needs were being ignored, and the state was too focused on the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad. This discontent led to rural farmers, primarily Republican-leaning regions, calling for secession from Wyoming. The initial movement began as a petition for Sheridan County, Wyoming to secede and join Montana, and was filed by A. R. Swickard, the street commissioner of Sheridan, Wyoming. The movement quickly changed to petition the formation of a new state. The Absaroka movement also began directly following another succession movement that sought to have a portion of the Black Hills secede from South Dakota and join Wyoming. Indeed, historian Watson Parker has linked the Absaroka movement, in terms of economic and geographic identity, back to an 1870s attempt to form a Black Hills-based territory out of three adjacent existing territories. The name "Absaroka" is derived from the Hidatsa name for the Crow people, meaning "children of the large-beaked bird" and shares a similar name to the nearby Absaroka Range. Height and dissolution (1939) In 1939, supporters for the movement crowned Dorothy Fellows as Miss Absaroka, emulating the Miss America beauty pageant, wherein a winner is declared from each state as part of a larger national competition. Images of Miss Absaroka, alongside state automobile license plates and state coins for Absaroka, were issued soon after. A prominent supporter of the movement was C. M. Rowe, a professor at the South Dakota School of Mines. That same year, the King of Norway toured southeast Montana and Wyoming, and supporters of the secessionist movement claimed this event as official recognition of the new state. Swickard also met with the Governor of Wyoming, Nels H. Smith, on May 12, 1939, to discuss the formation of a new state. Swickard said after leaving the meeting: Around this time, Samuel W. King, a congressional representative for the Hawaii territory, stated during a session of Congress, "Hawaii is entitled by prior claim to be the 49th state. Let Absaroka be the 50th but Hawaii has claim to the 49th!" Following the Miss Absaroka pageant, A. R. Swickard appointed himself "governor" and held a series of grievance hearings covering the perceived wrongs committed by the state of Wyoming. A. R. Swickard also criticized the now Republican-led Wyoming state government, which took office following the 1938 Wyoming state elections, for not providing his movement with what the Associated Press called political patronage jobs. These hearings led