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 2024
Mo Brings Plenty
The Rediscovery of America
Bighorn Visions: The Photography of Jessamine Spear Johnson
Heartwood Mountain: The Adventures of Wilder Good #8
The Geddes Murder Trial: Gender, Race, and Murder-for-Hire in Montana’s Criminal Justice System
The Ways of Water: A Novel
The Best Material for the Artist in the World
The Shelter of the Wildwood
From The Saddle To Symphony Hall
Today’s Wild West: Episode 603
Ride
Lakota Nation vs. United States
Hózhó náhásdlįį (Beauty is Restored),” Dark Winds
The Warrant: Breaker’s Law
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