Research

Lt. Josh Fowler 1871, Unthank Collection

FOLA Archives, UNT-5

Collections Research

Fort Laramie National Historic Site has and manages museum collections, an archives, and a research library that are available to researchers. The museum collection contains over 300,000 catalogued objects, including historic firearms, archeological artifacts, antique furniture, and more. The archives holds original documentation such as letters, certificates, and photographs of the military occupation of the fort as well as park administrative documents.

"[R]egional history cannot be written without two things," Odie B. Faulk wrote in "Regional History and the National Experience" (Great Plains Journal, Fall 1974, p. 106): "good libraries and good museums; and here, happily, the two go together. No historian can write without the hard work done by the collectors of the sources of regional history. Just as the bricklayer cannot work without bricks, or the carpenter without lumber, so also the regional historian cannot work without the diaries, letters, manuscripts, pictures, company records, periodicals, newspapers, pamphlets, and books housed in such institutions as this. These are the bricks of history, the lumber of literature."

For most researchers, the first stop at Fort Laramie National Historic Site is the park's research library, which contains books, journals/magazines, microfilm, and copies of selected historic documents such as military records. Over the decades, park staff and researchers also have compiled a names file that at present includes nearly 40,000 people who passed through or were associated with the fort. The next stop is the park's museum collections and archives.

To learn more about the museum, archives, and library collections; to submit a research request; or to schedule an appointment to conduct research, contact us by e-mail at [e-mail]. Although we do not have established days or hours when the library is open to the public or when researchers can access the museum collections and archives, we work to accommodate all requests submitted in advance. Depending on the nature of the request and availability of staff, responses to many emails can be expected within 7 to 14 days. Responses to requests that require research can be expected within 21 days.