As a multi-generational native Wyomingite, I grew up with tales of the hard-working folk who settled the American West. Not only were we regularly taught about these people at school, stories passed down through generations of those who came before us contributed to the legends of those rugged individuals.
Rugged individualism.
It’s a concept many of us grew up with, with a uniquely American idea of what it means. Railroaders, homesteaders, pioneers, revolutionaries. They crossed the American prairie in much the same way as their forebearers crossed the Atlantic, searching for a “new” world where a man could fashion a life with nothing but his own two hands. (Yes, I personally recognize the Americas were populated prior to European immigration and that not all of these people were men. That’s far more than I can get into in the confines of this column.)
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