Walter Stanley Vestal was born to Walter and Isabella "Daisy" Vestal near Severy, Kansas on August 15, 1877. Vestal’s father died when he was young. His mother remarried and Vestal took the surname Campbell from his stepfather. In about 1889, the Campbell family relocated from Kansas to the Oklahoma Territory.

Vestal graduated from Southwestern Oklahoma State University and was a Rhodes Scholar, earning a B.A. and a M.A. in English at Oxford.

Vestal became a professor at the University of Oklahoma after serving as a Captain in an Artillery regiment in World War I.

Between 1927 and his death from a heart attack on Christmas Day 1957, Vestal wrote over twenty books and as many as 100 articles about the old West. He is buried at the Custer National Cemetery in Big Horn County, Montana.

• Fandango; Ballads of the Old West, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1927
• Mountain Men', Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1927
• Kit Carson, the Happy Warrior of the West, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1928
• Dobe Walls a Story of Kit Carson's Southwest, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1929
• Sitting Bull-Champion of the Sioux-a Biography, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1932
• New Sources of Indian History 1850-1891. The Ghost Dance. The Prairie Sioux . A Miscellany'. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1934
• The Wine Room Murder, Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1935
• *Revolt On The Border, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1938
• Happy Hunting Grounds, Lyons and Carnahan, 1938, Chicago, IL
• The Old Santa Fe Trail, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1939
• King of the Fur Traders: The Deeds and Deviltry of Pierre Esprit Radisson, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1940
• Big Foot Wallace, A Biography', Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1942
• Jim Bridger Mountain Man, William Morrow, New York, 1946
• Joe Meek, The Merry Mountain Man, Caxton, Caldwell, Caldwell, ID, 1952
• Short Grass Country', Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York, NY., 1941
• The Missouri, Farrar & Rinehart, New York, 1945 (Volume 26 of the Rivers of America Series)
• Warpath and Council Fire: The Plains Indians' Struggle for Survival in War and in Diplomacy, 1851-1891, Random House, New York, 1948
• Queen of Cowtowns: Dodge City,: "the wickedest little city in America," 1872 - 1886, Harper Brothers, New York, 1952

• The Book Lover's Southwest: A guide to good reading, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1955

• The Indian Tipi: Its History, Construction, and Use, (with Reginald Laubin & Gladys Laubin, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1957