Prohibition Agency’s First Case
The Prohibition Agency’s First Case: Official Zeal, Mistaken Identity and Murder in Wyoming, 1919 By Phil Roberts Published in Western Legal History 11 (Summer/Fall 1998) …
Progressivism Comes to Yellowstone
Progressivism Comes to Yellowstone: Theodore Roosevelt and Professional Land Management Agencies in the Yellowstone Ecosystem By Jeremy Johnston Throughout the Progressive Era, many professional …
Cheyenne’s 100-Octane Plant
Cheyenne’s 100-Octane Plant By Mike Mackey The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into World War II on December 7, 1941. …
1935: A Momentous Year in Wyoming History
1935: A Momentous Year in Wyoming History by Phil Roberts Posted 15 February 2015 (The following is an abstract of remarks made to the Laramie …
Loving Cecile: The Strange Case of Stanley Lantzer
Loving Cecile: The Strange Case of Stanley Lantzer By Carol Bowers A shot rang out, followed by a woman’s scream on a Sunday morning …
Lovell’s Mexican Colony
Lovell’s Mexican Colony By Augustin Redwine* Industry came to Lovell, Wyoming, in 1916, bringing an influx of new residents including Mexican beet laborers. …
Home on the Range: Boom and Bust in Jeffrey City
Readings in Wyoming History, Essay 10 Home on the Range No More: Boom and Bust in Jeffrey City …
Grace Raymond Hebard and Americanization in Wyoming
My One Hobby: Grace Raymond Hebard and Americanization in Wyoming By Frank Van Nuys A highly ironic and bemusing scene may have entertained the Sisters …
Harvard Cook in the Wyoming Badlands:
A Harvard Cook in the Wyoming Badlands: The 1908 Diary of Alcott Farrar Elwell By Ginny Kilander “I waved my hat and …
Selling of Wyoming’s Image Between the World Wars
Give Them What They Want: The Selling of Wyoming’s Image Between the World Wars By Rick Ewig “Give them what they want” has been an …
Fired by Conscience: The Black 14 at UW
Fired by Conscience: The Black 14 Incident at the University of Wyoming and Black Protest in the Western Athletic Conference By Clifford A. Bullock The …
Evolution of Roads Across Southern Wyoming
Evolution of Roads Across Southern Wyoming By Kris A. White Roads across Wyoming grew out of the necessity of connecting the West …
Ethnicity in Wyoming
Ethnicity in Wyoming By Carl V. Hallberg (1991) Since the 1970s, western historians have recognized ethnicity as an integral part in the …
Emerging Civil Rights Movement in Wyoming:
The Emerging Civil Rights Movement: The 1957 Wyoming Public Accommodations Statute as a Case Study By Kim Ibach and William Howard Moore Two prominent …
The Wyoming Experience: Chinese in Wyoming
The Wyoming Experience: Chinese in Wyoming By Dudley Gardner A New York Daily Tribune reporter traveling with the United States Army in 1857 filed a report …
Williams v. Eaton: The Black 14 at UW
The Black 14: Williams v. Eaton A Personal Recollection by James E. Barrett [In 1969}, I was involved in an incident that shook …
Wyoming Almost Repealed Women Suffrage
Wyoming Almost Repealed Women Suffrage The first Territorial Legislature in 1869 passed the suffrage bill, giving women the right to vote for the first time …
Treagle Train
Prominent political figures were frequently guests on the “Treagle train,” an excursion from Cheyenne to a UW football game in Laramie, sponsored annually by the …
Temporary Emergency Sales Tax Act
The “Temporary Emergency Sales Tax Act” and its Successors After the Griffenhagen plan was roundly rejected, various groups proposed new ways to raise revenue. Ranchers …
Wyoming’s First Public Schools: Early Emphasis on Education
Wyoming’s First Public Schools: Early Emphasis on Education in the Equality State By Phil Roberts Public schools, started even before territorial government, were the subject …
Press Description of a Cheyenne Visit, 1877
Press Description of a Cheyenne Visit, 1877 “We reached Cheyenne on April 21st. This city of the Plains has a reputation for vice and crime …
Political Myth: Single-member districts
Political Myth No. 10: “Single-member districts have made legislators more accountable” This “myth” is utterly false. Because of single-member districts (created despite the legality of …
Remarks for Nellie Tayloe Ross Dinner
February 27, 2011 Text of Prepared Remarks for Nellie Tayloe Ross Dinner, Wyoming State Democratic Party, Cheyenne (Following is the prepared speech by Phil Roberts …
Shifting the Wyoming Penitentiary from Laramie to Rawlins
Moving Day at the ‘Big House’: Shifting the Wyoming Penitentiary from Laramie to Rawlins By Phil Roberts (1982) Nearly 80 years ago …
Mary Bellamy, First Woman State Legislature
Mary Bellamy Was First Woman Elected to Wyoming State Legislature Mary Godat Bellamy (b. 1861, d. 1954) was the first woman elected to the Wyoming …
John Hoyt, UW’s First President
John Hoyt, UW’s First President: Doctor, Lawyer and Visionary When President Rutherford Hayes offered Dr. John Hoyt the ambassadorship to Spain in 1877, …
We Should Not Allow Guns in Schools, on UW Campus
An earlier version of this article was initially sent as an e-mail message to Albany County legislators and others on Jan. 29, 2015, in light of …
Wyoming Town Ordinances Favored Law and Order
Wyoming Town Ordinances Favored Law and Order Lots of myths are out there about how local Western towns approached guns in their earliest years. Below …
Plans to Economize State/Local Governments
Great Depression Consultants: Plans to Economize State/Local Governments Wyoming has spent money on outside consultants for many years. Perhaps the most notorious of these studies was …
Interesting Facts About Governors of Wyoming
Interesting Facts About Governors of Wyoming 1st Wyoming native to be elected governor: Robert Carey, b. Cheyenne, 1878, elected governor in 1918. 1st University of Wyoming …
Wyoming’s First Public Schools
Wyoming’s First Public Schools: Early Emphasis on Education in the Equality State By Phil Roberts Public schools, started even before territorial government, were the subject of …
Democrats should embrace the state’s symbols
Democrats should embrace the state’s symbols Wyoming Democrats in recent years often belittle the value of embracing the state’s symbols, ceding them to the GOP …
Wyoming Adopts the Sales Tax
Wyoming Adopts the Sales Tax: The 1930s Origins of the Current Tax System By Phil Roberts, Department of History, University of Wyoming Wyoming’s …
Sedition and Vigilante Justice in World War I Wyoming
Aliens and Slackers: Loyalty, Sedition and Vigilante Justice in World War I Wyoming By Phil Roberts This article first appeared in Annals of Wyoming 85 (Winter 2013) …
State Efforts to Control Alcohol After Prohibition Repeal
Extract from Regulating Liquor: Prohibition Enforcement, Official Corruption, and State Efforts to Control Alcohol After Prohibition Repeal By Phil Roberts, University of Wyoming The …
Federal Prohibition Enforcement in Wyoming
Conducting Investigations: Inside Federal Prohibition Enforcement in Wyoming This is the story of some long-lost files, some citizen complaints about wide-open bootlegging and official …
Wyoming State Historical Society, 1966-1994.
The Partnership Years: The Wyoming State Historical Society and the State of Wyoming, 1966-1994. By Phil Roberts. The decades of the 1960s through the 1980s …
Wyoming Responses to Heart Mountain “Relocation” Camp, 1941-43
Wyoming Responses to Heart Mountain “Relocation” Camp, 1941-43 An Editor Speaks Out and a Senator Stays Silent By Phil Roberts This article first appeared as …
Flu Epidemic of 1918
Flu Epidemic of 1918 By Phil Roberts Published in wyohist.org in September, 2018. Available also on wyohist.org website Though disease epidemics were common throughout America …
Cowboys Form a Health Cooperative:
Cowboys Form a Health Cooperative: The Fetterman Hospital Association and Health Care Coverage on the Range By Phil Roberts Wyoming would seem to be …
Wyoming’s First Arbor Day, 1888
“Drizzling Rain Kept All Indoors”: Wyoming’s First Arbor Day, 1888 By Phil Roberts Wyoming law establishes the last Monday in April as Arbor …
Creating Counties in 1911
Creating Counties in 1911: Why Two of Wyoming’s “Grand Old Men” Have No Counties Named for Them By Phil Roberts The 1911 Wyoming legislature created …
Nellie Tayloe Ross Dinner, Cheyenne
Febbruary 27, 2011 Text of Prepared Remarks for Nellie Tayloe Ross Dinner, Wyoming State Democratic Party, Cheyenne (Following is the prepared speech by Phil Roberts …
Memories of a Wyoming Life
Memories of a Wyoming Life By Phil Roberts February 24, 2018 From time to time, I’m going to use this page as an informal personal …
Memorial Day Address, Lusk, Wyoming, May 31, 2010
June 2, 2010 Memorial Day Address Lusk, Wyoming, May 31, 2010 Thank you for the kind introduction. Also, before I begin my formal address, I’d …
“High Country Shores: The New Immigrants to the Cowboy State”
Editor’s Note, February 23, 2018 Wyoming has been a “state of immigrants” in the “nation of immigrants” that is the United States. In territorial …