The US State With Only One Panera Location

It's hard to imagine any corner of America without a Panera Bread. It doesn't even seem like a company that purposefully chooses locations so much as a sort of naturally occurring phenomenon. Wherever there's an opening in a strip mall or an airport, the wooden furnishing and green-and-gold color scheme starts to spread across the bare walls like lichen, and soon enough you can walk in and buy any one of its many soup options for $7 or take advantage of its fresh bread baked on site. But there is one state — Wyoming — with just a single Panera location.

There are no Panera Breads in Alaska or Hawaii, which is to be expected: Both are far from the contiguous United States, which makes the logistics of running a fast food restaurant challenging (It's hard enough for an Alaskan town to get groceries). But more interesting than a state with no Panera is a state with just one Panera. It's almost a romantic notion, bringing to mind a corporate, Global Village Coffeehouse-aesthetic version of a last chance saloon. You can imagine a lonesome traveler staggering inside, enticed by the smell of broccoli cheddar soup in a bread bowl, as Ry Cooder's plaintive slide guitar from the "Paris, Texas" theme plays in the background.

The reality, of course, is more mundane. Wyoming is the 10th-largest state by area, but it's the least-populated state in the union; with just 576,851 people, it's less populated than the city of Portland, Oregon. The state's largest city is its capital, Cheyenne; about 65,000 people live in the city proper, while a little over 100,000 people live in the greater metropolitan area. This is where Wyoming's sole Panera is located: right outside Cheyenne Regional Airport, on Dell Range Boulevard across the street from a Starbucks and down the road from a Chick-fil-A.

The only passenger route going in and out of Cheyenne Regional Airport is a United Express shuttle from Denver that takes between 45 minutes to an hour. We suppose that's enough time to work up an appetite for something from its newly revamped menu (with increased portion sizes), especially if you're on the run from Denver International Airport's terrifying and allegedly cursed horse statue.