Nothing Says Wyoming Like A Horse With No Name

Did you know Wyoming’s bucking horse and rider insignia was first used in France and Germany in 1918 during World War I?

It was on uniforms of The Wyoming National Guard, and adopted by the U.S. Army as official identification of units from The Cowboy State. To our troops it’s still a reminder of home.

No one knows who inspired the image of the man on the bucking horse, and does it matter if there was no name for the horse? People from out of state never knew that darn bronco had one. Okay, if you want to, we can still honor that rodeo legend, “Steamboat”. He did go back to the early 1900s.

It's just that steamboat wasn’t on our license plates until after 1935, when our Wyoming Secretary of State proposed an official design to help with widespread counterfeiting of the bucking horse and rider. In 1936 the new plate made it's debut, and with a new copyright.

Check out the boring look of these plates from 1930 to 1935.

If you never heard the story, see why the real horse was called, “Steamboat” here. He was also known as “the horse that couldn’t be ridden.”