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Vermont has been stagnant for the past 10 years. A lot of NY'ers buy property up there and stay there part time. Most of the businesses go to NH because of lower taxes. The largest area of growth in Wyoming is in the Cheyenne area and it's only a matter of time before pieces of the Denver area spill over in southern Wyoming. Cheyenne is just over an hour from Denver and taxes in Wyoming are much lower. Give it 10-20 years and Wyoming will surpass it.
Wyoming probably is going to surpass Vermont in population in the long run, although with periodic downturns depending on the cycles of their energy/mining sector. The state is much larger in area, and features a considerably more pro-business environment with its absence of an income tax. The Cheyenne and Laramie areas are likely to get some overflow eventually from the booming Front Range of Colorado as well.
Vermont doesn't really have any catalyst for growth, and has an increasingly elderly population so there is hardly any excess of births over deaths like in Wyoming or most other states. It has a demographic profile that would fit better in rural areas of western or central Europe than in the US. Certainly it is a visually beautiful environment and very safe and well educated, but has harsh winters and is not much of a place to get ahead economically - which is the key factor behind a major share of relocation decisions.
Wyoming probably is going to surpass Vermont in population in the long run, although with periodic downturns depending on the cycles of their energy/mining sector. The state is much larger in area, and features a considerably more pro-business environment with its absence of an income tax. The Cheyenne and Laramie areas are likely to get some overflow eventually from the booming Front Range of Colorado as well.
Vermont doesn't really have any catalyst for growth, and has an increasingly elderly population so there is hardly any excess of births over deaths like in Wyoming or most other states. It has a demographic profile that would fit better in rural areas of western or central Europe than in the US. Certainly it is a visually beautiful environment and very safe and well educated, but has harsh winters and is not much of a place to get ahead economically - which is the key factor behind a major share of relocation decisions.
It is 131 miles from Laramie to Denver. It is 102 miles from Cheyenne to Denver. These are both too far to really get any overflow from people working in the metro Denver area. People generally don't commute in that far from the Colorado mountains, why would they do it from Wyoming? It's even 46 miles from Cheyenne to Ft. Collins, CO, where there's not much to do work-wise unless you're employed by Colorado State University or in a service job.
Wyoming's winters can be harsh as well, and currently it is very sparsely populated, far moreso than Vermont. One can drive miles and miles in Wyo and see absolutely no signs of human life. Here's a story that describes driving in Wyoming: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-...nd-communities "Schultz thought she knew rural America well when she took a position with the Helmsley Charitable Trust overseeing their rural health program in seven Western and upper Midwestern states, including Montana and Wyoming.
But even she has been surprised by how she can drive hours on country highways seeing few cars and just "a handful of gravel driveways going somewhere you can't see."
"It's almost scary," Schultz says. "You're thinking, 'If something happened to me here on this road now, how long would it take for someone to get to me? An ambulance? And where would they take me for care?' ""
It is 131 miles from Laramie to Denver. It is 102 miles from Cheyenne to Denver. These are both too far to really get any overflow from people working in the metro Denver area. People generally don't commute in that far from the Colorado mountains, why would they do it from Wyoming? It's even 46 miles from Cheyenne to Ft. Collins, CO, where there's not much to do work-wise unless you're employed by Colorado State University or in a service job.
I don't think there would be any significant daily commuting across the state line from WY to CO, but some retirees, smaller businesses and home based workers looking for a lower cost environment could migrate across the border over the long term. Regardless, this thread is concerning the possibility of Wyoming surpassing Vermont in population - which is not a very difficult goal to achieve, given the states are already pretty close in population and Vermont has little potential for much growth. While 2017 wasn't such a year, in certain years within the past decade Wyoming has indeed demonstrated that it can grow significantly.
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