This month, WyoHistory.org presents three new articles ranging from fur trade artist Alfred Jacob Miller to woman homesteader Elinore Pruitt Stewart to an account of how oil theft on Wyoming’s Wind River Reservation led to new protections and reforms.

Fur trade artist
Trained in Paris and Rome, Baltimore artist Alfred Jacob Miller attended the 1837 fur-trade rendezvous in what’s now western Wyoming. Miller sketched and painted all aspects of the fur trade for his patron, the Scottish adventurer William Drummond Stewart, and later reworked much of this material into oil paintings for a wider audience. To learn more, read Chavawn Kelley’s article An Artist and the Fur Trade: the Wyoming Paintings of Alfred Jacob Miller at
 http://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/artist-and-fur-trade-wyoming-paintings-alfred-jacob-miller.
 
Oil field theft, oil field reform
Recurring oil theft on the Wind River Reservation in the 1970s eventually led to better practices that focus on preventing such losses and protecting American Indian tribes’ oil and gas revenues. Read more in journalist and longtime Fremont County resident Marjane Ambler’s article Wind River Exposé in 1980s Led To National Oil and Gas Reforms at http://www.wyohistory.org/essays/wind-river-exposé-1980s-led-national-oil-and-gas-reforms.
 
C-SPAN Cities Tour coverage update
Deborah Lamb, C-SPAN Cities Tour coordinating producer, recently let us know that C-SPAN’s Casper Weekend, which was broadcast in mid-August and featured a number of Wyoming authors, historians and other dignitaries, is now available at http://www.c-span.org/search/?searchtype=All&query=Wyoming.  All Wyoming video segments will be available indefinitely on the C-SPAN Video Library site by searching for “Wyoming” in the main search window at the top of the page at www.c-span.org.
 
C-SPAN producers also visited Cheyenne, and those segments filmed for Book TV and American History TV will be broadcast on television this weekend, Sept. 6-7, 2014. Book TV programming begins at 10 a.m. Mountain Time on Saturday, September 6, on C-SPAN 2. American History TV programming begins at noon Mountain Time on Sunday, September 7, on C-SPAN 3. For more information, visit http://series.c-span.org/History/. And after this weekend, the interviews from the Cheyenne visit will be permanently available by searching for “Wyoming” in the main search window at the top of the page at www.c-span.org.
 
Altogether the Casper and Cheyenne visits resulted in more than two dozen segments featuring Wyoming history, historians and history books about. We hope you’ll agree with us it makes for some great TV.
 
Proposal deadline extended for 125th statehood anniversary conference
Organizers of the Wyoming State Historical Society’s June 2015 conference and trek in Laramie, Our Place in the West ... and Beyond: Wyoming at 125, have extended the deadline for papers and sessions to be delivered at the conference.
 
Proposal deadlines have been extended to Sept. 30, 2014. The Conference Committee invites proposals that consider the relationship between Wyoming, the West, the nation and the world.  Fresh perspectives await when exploring such topics as the state’s energy history; its cultural diversity or lack thereof; and the gap between its cowboy image and the reality of mining and tourism economies.
 
See http://www.wyshs.org/about/whats-new/awards-program for details on submitting proposals. And save the date! June 11-14, 2015, at the Hilton Garden Inn in Laramie. Online registration will be available early in 2015.