The Wilkinsons were a large–and poor–family, living close to the land in the late 1800s, when the magic word “homestead” in America drew brothers Anthony, John, and Francis from Yorkshire, England, to ranch land around Horse Creek and Sprager Creek near the young town of...
George Donald “Powder River” Thompson was born in January 1895 in rural West Virginia to Frank H. Thompson and Annie J. Armstrong. After his mother died in 1901, his father remarried and by 1906 had moved the family west to Ekalaka, Montana. Much is unknown about Powder...
Wes Taylor worked for Eddie Moore at the Ogallala, for Tye Moore at the Buzzard, for Nimick at the Quarter Circle 41, and for Gammons at the Quarter Circle JP. Wes was in the service from 1959-60 until he was issued a Hardship Discharge when his Dad passed away. After that...
Bob was born February 4th, 1932 in Basin, Wyoming to Carl & Murial Snyder. He had 2 sisters and 1 brother. His dad was a sharecrop farmer in the Basin area. After the 9th grade he went to work as a ranch hand on neighboring ranches and worked his way over to the...
Floyd “Hawk” Shaffer was born April 8, 1902, in Sheridan Wyoming. He attended school through the eighth grade in Sheridan. He acquired his nickname, “Hawk”, while night hawking horses for a roundup outfit when he was about 15 or 16 years old. Most of his life was spent...
Harold Woods Scott was born September 29, 1907, the youngest son of Frank & Mollie Scott in Foster, Missouri. They moved to Campbell County, Wyoming in 1917 and filed on a homestead twenty miles north of Gillette on Wildcat Creek, which began the fulfillment of...
In the mid-thirties the going rate for “cowboying”, especially for a young teenage boy, was 50 cents a day. If you were experienced and could provide your own “cow horses” the monetary amount changed. Alden Robinson’s recollections included his ability to earn a dollar a...
Ben was born on a ranch in Sand Creek in northern Carbon County. The ranch where he was born is now part of the Buzzard Ranch. His father was a cowboy for Swan Land and Cattle Company and his mother taught school in the Sand Creek area. In his early child hood his parents...
Ray Rice was born July 22, 1943 in Worland, Wyoming, the youngest child of Vernon and Doris Rice. Ray grew up on the family ranch east of Ten Sleep, graduating from Ten Sleep High School in 1961. Growing up on the ranch Ray had an affinity for animals and a real talent for...
Howard Peterson was born in Glenwood, Utah in 1924. He loved to work on his father’s ranch and farm. Howard was always helping other families in the community with ranch work. You would find him riding his horse all over Glenwood area to do whatever needed to be completed...
Art began life near Wood River in Hall County, Nebraska. When he was four his family joined several others to travel by team and wagon to North Dakota. Men, women and children battled blizzards and every hardship imaginable before settling 45 miles south of Dickinson....
Otto Arthur Herman Miller was born December 16, 1908, near Lawton, Iowa, the son of Fredrich William Miller and Caroline Wilheimine Miller. Otto had three brothers and three sisters. Otto attended country schools near Keeline, Wyoming. He was baptized and confirmed in the...
In 1898, Hank Miles and his twin brother left Georgia and spent a short time in Utah. In 1900 he came to Wyoming and worked for one day in the coal mines in Hanna. One day was all it took for him to know that kind of life was not for him. He worked at a store in Hanna and...
James Oscar Middleton was born October 31, 1906 in Helena, Arkansas. He arrived in Wyoming with his family late fall of 1910 by train. It was bitter cold and he had on a straw hat and was barefoot. Solon Clark traveled by team and wagon from Old Woman Creek, Niobrara...
Cecil Vaughn McMillin came to Wyoming in 1913 with his folks, where they went to work on the Trail Creek Ranch, north of Cody. As an adult Cecil bought properties on Cottonwood Creek and on Trail Creek north of Cody, where he raised horses, cows, sheep and farmed. Cecil...
Walter C. “Buster” McIlvain was born on March 20, 1882 on LaBarge Creek, Wyoming to Robert McIlvain and Sarah Ann Woolworth McIlvain. Buster was raised on LaBarge Creek at the mouth of Little Spring Creek. He had four brothers and three sisters. Buster wrote the following...
J. William Martin was born in Evanston, Wyoming in 1941. He was raised by his parents Joseph B. and Elizabeth Maria Henry Martin, on a ranch south of Evanston known as “Hilliard” in Uinta county. His grandpa and grandma Martin homesteaded their ranch and helped his father...
Lewis “Junior” Martin lived as a Wyoming cowboy his whole life. He grew up on a ranch in Hilliard, Wyoming. At a very young age he developed a love of horses, rodeo, ranching, hunting, and working in the mountains. In 1941, he joined the Marine Corps and was honorably...
Born to be a cowboy in 1927, Hugh Maller grew up on the family ranch near Burlington. From his parents, Fred and Marie, he learned ranching, farming and the cowboy trade. His best friend was his horse. His sister, Inez, ran a close second. He rode horseback to a one-room...
Abner Luman was born in the 1840’s. At the age of fourteen, Abner Luman left his family farm in Kansas and started bull whacking on the Santa Fe Trail from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas to Fort Union, New Mexico. Luman left home again in the spring of 1864 with a four-yoke of...
Robert E Lozier “Bob” was born April 12, 1927, the oldest child of Robert “Rob” and Alice “Mum” Lozier at their homestead cabin on Willow Creek north of Pinedale. He grew up ranching with his father Rob, breaking horses, moving cows and general ranch work. In 1945 he...
Frank Perry Lilley was born Dec. 20, 1926, in Ft. Collins, CO. He was the son of Charles W. and Julia F. (Williams) Lilley. He was reared on the Table Mountain Ranch at Virginia Dale, CO and attended rural grade school there. He graduated from Lakewood High School and...
Dail Price Knori was born on June 21, 1935 in Jackson, Wyoming. Her parents were Doug and Ileta Wells Price. Her paternal grandmother, Cora Nelson Price Barker, was the first white child in Jackson Hole. Her father, “Slough Grass” Nelson homesteaded on what is now the...
Life time Carbon County Rancher Bert Johnson was born in 1936 in Laramie, Wyoming. The same year his dad Robert Johnson purchased and moved onto the A Bar One Ranch. Bert is the 2nd of 5 generations to enjoy and work on the family ranch. Bert went to grade school on the...
Bob was born at home on March 25, 1926 to Claude & Helen Isenberger. He had two brothers and four sisters. He attended country school until the 8th grade, then he went to Gillette for a year. He helped on the ranch after he left school, and worked with his father...
Jimmie and Gloria Grieve together are a part of Wyoming’s ranching history; a cowboy and his wife; born of the land, raised on the joys and hardships of ranch life. Molded by their environment and lifestyle into true pioneers of Wyoming. Ranching as their predecessors on...
William (Bill) Greer was born on July 9, 1935 to Olen & Clara Greer in Gillette, Wyoming. Bill was raised on a ranch 16 miles SE of Gillette in Campbell County. The ranch was very diversified raising cattle and sheep, horses, hogs and the customary chickens & milk...
William (Bill) Shaw Gray was born July 25, 1927 on a ranch near Orin Junction, Wyoming where he began his cowboy legacy. Being the eldest of three boys, with brothers Bob and Corky, he grew up working with his Mother, Patty “Shaw” Gray, Father, Bill Gray and his two uncles...
Jack W. Graves, Jr. was born on January 30, 1945 in Blanchard, Oklahoma to Jack and Pauline Graves and he was the oldest of three boys. His first experience as a cowboy was when he was five years old and his Uncle Raymond and Aunt Ludie had a farm in Cordell, OK. They had...
George Earl Givens (Rasty), came into this world with an identical twin, Henry Merle Givens (Moon). Rasty was born in 1927 north of Riverton on the Wind River in a log cabin. He lived his life in Fremont County riding range there and surrounding counties. During his early...
Joe Fordyce was born in Webster City, Iowa and came to Wyoming with mother, father and half-sister in 1927. Mother Margaret, from Scotland, and Joe proved up on the homestead dad Edward had filed on but needed money so Joe walked to the Merriott place which was one of the...
Church Hill Firnekas was born late in October 1896 at his father’s homestead on Johnson Creek a few miles northwest of Buffalo. He left home when he was 12 and went to Sussex just East of Kaycee. He stayed with relatives and continued school for a couple of years. During...
Percy Edwards was born April 30, 1896 to Edward “Eddie” Edwards and Minnie Kutch Edwards on the Willow Creek Ranch north of Cora, Wyoming. In 1900, his family moved to what is now the Edward Steele ranch on the New Fork which they sold shortly thereafter, filing a...
Eddie was born to Lithuanian immigrants, Rupert and Elizabeth (Wishwell) Dvarishkis, in Hudson, Wisconsin in 1914. He moved with his parents to Cottonwood, Wyoming, in 1917 where he lived and worked on his mother’s homestead. After graduating the eighth grade he boarded in...
Charlie Dunning was born in Rosebud, Montana, where he was raised on several small ranches through the Depression. After high school he joined the Army, serving in Europe during World War II. He returned to Montana and attended college. After college he worked on ranches...
Carl was born and raised in Hot Springs County. After graduation from Hot Springs County High School Carl worked on various ranches in the area performing ranch work and training horses. In 1959 he married Carol Ireland. In 1968 they bought a ranch on Mud Creek, where they...
John (G) Corbett was born December 16, 1938 in Lander, Wyoming to Thad and Mary Noble Corbett. He is the eldest of seven children and worked on his great Uncle Sanford Mills’ Red Bluff Ranch as a young kid. Jack then began working for Sweetwater area ranchers in the summer...
Donald ‘Dee’ Clark was born December 8, 1926 on TL Creek in Crook County Wyoming to Lewis and Louise (Atkinson) Clark. He was raised on ranches near TL Creek, New Haven and Prairie Creek (all N.W. of Hulett) with 2 brothers and a sister. Dee left high school early to help...
Murray Butler was born on Jan. 1, 1930 to E.H. and Rita Butler. They lived at the family homestead near Snyder Creek, 60 miles NW of Lusk, Wyoming. His father died when he was three years old, and his mother raised him and his two brothers on the homestead. His first paid...
Joe (J.W.) Buckhaults was a ‘cowman’ known throughout Goshen County, Wyoming. Moving to Wyoming in 1972 from the drought-laden plains of eastern Colorado, Joe and his wife, Pat, brought with them a love of the land, horses, ranching, but most of all, cows. Joe engrained...
Nate Brown was born in Lander, Wyoming and raised on Crow Creek, 64 miles outside of Lander on the Crow Indian Reservation. Brown says his mother was a natural with horses and cattle, she taught him to ride. From the time he was a little kid he learned to trust horses and...
Louis “Louie” D Boles was born in 1918 on a homestead started by his grandfather, Amzi Boles, on the Little Medicine Bow River, just north of the town of Medicine Bow, Wyoming. He was the son of James Adelbert (Del) Boles and Chrystal Dolling Boles, the second of five...
A native of eastern Colorado, Don was born June 12, 1911. His parents, Fowler and Lodeska Bell were early day homesteaders. Fowler trained and sold horses to the United States Cavalry. The Bell’s raised four children; Alton, Lee, Clorene and Don. The kids all grew up...
The only time James William Beard or more commonly known as Bill Beard has lived outside of Wyoming was when his mother gave birth to him in Rexburg, Idaho. All 87 years of his life has been working and living on the homestead of South Leigh Canyon, Wyoming. Bill helped...
Born into a ranching family, Richard Temple “Bucky” Barnette was a lifetime rancher on the Emma Ranch south of Lusk, Wyoming. For over 60 years, he lived on the ranch that he loved. He took a great deal of pride in raising good cattle and he loved riding horses and colts....
James Felix Atkinson was born to Day and Connie Atkinson on January 4, 1944. He is the youngest of three brothers, including Lawrence and Gene Atkinson, who were raised in the Marshall community along Sheep Creek on the family ranch that was settled by their grandfather in...