Pageant News Bureau - Karla Farnham

There are no lighthouses in Wyoming, no bustling ports. You don't smell salty breezes in the morning. Wyoming has vast plains and spectacular mountains, a few lakes, a few rivers. But it has no ocean.

A century ago, that fact of geography made a big difference. If you loved the sea, you didn't live in Wyoming. People could spend their whole lives in the state and never hear the crash of the surf or the screeching of seagulls.

Photo by Ken Ball

Photo by Thomas Oed

Today, the world is a much smaller place. The deep ocean is just a couple of hours away from the towering Rockies. People in Wyoming eat lobster and oysters fresh from the Gulf. They go surfing on their West Coast vacations. And many of the women wear bikinis, just like on the Riviera.

Karla Farnham is a modern Wyoming woman, a hard-working Westerner who runs a furniture store with her husband. A century ago, if she had any spare time at all, she would probably spend it on horseback. But times have changed, and she prefers to swim. She's an advanced water skier, a scuba diver, a bathing beauty.

She has modeled swimsuits by the sea, been a Hawaiian Tropic competitor and finished as first runner-up at Mrs. Wyoming America. Undaunted, she's preparing for another try at the state crown.

History has many streams, but sometimes they flow together in pleasing ways. A century ago, just as beauty pageants were being born in freewheeling beach towns, the sober pioneers of Wyoming became the first people to recognize a woman's right to vote. Now, it's a small world, or at least a small nation. Just as women on the coast cherish their right to vote, women in the hinterland love to compete in beachwear. The issue is choice, and choice is ultimately for everyone.

The Wyoming wave