History Day

Wyoming history is full of great research topics for History Day contest projects. To get the mental juices flowing, we have come up with some potential topics that fit with the 2024-2025 theme, Rights & Responsibilities in History.

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 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.

Wyoming History Day
Current year National History DayTheme Book

History Day 2021 Topic Ideas Using Wyoming State Archives sources

Annual Theme: Communication in History: The Key to Understanding

2021 Theme Narative from NHD

The ride of Portugee Phillips
Stage stations and their role in communication in early Wyoming
White Eagle speaks: The poetry and prose of a deaf Native American cowboy in Wyoming (meet White Eagle)
Newspaper editors and journalists in Wyoming:
- E.A. Slack - Cheyenne, Esther Morris' son and helped popularize his mother as the face of women's suffrage in Wyoming
- Caroline Lockhart - Cody, fearless journalist and independent rancher
- Merris Barlow - Douglas, the "Sagebrush Philosopher" (meet Merris Barlow)
- Bill Nye - Laramie, Wyoming's Mark Twain
- James Hayford - Laramie, (meet James Hayford)
- Gertrude and Laura Huntington - Saratoga, Wyoming's first newspaper owned by women (meet Gertrude and Laura Hutington)
- Tracy McCraken - Cheyenne
- Francis Brammar - Cheyenne, "One-Shot Bram" photographer/photo journalist
The region's first telephone conversation - Cheyenne to Laramie
Rural telephone operators
Women's editions in local newspapers
Lightening Creek Raid
Airmail - 2020 is the 100th anniversary in Wyoming
E.T. Peyton - journalist incarcerated in the Wyoming State Hospital
Ah Say - interpreter, consul, and leader of the Chinese community in Wyoming
Chief Washakie - leader of the Eastern Shoshone
Sharp Nose - a leader of the Northern Arapaho who petitioned the US Government to move his people from a dangerous situation
Wind River Tribal Business Council - a dialog between two tribes
Establishing public broadcasting and radio in Wyoming
The postal system in Wyoming - serving rural communities and cities (Wyoming postal route maps)
Use family, personal, business, or official correspondence to tell a story or learn about an event
- Letters between Esther Hobart Morris and her sons and her niece, Francis "Frankie" McQuigg Stewart (read their letters)
- Personal and business correspondence by John Feick, general contractor during the inital construction of the Wyoming Capitol Building
- Wyoming Governors' records (find them here)