Explore the Wyoming Veterans Memorial Museum
The Wyoming Veterans Memorial Museum offers visitors a rare opportunity to explore World War II history within the former Casper Army Air Base at the Casper-Natrona County International Airport. Approximately 85 of the base’s original buildings remain, including all of its original hangars, making it one of the nation’s most complete surviving World War II Army Air Forces installations. Museum Director John Woodward, a historian and cultural resource professional with nearly two decades of experience, helps preserve the base and share the stories of the people who served there.
Why the Casper Army Air Base is Historically Significant
Many of the hangars, workshops and aging buildings scattered around the Casper-Natrona County International Airport are surviving pieces of the Casper Army Air Base, where World War II bomber crews completed the final stage of their training before heading overseas.
Of more than 400 buildings constructed at the base in 1942, about 85 remain today, along with all of the original hangars and examples of nearly every type of building once found there.
"We're the most unique in that we're the most complete out of all of the Army Air Force bases that were built in World War II," said John Woodward, Director of the Wyoming Veterans Memorial Museum.
And tucked among those surviving buildings is the museum John oversees, housed inside the base's former Enlisted Men's Service Club.
It's difficult to separate the museum from the place around it. That's part of what makes visiting it unusual. You aren't learning about a vanished military installation from somewhere else. You're standing inside it.
Meet the Historian Preserving the Casper Army Air Base's Stories
John has spent his career preserving places and the stories attached to them. He began working in cultural resource management in 2008 at the University of Wyoming's archaeological repository while completing his undergraduate degree and master's degree in history. Museum positions took him to Lexington, Nebraska, then Sheridan, Wyoming, before he came to Casper in 2018.
Military artifacts had always appeared in the community collections he worked with, but Casper required him to dig much deeper.
"When I came to Casper, that was the sole focus," John said. "So I really jumped feet first into learning more about military history, military culture."
That meant learning the story written into the landscape surrounding his new museum.
The History of Casper Army Air Base
The U.S. military began considering Natrona County for a potential base in the summer of 1941, before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Construction was authorized in April 1942 and began in May. By September, the base was active.
The Casper Army Air Base wasn't a basic training facility. Most of the men arriving here had already spent months in uniform. Casper was one of their final stops before combat.
"We were the last stop on our training pipeline that brought people from across the country," John said.
Crews trained first in B-17s and later B-24s until the base was mothballed in 1945. The property was eventually transferred to Natrona County, and many of its buildings found new purposes. Former barracks became storage and workshops. Larger structures were adapted for industrial uses. Hangars continued serving aviation.
Some buildings disappeared, but enough survived that the former base was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2000.
How the Wyoming Veterans Memorial Museum Began
The museum came from an effort to make sure the stories connected to those buildings survived too.
In 1998, Joy Keating and a group of veterans and volunteers established what would become the Wyoming Veterans Memorial Museum. Joy had her own connection to the base. As a teenager during World War II, she worked there as a civilian secretary and met her future husband, Frank, an officer stationed at the base.
Today, John works alongside curator Daisy Allen and a small group of volunteers to preserve a much broader story of Wyoming's veterans.
Inside the Renovated Wyoming Veterans Memorial Museum
The museum recently completed a $2.6 million renovation, the first substantial renovation in the building's history. It was no small undertaking for a structure that was never expected to still be standing.
"Most of those World War II-era buildings were only designed to last five to 10 years," John said.
Now more than 80 years old, the former service club has a new roof, siding, HVAC system, accessible entrances and bathrooms, paved parking and landscaping.
Some of its most remarkable features, however, have been there almost from the beginning. Fifteen mural panels painted in 1943 and 1944 still line the main gallery, depicting 22 scenes from Native American mythology and Wyoming history.
The Stories of Wyoming's Veterans
The building tells one part of the story. The collections inside tell thousands more.
For John, military history isn't simply a chronology of wars, weapons and uniforms. Those things provide context for the people at the center of the museum.
"We're about telling stories," he said.
Visitors may encounter a veteran's military service and then follow that person home to Wyoming, where they became teachers, public officials, business owners, parents and community members.
"We believe their service continues even after they hang up the uniform," John said.
That idea changes the way you look at the museum, and perhaps the old air base around it.
Experience WWII History Where It Happened
These buildings were never meant to last this long. The people who passed through them were often here only briefly before moving on to whatever came next.
More than eight decades later, enough remains to walk through that history in the place where it happened.
And thanks to John and the people who have worked to preserve it, the stories of those who served here, and Wyoming veterans who served far beyond it, remain part of Casper's story too.
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