Let’s not kid ourselves: Politically speaking, Wyoming is so red it makes a firetruck blush and a stop sign reconsider its career. It’s been conservative since before it had a flag to wrap itself in. But like everything in this cult—and the American West in general—it’s a little more complicated than that.
Because tucked inside that bootstraps-and-buckshot bravado is a surprising tradition of community interdependence. What some might call “cooperation,” and what your libertarian uncle might accidentally call “economic collectivism” if he forgets to take his sunglasses off.
This is part of an ongoing series titled Wyoming: More Liberal Than You’d Think, a name that admits up front it’s clearing the bar with a shovel.
Co-ops: How the West Was (Collectively) Won
In the 1800s, the U.S. government had a surplus of so-called “empty” land—if you ignored the Indigenous nations already living there, which they very much did. Their solution? Give it away.
Enter the Homestead Acts: 160 acres for free, as long as you lived on it and “improved” it. That’s how big chunks of the West got claimed—one settler, one plot, one daily confrontation with mortality.
But 160 acres is a lot when your closest neighbor is three miles away and the only phone network is yelling into the wind. So yes, settlers had to be tough—but they also had to be clever. Enter: the Wyoming compromise between rugged individualism and “hey, can I borrow your plow?”
Self-Sufficiency and Shared Infrastructure
You’ve got land. You don’t have labor. You’ve got crops. You don’t have a tractor. And buying a combine to use it for three days a year? That’s not just wasteful—it’s economically suicidal.
So what did people do?
They formed co-ops. Communities pooled resources to buy the big stuff—tractors, harvesters, processing gear. They rotated usage, helped each other, and got their crops in using shared tools. Not out of charity. Not out of utopian idealism. Out of pragmatic survival.
The result? Individually owned farms operating with collectively owned infrastructure. Not quite communism. But also… not not communism. Call it denim-and-boots socialism, with a side of beef jerky.
Fast Forward: Still Ridin’ the Co-op Trail
That old-school co-op model didn’t vanish when the West got Wi-Fi. In fact, it evolved into the backbone of rural infrastructure.
- Electricity in the middle of nowhere? Co-ops.
- Phone service to towns no one can pronounce? Co-ops.
- Internet access where Verizon fears to tread? You guessed it.
I get my power from Powder River Energy Corporation—born a classic rural electric co-op. My internet? From Range Telecommunications, a former phone co-op. Even my health insurance is through a co-op. And yes, I get dividends. A utility that pays you back. Witchcraft!
It works because customers are the owners. When profits return to the people paying the bills, price-gouging becomes self-sabotage. I’ve paid the same electricity and internet rates for four years. Say that in a city and wait for someone to accuse you of running a cult (which… fair).
And since I make my living online, that means—technically—I’m a worker who owns the means of production. Again, not communism. But it hums a familiar tune, doesn’t it?
The Paradox of Cowboy Communalism
This is Wyoming’s quiet contradiction. It talks tough, votes red, and idolizes independence—but lives on shared infrastructure and collective problem-solving.
No, Wyoming isn’t some progressive utopia. But if you look past the belt buckles and talk radio static, you’ll see a whole lot more cooperation than anyone’s admitting.
Because out here, survival wasn’t political. It was practical.
Call it what you want. Around here, we just call it Tuesday.
