Fifty years ago, I turned 12 years old, and America turned 200. Today, with America reaching 250, and me at the ripe old age of 62, I look back with fading memory on my participation, for the Great State of Wyoming, in the celebration of our nation’s Bicentennial.
I am proud to say that I started attending the University of Wyoming in kindergarten. Back then, the College of Education played host to a (now sadly and shockingly shuttered) school where students in the college got to learn and practice their trade by assisting their professors in educating children. Throughout those years of my youth, I had three passions: collecting stamps, American history, and leafing through atlases—my love for maps was such that I dreamed of growing up to become a cartographer.
My parents encouraged me in all three of these things and many more. Dad passed his own stamp collection down to me, helped me to memorize the names of the Presidents, and pored through maps with me. At some point—I was likely eight or nine—I noticed, thanks to Rand McNally, how many of the American states (and even a Canadian province) were home to places named “Wyoming.” A city in Michigan, a township in Wisconsin, a town in Iowa, a county in West Virginia—my state’s name seemed to be everywhere.
I asked my dad about this, and he, ever inquisitive, used it as an opportunity to pursue his own curiosity about the strange word. The origin of the word “Wyoming” is unknown, with only unproven theories backing various claims for meaning. My dad never believed any of those claims, and he suggested, “Why don’t you write a letter to the postmaster of each of these places, asking them what they believe ‘Wyoming’ means and what its origin is, and you will have a great collection of postmarks from all these various ‘Wyomings’ for your stamp collection?”
And so I did. And responses came back from each and every one of these Wyomings, each writer charmed by this nine- or ten-year-old and his curious questions about their locality and its name. Some postmasters decided to forward my letter to the local elementary school, encouraging the kids my age to help answer my question, and to become pen pals with me. I wrote back and forth with a great many kids, although no more light seemed to be shed on the origin of the word “Wyoming.”
1976 was approaching, and my father, ever the idea man, decided that it would be a great way to celebrate the Bicentennial if the State of Wyoming were to confer Honorary Citizenship on the citizens of each of these municipalities, and that I, the precocious 12-year-old, should personally deliver the plaque and proclamation of this honor to these 26 places.
My dad and I drove over the hill to Cheyenne, where I presented a simple poster board and mimeographed proposal to the Wyoming Bicentennial Commission in one of the meeting rooms of the State Capitol. In my little-boy leisure suit, I must have charmed them enough, because the Commission decided to grant $1,200 for the project on the condition that I raise a matching amount. This money would cover the cost of the Honorary Citizenship plaques as well as the road trip from Laramie to the east coast and back.
I imagine that the members of the Commission thought I would raise the other $1,200 by selling lemonade or going door-to-door like a normal kid. But when the grant was announced, my dad grabbed my arm, walked me to the other wing of the Capitol, demanded an immediate audience with Governor Ed Herschler, and told me to make the same presentation I had just made. The Office of the Governor provided the matching $1,200 on the spot, and we drove back to Laramie fully funded for what became known as “The Wyoming Trip.”
My parents did most of the planning. I’d be the wrong person to ask about how difficult all of that must have been. As the stamp-collecting, Star Trek-loving brother of five younger sisters, the youngest not quite two years old, I left the determination of all of the dates and times and places, the creation of the plaques, and, well, everything else up to my folks. My job was to sit in the car and put up with those five sisters, and to create a daily record of the trip (a requirement of the grant) to be placed in the Wyoming State Archives, where you can go and read it today.
The Wyoming Trip made national news. I remember being at a friend’s house at 5th Street and Park Avenue when we happened to catch Walter Cronkite on CBS Evening News mispronouncing my name as he told the nation about our planned trip. But still I didn’t know what I was in for.
My first memory of the trip was waking up after the first day’s drive and hotel stay (I believe it was in Rapid City, South Dakota), knowing that the day would bring us to our first Wyoming, a town in Minnesota. Our family station wagon, with its “5-WYOS” license plate, was packed with two adults, six kids, and all the gear needed to sustain such a crowd. About 10 miles from our destination, we were suddenly joined by multiple police cars, their lights swirling, that escorted us to the arena where I was welcomed, and where I would present Wyoming state citizenship to the Minnesotans. Television cameras were there to record what I said and did for the local news, and hundreds of people shook my hand and thanked me for what I was doing and for coming to honor their humble home.
It was like that everywhere. Every single Wyoming welcomed me and my family with open arms. We were treated to local cuisine and taken around to visit all the local tourist sites. I was showered with keys to their city, mayoral proclamations of “Manus Hand Day,” and a great many souvenirs from municipal anniversaries and other celebrations. All of these gifts hung in the basement of my parents’ house until they downsized, when we happily donated them all to the American Heritage Center. My family and I hope that you will stop by and see them!
I won’t go through each of the over two dozen municipal visits; you can read about them all at the Archives or at the AHC, but I have fond memories of each one. Among so many experiences, I will list that I spoke at many school assemblies, walked through Mark Twain’s home, watched in fascination as food was packaged in a Kraft factory by conveyor belts and machines, and huddled in a city hall basement while tornado warning sirens sounded in my ears for the first time.
Although the name “Wyoming” is found in a few of of the original 13 states (Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Delaware, and West Virginia—initially part of the state of Virginia), my dad found an excuse visit each of them on the trip. I’ll always remember how he scoured a map and decided that the name of the town of Warwoman, Georgia—which lies only a few miles from the state’s northern border, and so could be reached quickly without much delay in the trip—was “probably a corruption of the word Wyoming.” That’s my dad.
With New Hampshire also a necessary drive-through, Dad made sure we got to Bath, Maine, where the “Wyoming,” the largest wooden schooner ever built, was constructed and launched. If you haven’t seen the display featuring this great ship in Coe Library (a large model of the vessel, with a framed poem written my my dad himself about its heroic fate), stop in there and see it!
What else? Well, we ran out of gas in bumper-to-bumper traffic right at Times Square in New York City. To this day, I think my dad did it on purpose, just to say it happened, because it was something that we joked about before even leaving Laramie.
We also visited Washington, D.C. and the White House. Dick Cheney was Chief of Staff at the time, and because he and my mother were classmates in Casper growing up, he gave us a private tour of the Executive Residence. Although I didn’t set foot in the Oval Office, I was able to peek into it through an open door, where I saw President Ford behind his desk reading a newspaper.
My family and I have countless stories about those two (three? more?) weeks we spent traveling the nation and Canada. From singing a million songs together (especially John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” while driving through West Virginia’s mountains) to my dad’s reactions to the misbehaving kids in the seats behind him (“Cotton PICKIN’!!” and “Judas Priest!”), to the way my one-year-old sister Mollie was just beginning to form words and sentences (“What DOIN’ down dere, guys?”), we share a lot of happy memories. My mother only recently revealed to me (she thought I knew this—and I should have!) that for her, wrangling six kids in an out of a car across two countries, The Wyoming Trip was a very trying experience. Mom had begged my dad to make it a father-son trip, but he wouldn’t have it.
It was always a half-formed dream to reprise the trip on America’s 250th, to drive those same highways, return to all the Wyomings, and reiterate their eternal honorary citizenship and full fellowship with the people of the Equality State. Alas, those 50 years passed all too quickly, and as 2026 arrived, I realized that the dream that my family would find ourselves watching semiquincentennial fireworks in Wyoming, Ohio, or Wyoming County, Pennsylvania, or Wyoming, Ontario, Canada, or in any of the other places where we hope we might be remembered, sadly faded away.
All that remains now are the memories, and I thank the American Heritage Center for inviting me to write a few of them down for you. Go Pokes! And Go Wyo, wherever in the continent you might be found!
Post contributed by Manus Hand.
