Virulence shifts in populations of *Puccinia striiformis* f. sp. *tritici* (*Pst*), the causal pathogen of wheat stripe rust, are a major challenge to resistance breeding. The majority of known resistance genes are already ineffective against current races of *Pst*, necessitating the identification and introgression of new sources of resistance. Germplasm core collections that reflect the range of genetic and phenotypic diversity of crop species are ideal platforms for examining the genetic architecture of complex traits such as resistance to stripe rust. We report the results of genetic characterization and genome-wide association analysis (GWAS) for resistance to stripe rust in a core subset of 1175 accessions in the National Small Grains Collection (NSGC) winter wheat germplasm collection, based on genotyping with the wheat 9K single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) iSelect assay and phenotyping of seedling and adult plants under natural disease epidemics in four environments.