Formation 1961 Website www.westernhistory.org | Headquarters Fairbanks, Alaska | |
The Western History Association (WHA) was founded in 1961 at Santa Fe, New Mexico by Ray Allen Billington et al., with the following mission: "The Western History Association strives to be a congenial home for the study and teaching of all aspects of North American Wests, frontiers, homelands, and borderlands. Our mission is to cultivate the broadest appreciation of this diverse history." Included in the field of study are the American West and western Canada. The Western History Association is currently headquartered at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.
In 1964 WHA began publication at the University of Utah Press, with a full run of four issues, and then in 1965 contracted Sunset publishing to print the quarterly called The American West Magazine, edited by A. R. Mortensen. The WHA's publications now include the Western Historical Quarterly and Montana: The Magazine of Western History. The association offers several annual and biennial prizes for essays and books, including the annual Caughey Western History Association Prize for the best book of the year in Western History and the Robert M. Utley Book Award for the best book published on the military history of the frontier and western North America (including Mexico and Canada) from prehistory through the 20th century.