
Awards
Western Heritage Award winners
Every winner of a Western Heritage Award receives The Bronze Wrangler, which is given annually by the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum to honor the top works in Western music, film, television and literature.
Telling the tales, singing the songs of the West
One of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum’s most important roles is preserving the history of the West. With the Western Heritage Awards, we celebrate all the different ways in which that history is gathered, interpreted, analyzed and celebrated.
These awards include many of the best people through whom the West had come to life: Authors like Cormac McCarthy and Barbara Kingsolver and songwriters like the legendary Red Steagall and Riders in the Sky.
Our awards have evolved from Western TV favorites like “Gunsmoke” to the gritty melodramas of “Yellowstone”. These awards include historians, documentarians and poets. If someone is transforming the way we think about and honor the West, they are welcome in the Western Heritage Awards.
Western Heritage Awards Class of 2025


The Colfax County War: Violence and Corruption in Territorial New Mexico

Making the Unknown Known: Women in Early Texas Art, 1860s–1960s

Glory Be! It’s Punkin’s Story!

After Birth

Malas

Earl’s Own Dakota Odyssey

“I Am A Cowboy”

On the Trail with The Lonesome Pines

The Roundup: A Cowboy State Daily Podcast with “Longmire” Author Craig Johnson

Tokyo Cowboy

Playing Cowboy
