Gay Day Alcorn

Alcorn, Gay Day

DOB December 15, 1943

Saratoga, WY 82331

Biographical and Professional Information

Gay Day Alcorn was born in Rawlins (Carbon County), Wyoming on December 15, 1943. The daughter of Saratoga ranchers Kenneth and Elizabeth Day, she has lived almost all of her life in Wyoming.

After graduating from the University of Wyoming in 1971 with a B.A. in education and a minor in music, Gay followed her lifetime interest in Wyoming and U.S. history. It all began when she was a little girl, visiting with her great-aunts Cora and Ida who talked to her by the hour about their neighbors and told her stories that they had heard from their father George Washington Drinkard, a newspaper columnist.

Alcorn is the author of many articles about the North Platte River Valley and she is best known for her book Tough Country, The History of the Saratoga & Encampment Valley 1825-1895, which is still available at ABEbooks.com.

The desire to discover and preserve the early history of Wyoming led her throughout the U.S., Scotland, England, and Mexico. As Gay likes to say, searching for documents took her literally from cabins to castles.

The English-Speaking Union’s New York City judges chose Tough Country in 1985 for the history section of their “Books Across the Sea” program, calling it “a great work on the American West experience.”

When she received the Homsher award from the Wyoming State Historical Society in 1997, they acknowledged her outstanding efforts saying that because of people like Alcorn, “Wyoming’s unique heritage is saved.”

Genres

Autobiography or Biography

History

Nonfiction

Wyoming Subjects

Titles

"Dear Children": The Letters, History and Family of George Washington Drinkard (2001). Saratoga, WY: Legacy Press.

Saratoga's Historic Hood House (1987). Saratoga, WY: Hood House, Inc.

Tough Country: The History of the Saratoga and Encampment Valley, 1825-1895 (1984). Saratoga, WY: Legacy Press.

Upcoming appearances

Friday night, July 31, 2009: 4:00-7:00 P.M., Saratoga Museum-just off Highway 130 Saratoga Historical & Cultural Association, 104 Constitution Avenue, Saratoga, Wyoming. Chamber of Commerce open house with Wyoming writers signing their books. Alcorn's books Hood House and Tough Country available for purchase in limited supply
Saturday, August 1, 2009: 10:00 A.M.-2:00 P.M., Pavilion-just off Highway 130

Saratoga Historical & Cultural Association, 104 Constitution Avenue, Saratoga, Wyoming
Forum and barbeque lunch with other Wyoming writers. Alcorn's books Hood House and Tough Country available for purchase in limited supply