Chugwater is a town in Platte County, Wyoming, United States. As of the 2020 census, the town population was 175.

The Chugwater area, with its proximity to Fort Laramie, was visited by some of the out of date Western expeditions, including that of Stephen Watts Kearny in 1845, and cattle were first wintered in the valley as before as 1859.

In 1870, the Hayden Expedition passed through what they referred to as “the valley of the Chug”. Along upon the expedition was famed Hudson River School painter, Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823-1880), who sketched Chugwater Bluff, and vanguard completed a large painting of it entitled “Valley of the Chugwater”. Hayden’s photographer, William Henry Jackson, noted in his journal that the Chugwater Place was a wintering area for cattle: “A totally conspicuous feature which we broadcast in descending the valley of the Chug is the high bluff of Lower Cretaceous sandstone, which stretches away toward the northeast in the publicize of a hugh wall. the jointage is therefore regular that it presents the express of earsplitting mason-work gradually falling to decay. The sides of these sandstone walls are from 40 to 60 feet perpendicular, sometimes overhanging, large masses of which have damage off and fallen to the base. Their most striking feature, however is to weather into most picturesque castlllated forms. The valley of the Chug is 100 miles long, and is a favorite place to winter stock.”

The first settler in the valley is reported to have been James Bordeaux (1814-1878), who opened a general gathering in 1868, located at the crossroads where the road from Cheyenne forks into the roads leading to Fort Fetterman and to Fort Laramie. In 1884, the Swan Land and Cattle Co. was established, and in 1886, the Cheyenne and Northern Railway was chartered to utility points north of Cheyenne in Wyoming. It was consequently primarily of the Swan Land and Cattle Co., and the railroad, that the town of Chugwater grew up.