The launch of the monitor Wyoming on September 8, 1900 at Union Iron Works in San Francisco was a festive occasion. The state was celebrating its semi-centennial of statehood, it had been admitted into the union on Sept. 8, 1850. The launching was a featured event in the celebrations. Thousands of people gathered at the shipyard, on the rooftops of houses and buildings and the nearby hills to view the event.

Wyoming Governor DeForest Richards spoke before Miss Frances Warren, daughter of Senator Francis E. Warren of Wyoming, broke the bottle on the bows and sent the ship down the ways. The crowd was not disappointed as the ship took to the water without hesitation. She was touted as "one of the most formidable fighting engines of its type", and this was true, but a formidable ship she was not.

The waterlevel hull design was so outdated it's hard to believe that such a ship would have even been built at that time. Her design harkened back to the War Between the States and really had no place in a modern navy. Nevertheless USS Wyoming (later USS Cheyenne BM-10, USS Cheyenne IX-4) would survive in the navy inventory until its final decommissioning in 1926. She was not scrapped until 1939.