Wright, WY

At the 2020 census, Wright was a Campbell County town of 1,644 people in the Powder River Basin, where the surrounding coal mines still shape work, roads, and the horizon. Wright grew as a company town during the coal boom of the 1970s, when the new community helped house workers and families tied to nearby mines. It was incorporated in 1985, making it one of Wyoming's newer municipalities even though the high plains around it carry a much older human history. Sioux and Crow people used this country as hunting ground before the modern mining map took over.

Coal remains the town's main fact, but Wright is more than a mine camp. Two Elk Energy Park was proposed as a large development and later stalled, a reminder that the local economy has always been tied to big industrial decisions made beyond the town limits. Campbell County School District No. 1 serves local students through Cottonwood Elementary and Wright Junior-Senior High School, giving the town a school-centered daily rhythm. Roads run out toward the mines, ranch country, and Powder River country. Wright feels young in its buildings and old in its landscape, with energy work and open prairie sharing the same view.