Original Research by School Decision on Shoshoni High School
Shoshoni High School sits in a small rural crossroads town at the junction of U.S. Routes 20 and 26 in Wyoming's Wind River Basin. The town began as a railroad and mining stop and still functions as a highway junction community, with ranching in the surrounding area and a surge of summer tourist traffic heading toward Yellowstone and Boysen Reservoir. Publicly reported sources describe a population that declined between the prior census and 2020, and no major new housing developments have been identified. The town has a cold desert climate, and street life is minimal given the tiny population and the orientation of activity along the highway corridor.
The school is part of Fremont County School District #24, which also includes Shoshoni Elementary for grades K through 6 and the combined junior-senior high building for grades 7 through 12. Shoshoni High School itself serves grades 9 through 12 and is a very small school, with an enrollment that makes it closer in size to a single large grade at a typical suburban high school. The grade distribution is relatively even across the four years, with a slight taper in the upper grades.
The student body is predominantly white, with a Hispanic minority and small numbers of American Indian or Alaska Native students, students of two or more races, and Black students. The school is not a charter school and has no reported magnet status.
Academic performance data was not available in the sources we reviewed. State assessment results, multi-year academic trends, and a nationally standardized academic context were all absent. The comparison fact-set, which positions this school relative to districts in Fremont County, could not produce a proficiency index, a graduation rate, or a chronic absenteeism rate because the entity values were missing. This means a parent looking for test scores or a graduation rate will not find them in the data we have. A parent may want to look into this further directly with the school or the Wyoming Department of Education.
Free or reduced-price lunch counts were not reported, and special population data for students with individualized education programs and English learners was also missing. Staffing, course access, discipline, and attendance details were not available either. Program offerings, such as AP courses, career and technical education pathways, dual-credit opportunities, or extracurriculars, were not provided. We looked for the district's strategic priorities or recent parent-relevant changes and found little, so we left that out rather than guess.
The housing market in Shoshoni's zip code is modest by both state and national standards. The typical home value sits well below the Wyoming benchmark and the national benchmark, and recent year-over-year movement showed a slight decline. The price-to-income ratio is low, meaning a household earning a typical income would find ownership relatively attainable compared with many parts of the country. Estimated monthly mortgage costs were below typical rent figures in the area, though rent data itself was not directly reported. For a family considering a move, housing here is affordable on paper, but the town's small size, limited employer base, and rural isolation are part of the trade-off. A mushroom processing plant on annexed town land is one of the few industrial employers publicly identified, and ranching remains the dominant agricultural activity in the surrounding area. Weekly intercity bus service connects the town to Cheyenne and Billings, Montana.
What the picture comes down to is a very small rural high school in a highway-junction town with affordable housing and a close-knit peer environment, but with substantial gaps in the data a parent would normally use to judge academic quality. Without state testing results, a graduation rate, program listings, or staffing details, the available record does not support a characterization of academic strength or weakness. Families drawn to a small-school setting in a quiet, high-desert community may find the environment appealing, but they would need to go beyond these sources to assess whether the academic pathway matches their student's needs.
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