The Western Governors’ Association is created through a merger of the Western Governors Conference and the Western Governors Policy Office during a joint meeting in Washington, D.C. in February 1984. The 19 Governors of the newly formed Assocation locate WGA's headquarters in Denver, Colorado. Hawaii Governor George Ariyoshi is elected as the Association's inaugural Chair and Colorado Governor Richard Lamb as its Vice Chair. The Association's first Annual Meeting is held in Palm Springs, California on May 20-23, 1984.  

The Western Governors' Association establishes a Technical Advisory Group of representatives from western states to help ensure the “safe and uneventful” shipment of radioactive waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. The first shipment of defense generated transuranic waste arrives in May 1999. Today, after over 5,000 safe shipments of transuranic waste, the facility holds up to 6.2 million cubic feet of nuclear waste. On Oct. 4, 2023, the New Mexico Environment Department issued a 10-year renewal of the operations permit. 

The Western Governors' Association publishes ‘Beyond the Mythic West.’ The book combines essays from five prominent western writers (Stewart Udall, Patricia Limerick, Charles Wilkinson, John Volkman, and William Kittredge) with the color photographs of thirteen western photographers to form a tribute to the American West. Its genesis is “founded in the desire to define the true West, the West beyond the narrow myth, the West of marvelous people and rich cultures, the West that is looking forward to the future.” 

Western Governors create the Interstate Technology and Regulatory Council (ITRC) out of the Federal Advisory Committee to Develop On-Site Innovative Technology (DOIT Committee) to “identify, evaluate, and test, new more cooperative approaches to deploying promising innovative waste remediation technologies and cleaning up federal waste sites." Today, ITRC produces documents and training that broaden and deepen technical knowledge and expedite quality regulatory decision making, while protecting human health and the environment. 

Western Governors launch Western Governors University, one of the first internet-based education alternatives. WGU, which pioneers the innovative learning model of competency-based education, is later established as an independent entity. Today, WGU has become one of the largest universities in the country that proudly recognizes over 265,000 alumni in all 50 states and around the world. WGU is unique for its competency-based model.  

In August 2001 the Secretaries of Agriculture and Interior joined the Western Governors’ Association, National Association of State Foresters, National Association of Counties, and the Intertribal Timber Council endorse “A Collaborative Approach for Reducing Wildland Fire Risks to Communities and the Environment: A 10-Year Comprehensive Strategy.” The report leads to the development of the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy in 2002 and the Wildfire Crisis Strategy in 2022. 

Following WGA's formation of the Western Drought Coordination Council in 1997, Congress enacts the National Drought Policy Act in July 1998, directing the National Drought Policy Commission to create "an integrated, coordinated Federal policy designed to prepare for and respond to serious drought emergencies.” In 2003, that vision is articulated in a WGA report entitled, Creating A Drought Early Warning System for the 21st Century: The National Integrated Drought Information System. Recommendations from that report were key to the creation of the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) in 2006, which today is a multi-agency partnership that coordinates drought monitoring, forecasting, planning, and information at national, state, and local levels across the country. 

In 2007 the Western Governors’ Association launched the “Wildlife Corridors Initiative.” The initiative was a multi-state collaboration that identified key wildlife corridors and crucial wildlife habitats, and then made recommendations on how to preserve those landscapes. This work led to the creation of the Western Governors’ Wildlife Council in 2008. In 2013 it unveils the Crucial Habitat Assessment Tool (CHAT), a cooperative effort of 16 Western states that provides a high-level overview of “crucial habitat” across the West and issued guidelines to help each state prioritize habitat within its boundaries to meet its specific conservation objectives. In 2015, WGA turns over management of CHAT to the Western Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies.

Western Governors launch the Sage Grouse Task Force with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to coordinate sage grouse conservation across the West. Governors Matt Mead of Wyoming and John Hickenlooper of Colorado co-chair the task force with BLM Director Bob Abbey. The Western Governors’ Association help manage the discussions that led to the 2015 decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to not list the greater sage-grouse under the Endangered Species Act.  Governor Mead said the “cooperative effort at the local level, the state level and the federal level” has allowed land managers to find “the skeleton key that opens the door for a better path on how to deal with endangered species.”

In conjunction with the Western States Water Council, the Sandia National Lab, and the U.S. Department of Energy, the Western Governors' Assocation launches the Water Data Exchange (WaDE) Program in 2012. Its mission is to assist WSWC member states in publicly sharing water rights, allocation, supply, and use data through a common streamlined and standardized service that enables both state and regional analyses to inform water resources planning and policies. Today, WaDE is one of the major data hubs of the Internet of Water. In addition, the WaDE Program developed a metadata dictionary with controlled vocabularies that have become the standard method for sharing state-agency water use data between WaDE and the USGS Water Use Data Research (WUDR) Program.

Western Governors release the Regulatory and Permitting Information Desktop (RAPID) online toolkit in partnership with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to tackle the challenge of transmission line siting and permitting in the West by integrating important information related to potential transmission routes and key permitting and siting requirements of federal and state agencies into one website. Today, the RAPID Toolkit has been expanded to include information about developing and permitting hydropower projects.  

The Western Governors’ Association and the U.S. Department of Agriculture signed a Memorandum of Understanding to “establish a framework to allow the Forest Service and WGA to work collaboratively to accomplish mutual goals, further common interests, and effectively respond to the increasing suite of challenges facing western landscapes.” The agreement is the first shared stewardship the USDA signed with an entity outside of the federal government.  

Western Governors and the U.S. Department of Agriculture signed a Shared Stewardship Memorandum of Understanding to address the large-scale infestation of invasive annual grasses on western forests and rangelands. As part of the agreement, WGA launches the Western Invasive Species Council to coordinate regional efforts for controlling invasive species and releases “A Toolkit for Annual Invasive Grasses,” which helped develop a new conceptual management model known as “Defend the Core, Grow the Core."

At the culmination of former Oregon Governor Kate Brown's WGA Chair Initiative, The Electric Vehicle Roadmap, nine western Governors (Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon Utah, and Washington) sign an MOU “to pursue opportunities, among interested states, to standardize technical specifications between existing sub-regional state electric vehicles collaboratives and produce an expanded regional agreement on electric vehicle infrastructure deployment. 

The Governors and the U.S. Department of Agriculture sign a Shared Stewardship Memorandum of Understanding to create the Task Force on Collaborative Conservation. The Task Force serves as a forum for federal, state, and territorial representatives to collaboratively respond to the land, water and wildlife challenges facing western landscapes through shared expertise and dialogue, strategic resource and capacity coordination, information and data sharing, and joint problem-solving. 

To celebrate the 40th Anniversary of WGA's founding on February 24, the WGA policy team joined nine Western Governors in Washington D.C. for WGA's Annual Cabinet Breakfast with U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra, Administrator of the Small Business Administration Isabella Casilla Guzman, and U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Dennis McDonough. While they were in the nation's capital, WGA's staff also met with 19 Senate offices from 11 western states.