Laramie

At just over 30,000 people, Laramie is not a big city, but it is probably Wyoming's coolest. Home to the University of Wyoming, it has all the trappings you'd expect from a college town, from hip little stores, to a vibrant bar scene, to an excellent vegetarian restaurant. Its historic downtown has several quaint buildings, some of which date back to 1868, the year after the railroad arrived and the city was established. For a time it was a tough “end-of-the-rail” town. Vigilantes took care of lawbreakers, hanging them from convenient telegraph poles. Then in 1872 the city constructed the Wyoming Territorial Prison on the bank of the Little Laramie River. One of its most famous inmates was Butch Cassidy. The prison has been closed for more than a century now, but can still be toured during the summer, and like so much of Wyoming's Wild West past, still feels like it's flavoring the present.