Find Your West

The American West is difficult to define and far more complex than stereotypes suggest. It is a destination, an experience, an idea, and for some even home. It has few boundaries and crosses cultures, geography, socioeconomics, gender, age, and eras. Photographs from the Museum’s Dickinson Research Center (DRC) reveal this diversity in Find Your West. At its core, history is not about dates and events, but the people who experienced them. Not just the famous, but the everyday and ordinary. Visitors meet husbands and fathers, mothers and daughters, brothers and sisters, and family and friends. Through painting, tilling, photographing, riding, roping, conserving, defending, acting, weaving, and ranching, they found their West. Now we invite the public to find theirs—at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.