Casper native Steven Dacus has done a lot of cool things — cruised through Casper streets with lights and siren as a firefighter, led horse-mounted cavalry at Gettysburg, and this summer helped launch a new website for Civil War historians that saves them a lot of time and money.
Casper native Steven Dacus has done a lot of cool things — cruised through Casper streets with lights and siren as a firefighter, led horse-mounted cavalry at Gettysburg, and this summer helped launch a new website for Civil War historians that saves them a lot of time and money.
Dacus is one of the driving forces behind the new website ResearchArsenal.com. The website allows historians — amateur and professional — to dig into the nitty gritty of Civil War regiments, weapons and uniforms, or just to see how that great-great-great uncle lived on the battlefields from 1861-1865.
“The whole premise is to have a one-stop spot for researching mid-19th century history,” Dacus said. “We have been working on it for about five years. We just made it public on June 2, and the vast majority of what we have is from private collections. We have 30,000 pages of letters that people can keyword search.”
There are also 10,000 photographs that can be keyword searched: for weapons, uniform, place or even hairstyle.
You can read more in an article by Dale Killingbeck published in the http://cowboystatedaily.com/ at https://cowboystatedaily.com/2023/12/10/casper-based-database-revolutionizes-virtual-access-for-civil-war-buffs/.