Ranking the Best Wyoming Cities (Cheyenne, Casper: ski resort, best towns, real estate)

[Milwaukee City]

I'm just wondering, what is the consensus of the best places to live overall. I hear a lot of negatives about Rock Springs but a lot of praise for Green River, Lander, Sheridan, Powell and even some for Worland and Laramie. So how would you rank the top 10 or 15 or so cities or towns in Wyoming. All things considered which are the best towns/cities to live in. I'd rather ask the locals than some silly website like road snacks.



From an outsiders positions, all I hear is Jackson, Sheridan, Lander, Cody, Pinedale, Riverton are nice places to live and nobody wants to live in Rock Springs. Even give me cities that aren't bad but just have a bad reputation and their reputation is way overblown.

[WyoNewk]

I live in Gillette, in NE Wyoming. I'm not very familiar with towns in western and southern Wyoming, so I'm leaving out a few that might be great. Without giving it a lot of thought, here's my top 10 cities/towns with populations over 5K.

1. Buffalo
2. Lander
3. Sheridan
4. Cody
5. Jackson
6. Gillette
7. Douglas
8. Laramie
9. Casper
10. Cheyenne

There are other nice smaller towns, but listing them with the cities is hard to do. For example, Story, Ranchester and Dayton are all very nice, but they have little in the way of businesses for the communities. Most of their residents make frequent, if not daily, visits to Sheridan. Kinda hard to compare them to Cheyenne or Casper, but most of the residents of those small communities would probably rate them at the very top.

[Ltdumbear]

Denver, Salt Lake City, Pocatello, Idaho Falls, Bozeman, Billings, Miles City, Rapid City, and Scottsbluff. Those are all great alternatives to look into, rather than wasting any further time 'rating' towns & cities here in Wyoming.

[NW Crow]

If you have a city size preference, it narrows down to a few choices unless you prefer small or real small. City size may not be a firm priority for everybody but it can play a big role with a move working or not on a lot of levels.


Your real estate or rental budget is an important criteria in the more popular places.


Terrain, precipitation levels (including snow), degree of remoteness are factors that folks weight differently. There may be better towns in most people's eyes but it comes down to your priorities.


Road Snacks does a little chop busting of places (and that has some value) but they don't do enough work. Outside Magazine, Outdoor Life, Money magazine and some others can give you some names and useful info to get started but the rankings turn on the weights given to different things. Not everybody will do a quantitative analysis but it can help. Take 100 points, divide them between 3-10 priorities, best guess score places from your research and visits. See which score well. See how you feel about the rankings. Adjust. Decide.

[sunsprit]

Originally Posted by Milwaukee City

I'm just wondering, what is the consensus of the best places to live overall. I hear a lot of negatives about Rock Springs but a lot of praise for Green River, Lander, Sheridan, Powell and even some for Worland and Laramie. So how would you rank the top 10 or 15 or so cities or towns in Wyoming. All things considered which are the best towns/cities to live in. I'd rather ask the locals than some silly website like road snacks.



From an outsiders positions, all I hear is Jackson, Sheridan, Lander, Cody, Pinedale, Riverton are nice places to live and nobody wants to live in Rock Springs. Even give me cities that aren't bad but just have a bad reputation and their reputation is way overblown.

Sorry, but you pose an impossible premise.

"all things considered" has such a wide range of variables … ranging from employment, climate, housing, job or business opportunities, recreation, shopping, entertainment, access to transit/airport … and so forth

that it becomes an entirely personal set of parameters.

What's your pleasure? What do you value and prioritize for your lifestyle, wants, and needs?

The attributes of the places you mention as "nice places to live" are quite different.

Absent knowing what your priorities are, it's impossible to give you a meaningful answer about the characteristics of the various towns.

PS: my choices/compromises in Wyoming lead me to a place that would be "none of the above" in your list of mentioned places.

[Milwaukee City]

Originally Posted by sunsprit

Sorry, but you pose an impossible premise.

"all things considered" has such a wide range of variables … ranging from employment, climate, housing, job or business opportunities, recreation, shopping, entertainment, access to transit/airport … and so forth

that it becomes an entirely personal set of parameters.

What's your pleasure? What do you value and prioritize for your lifestyle, wants, and needs?

The attributes of the places you mention as "nice places to live" are quite different.

Absent knowing what your priorities are, it's impossible to give you a meaningful answer about the characteristics of the various towns.

PS: my choices/compromises in Wyoming lead me to a place that would be "none of the above" in your list of mentioned places.

I think you can still put a list together generally what cities, towns are highly regarded to live in without getting so technical.

[Milwaukee City]

Clearly Jackson, WY and Teton County are the prized cow in the state hence the long list of M's and B's that live there and the high cost of living and scenic beauty. Now true, its' priced well out of most people's range but it's still a great place to live, if you can swing it.

[sunsprit]

Originally Posted by Milwaukee City

I think you can still put a list together generally what cities, towns are highly regarded to live in without getting so technical.

OK.

My List: I wouldn't live in any Wyoming City, few that there are over 5,000 population.

IMO, the real beauty of Wyoming living is to be found in the rural areas outside of the cities and towns.

There are many such locales, all with their various strengths and trade-offs, throughout the state.

[sunsprit]

Originally Posted by Milwaukee City

Clearly Jackson, WY and Teton County are the prized cow in the state hence the long list of M's and B's that live there and the high cost of living and scenic beauty. Now true, its' priced well out of most people's range but it's still a great place to live, if you can swing it.

If your definition of desirability is to be in a locale rubbing elbows at great expense with all those "M's and B's", then you've really lost sight of what Wyoming living is all about for 99.9% of the population.

Jackson today bears as much relationship to the realities of Wyoming living as Aspen, Malibu, or any of the other "tony" enclaves of wealthy folk that you can name around the USA.

Be aware that few of those wealthy folk who own places in Jackson/Teton County actually spend much time there. For most of them, it's just another place among their collection of real estate. And yes, I know a few of them … having skied, flown, or sailed with them … and they show up for a few weeks per year, at the most. Just like they do with their ski resort properties … some of them I met because they're my infrequent neighbors in Vail CO, where I also owned multiple SFH's since it's inception through to present day. One family I know bought over a section in Teton county, just so they could ride their trail horses on their place in Wyoming a couple weeks per year. They have their favorite trail horses trucked in by staffers from FL or VT or CA for their pleasure use, then trucked on to their next destination … or winters in Southern FL. The "ranch" in Wyoming has permanent staff to maintain the residences, fences, streams, and keep the premises stocked, presentable, manicured, and ready for the owners and their guests to arrive on short notice … the ranch is kept for the exclusive use of the owners among their numerous real estate holdings around the country and overseas. These are the type of "trail" riders that have the staff "groom" the trails discretely behind them so that when they come back over a trail near the ranch house, it is "pristine" and untracked. I've ridden with them at their FL "ranch" … and it's somewhat uncanny always riding on untracked trails. Yes, they're that well off … the FL stables were a $multi-mil facility, with equestrian themed statuary and absolutely manicured grounds. Each horse had facilities more elaborate than any of my residences. That's what real wealth can buy you along with a fleet of your own jets to transport you at your whim to your various residences.

I spent a lot of time in the Aspen area in the 1960's-mid 1970's … and I saw what happened to that area when it was "discovered" by the money set. My college roommate bought his first house in Aspen using a fraction of a $17,000 inheritance, and then went on to buy a number of $30,000 little ol' cute Victorian houses there. In very short order, they became $1mil "tear-down" properties, making him a very wealthy man … at least, by our standards. Drops in the bucket for the money'ed set. I bought in Vail because it hadn't been invaded by the money set at the time, but had similar attributes of the Aspen area, like so much of Colorado. Well, it now has become another wealthy enclave.

At that, there are other places in Wyoming where the Eastern monied set bought up the area for their exclusive recreational playgrounds back in the time of territorial and early statehood. Much as they did with places such as their enclaves in the Adirondacks years before. You are not familiar with the names of those towns in Wyoming because the money set has kept their presence there fairly low-key … but the prices for places in those areas are staggering by any normal standards for Wyoming properties. Kinda' like Pecos, NM, to name but another such enclave in the Rocky Mountain region.

We could venture off into the "agenda 21" crowd regarding the use/development of this region of the USA. Wyoming is targeted to be nothing more than an exclusive use recreational area by the connected … wealthy crowd. Us common folk don't have the same level of appreciation for the beauty and recreation here that the privileged do, in their view. Make no mistake, the wealthy set that can and do control much of the private recreational use lands in the area aggressively seek to deny access to the public lands which they may landlock, creating even more exclusivity and denial of use by others.

[NDak15]

Originally Posted by Ltdumbear

Denver, Salt Lake City, Pocatello, Idaho Falls, Bozeman, Billings, Miles City, Rapid City, and Scottsbluff. Those are all great alternatives to look into, rather than wasting any further time 'rating' towns & cities here in Wyoming.

So all of Wyomimg is great compared to these locations?