramie Project. In 2004, Laramie became the first city in Wyoming to pass a law to prohibit smoking in enclosed workplaces, including bars, restaurants and private clubs. Opponents of the clean indoor air
ordinance, funded in part by the
R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, immediately petitioned to have the ordinance repealed. However, the voters upheld the ordinance in a citywide
referendum which was conducted concurrently with the 2004 general election. The opponents challenged the validity of the election in court, claiming various irregularities. The judge ruled that the opponents had failed to meet their burden of showing significant problems with the election, and the ordinance, which had become effective in April 2005, remained in effect. In August 2005, Laramie's City Council defeated an attempt to amend the ordinance to allow smoking in bars and private clubs. ==Geography==