2025 Inductee North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame: Dr. Victor Hugo Stickney

2025 Great Westerner Inductee

North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame

Dr. Victor Hugo Stickney, “The Cowboy Doctor”

October 1, 1858 – July 26, 1927

See also North Dakota Horizons Magazine article and Cowboy Chronicle article posted on this website

Dr. Victor Hugo Stickney was inducted into The Hall of Great Westerners at the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center in Oklahoma City in 1966 from North Dakota

In his biography for the National Cowboy Hall of Fame he was described as having lived: “one of the richest and most productive lives a man can live. He had achieved distinction in the practice of his profession. He had been a leader in his state and community, and public affairs; and had been a founder of a fine college in his native city …..he aided by personal participation and financial assistance to others the establishment of the livestock industry in the western Dakotas. And he left a heritage of affectionate memory in the hearts of thousands he had served, and with whom he had shared the hardships of pioneer life.”

Excerpts From: The Cowboy Doctor, published in North Dakota Horizons Magazine, Winter 2020

On a warm day in late July 1927 the entire town shut down; stores and businesses were empty, their doors closed. There was no heart to carry on business as usual. The people crowded the cemetery to say goodbye to their beloved “Cowboy Doctor”.   He didn’t just heal and console, he was a friend to almost every family in the region…

Victor Hugo Stickney, was born April 13, 1855. He was raised on the family farm in Vermont. …Stickney worked his way through college with an assortment of jobs such as shoveling coal and waiting tables. …  Graduating from Dartmouth Medical School in 1883 Stickney went west to the Dakota Territory’s open spaces… His good childhood friend Jeremiah Hayes was operating a blacksmith shop in Dickinson. With the railroad’s arrival in 1881 the town was growing rapidly and Hayes knew they needed a doctor.  Hayes convinced Stickney to start his medical practice in this growing community. .. the “promise of magic and enchantment” lured him west. .. Stickney’s patients were not just the townsfolk; his practice covered 50,000 square miles. He would often be gone for days at a time…called to a remote camp or ranch to attend the injured or sick. He never hesitated no matter the conditions… He would travel by horse or buckboard, and occasionally in the caboose of a freight train, and work in often primitive conditions. He would sterilize his instruments in a Dutch oven. Due to the great distances he traveled he often slept out on the open prairie wrapping himself in a tarp. If caught in the snow, he sought shelter near a butte or in brush. ..

Hermann Hagedorn described Stickney in his book, Roosevelt in the Badlands.  “Dr. Stickney was the only physician within 150 miles in any direction. He had a reputation for never refusing a call whatever the distance or the weather… it was a life of extraordinary devotion…he was utterly fearless and it seemed tireless….. Over a hundred miles or more he would ride relays at a speed that seemed incredible, and at the end of the journey operate with a calm hand for a gunshot wound or a cruelly broken bone, sometimes on the box of a mess wagon turned upside down on the prairie.”

Stickney’s daughter Dorothy recalled:  “He never wore chaps nor a red shirt nor high heeled boots nor a revolver, but he made his calls on horseback or in a sleigh or in a buckboard to visit the sick or injured in the bleak and lonely obscurity of a ranch house or a cow camp, and if he got there too late he often stayed on to help dig the grave or to read the burial service. He was as much at home on horseback as any cowpuncher on the range.”

Timeline of Stickney’s life and many of his accomplishments:

1833

• Established a new medical practice in western North Dakota, with his office in Dickinson

1885

• Married Margaret (Maggie) Hayes. They had two daughters, Marjorie and Dorothy

1886

• Contracted with the railroad to serve as surgeon for all railroad employees in northwestern Dakota Territory (for 26years)
• Met and became good friends with Theodore Roosevelt

1890 -1894

• Stickney was elected the Stark County Superintendent of Schools.

c. 1900

• Stickney was involved with raising stock on a large scale. He owned and operated ranches as well as aiding and providing financial backing to others in the cattle business.

1913

• Stickney retired from active medical practice

1915

• Stickney was elected president of the North Dakota Medical Association.

1917-1919

• Stickney was commissioned as a lieutenant and then as a captain in the Medical Corp during World War 1,

stationed in Washington D.C. He later returned to North Dakota assigned as a medical aide to Governor Lyn Frazier.

1919 – 1926

• Stickney assisted with the establishment of the Dickinson State Normal School, now known as Dickinson State University.
• Stickney helped establish banks in Dickinson and Dunn County. For many years he served as Vice- president and Director of First National Bank of Dickinson.
• Stickney worked as director of the Roosevelt Memorial Association.
• Dr. Stickney wrote articles and stories for several publications including: How Roosevelt Outwitted Thieves While a Rancher, 1919 and an article for the first edition of the North Dakota Historical Quarterly, “The Roundup”

1966 Inducted into The National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City; one of the first ten individuals from North Dakota