This Wyoming County Easily Has The Lowest Population
If you were to look at a map of eastern Wyoming, this county is the middle border county.
The South Dakota/ Nebraska State Line is at the middle point of the county on the far east side.
There are only three towns and one census-designated place in the county.
In the county's early days, the population was over 6,300, but through the years, the population continued to dwindle and is now just over 2,300.
Wyoming's smallest county by population is none other than...
NIOBRARA COUNTY
It's not the smallest county by area, just population. Niobrara County is 2,626.03 square miles. The smallest county by area is Hot Springs County, 2,004.09 square miles.
Officially, Niobrara County has been a Wyoming county since the November 1912 election. Two months later, the newly elected county commissioners took office on January 1, 1913.
The county took its name from the Niobrara River, which flows east through the southern part of the county.
According to WYOHISTORY.ORG:
The land in what’s now Niobrara County was once roamed by tribes of the northern plains, including the Crow, Lakota Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho and Pawnee. A treaty signed at Fort Laramie in 1868 set aside land north of the North Platte River and east of the Bighorns for the Indians. Gold was soon discovered in the Black Hills of Dakota and Wyoming territories, however, and when the tribes refused to sell their land the government ordered them to leave it. The result was the so-called Great Sioux War of 1876, which included Custer’s defeat at the Little Bighorn. The following year, the tribes were moved onto reservations in Montana, the Dakotas and Nebraska.
The county seat of Niobrara County is Lusk, which has always had the largest population and was a big influence on the decision to make Niobrara a county. Not everyone favored creating the new county, but the people of Lusk wanted it and got enough votes to make it happen.
Financial struggles plagued the newly created county during the early years. Then, in the 1920s, prohibition hit, making oil and gas workers prosper but causing ranchers and farmers to face even more challenging times. This, in turn, offered some folks other money-making opportunities by making moonshine. Some stories point to Niobrara County as being where Wyoming's moonshine originated.
Today, significant employers in Niobrara County are the public schools, the Union Pacific Railroad, the Wyoming Women's Center, and local government agencies. Business and service industries comprise about 20 percent of the county's employment, and construction, farming, and forestry employ small proportions of the population.
If you've gone to Newcastle, Wyoming, Custer, or Deadwood, South Dakota, there's a good chance you've driven through Niobrara County. Next time, if you have time, stop and check out Wyoming's least populated county.