The first murals of Wyoming's past to b placed in a public building are placed in the auditorium of the Laramie Plains Civic Center (formerly Laramie High School) which was entered in the National Register of Historic Places, March 17, 1981.

The masterpieces were executed by Florence E. Ware (1891-1971), granddaughter of a pioneer Laramie couple. Following her graduation from the University of Utah in 1913, Florence attended the Art Institute of Chicago from which she graduated with honors. She was one of the few women muralists in the United States. Her murals are placed in many schools and public buildings in Salt Lake City, Utah and the Laramie Plains Civic Center in Laramie, Wyoming. While she traveled abroad in 1928-1929, she painted many small pictures which are now collectors’ items. She was teaching art and interior decorating in Salt Lake City, Utah when she was commissioned in 1929 by Wilbur A. Hitchcock, architect for the addition to Laramie High School (originally built in 1878), to do the murals for the auditorium. Painstaking research characterized her art form. She visited historical sites and viewed many pioneer artifacts at the Covered Wagon celebration in Green River before starting the murals. In mid-November or 1929, Florence and two assistants began the process of adhering the canvases to the walls with white lead and fitting the molding around them to complete the framing. The official unveiling took place before 705 junior and senior high school students on December 13, 1929. At that time, Florence explained each picture. The murals still glow with warmth and color thanks to the late Karl Svenson, who learned the fine art of washing murals in Munich, Germany. He cleaned the masterpieces shortly before his death in 1969.

The first panel entitled Explorers honors those who particularly touched Wyoming. Above Snowy Range are Ferdinand and Isabella who sent Columbus on his voyages. Carolos IV was ruling when the first Spanish explorers came to this part of the country. French explorers claimed the land on either side of the Mississippi for Louis XIV. Napoleon sold the land on the western side of that river as the Louisiana Purchase in 1804. Behind the weather beaten tree on the summit of Lincoln Highway are the timberline trees of Libby Flats. Coming up the hill are Lewis and Clark who led the first American expedition in to the western wilderness with Sacajawea, a Shoshoni Indian girl, behind them John Fremont, thePathfinder, is distinguished by his military uniform. Jacques LaRamie, the French Canadian, who trapped for beaver along the rivers and near the peak that bear his name, dominates the center of the picture. Coming around the east side of the tree is Father Pierre DeSmet, the famous Jesuit missionary who first traveled across the high plateau of Wyoming in 1840. Jim Bridger sits on a rock in the right foreground. Three Indians mingle with the great explorers.

The western profile of Chimney Rock forms the skyline devoted to the Pioneers: a prospector pans for gold, and Indian encampment nestles at the foot of the Rock, wagons halt for the night while families and an Army officer gather outside the wagons. The five oxen were painted from a picture of a well known pair that belonged to Oregon pioneer, Ezra Meeker, who used to travel back and forth across the Oregon Trail with them.

Union Pacific, the larger of the two pictures upstairs, commemorates the coming of the railroad. The Pony Express rider and stagecoach are depicted as forerunners of the train. In Cowboys, the smallest mural, a mounted band of Indians dash full tilt out of the clouds, above a trio of cowboys, while two mounted companions circle the distant herd of cattle.

In Homemakers, a mother and her children are seen pursuing activities around their log cabin home. The original school building, started in 1878, with a group of children playing under the supervision of their teacher, is seen in 1878-1930. Also seen in the 1878-1930 picture are two teenage girls of the 1930's era and the achievements of 1930 that knit their world together, such as an airplane, the great locomotive and the microphone.