Wyoming is the least populous state in the country and, save for Alaska, contains the fewest human souls per square mile. More than half of its land is publicly owned; the rest is fiercely guarded. A pocket in the northwest, around Jackson, is a haven for some of the wealthiest people in America. Four hundred miles to the east, tall grasses wave at the brinks of yawning coal mines, in the region where the Oglala Lakota chief Red Cloud and his allies once battled the U.S. government into submission. In the southeast, as you drive west on Interstate 80 from the university town of Laramie, 11,156-foot Elk Mountain rises above meadows fattened by meandering creeks, on ground primarily owned by the North Carolina businessman Fred Eshelman, who made a fortune starting pharmaceutical companies that later sold for billions of dollars.
