Two of twelve children born to Anthony and Alice Sayer Wilkinson, owner/operators of a dairy and farmland as well as a public house and butcher shop in the county of Yorkshire, Northern England, these brothers entered the workforce early. Anthony was a farmworker at 16,...
Slim Whitt was born in Albion, Nebraska, on Dec. 26, 1929. His father died when he was five and his mother died four years later. At age 14 he caught a Greyhound bus that brought him to Cheyenne. He traveled north to the Bighorn Basin and worked on ranches around Shell,...
Ray Weber began his cowboy career riding a rocking horse and then riding the work horses on the family ranch near Baggs. As a youngster he pieced together scraps of leather and discarded saddle parts to make himself a saddle. He would ride out from the ranch with his...
Joseph Rex Wardell was the seventh child of nine born to homesteaders in the Green River Valley in Sublette County. The “Forks of the River” was where he grew up and learned to work at on the family ranch, which was known as a horse ranch and the boys had ample opportunity...
Rhea “Bud” Tillard was reared on the family ranch north of Douglas and has ranched and rodeoed most of his life. He competed at the NFR in steer roping twice and put on high school rodeos for 15 years. He has raised a 6th generation ranch family in the same place for 100...
Jack Sipe, the youngest of eight children, was named Howard, but when he was only a few days old he had colic and his crying led his dad to start calling him Jack, a name that stuck. He grew up on a ranch in Moorcroft Wyoming, with his parents and seven siblings until high...
Three-time World Champion Saddle Bronc Rider Cody Bill Smith, was reared in the Bear Creek area on the Wyoming-Montana line where he worked on several ranches. Smith has spent his life with horses – either trying to ride bucking horses or trying to master the methods of...
Born in May of 1882 at his parents’ public house “The Bluebell Inn” in Kettlewell, Yorkshire, England, Anthony Wilkinson Sedgwick was named after his mother’s brother. He had no more belief that he would become a Wyoming cowboy and rancher than he did that the Bluebell Inn...
Ralph Scott Jr. was 17 when the family moved from Colorado to Wyoming. He received his father’s herd of cattle at the train at Orin Junction and trailed them to Muddy Wagon Hound. Good with a rope, and adept on a rough string, he was his father’s rep on the last roundup...
Frank Rhodes was born March 14, 1919, at Powell, Wyoming, the son of Jack and Bessie Rhodes, the first of four children. They lived on Rawhide Creek, northwest of Meeteetse, Wyoming. Frank was only a few years old when the family moved to the Pitchfork Ranch on the...
Born in 1924 to Aldin and Ethel Reynolds on a ranch at Rocky Point, Charles “Ellis” Reynolds, was on a horse before he could walk. He doesn’t remember when he wasn’t breaking and training horses, both his own and others. It is said that if anyone ever had an “unrideable”...
Ben C. Reynolds was born Dec. 9, 1942 in Las Vegas, New Mexico, the son of Jimbo and Frances Reynolds. At the time his father worked for the Gill Cattle Company, and when Gill purchased a new ranch near Parkman, the family, including five-year-old Ben came to Wyoming....
Joseph Michael Maycock was born in southeastern Nebraska in 1873, and spent his childhood in the state. The severity of the winter of 1886 and 1887 branded Joseph’s mind with memories of starving range cattle drifting with the storms, and how his family had to struggle to...
Robert W. “Bob” Manning was born November 7, 1929, in Douglas. He was reared on the family ranch north of Douglas. At age four he started paint branding the ranch lambs, and by age seven single-handedly trailed a herd of brood mares and a stud from the Kane Ranch to the...
Will Jones is the second child of Harold and Sue Jones, born May 24, 1933, in Buffalo. His dad was an industrious laborer, ranch and farm hand, teamster and logger. He was horse savvy and had farrier skills. Young Will shadowed his dad, watching and learning of his many...
As a three-year-old James Edward “Jamis” Johnson would sneak out of the family ranch home and down to the barn where the horses were, setting a tone for the rest of his life. He has always had a love of and a way with horses. Johnson attended school in Casper at McKinley...
Raymond D. Hutson was born in 1938 to a cowboy family that used horses on a daily basis for all aspects of their ranch life. Part of his job on their ranch was to break the horses. After graduation, Raymond moved to Montana and continued working on ranches breaking,...
At age 11, Richard Quay “Dick” Hornbuckle left home in Colorado and headed north to Wyoming. His ambition was to be a cowboy there. He went to Cheyenne and when he was 12 or 13 years old, he found work breaking remounts for the U.S. Cavalry. When near 15 years of age, the...
In 1903 Guy Holt won the World Championship Bronco Rider contest at Cheyenne Frontier Days, riding Young Steamboat – the horse that was a half-brother to the famed Steamboat. He also won the Festival of Mountain and Plain in Denver in 1903, and that September he rode...
Jack Hickey was born June 27, 1929 in Lonetree, Wyoming, the son of Irma and Joe Hickey. He left formal book learning behind at an early age instinctively understanding everything he’d ever need to know could be learned from horses, cattle, country, and cowboys. Jack roped...
James Clay “Jim” Hageman grew up on a ranch near Shawnee, Wyoming, where he was the third child of six. He worked hard helping his folks milking cows and feeding chickens everyday before school, and riding plenty of horses. When the roads were snowed in, Jim rode his horse...
Robert Mills Grant learned cowboying and ranching on the ranch his Scottish grandparents Robert and Margert Grant established in 1884. He and his parents, Duncan and Cora Grant had a cow/calf operation. As a youngster he rode his horse to school on the CMD Ranch on Richeau...
Wheatland rancher Les Gore is a founding member of the Old Timer Rodeo Association (now called the National Senior Pro Rodeo Association). He ranches with his family on Fish Creek at the base of Laramie Peak. Reared on the family ranch, Les Gore began an early love affair...
Ron Garretson was a founder of the Donald Erickson Memorial Chariot Races in Saratoga, where he ran his own teams for many years, ultimately serving on the Interstate Chariot Racing board of directors. His early ranch work took place on the family ranch at Elk Mountain,...
John Robert “Cub” Forbes was raised on his parents’ ranch, the Bob and Betty Forbes Ranch in Barnum, Wyo. Forbes got his first horse Smarty Pants, when he was four years old, and he has been working with horses one way or another ever since. He helped on the family ranch...
Charles A. “Chuck” Fenton was born in Lost Springs, WY, where his family had a homestead, a saloon, and a livery stable. He completed his elementary schooling when the family lived at Lost Springs, WY. His father was also a deputy US Marshal. Chuck was the youngest of nine...
John C. Esau, the son of German immigrants, was born in a sod house in Hamilton County Nebraska. He was orphaned at a young age. His father passed away when he was only 3 and his mother when he was 10 leaving him to be raised by relatives and foster parents. By the time he...
Nate Champion may be one of the most recognized names in Wyoming history. This Kaycee area rancher was born Sept. 29, 1857, in Leander,Texas, the son of John and Nomi Champion. Nate grew up on his family`s farm near Round Rock, TX. He had 18 brothers and sisters and was...
Frank Carroll was born on May 13, 1919 on the Carroll Ranch on the Little Laramie River near Laramie, Wyoming. He was the third of eight children born to Thomas and Gertrude Carroll. He grew up on the Carroll Ranch where he learned to love livestock, especially horses, a...
There’s nothing like a fast horse to turn a young feller’s head, and way back in 1887 it was fast horses that lured 10-year-old Cam Camblin from Southeast Nebraska to Kansas. A quick, fearless, willing, and capable lad can be mighty handy around a racetrack so Cam had no...
Many a cowboy relied on the solid riding of Paul Bruegman, who was a three-time pickup man at the National Finals Rodeo. Paul owned the Bruegman Rodeo Company with his father George. He began working in the arena at Cheyenne Frontier Days as a pick up man from 1961 to 1987...
Billie Jean Shepperson Beaton spent her childhood and early years around Salt Creek, Wyoming. The railroad passed through the area and there were stockyards there, which became her hangout. Ranchers from all over Johnson, Campbell, and Natrona counties would trail their...
Tim Barkhurst learned much about cowboy ways from his uncle Jess Barkhurst, who rode with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West. While growing up on the family ranch on Brush Creek, south of Saratoga, Tim built his first bucking chutes at the age of 4 or 5. Tim attended the Bennett...