It was always my intention to cause Wyoming’s 180 million year history to come alive in my newest coffee table book about the state.  Called Wyoming at 125, Our Place in the West, we have attempted to show what Wyoming looked like over its long history.

In every nook and cranny, in every city and town, on every mountain and deep in every valley – well, Wyoming is full of great historical stories.

         Genesis of this new coffee table book was from the state of Wyoming when a couple of state agencies asked me to do a coffee table book to celebrate the 125^th anniversary of Wyoming’s statehood.

         We started with a blank sheet of paper on Dec. 15 and submitted the final book to the printer six months later on June 15. Whew!  Finished books are now on hand and are being distributed to quality bookstores around the state.  They are also available on our web site at www.wyomingwonders.com.

         As readers of my two earlier coffee table books know, I love to show off Wyoming with the best photography and most colorful photography possible.

         But if you want to publish outstanding color images, how do you do that with 100-year old, fuzzy, black and white photos?

         The great pioneer photographers, J. E. Stimson, Charles Belden, William Henry Jackson, Frank Meyers and others were every bit as talented as today’s photographers, but were limited by antiquated equipment and horrible facilities. 

         In truth, their cameras, which were huge, took great photos.  It was almost impossible to get high quality black and white prints with 19^th century technology. And color was a half a century off into the future.

         Was I going to be stuck with publishing over 50 black and white photos?  Not so fast.

         In December I watched a program on the History Channel that featured photos of Abe Lincoln and the Civil War “in color.”    I tracked down the lab in Michigan, which had colorized those famous Mathew Brady images, and the problems with my Wyoming photos were solved.

         My new book has 52 of the most iconic historical photos ever taken in Wyoming.  Instead of being old, fuzzy and black and white, they now show up in our book as sharp and colorful.  They look like they were taken this week.

         So far, the people who have previewed the book are amazed.

         The book is jammed full of iconic Wyoming historical photos ranging from portraits of Chief Washakie and Buffalo Bill Cody to a photo of Amelia Earhart in Cheyenne celebrating her recent flight across the Atlantic.

         The worst passenger plane crash in American history up that point occurred in Wyoming in 1955. We have a photo of it that is sharpened and colorized.

         Some 99 men were killed in a mine in Kemmerer in 1924. We have a photo of bodies stacked on the floor of a dance hall with women going around lifting up the sheets to locate their dead husbands.

         In 1923, two Union Pacific trains collided head-on in downtown Rawlins.  Spectacular photo of that event.

         In 1936, the owner of the Pitchfork ranch in Meeteetse shipped antelope fawns on the Hindenburg from Lakehurst, NJ to Nazi Germany so Hitler’s minions could create a home for exotic animals.

         In 1921, an unknown photographer snapped a photo of three people visiting the Medicine Wheel. Oddly, there is a big rock wall around it? Where did it come from?  What happened to it?  Who tore it down?

         We have an 1868 photo of the railroad first arriving in Laramie. There is a photo of a wagon being ferried across the Big Horn River in the 1890s.

         Our cover photo is a shot of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show taken by Stimson.

         The book also features photos and artwork from National Geographic.  We have ten amazing stories by Tom Rea and the WyoHistory.org folks.  Phil Roberts and Mary Hopkins were my two main historical consultants on the book. Phil also had three major stories plus we put an excerpt at the end of each chapter featuring items from the Roberts brothers’ Wyoming Almanac series.

         Pat Schmidt, Gene Bryan, Ray Hunkins, Al Simpson, Rodger McDaniel and Randy Wagner also contributed wonderful stories to the book.

         The book was produced with encouragement and assistance from the Arts, Parks and Cultural Resources Agency (Milward Simpson, director) plus lots of enthusiasm from the Humanities Council staff and Gov. Matt Mead.

         Historic photos came from the state archives in Cheyenne, the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Western History Center at Casper College, Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody and the Lander Pioneer Museum.

         Amazing photos also came from Steve and Dana Cranfill of Cody and the National Guard Museum in Cheyenne.  Modern photos came from Richard Collier, Dan Hayward, Randy Wagner, Dewey Vanderhoff, Scott Copeland, Daryl Hunter, Shawn Rivett, Lona Patton and myself.

         I hope folks enjoy reading the new book as much as I enjoyed producing it. I think it is our best book yet.  We plan to bundle it with the other two coffee table books into a gift set called “The Wyoming Trilogy.”  Should be a fun Christmas gift this winter.