Archives On The Air

A 1949 western novel features a mysterious gunslinger named Shane who rides into the lives of a Wyoming homestead family of the late 1880s.

Carrie Arnold loved western history and used her artistic talent to portray sites and communities in the West.

Aloha Wanderwell was an adventurer. In 1922 at age 16, she joined an expedition traveling around the world by Model-T Ford.

Dr. Sara Jane Rhoads joined the University of Wyoming's faculty in 1948. She was one of the first women in the United States to reach full professor rank in chemistry. 

Annette Becher Grey was ordained a minister in 1900 and became pastor of the South Side Congregational Church in Cheyenne. 

Chief Washakie was leader of the Eastern Shoshone from the 1840s until his death in 1900.

Photographer Jean Howard captured Hollywood glamor of the 1940s and 50s. Marriage to super-agent Charles Feldman provided her with access to celebrities like Marilyn Monroe.

Moana McLaughlin Tregaskis is at times eclipsed by her husband - noted journalist and author Richard Tregaskis. Like her husband, she was a reporter and war correspondent.

The League of Women Voters was a grassroots organization formed in 1920 to teach women in the U.S. how to use their new voting power after passage of the 19th amendment. 

The Wyoming State Senate had a heated debate over the Equal Rights Amendment in 1973.

Wyoming's Secretary of State Thyra Thomson argued that despite being the Equality State, gender bias still existed.

Caroline Lockhart was a newspaper publisher, writer, journalist, rancher, and rodeo sponsor.

An interview with western showman Buffalo Bill Cody in 1904 inspired her to relocate in Cody, Wyoming, where she remained the rest of her life.

Liz Byrd was the first black woman to serve in the Wyoming State Legislature.

Growing up as an African American in Wyoming in the 1930s and 40s was not easy. In high school Byrd was denied service in a Cheyenne drugstore. Her white classmates threw the ice from their drinks over the counter and walked out.

Katharine Newlin Burt was an author of western novels, short stories, plays and poetry.

Although a native New Yorker, she was entranced with the West. She once said that "all her life she wanted to marry a man from the West."

Leona Wells came to Wyoming from Illinois in 1898 because she wanted the right to vote. Wyoming’s U.S. Senator Francis E. Warren hired her as a staffer. She became one of the very rare well-paid professional women on Capitol Hill.

Barbershop quartets are a form of a cappella music that started in the 1930s. In 1938 a nationwide group for Barbershop singers appeared. It was called the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America. Or if you prefer acronyms, SPEBSQSA.

Dee Linford grew up in Wyoming before he was drafted into the Marines in World War II. Linford was stationed in Japan.

Wilma Soss was a publisher, writer, and radio journalist in New York. In all of her work Soss advocated for women in industry and stockholding.

Jacques Kapralik was a caricature artist for Hollywood.

He brought his talents to LA in the mid-193os and began making movie posters.

Foreign correspondents were the first to raise the alarm about Hitler's Germany. They witnessed the violence first hand. One of these reporters was Gregor Ziemer. While in Germany he interviewed Hitler and probed the Hitler Youth program.

Cathrine Curtis was an early film producer. She started the Cathrine Curtis Corporation in 1919.

President Roosevelt was faced with labor strikes at home during World War II. The strikes delayed production for the war.

The Centlivre family lived in the Midwest. In 1913 their daughter's spirit began communicating with them. The daughter died at age four. They called her spirit "J".

Olive Borden was a silent film star. Her film career started in 1922 in comedy shorts. She starred in the 1927 film The Joy Girl.

Jim Beckwourth was born into slavery. He came West around 1820.

William Lava had no formal music training. He had a journalism degree. But the great depression kept him from breaking into the news.

In 1950 Coloradoan Betsy Cowles Partridge was part of an attempt to find a path to the summit of Mount Everest.

In the early 1930s, Tot Seymour was writing lyrics for Hollywood movies. She teamed up with composer Vee Lawnhurst. They founded a company called Famous Music. Seymour and Lawnhurst touted themselves as "the first successful team of girl song writers in popular music history".

2020 marks one hundred years since the nineteenth amendment allowed women to vote in the U.S. But Wyoming women have had the right to vote for 50 years longer than the rest of the country.