Tommy Jarrard was born in Sheridan, and has been a cowboy since he started riding horses and working cattle on the family ranch long before he was old enough to go to school. He is a rancher, horseman, cowman, sheepman, cowboy. In the fall of 1962, when he was just 17...
Thomas Francis “Franny” Pearson was born in Burntfork, Wyoming. Fran grew up loving and caring for livestock and the land. There are many stories of him camping out with a herd of cattle, branding on the open range, roping, and riding horses. On February 13, 1942, when...
Teddy, or simply “Ted,” grew up on the family ranch just north of Lost Springs -- the family ranch that Ted would never leave, and later named Rocky Top Ranch, after the ranch’s most notable landmark. His childhood was spent mostly attending school and helping out with all...
Sue was born in Lancaster, California, on the Rancho La Liebre Ranch where her working cowboy parents Frank and Georgie Sicking were both employed. About the time Sue turned five, Frank and Georgie purchased their place south of Fallon, Nevada, where they raised hay and...
Alonzo, John Fee, William Gary, & Horace Greeley “Dutch” Stepp African Americans Alonzo and Esther Stepp brought their family, including sons John Fee and William Gary Stepp, from their home in Berea, Kentucky, to southwest Wyoming in the late 1890s. Another son,...
Stanley G. Murdock was born in Heber, Utah, on July 11, 1865. As a teenage lad, Stanley hired on with Texas cattle drives and guided a herd of several hundred Texas cattle through Utah into Wyoming. In 1883, when Stanley was 18 years old, Rody Thornton hired him to help...
Russell “Pinky” Walters was raised on a farming/cattle operation outside of Lingle. He participated in 4-H and FFA throughout his school years. He started riding bulls at the age of 16, much to his parent’s disapproval. Pinky attended Eastern Wyoming College for a while,...
When Ross was a young boy his parents homesteaded north of Bear Creek and east of Chugwater, and he lived and worked in this area his entire life. In the 1930s, he broke and sold horses to the Army. Ross was a natural horseman; his life revolved around horses from the time...
Ronald E. Crawford was born on the family homestead in Holt County Nebraska. In a one-room schoolhouse he managed, with some difficulty to complete his eighth grade education but cowboy life was calling, him. As early as nine years old, Ron was working on cattle drives for...
Bobby Good was born at a homestead on Beaver Creek near Shell. He loved the land, quality horses, good livestock, and the wisdom of the old-time ranchers who instilled in him the value of ranching and doing the work quietly and effectively. Bobby started riding horses when...
Robert Earl Curtis was born into a ranching family and was reared on the Pitchfork Ranch with his two brothers. Growing up he would work on the ranch with his dad. After graduating from high school, he married his high school sweetheart, Frances Hamby. He was a...
Raynard McKenzie was born in Montana but left home at age 13, coming to Wyoming where his first job was with rancher Sandy Perriman, at Powder River. Raynard trailed horses from Powder River to Gillette for two springs. It was a 70-mile trip and took three days. His pay...
Ralph Thomas Foster was born on January 3, 1930 to homesteaders Grace and John Foster. They lived on their Buffalo Creek ranch north of Leiter in Southeast Sheridan County. The family moved to town and this country boy would have had a much tougher time adjusting if not...
Patrick “Pat” Ace Miller was horseback from a very early age. As a young boy he rode from home to the Lance Creek School and later to catch the school bus into Lusk. In February of 1964, Pat married Beverly “Bev” Grant. After earning degrees from the University of Wyoming,...
Mel Stonehouse was three years old when his father froze to death in a snowstorm in 1915. Mel was placed in a Denver orphanage. He struggled until he escaped at age seven and began bouncing from one ranch to another trying to find enough work to survive. Mel ended up in...
Marie Jordan Bell was born in Laramie County to Iron Mountain rancher John L. Jordan and Jeannette Liggit Jordan. All Marie ever wanted to do was work outside with horses and cattle. She got her first horse at age four; broke her first horse at nine; worked extensively...
Elijah H. “Lige” Driskell (also spelled Driscoll, Driscol, Driskoll) was born in Kentucky. He left Missouri and went to California to hunt for gold. He came to Wyoming with Johnston’s army at the close of the Mexican war, and during the “war” with Mormon pioneers. The army...
Kenny’s 5th grade teacher, Mrs. Chaney, had a big impact on his life. She would read to the class every afternoon and Kenny learned to love the West and western ways through those books. One of his favorite authors early on was Will James. While in Mrs. Chaney’s 5th grade...
Kenneth Dean Canfield was born on February 28, 1919, on his father’s homestead southwest of Sundance on Inyan Kara Creek, Crook County, Wyoming. He was the son of Willard and Ada O’Haver Canfield. The Canfields came to Crook County from Wisconsin in immigrant cars in 1887....
As a child, Jack Darnell lived at Pilot Butte where his father was a ditch rider. While still a toddler they moved to Derby Dome Oil Field where his dad worked as a boiler and at age five, Jack started first grade. When his older sister started high school the family moved...
Jim Price spent his school years working for various ranches to include Bill Snodgrass, Louie Irene, the ID Ranch owned by the Miller Estate Company, and Miles Land & Livestock Company. Jim was known to be a good hand with a horse, could work cows like no other and was...
Jep learned to work on his family’s ranch at an early age. Once, when he was seven, he and sister Verla trailed a herd of horses that had been running on the desert, moving them forty miles in a day. Jep came by his love of horses naturally. His father, Ebb, loved his...
Pioneering runs deeply in Jean’s blood. Her Sherwin paternal family helped save the buffalo in Colorado; and her grandfather Len Sherwin instituted and produced a traveling Wild West Show around 1904. Jean’s personal ranching/cowboy legacy was honored at the American...
Jim Wilson was born in Platte County in 1932 and has ranched near Glendo his entire life. He attended the University of Wyoming, earning degrees in Agriculture Education and Animal Science while also competing on the UW rodeo team. From the time he was able to mount a...
James Delmar Baker, DVM, worked hard in school to make good grades and played basketball. After high school went to Casper College on a basketball scholarship and was the college’s first student to major in Pre-Veterinary Science. When he transferred to the vet medicine...
Fred was born and raised in the Douglas community growing up on the family ranch northeast of Douglas and north of Shawnee. Fred served in the 82nd Airborne Division in the U.S. Army during the Korean War. After having worked as foreman for the LAK Ranch at Osage, Fred...
Fred Wilson was born in Gillette in 1938. He was active in all sports in high school, basketball, football, and track. He attended Colorado State University on a track scholarship. After one year at CSU, he went to Casper College where he had been offered a rodeo...
Francis was born in the family’s Wyoming ranch home on the Cheyenne River (near present Mule Creek Junction). When he was three his Mother, going to the corrals to look at the new foals, stepped on a rusty nail, contracted blood poisoning, and died. His dad never...
Edward, or “Ed,” was born at Salem, Wyoming, west of Albin. His father, Hajelmer August Johnson was a Swedish immigrant. His mother, Janet Brown Johnson was the daughter of a coal miner. Just before Ed’s first birthday the family bought CP Ranch north of Albin on the...
Ed Cooper “Coop” was born in Faith, South Dakota, to Marie and Arthur Cooper on May 18, 1933. The family moved to Buckhorn, Wyoming in 1941. Ed attended school in Buckhorn and Newcastle. He landed his first job lambing for Howard Sheridan for $50 a month when he was 15...
Donnie was about five or six years old when his grandfather John A. Hanson purchased a first horse for the boy. He spent the majority of his youth helping his grandfather and Uncle Frank Hanson on the family ranch. After the purchase of his first horse, it became his...
Donald Kortes was born in Hanna, in 1917, to Andrew and Inez Kortes. He grew up on the family’s Black Canyon Ranch north of Hanna in the area known as Leo. As a young man he worked on the Buzzard Ranch and then went to work for Gus Nelson on the Lost Creek Ranch in 1936....
Don Proffit always knew he would be a cowboy, judging from scenes in his youth: choosing to ride a horse while his brother rode a bike, and making sure to brand his stick horses with a car cigarette lighter. Wyoming has been home to Claudia Hamilton Proffit nearly all of...
Dale M. Sims was born at his grandmother’s house in Greybull in 1937. He attended school at Avent Country School, Otto, and Greybull until his junior year when he married Bonnie LaRose Coguill on June 18, 1955. Dale worked at the Holzworth Farm in Worland until 1957,...
Chancy R. Wheeldon was raised on the family ranch in Horse Creek in Jackson Hole, and is the fourth generation to run the ranch. His family raised 140 head of draft and half draft horses, that were used for the hunting operation. Everyday when not in school he was helping...
A measure of Butch Reynolds is the fact that his high school class nominated him to the Wyoming Cowboy Hall of Fame at a recent reunion. Butch follows in his dad’s footsteps, not only in the WCHF, but also in ranching and cowboying. He was only seven when he and his...
Kenneth “Buss” M. Fear was born on the family ranch in Big Piney. He graduated from Big Piney High School and married his sweetheart, Mardell Bennett, in 1938. Soon after, the young couple moved to the cookhouse on the family ranch; they lived on the ranch until retiring...
Bertha Matilda Hamilton was born on Christmas Eve, in a two- room cabin on the Hill Ranch, which her father purchased from mountain man Amos Hill. While her older sister Allene enjoyed helping their mother with cooking, cleaning, and gardening, Bertha became her dad’s...
Ben Kern was nine years old when he arrived in Carbon County with his family. His father worked for the Dixon Ranch on the Albany-Carbon County line and Ben drove a team of horses during haying season on ranches near McFadden, Rock River, and Medicine Bow. He attended...
Born on an isolated ranch in the hills east of Sheridan, Archie L. Nash, an only child, created a bond with horses and animals from the very beginning. After graduating from Sheridan High School in 1922, he went on to attend Chillicothe School of Business in Chillicothe,...
As a child Aldin Reynolds lived in a sheep wagon on the prairie in the Weston and Rocky Point area. Aldin was riding at age four and rode to school at age five, staying at the teacherage during the winter months. By the time he was 13 he no longer attended school, but...