Credit: Courtesy of the Owen Wister Collection, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
On the advice of his physician, Owen Wister in 1885 left Philadelphia for a ranch in Wyoming. There, Wister regained his health and became enthralled with the American West. Wister recorded his observations, stories, and anecdotes in a journal that he used to write The Virginian, the bestselling 1902 novel that initiated a genre of American westerns that continues to the present day.
