Paul L. Hedren

A native Minnesotan, Paul Hedren retired from the National Park Service in 2007 after some thirty-seven years as a park historian and superintendent at such storied places as Fort Laramie, Wyoming, the Golden Spike Site in Utah, Fort Union in North Dakota, and the Niobrara Scenic River in Nebraska. He devotes his time now to writing.

Paul is the author of scores of scholarly and popular articles appearing in magazines and journals far and wide, plus thirteen books, nearly all pertaining to the Great Sioux War of 1876-77. He particularly enjoys studying and interpreting that conflict’s subtleties and consequences, though he has also written about its great battles.

Paul has won numerous writing awards including a Spur from the Western Writers of America, the Vivian Paladin Award from the Montana Historical Society, and the Herbert Schell Award from the South Dakota State Historical Society. His 2011 book After Custer: Loss and Transformation in Sioux Country won a prestigious Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, and also the Sills Book Prize from the Custer Battlefield Historical & Museum Association (CBHMA). His 2016 and 2019 books, Powder River: Disastrous Opening of the Great Sioux War, and Rosebud, June 17, 1876, received respective John M. Carroll Awards from the Little Big Horn Associates.

Paul is now at work now on his fourteenth book, Sitting Bull's War, a unique recounting of that long and complicated story from the 1870s, told from the Lakota and Northern Cheyenne perspective and utilizing primary accounts of the war collected in the days when Indian survivors were willing to share their stories.