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Welcome Wyoming!


The Canyon of the Belle Fourche, Wyoming On this day in 1890, Wyoming became the 44th state in the Union.

Thomas Moran made this beautiful drawing of the Belle Fourche River while on a government surveying expedition. Beginning in the plains of Wyoming, the Belle Fourche River runs past Devil's Tower National Monument in the northeastern part of the state before it flows into South Dakota.

View more landscapes of western sites in our traveling exhibition Lure of the West: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The Knoxville Museum of Art hosts Lure of the West through September 8, 2002.

Pictured: Thomas Moran, 1837–1926, The Canyon of the Belle Fourche, Wyoming, 1892, pen and ink, pencil and ink wash heightened with white on paper, 7 x 9 11/16 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Dr. William Henry Holmes.