Archives On The Air

Gladys Beery was a fan of Laramie, Wyoming. She devoted her life to studying Laramie’s urban, architectural, and social history.

Most Americans know about the U.S. Transcontinental Railway. But did you know that Canada has its own coast-to-coast railroad known as the Canadian Pacific Railway?

In the 1970s and 80s, the proposed Wagon Wheel Project would have used underground nuclear devices to obtain natural gas outside of Pinedale, Wyoming. The project was stopped before it ever began.

Herbert Luft was a German journalist. In 1938, Luft and his wife Pepi were in the Dachau concentration camp for six months. They fled to the US before World War II began in 1939.

Dorothy Eidlitz was an accomplished woman. She graduated from Vassar in 1915 and did graduate work at Pennsylvania and Columbia.

Will Lee is best known for playing the kindly grocer Mr. Hooper on Sesame Street in the 1970s. Before Sesame Street Lee was blacklisted from acting for being a suspected communist.

Wyoming’s Powder River Basin is big coal country. Wyodak Resources Development has operated mines in the Basin for about a century. But something else has been using up Powder River coal much longer: fire.

Joseph C. O’Mahoney served as U.S. Senator from Wyoming from 1933 to 1960. O’Mahoney also had a weekly show where he interviewed notable figures from America.

On October 6, 1955, a United Airlines flight crashed into Medicine Bow Peak. Everyone on board perished.

In 1869 the Wyoming Territory passed the first law in the United States granting women the right to vote.

In 1955, UFO expert Morris Jessup received two letters from Carlos Allende.

Journalist Roger Neville Williams was drafted for the Vietnam War in 1968. He fled to Canada and joined the American Deserters Committee in exile.

Some of the smallest collections at the American Heritage Center tell the largest stories.

The 1933 Chicago World’s Fair had many exciting features, like the Graf Zeppelin, a gondola that took visitors across the fair.

Victor Gruen was an Austrian architect who came to the U.S. to escape WWII. He became a pioneer in the design of shopping centers and malls.

Richard Throssel was of Cree Indian and English descent. The Crow Tribe adopted him in 1905.

The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson aired on television from 1952 to 1966. The show depicted a fictional version of the lives of the actual Nelson family.

In the late 19th century, Wyoming became a hotbed for literature, painting and romanticism.

Political cartoons have played a key role in people’s understanding of current and historical events.

In 1932 Amelia Earhart published a book called The Fun of It. The book is not hard to come by. You can check out a copy at the library, buy it on Amazon, etc.

John Ravage, a former UW journalism professor, researched the history of many different aspects of the West, including, African American cowboys.

Garrett Price was a successful cartoonist for the New Yorker and other prominent publications during the mid-20th Century.

Few people have instituted the same level of security across America that Frank Wilson did leading the Secret Service.

Swimming holes and sumo wrestling are not usually associated with barbed wire and guards, but all of these existed together at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center.

Dorothy, Toto, the Witch of the West, and the infamous red slippers all come to mind when you think of L. Frank Baum’s Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

The early development of devices that recorded sound was a long and dramatic journey for a group of entrepreneurs and engineers.

As you cruise around Laramie, you start to notice some intriguing architectural styles. Especially on the University’s campus.

In 1908 a large drought hit Laramie and most of Wyoming. But Laramie’s residents loved to water their new lawns using their sprinkler systems, especially Grace Raymond Hebard, the first historian of Wyoming.

Did you know that Laramie has its own Wunderkammer?