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Title Article Type Author
Afghan Project, University of Wyoming Encyclopedia WyoHistory.org

Historian, botanist, teacher and rancher Vie Willits Garber grew up in Big Horn and in 1910 earned a master’s degree in two disciplines from the University of Wyoming. She was the first person to carefully map and document the route of the Bozeman Trail—and she identified and listed 615 plants in the Little Goose Valley near her family’s home.

Longtime University of Wyoming archaeologist George Frison’s thinking about ancient bison kill sites was deeply informed by his early life as a hunter and rancher. Over a long career Frison won the affection and respect of students and colleagues; his many awards included election to the National Academy of Sciences.

Agnes Wright Spring believed women’s stories were “filled with romance and color;” the story of her life is no different. Undaunted by sexist barriers, Spring served as Wyoming state librarian, director of Wyoming’s Federal Writers’ Project and Colorado state historian. Read more about her dedicated and deliberate life.

Under a Cold War-era U.S. government program, University of Wyoming faculty taught vocational agriculture and engineering at Kabul University and other schools in Afghanistan, and Afghan exchange students studied in Laramie. At least one personal account survives, a shrewd, engaging memoir by faculty wife Ruth Southworth Brown.

In September 1967, Loren Evans, a ninth grader at Casper’s Dean Morgan Junior High, was suspended for refusing to get a haircut. Public controversy, vigorous on both sides, continued for three years while Evans studied college-level books at home.

A century ago there were hundreds of boarding schools for American Indian children. Many were on reservations, and many were run by religious orders; there were three on what’s now the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. Others were intentionally built far from tribal homelands, to separate children from their languages, lands and families.

Aven Nelson, one of the University of Wyoming’s original faculty, became a world famous botanist. He founded the Rocky Mountain Herbarium on campus, which contains 1.3 million plant specimens from throughout the world. From 1917-1922, he served as university president, but was happy to return to botany when he got the chance.

Scientist, scholar and poet June Etta Downey, an internationally recognized expert in personality testing, was longtime head of the University of Wyoming psychology department. She published seven books and scores of articles, and served on the UW faculty for 34 years before her death in 1932. 

Carrie Burton Overton, the first female African-American student at the University of Wyoming, triumphed over poverty and race prejudice in the course of her long life. After training as a stenographer at UW, she earned music diplomas from Howard University and the Juilliard School and, later, bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Columbia University. 

A fountain and a mural on the University of Wyoming campus memorialize events surrounding the 1922 death of UW student Lowell O’Bryan, who died after being bucked off a horse while preparing a “cowboy welcome” for incoming UW President Arthur Crane.