Wyoming State Coat of Arms

The Wyoming coat of arms shows a central female figure standing between two pillars. She holds a banner reading Equal Rights. A rancher stands to her left and a miner to her right. Oil lamps burn at the top of each pillar. Above her, an eagle spreads its wings over a shield. The dates 1869 and 1890 appear on the two pillars.

The coat of arms appears on the Wyoming state seal and on official documents throughout the state. Wyoming's motto, Equal Rights, comes directly from the banner held by the central figure.

Wyoming Territory was organized in 1869, and on December 10 of that year it passed a law granting women the right to vote. It was the first territory or state in the United States to do so. Women in Wyoming could also serve on juries, another first. These decisions shaped Wyoming's identity from the start.

When Wyoming applied for statehood, some members of Congress objected to the women's suffrage provision and pushed to remove it as a condition of admission. The Wyoming Legislature refused. The reply sent to Congress became famous: Wyoming would remain out of the Union one hundred years rather than come in without its women. Congress admitted Wyoming on July 10, 1890, as the forty-fourth state, with women's suffrage intact.

The Wyoming Legislature adopted the coat of arms in 1893, three years after statehood. The design built the story of equal rights directly into the state's official emblem. The woman at the center, the dates on the pillars, and the motto all point to the same history.

The Wyoming coat of arms organizes its symbols around a central female figure. Every element connects to Wyoming's economy, history, or identity as the Equality State.

Wyoming's coat of arms is one of the most historically specific in the United States. It does not use generic symbols of strength or abundance. It puts a specific historical argument at its center: that this state gave women equal rights decades before the rest of the country, and that it was willing to stay out of the Union to keep that right.

The rancher and the miner on either side show what the state was economically. The woman in the middle shows what it believed politically. Together they present Wyoming not just as a place to live and work, but as a state with a defined position on who deserves to participate in its government.

The dates 1869 and 1890 bookend the argument. From the first year of the territory to the first year of statehood, Wyoming maintained the same position. The coat of arms records that continuity.

Wyoming Territory used a territorial seal before statehood in 1890, but the emblem now associated with the state's coat of arms took shape only after admission to the Union.

The earliest widely circulated image I could verify is an 1891 published rendering preserved on Wikimedia Commons. Later official seal renderings kept the same woman, supporters, eagle, lamps, and date pillars even as the drawing was standardized.