Grace Raymond Hebard (July 2, 1861 – October 1936) was an American historian, suffragist, scholar, writer, political economist, and noted University of Wyoming educator.

Today, her books on Wyoming history are sometimes challenged due to her romanticization of the Old West, spurring questions regarding accuracy of her research findings.

In particular, her conclusion after decades of field research that Sacajawea (participant in the Lewis and Clark Expedition) was buried in Wyoming's Wind River Indian Reservation is questioned.

[5] In later years, Hebard reflected in a 1928 letter to a colleague on her singular experience as a female engineering student: "I met with many discouragements and many sneers and much opposition to my enrolling in the scientific course, which was then entirely a man's college.

Rowdy cowhands wearing guns in the saloons and prostitutes openly plying their trade in brothels made for a sometimes raucous downtown.

The young engineer found work at the surveyor general's office, where she served as the only female draftsman in the city, according to the University of Wyoming archives.

Laramie's scruffy prairie campus became the locale from which Hebard launched a storied career in higher education, devoting more than 45 years (1891–1936) to the University of Wyoming.

Senator Joseph M. Carey of Cheyenne, whom she had known since childhood[4] into an appointment by acting Governor Amos Barber as a salaried secretary to and member of the University of Wyoming Board of Trustees.

One sharply worded account claimed: "It's a standing remark in Laramie that no professor or employee of the institution can hold his job without being branded 'OK' by Miss Secretary Hebard, and whenever she decrees it the president's head will fall in the basket.

[3] Critics such as author Mike Mackey assert that "Hebard's 'histories' have resulted in many interpretations in Wyoming of past events which never took place, but are now believed by many in the state to be facts."

'"[12] In particular, Hebard's 30 years of research which lead to the 1933 biography of the Shoshone woman who accompanied the Lewis and Clark Expedition is called into question by critics.

[1] Hebard presents a stout-hearted woman in a biography that is "undeniably long on romance and short on hard evidence, suffering from a sentimentalization of Indian culture".

A person, according to testimony gathered by Hebard, so revered by the Whites that she rode stagecoaches for free and who "rendered great service both in urging the Shoshones to learn to farm ... and that the buffalo and other game animals would soon be gone.

Hebard further expands on the actions of the valiant Large: "An ancient, white-haired woman sprang forward, took the ropes in her own hands, and, bracing herself, successfully lowered the box to its resting place with a dexterity that challenged the skill of the young men present.

Summers often found her bouncing along Wyoming's sagebrush rangeland, sometimes by horse and wagon and later by automobile, searching for Oregon Trail ruts or seeking to locate yet another historic site or pioneer to corner for an interview.

Hebard saluted his work locating and marking old western trails during a period of eight years noting that: "Here and there Captain Nickerson has placed stones, boulders and slabs of native material on which he, in the open, has carved with his chisels and mallet inscriptions and notations.

Yet Wyoming's isolated rangeland and mountain passes did not prevent trail boosters such as Hebard and the Daughters of the American Revolution from staging formal unveiling ceremonies with a pageantry of music and "religious, patriotic and historical exercises, prayer, national songs and addresses.

"[14] Stone markers placed by Nickerson, Ezra Meeker, Hebard, and others (some weighing several tons)[14] are still found throughout Wyoming and are monuments to the state's early historic preservation efforts.

Scholar Frank Van Nuys notes that a Wyoming News testimonial expressed in 1935 that Dr. Hebard's "certificates of preparation for naturalization were accepted by the United States District Court in lieu of examinations for citizenship."

While the evidence of her work is fragmentary, it nonetheless places Hebard within an essentially progressive tradition of qualified optimism about immigrants' ability to assimilate to Anglo-American cultural norms.

[citation needed] On September 2, 1885, rioters killed at least 28 Chinese miners and wounded 15 in a violent labor dispute, since dubbed the "Rock Springs Massacre."

The way Hebard lived her feminist life, including her deep relationship with fellow Professor Agnes M. Wergeland, spoke volumes about her worldview.

Suffragists were not so celebratory two years later when legislators seeking to repeal women's enfranchisement failed by a single vote, according to historian Phil Roberts.

"[6] Yet it was because of such anti-suffragists that Esther Hobart Morris made history for women in Wyoming in 1870 when she received an appointment as the nation's first female justice of the peace.

Hebard and Nickerson erected a rock cairn monument in 1920 near Morris' South Pass City cabin as a crude memorial.

The Wyoming Division of State Park's and Historic Sites has tried to correct the record noting that "recent studies indicate that [William H.]Bright was the only author of the suffrage bill.

Hebard teamed up with Professor June Downey to convince faculty members to award the University of Wyoming's first honorary degree to Carrie Chapman Catt.

The influence and impact of Hebard's life in part can be measured by the attendees at her funeral and contributors to the 50-page "In Memoriam" program published by her fellow faculty.

"[4] Other contributors to the memorial program characteristically presented Hebard as a multi-faceted, action-driven feminist with a penchant for history and trail marking.

A plaque memorializing Hebard is mounted on the famed Oregon Trail icon, Independence Rock; located in barren central Wyoming, about 50 miles southwest of Casper.