AGNES WRIGHT SPRING PAPERS

Agnes Rebecca Wright was born January 5, 1894 in Delta, Colorado. Her family moved to a ranch on Wyoming's Little Laramie River when she was nine. Wright was the first woman editor of the student newspaper at the University of Wyoming and later edited the Pi Beta Phi sorority magazine. She also became the first woman to enroll in engineering at the University of Wyoming, graduating with a degree in civil engineering in 1913. Although Wright received the third highest test score in the United States on the civil service examination for draftsmen, she was told there were no openings for women in that field.

Wright became assistant state librarian for the Wyoming State Supreme Court at Cheyenne, Wyoming before receiving a scholarship to study at Columbia University's Pulitzer School of Journalism. While studying there in 1916 and 1917, she became friends with suffragettes Susan B. Anthony and Carrie Chapman Catt. When the journalism school closed in 1917, Wright returned to Wyoming to become the state historian, state librarian and state superintendent of weights and measures.

On Valentine's Day 1921, Wright married oil geologist, Archer Spring. The couple moved to Fort Collins, Colorado where, in 1930, they purchased a thirty-acre cherry orchard called Cherryhurst. Agnes Wright Spring published her first book in 1927 and subsequently published more than twenty books and over 600 feature and fiction articles.

During the Depression, the Spring's cherry tree business failed and they returned to Wyoming, where Spring became director of the Wyoming Federal Writers Project. She served as women's editor for the Wyoming Stockman-Farmer for twenty-seven years and compiled a history of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association.

The Springs moved to Denver during World War II. Spring served as Colorado state historian from 1954 to 1963 - the only person to serve as state historian for two states. In 1961, Spring was the first woman to receive the distinguished alumni award from the University of Wyoming. She was also inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame. In 1978, the members of the Western Writers Association recognized her lifelong contributions to Western History by awarding her the Saddleman trophy. When she retired in 1963, Spring had worked for nine different governors in Colorado and Wyoming.

Agnes Wright Spring died in Fort Collins, Colorado on March 20, 1988. She was preceded in death by her husband in 1967, and she is buried at Greenhill Cemetery in Laramie, Wyoming.