New Edi­tion of Wyoming Almanac Now Available

Sept. 3, 2010 — Uni­ver­sity of Wyoming — Who drove the first car in Wyoming? What was the first radio mes­sage received in the state and who was the doc­tor who removed an arrow from Jim Bridger’s back?

The answers to these and scores of other ques­tions rang­ing from the triv­ial to the sig­nif­i­cant can be found in the sixth edi­tion of the Wyoming Almanac, writ­ten by broth­ers Phil, David and Steven Roberts and pub­lished by Sky­line West Press.

Phil is a Uni­ver­sity of Wyoming his­tory pro­fes­sor. David teaches jour­nal­ism at Mis­souri Val­ley Col­lege in Mar­shall. He founded the Med­i­cine Bow Post news­pa­per and also taught jour­nal­ism classes and served as a stu­dent pub­li­ca­tions adviser at UW. Steven taught his­tory and social stud­ies at Vet­eran and Moor­croft high schools and retired last year after a career in the U.S. Postal Ser­vice human resource division.

The book pro­vides a handy guide to Wyoming cul­ture, his­tory, pol­i­tics, sports, peo­ple, media, art and many other categories.

The Roberts broth­ers com­piled and pub­lished the first Wyoming Almanac in 1988. The vol­ume has grown from about 350 pages then to more than 600 pages in the 2010 edition.

The sixth edi­tion of the Wyoming Almanac is now avail­able. (Cour­tesy of the Uni­ver­sity of Wyoming)

“We found no sin­gle vol­ume that would pro­vide lists of firsts and seem­ingly triv­ial but fas­ci­nat­ing facts about Wyoming that would set­tle argu­ments or serve as a ‘fact-checker’ when needed for writ­ing news­pa­per arti­cles or pop­u­lar his­tor­i­cal fea­tures,” the authors wrote in that first introduction.

“Even with advances in tech­nol­ogy and the Inter­net, it still remains true with this newest edi­tion,” Phil Roberts says. Along with updates in exist­ing cat­e­gories, the 2010 Wyoming Almanac con­tains many entirely new sub­ject areas.

The almanac lists at $20 and is avail­able at many Wyoming book­stores. Many ideas for the sixth edi­tion were sub­mit­ted by peo­ple who read ear­lier edi­tions, Phil says.

“Not only did we include new mate­ri­als from read­ers, we fixed mis­takes read­ers brought to our atten­tion,” he said. “For instance, one ‘famous horse race’ listed as a fact in ear­lier edi­tions was moved to the cat­e­gory of ‘rumors and hoaxes’ when a reader pointed out that the much-heralded event actu­ally never happened.

“We are not experts in every area, and we’d be inter­ested in peo­ple sub­mit­ting new mate­r­ial,” he says.

For more infor­ma­tion, call Phil Roberts in Laramie, (307) 745‑8205.