Wyoming Agricultural Experiment Stations 125 Years of Service

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Wyoming Agricultural Experiment Station:

125 YEARS OF SERVICE David Kruger Agricultural Liason Librarian UW Libraries

With roots planted only one year after historic Fort Laramie was decommissioned, Wyoming citizens reap the rewards of research pivoting the state’s focus toward the future

93-year-old man this past February made his way inside the Powell Research and Extension Center, ostensibly to sit down and talk about the Wyoming Agricultural Experiment Station (WAES) and its history as he knew it. That man, known by many in WAES as Jay Partridge, was a significant part of WAES’s 125-year legacy and particularly the Powell Research and Extension Center (PREC), serving from 1952 until his retirement in 1988. “I started out testing soils,” the former PREC superintendent recalled. “Farmers would bring in soil samples and I would make a recommendation as to how much fertilizer they should put on for how much they were growing. I ran a lot of research projects to help a lot of farmers out around here: corn, beans, alfalfa. Most of my research projects were in the Heart Mountain area. Some in the Worland area, and some

between Cody and Greybull. Some even in the Star Valley area.” The celebration of the WAES and its 125th anniversary is really a celebration of service between agricultural researchers and agricultural producers, ultimately in an ongoing effort to improve Wyoming agriculture. The experiment station is, in actuality, nearly as old as Wyoming itself, signed into law in 1891 just a few months after Wyoming attained statehood.

Differentiating between WAES and UW Extension Recognizing the distinctive nature of WAES is often difficult for many Wyoming residents in the 21st century. Hearing longtime experiment station farms simply referred to as “extension farms” is not uncommon,

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