Will Bagley

Will Bagley (born 1950) is a historian specializing in the history of the Western United States and the American Old West. Bagley has written about the fur trade, overland emigration, American Indians, military history, frontier violence, railroads, mining, and Utah and the Mormons.

William Grant Bagley was born to Lawrence Miles Bagley and Margene Bailey Bagley on May 27, 1950 in Salt Lake City. From the age of nine he was raised in Oceanside, California, where his father was a long-serving mayor in the 1980s. His younger brother Pat Bagley became the notable Salt Lake Tribune editorial cartoonist and they are the uncles of professional surfer Dusty Payne. Bagley attended Brigham Young University in 1967–68, and then he transferred to University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC), where he obtained his B.A. in History in 1971. At Santa Cruz Bagley studied writing with Page Stegner and history with John Dizikes. He graduated from UCSC between Richard White and Patty Limerick, two of the leading lights of the "New Western History." While at UCSC he received the California State Scholar and President's Scholar awards. He considers an integral part of his education a trip he took in 1969, on a homemade raft built of framing lumber and barrels, down the Mississippi River from Rock Island, Illinois to New Orleans. After graduation he spent three years in North Carolina studying the local Bluegrass music and culture, and playing in bands.

...
Wikipedia