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