Rebecca Maloney
Platte
County named for the river
Growing
populations in Wheatland and the Guernsey-Hartville-Sunrise area
led the Legislature to create a new county out of the
northwestern parts Laramie County of in 1911. Gov.
Joseph
M. Carey signed
the bill establishing the county on Feb. 9, 1911. Organizing
commissioners Chris Hauf of Glendo, T.J. Carrol of Wheatland and
Robert Grand Jr. of Chugwater first met on March 8, local voters
approved the idea in November 1912 and the county government was
finally organized on Jan. 7, 1913. Wheatland is the county seat
of Platte County.
Platte
County is bordered on the northeast by Niobrara County; on the
east by Goshen County; on the south by Laramie County; on the
west by Albany
County;
and on the northwest by Converse
County.
Platte County includes five towns: Chugwater, Glendo, Guernsey,
Hartville and Wheatland. Smaller, census-designated places are
Chugcreek, Lakeview North, Slater, Westview Circle, Y-O Ranch,
Whiting and Sunrise.
The
county was named for the North Platte River. In the 1790s, French
fur traders and trappers named the river “Platte,”
from the French for “flat” or “shallow.”
The river to this day is the lifeblood of the area, providing
water to more than 335,000 acres in Wyoming and Nebraska,
enabling the semi-arid plains to produce alfalfa, corn, potatoes,
sugar beets and dry beans.
Platte County, in southeastern
Wyoming, lies along the east slope of the Laramie Range, part of
the front range of the Rocky Mountains. The county is a
rectangle, 65 miles long north to south and 30 miles wide, with
the North Platte River running through its northeastern corner.
Most of the
county is dominated by the blue cone of Laramie Peak on its
western horizon, and a north-south travel route along the
mountain front, used by people since prehistoric times,
dominates its economy as today’s Interstate 25. Water has been
diverted from the river and its tributaries since the 1880s, and
remains important to Platte County agriculture and to a large,
coal-fired power plant today.
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