The Lariat Award was created in 2006 and recognizes a company or individual who has shown exceptional support for WWA and for the literature of the American West.
| 2022 | BPI |
| 2021 | Denver Public Library, Western History Collections |
| 2020 | Wolfpack Publishing |
| 2019 | Bobby Daniels |
| 2018 | The Arthur H. Clark Company |
| 2017 | University of Nebraska Press |
| 2016 | TwoDot |
| 2015 | Walmart and ANConnect, Booksellers |
| 2014 | Emil Franzi, radio host of Voices of the West |
| 2013 | Five Star Publishing, publisher of historical and Western novels |
| 2012 | Nancy Curtis/High Plains Press, publisher of many award winning books about Wyoming and the West |
| 2011 | Luther Wilson, former director of University of New Mexico Press |
| 2010 | Dorchester Publishing, publisher of multiple western titles under the Leisure Books imprint |
| 2009 | University of Oklahoma Press, distinguished publisher of Western fiction and nonfiction and recipient of numerous Spur Awards, and the first university press established in the Southwest |
| 2008 | True West magazine, Western history magazine founded in 1953, revamped and reimagined by historian/artist Bob Boze Bell when he took it over in the late 1990s |
| 2007 | The first Lariat Award to an individual was presented to Tom Doherty of Tor-Forge Publishing. His firm has produced three WWA anthologies and generated fourteen Spur Awards through 2006 |
| 2006 | The first Lariat Award was presented to the Caxton Publishing, one of the oldest Western publishers and a long-time champion of WWA |