Over the past century, Wyoming has modernized, evolving from a rugged frontier state into a hub of industry, energy and now, cryptocurrency. Despite its economic and cultural advancements, one thing remains true: Wyoming has an abundance of single men.
A 2023 report from the U.S. Census ranks the Cowboy State in third place for the highest ratio of unmarried men at 106 for every 100 women, compared to the national rate of 90 men per 100 unmarried women.
This has traditionally been a problem for single guys in Wyoming dating back to the late 1880s.
Back then, one solution posed by a group of witty women in Thermopolis women was to tax these bachelors into marrying.
The April 1907 letter to the editor at the Thermopolis Independent Record resurfaced last month when posted on social media by the Hot Springs County Museum, eliciting laughs and a lot of curiosity about what these women were thinking.
It begins with a call to the council to take immediate action in taxing “the male population who should be susceptible to the darts of Cupid, but who have, for some reason or other, neglected thus far to get married.”
It’s signed by “The Single Women of Thermopolis” who suggest the bachelors be taxed on a sliding scale based on the numbers of the bachelor’s “chaste and forlorn period of single blessedness.”
The suggested tax would begin at $5.25 for those bachelors between 20 and 30, which today would have a relative value of about $398 when measured for inflation, according to the CPI Inflation Calculator, and doubled in five-year increments for a max of $20 – or $1,590 today – for men 30 to 40.
For those bachelors 40 years or older, the preferred penalty would be “chloroform in large doses.”
“We, the petitioners further assert that bachelors are a barnacle on the growth of society,” the women wrote. “They are no earthly use except as pallbearers.”
Barnacles Of Society
The latter particularly delighted Terri Geissinger, who said she enjoyed teasing her husband about his role as a barnacle.
Geissinger, a clerk at the Hot Springs County Museum that posted the article on their Facebook page last month, said the staff came across it in their archives and thought it was hysterical.
“We thought the wording was pretty clever and it was so well written,” she said. “We all got a giggle out of it.”
Geissinger said there was no particular reason for posting the article that day other than to get a laugh and was unaware that the letter was actually a spoof of an article that appeared a month earlier in April 1907 in a Fort Dodge, Iowa, publication.
Could This Be Real?
Apparently, an anonymous person had proposed that the Dodge City council pass an ordinance between $10 and $100 on all able-bodied unmarried women and men between 25 to 40 years old, according to historian Jill Frahm’s 2021 article in the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era journal.
Frahm said the council joked it off by referring it to the “sewer committee.” Someone, however, leaked it to a local paper that such a tax had actually passed, and the reporter ran with the fake story. The article was then picked up nationally, sparking a fierce debate throughout the country about the merits of a bachelor tax.
Presumably, the witty women in Thermopolis were weighing on the joke, which many throughout history had taken quite seriously.
“Old Maid” Charts
And though such a tax might seem a prosperous idea, the idea dates back to Ancient Rome and was implemented in many other countries over the centuries.
At one point, Wyoming even took up the idea. In 1890, the Wyoming Territorial Legislature contemplated a tax that was ultimately voted down, despite the urging of a Rawlins newspaper editor who suggested unmarried men be levied an annual tax of $2.50.
The idea caught steam in the United States after the Civil War when the country saw an increase in immigration, Frahm explained, that sparked nativist fears that the influx of races would overwhelm Anglo-Saxon stock, leading to a race suicide.
Around the same time, others became worried that men and women were choosing to remain single for too long, which would ultimately threaten the country’s growth and prosperity, according to Frahm, with fewer people having children and getting married.
The increasing number of bachelors throughout the country even prompted the U.S. Census Bureau to publish what one newspaper called a “Old Maids Chart” depicting areas of the country with the most amount of bachelors.
Wyoming ranked high on that list back then with one columnist declaring Wyoming the state of bachelors, with 58 out of every 100 men remaining single, in a 1903 issue of the Salt Lake Herald.
“Of course the only reason they continue in this state (of single blessedness) is because there are not enough young women,” the author panned. “That goes without saying. Where there are women there are marriages. What is to be done to help Wyoming out of this deplorable state is not yet decided upon.”
Why not tax them into matrimony, others declared.
“Menace To Society”
For some, it was a ludicrous notion, though many states like Wyoming flouted legislative attempts to pass the levy that in some cases was urged on by “old maids,” according to a Feb. 7, 1907, article in the Owensboro, Kentucky, Messenger Inquirer.
The article details legislative efforts – many farcical – in more than a dozen states, including efforts by a Missouri “Anti-race suicide senator” lobbied for a $10 annual poll tax on unmarried men 25 years and older.
In states like Iowa, legislation was brought forth by women who had attended the Old Maids and Old Bachelors’ convention in Forrest City in 1906, according to the same article. The women proposed that bachelors over 40 be assessed $25 a year and $30 when they hit 45 or until they marry. The proceeds from the tax were to be used for find a home for “fallen women.”
In the preamble of the bill, such men were declared “a menace to society.”
Similar efforts were soundly shot down in Minnesota, however, where one legislator said that as long as there was a scarcity of women, there would be no tax on single men.
Frahm said it was difficult to determine how many states actually passed bachelor taxes because many were dismissed as hoaxes or defeated by state legislatures, but Montana did actually pass a $3 poll tax on all unwed men between the age of 21 and 60 in March 1921.
The money raised was dog-eared for a “widow’s fund” to help those women who may have benefitted from the financial support of the unmarried men.
The bill easily passed the state legislature but didn’t last long. According to an article in the Great Falls Tribune, some anonymous bachelors challenged the law in the state supreme court and won. The law only lasted for 10 months with the tax money being refunded to the bachelors who paid in, according to Frahm.
Trend Reversing
Despite Wyoming’s current rank as the third highest state for high ratios of men, those numbers continue to fall over time with nearly half of Wyoming’s households being married couples versus 30% remaining single, according to a 2023 report from the Wyoming Economic Analysis Division.
Wenlin Liu, chief economist for the Wyoming Department of Administration and Information, credited the high disparity of men to the mining industries in Alaska, North Dakota and Wyoming.
Despite the slight trend reversal, a 2024 survey by Ben’s Natural Health, a natural supplement company, rated Wyoming the number two state where men are most likely to remain single, along with Tennessee, Texas, Colorado and North Dakota.
The study was based on the single ratio of men to women, the number of clubs and bars per 100,000 population as well as the number and percentage of Tinder users among other factors. Wyoming scored a 43.4 compared to Tennessee’s 47.59. Texas followed at a score of 40.13.
Government Has No Place In Romance
What’s the solution for single men in Wyoming and would a hypothetical bachelor tax incentivize some to get married?
Absolutely not, said Mike Watts, who was not surprised to hear that prior attempts to levy fines on bachelors had failed. He finds the notion of government interfering in one’s life – let alone one’s love life – personally offensive, noting that the very idea of using taxes as incentives is paradoxical.
The 36-year-old Casper resident, veteran and oil field consultant believes such taxes on unmarried men or women would have dire consequences.
“You’re just stirring up a recipe for disaster,” he said. “Then people are just going to start getting married because they want to avoid the tax, which just increases the divorce rate.”
Watts has been single for about four years following his divorce from a nine-year marriage. He’s chosen to be single for now, he said, and admitted he enjoys his bachelorhood and his ability to hunt at will with his trusty pup.
He would, however, eventually like to get married and have children, though he acknowledged that window is rapidly closing.
Meeting a mate is easier said than done in Casper, he said, given the relatively small pool of women to choose from. He’s not one for dating sites or hook-up apps like Tinder, and instead would prefer to meet a woman “the old-fashioned way.” He’s also not eager to meet a woman in a bar, because let’s face it, that doesn’t typically end well, he noted.
Ultimately, he said, love is about chemistry and the government can’t regulate love no matter the consequence.
No Way
Gabriel Guzman, a 24-year-old registered nurse living in Sheridan, agreed with Watts. A tax is a really dumb way to attempt to bring a couple together, he said.
His long-term relationship just ended, and he admitted he was having a hard time adjusting to the dating scene but said like many guys his age he uses dating apps like Tinder, Hinge and Snapchat+ to meet single women.
And though temporarily single, he’s not worried about his prospects of meeting a woman in Wyoming and remains optimistic.
Can’t Be Taxed Into Marriage
Brad White, of Cheyenne, agreed that a hypothetical bachelor tax wouldn’t sway him, though noted that if enacted, it might cause him to lower his standards.
“But it wouldn’t change much for me, aside from taking money out of my pocket.
White, a 29-year-old graphic designer, said he’s not single for lack of trying and blames a lack of things to do in the area for his difficulty meeting women. He wants to get married and have children but says it’s hard to meet someone in his age bracket who doesn’t already have children or has decided against it.
“It’s just harder to connect with people here,” he said.
He wasn’t surprised to learn that earlier efforts to tax bachelors had been proposed given that bachelors a century ago had more options because women had fewer opportunities for supporting themselves.
“It speaks to a different time where it was more of an imperative to marry someone,” he said.
And though he does want to meet a woman and get married, he won’t be taxed into it, he said, no matter how high the fine.
“I’d just move,” he said.
Maybe A Tax Works
Cody Budris, however, wasn’t as vehement about maintaining his bachelorhood under the threat of a financial penalty. The Michigan native is 36 and currently living in Douglas where he does ranch work, landscaping and freelance photography.
First, he wanted to know how much he would be charged each year to remain single and didn’t consider $100 to $400 a year a big enough deterrent to nudge him into matrimony. Raise that figure a few thousand dollars, however, and he might start to consider marriage as the amount chews into his annual income.
“If it was a lot of money like that, it definitely would have a huge effect on me,” he said.
And if hiding out on one of the ranches where he works wasn’t an option like it would have been 100 years ago, then maybe he’d give in and give a girl a ring.
That said, like Watts, he noted that it’s really hard to meet single women in his neck of the woods, especially for an outsider like him who isn’t keen to hang out in bars nor use apps or dating websites.
Unlike most of his friends, Budris has never been married nor does he have any children.
“I do want to meet somebody,” he said, but also acknowledged how hard it is to get married in this economy, even if he could find a viable mate.
Bad For The Bar Industry
One industry that does not want to see bachelors go away is the bar industry.
On Saturday morning, bartender Luke Hladky already had a handful of guys bellied up to the bar at Grinners Bar in Gillette by 10 a.m. The guys were sipping beer and putting back shots in solidarity with one of their buddies who was licking his wounds after learning his girlfriend cheated on him.
He wondered if those fines would better be served against cheating women. Regardless, a bachelor tax wouldn’t have any impact on any of these guys, they said, and would be unconstitutional.
Hladky said that single guys are the cornerstone of the bar industry, and in his experience, tend to buy girls a lot of drinks. If a group of women were to walk in right now, he noted, these guys would be sending drinks over. Most guys do.
By the same token, many girls come in looking to meet a guy, so it goes without saying that the bar industry in general would take a hit if a tax was implemented and more people decided to get married.
“It would probably go down a lot,” he said.
No Shortage Of Men
For many women, meanwhile, the abundance of bachelors means no shortage of attention. Just ask 37-year-old Jessi Evans, who works in the liquor store at Good Times in Gillette where she also periodically bartends.
An attractive single mom of a college-aged teen who has never married, Evans struggles to add up the number of men who have hit on her at work. That morning, she’d been there for about two hours and already had three guys ask for her number.
It’s more a quantity versus a quality kind of thing, she noted, and said she’d prefer to meet a guy outside of work in a relationship that begins with friendship.
The idea of a tax for both single women and men intrigued her.
If the figure was high enough it might have an impact on both genders to settle down and take their relationships more seriously if you “put on the pressure.
“It might make me think twice,” she said, though for now, she’s perfectly content on remaining single.
No, But Dowries Work
Cowboy State Daily columnist and salty bachelor, Rod Miller, took a different approach. Though fines wouldn’t work on him, money might, particularly if it comes in the form of a woman’s dowry.
“As a grumpy ol’ bachelor myself, I’d resist paying a tax on being single, but I do think that hefty dowry’s would incentivize marriage,” Miller weighed in on social media. “It seems to me to be a more capitalistic approach.”
For now, with no such incentives or penalties in place, Wyoming’s bachelors are on their own to scour the vast open spaces for a viable mate.
Jen Kocher can be reached at jen@cowboystatedaily.com.
