This 70th anniversary of Senator Lester Callaway Hunt’s death is an historic opportunity for us to remember the lessons of his life and death and a nation divided.

Civic Season encourages everyone to better understand our past and inspires us to shape our future. Each generation has strived to bring our founding ideals of freedom, equality, justice, and opportunity to life. Now, it is our turn!

A large part of Wyoming used to be French territory until the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. You can still see the borders while driving through the Red Desert at the Tri-territory historic site and the influence of the French can still be felt in place names around the state.

Richards’s diaries vividly describe a time long past, when manual labor and horse and mule power were the only means of accomplishing many tasks. How did William find the time and energy to keep a diary? Modern readers would do well to value his legacy, especially as we use power tools, drive around, correspond by text or email and otherwise benefit from life in the 21st century.

Barbara Smith of Rock Springs, Wyoming’s current poet laureate, a longtime teacher and writer of poems, essays and stories, has held the laureate position—poet lariat, people sometimes call it in Wyoming—only since last fall.

Wyoming fans of Masters of the Air, a new television series on Apple TV+ about U.S. Army Air Force combat over Europe in World War II, may have been surprised in the first episode to hear Austin Butler’s character, Gale Cleven, introduce himself as being from Casper. He points to Casper on a map. In a later episode, a second Wyoming character shows up, George Niethammer, played by Josh Dylan. Both men in fact were students at the University of Wyoming and college friends before the war.

The Civil War drew nearly all the Army’s attention and troops to the East, yet emigrants continued flooding west, many of them to escape the war. And the tribes resisted. Emigrant Tales of the Platte River Raids: An 1864 Trail Diary Companion gives background and context for the accounts of nearly 70 diarists who traveled the trails in 1864.

The old saw, “A bird in hand is worth two in the bush” has to do with procuring food. But when you are banding, you’re giving rather than taking.

If ever three children could be said to be “raised in isolation,” they were Allan, David and Phoebe Love on their family’s ranch on Muskrat Creek.

Last week in this space we detailed visits to Wyoming by presidents. Thanks to some alert readers, however, we’ve learned how wrong we were when we claimed those were the only ones.