The National History Day program is a year-long education program that culminates in a national contest every June. Wyoming History Day, administered by the University of Wyoming's American Heritage Center, occurs every year in April.
National History Day engages students in grades 6-12 in the process of discovery and interpretation of historical topics. Students produce dramatic performances, imaginative exhibits, multimedia documentaries and research papers based on research related to an annual theme. These projects are then evaluated at local, state and national competitions.
Many different people participate in the Wyoming History Day program, including Wyoming students and teachers, the University of Wyoming, Wyoming State Historical Society, the Wyoming Department of State Parks and Cultural Resources, The John P. Ellbogen Foundation and community business like Taco John's, who generously support the Wyoming History Day program with grants and special awards.
2021 State History Day Contest
will be held April 19-29 2021 if it’s in person, at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. If it’s virtual, the contest will run from April 21 to May 5, 2021. Click here for updates.
2021 National History Day Contest
will be held in June 2021 at the University of Maryland in College Park. Check here for more details as they develop.
Click here for information about the 2021 NHD theme, “Communications in History:”
View examples here of award-winning projects from previous contests.
Sample topics from Wyoming history on the 2021 theme, “Communications in History:”
Wyoming newspapers and their times:
The Frontier Index: 'Press on Wheels' in a Partisan Time
Covering Cattle Kate: Newspapers and the Watson-Averell Lynching
James Hayford of the Laramie Sentinel
The Sagebrush Philosopher: Merris Berrow and Bill Barlow’s Budget
E.T. Payton: Muckraker, Mental Patient and Advocate for the Mentally Ill
The 'Lyre Girls:' First Women Newspaper Owners in Wyoming
Tracy McCraken: From a $3,000 Loan to a Newspaper Empire
Newspaper War in Paradise: A 30-year Conflict in Jackson Hole
Bombardier Conservationist: Tom Bell and the High Country News
Ed Cantrell, Rock Springs and Boom-time Crime
Battling Monopoly: Northern Utilities and the Casper Star-Tribune
Protest
The University of Wyoming Textbook Controversy, 1947-48
High School Hair Wars: 1960s Casper board suspends boy's education
The Black 14: Race, Politics, Religion and Wyoming Football
Writers:
Asa Mercer and The Banditti of the Plains
Owen Wister: Inventor of the Good-guy Cowboy
The Old West's Female Champion: Caroline Lockhart and Wyoming's Cowboy Heritage
Grace Raymond Hebard: Shaping Wyoming's Past
Peggy Simson Curry, Wyoming's First Poet Laureate
Stand on South Pass: Wallace Stegner, the Wind and the West
Robert Roripaugh, Wyoming Poet Laureate 1995-2002
Wartime life and messaging
New Perspectives on the Fetterman Fight
Life on the Home Front: Wyoming During World War I
Shows, Show People and Orators
Feminist Orator Wows Territorial Cheyenne
Buffalo Bill and the Pony Express: Fame, Truth and Inventing the West
To 'Hold a More Brilliant Torch:' Suffragist and Orator Theresa Jenkins
Noted Beauty Coming:' Suffragist Campaigns Across Wyoming
Ed Farlow, Tim McCoy and Their Native Friends on Stage and Screen
A Stuntman's Jump: Parachutist Stranded for Days on Devils Tower
Artists and photographers
An Artist and the Fur Trade: the Wyoming Paintings of Alfred Jacob Miller
Albert Bierstadt: Landscapes of the American West
Jackson, William Henry: Foremost Photographer of the American West
Lora Webb Nichols: An Eye on Early Wyoming
J.E. Stimson and His Photographs
George Ostrom's War: A Wyoming Soldier-artist Serves in France
Wyoming's Long-lived Bucking Horse
The Fountain and the Mural: Remembering a Tragic Cowboy Welcome
Photographer on the Pitchfork: Charles Belden’s Version of the West
Painting Wyoming's Past: The Casper Army Air Base Servicemen's Club Murals
Who took the photo? Stories Conflict for Image of Ski Tracks on the Grand
Letter writers and diarists
The Utah War in Wyoming and the letters of Elizabeth Cumming
White and Native Views of the Platte Bridge Fight and the letters of Hervey Johnson and George Bent
Bob David's War: A Wyoming Soldier Serves in France
The Sticking Power of Ethel Waxham Love
Business
Industry, Politics and Power: The Union Pacific in Wyoming
The Diamond Hoax: a Bonanza That Never Was
Establishing Public TV in Wyoming
Coal Slurry: an Idea that Came and Went
Great places for primary sources on Wyoming history:
Wyoming Newspapers, a searchable database of nearly all Wyoming newspapers published before the mid-1920s.
American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming
Casper College Western History Center
Park County Archives, Cody
Sweetwater County Museum, Green River