United States: Wyoming: Laramie

russellviii
Layton

Not worth visiting!

High Tech Hub of Southern Wyoming

We stopped here for lunch on our way home. It is the home of the University of Wyoming. Besides that, there’s really not a lot to see here.

Laramie looks and feels a lot like most of the other towns in Southern Wyoming in that most of them were built by, and grew up around the railroad. The buildings in the center of the old part of town all look very much alike. Sometimes, even when passing through for the first time, I could swear that I’d been here before, just because it looks so much like many of the other railroad towns in Wyoming.

Comments:

MadameReya, dilettante extraordinaire
Minnesota

not worth it! (gasps)

Laramie DOES look pretty generic, doesn’t it?

Rumor has it that the town was named for a relative/ancestor of my greatgreatgreat LaRamie grandparents, who were driven out of town and eventually resettled in Michigan.

...in the good ole gunslinger days…

russellviii
Layton

Not Everyone Can Make That Kind of a Claim

I don’t think that there are any towns anywhere that are named after any of my ancestors.

I listed Laramie as “not worth it” based solely on its “curb appeal.” We didn’t really spend a lot of time there. It was pretty much just a matter of pulling in somewhere for lunch, making a quick drive through town, and then back out onto the freeway. It didn’t look like much to a casual observer like myself.

But now, armed with this fascinating tidbit of information, I am prepared to do more digging the next time that I pass that way.

I extracted this blurb from Wikipedia:

Laramie takes its name from Jacques LaRamie, a French or French-Canadian trapper who disappeared in the Laramie Mountains in the late 1810s and was never heard from again. He was one of the first Europeans to visit the area, and his name was given to a river, mountain range, peak, US Army fort, county, and city. More Wyoming landmarks are named for him than any other trapper but Jim Bridger.

MadameReya, dilettante extraordinaire
Minnesota

I just wish

that ‘my family’s town’ was a more aesthetically pleasing one – even Duluth would have been nice! Although it is nice to have an ancestral affiliation with a town, even Zimmerman, the ugly little town I live near, was named after someone. :p

My Uncle Pat actually traveled to Laramie about a decade ago, in hopes of uncovering some family history. I plan to get ahold of him soon, to see if he would share what he learned during his visit.

Someone in the LeVoir clan (Selinda Laramie, my Great Great Grandmother, married Joseph LeVoir) actually has a daguerreotype photo of my Great Great Great LaRamie grandparents, who were both frontier Doctors! I wonder about their lives…the challenges they must have faced…the rudimentary surgeries they performed!

The LaRamies were actually French French, not French Canadian, according to family historians…but the missing link is the one which would bind our family to Jacques…

russellviii
Layton

Consider the Source

The bit about being French Canadian came from wikipedia, so the validity of of any statement is up for discussion.

If you want to look at it another way, even French Canadians come from France at some point.

MadameReya, dilettante extraordinaire
Minnesota

strange nuance...

When I was growing up and initially questioned my heritage, I thought the distinction between French & French Canadians was pretty goofy. : )

To break it down even further, Acadians – French Canadians in the maritime provinces – differentiate themselves from other French Canadians (namely the Quebecois)!

eesh.

Interesting, isn't it - russellviii

ToddieM
Diamond Bar

When I think of Laramie

I think of the cool, tobacco flavor of Laramie cigarettes as espoused by the Simpsons.

russellviii
Layton

Tomacco

Was that when they started raising the tomacco plants?

ToddieM
Diamond Bar

The two episodes where I remember Laramie rearing its ugly head where the ones where Bart becomes an errand boy for the mob, and the one where Bart and his two buddies pool their money to buy a comic book (RadioActive Boy #1).


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