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.

Qualifications Explore the Winners

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.