Wayne D. Overholser
writer (1906–1996)
Wayne D. Overholser (September 4, 1906, in Pomeroy, Washington – August 27, 1996, in Boulder, Colorado), was an American Western writer. Overholser won the 1953 First Spur Award for Best Western Novel for Law Man using the pseudonym Lee Leighton. Law Man was made into the motion picture Star in the Dust, starring John Agar and Richard Boone (and Clint Eastwood in his first - uncredited - Western role), in 1956. In 1955 he won the 1954 (second) Spur Award for The Violent Land. He won the Spur Award for a third time in 1969 for his juvenile novel about the Meeker Massacre, with Lewis Patten. Three additional pseudonyms were John S. Daniels, Dan J. Stevens and Joseph Wayne; combinations of his three sons' names.
Early life
Overholser grew up on two different farms in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. He graduated from Pleasant Hill High School in 1924. He first attended Albany College, then the Oregon Normal School. He taught school in Tillamook and Bend.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Wayne D. Overholser” is writer (1906–1996). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Wayne, Overholser and writer, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2553043. VIAF identifies the subject as 30881912. The Library of Congress control number is n82070462. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1906, 1996, 1953 and 1956.
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This entry incorporates text from “Wayne D. Overholser” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.