In 1943, a 19-year-old Nebraska farm girl with two months of telegraphy training volunteered to staff one of the highest railroad stations in the country—and ended up earning equal pay with men while doing it. Myrtle Forney’s story of life at Wyoming’s remote Sherman Station, told through her own words and her daughter’s memories, is a remarkable window into the women who kept America’s railroads running during World War II.

"Annals of Wyoming" is one of the West’s longest-running state history journals. Now published under the Wyoming Department of State Parks and Cultural Resources, the journal continues more than a century of chronicling Wyoming’s rich past. The latest issue features Buffalo Bill’s life on stage and screen, with a feature by award-winning historian Paul Andrew Hutton, plus essays on the Buffalo Bill Papers Project and a tribute to the late historian Jeremy Johnston.

DeMarge Toliver was a charter member of Cheyenne’s Searchlight Club in 1904 and served as its president by 1920. Despite personal tragedies including the loss of both her children, she dedicated more than 40 years to building institutions that sustained Wyoming’s small African American community across multiple generations.

By Lilla Beaulier

I didn’t know my Wyoming History Day project would start at a museum I’d already visited, but that’s exactly what happened.

By Lena (Sunada-Matsumura) Newlin

“A cemetery is a history of people – a perpetual record of yesterday and a sanctuary of peace and quiet today. A cemetery exists because every life is worth loving and remembering – always.” 

– Inscription on the welcome stone at Greenhill Cemetery, Laramie, Wyoming

By Leslie Waggener

In the spring of 1996, the barren landscape of Hell’s Half Acre transformed into the alien planet Klendathu. For six weeks, Hollywood descended on the geological oddity 40 miles west of Casper, bringing with them director Paul Verhoeven, stars like Casper Van Dien and Denise Richards, and about 300 local extras ready to become Mobile Infantry troopers.