Letter from the Editor of "Annals of Wyoming"

March 5, 2026
Winter 2025 cover of Annals of Wyoming featuring an image of Bernadette Peters in "Annie Get Your Gun"

Annals of Wyoming is one of the oldest western state history journals to claim continuous publication for more than a century. Founded as a self-described “small brochure,” Annals has been published in one form or another and under slightly differing titles since 1923. Now under the auspices of the Wyoming Department of State Parks and Cultural Resources (SPCR), the journal will continue its long and proud tradition as the state’s premiere scholarly journal of Wyoming and regional history.

In Wyoming, history lays heavily on the land. The Wyoming State Library credits the state with having more than 1,000 historical markers and monuments, including 28 federally designated National Historic Landmarks. The state is also home to Yellowstone National Park, the nation’s first, founded in 1872; Shoshone National Forest, established as part of the Yellowstone Timberland Reserve in 1891; and Devils Tower, the first National Monument, created in 1906.

Wyoming is also closely identified with the early fur trade, the Oregon, Overland, Bozeman, and Bridger trails; early women’s suffrage (Wyoming is frequently known as the “Equality State”); ranching and farming; the Shoshone, Arapaho, Crow, and Lakota tribes; famous outlaws and lawmen; and, of course, William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody.

The latest issue, released in late February, offers an absorbing history of Buffalo Bill in the movies and on stage by award-winning historian Paul Andrew Hutton. In addition to Professor Hutton’s article is an essay on the Buffalo Bill Papers Project, a project of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West (BBCW), and a tribute to longtime Wyoming historian, the late Jeremy Johnston, former managing editor of the Papers of William F. Cody and curator of Western American History at BBCW. Also included is a short essay by James H. Nottage on the unlikely pairing of Buffalo Bill and Henry Ford, courtesy of WyoHistory.org.

Future issues will feature such topics as the memorialization of the scaffold burial of the Sicangu (Brulé) Lakota chief Spotted Tail’s daughter at Fort Laramie, the remarkable survival of pronghorns from the Pleistocene era (half their population of 700,000 live in Wyoming), Wyoming artist Merritt Dana Houghton, and a special issue on Yellowstone National Park.

Man in gingham checked shirt wearing a white hat
Charles “Chuck” Rankin, Annals of Wyoming Editor. Photo courtesy Chuck Rankin. 

Annals of Wyoming is dedicated to the idea that history belongs exclusively to no one. Rather, that it belongs to everyone and should be as informative and entertaining as it is instructive and reflective even as new historical information and interpretation shape and reshape our understanding of the state and region’s past.

To underscore this approach, Annals is being offered free to anyone who wishes to subscribe or obtain a single issue. If you haven’t received the latest edition, please contact Sara Davis or Cindy Brown at SPCR by emailing spcr-annalsofwy@wyo.gov.

In keeping with this view, Annals is also building bridges and partnerships with individual county historical chapters across the state, Wyoming museums and libraries, WyoHistory.org, and the Wyoming Historical Foundation. This is reflected in our new editorial board: Michael A. Amundson, Rick Ewig, Paul Andrew Hutton, Jeffrey Means, Kylie McCormick, Candy Moulton, and Sherry L. Smith.

Our Annals of Wyoming staff of three includes me as editor, Tamsen Hert as associate editor, and Carl Hallberg as book review editor.

This post is based on a letter from Editor Charles Rankin that appeared in the February 2026 issue of Annals of Wyoming.

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