-
The Cowboy Doctor
Printed in North Dakota Horizons Magazine Winter 2020 https://www.ndhorizons.com/articles/88/the-cowboy-doctor.aspx On a warm day in late July 1927, all of Dickinson shut down. Stores and businesses were empty, their doors closed. There was no heart to carry on business as usual. Crowding the cemetery people were saying goodbye to their beloved “Cowboy Doctor.” He didn’t just heal and console, he was a friend to almost every family in the region. He was remembered with overwhelming gratitude for his gift of love and 44 years of dedicated service to the people he came to cherish. The “Cowboy Doctor,” Victor Hugo Stickney, was born April 13, 1855. He was raised on the family…
-
“Little Misery”: The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Badlands Town
Published in the Cowboy Chronicle Publication of the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame Volume 24 Issue 5 Newspapers from New York to Paris and London in the late 1870’s and early 1880’s were abuzz about the Dakota cattle boom on the northern plains of America. Books, such as James Brisbin’s The Beef Bonanza or How to get Rich on the Plains (1871) and Trans Missouri Stock Raising; the Pasture Lands of North America by Hiram Latham ( 1881), fueled the excitement for the expanding cattle industry. In 1879 The Bismarck Tribune proclaimed that that western North Dakota possessed “the best grazing lands in the world”. A writer for the…
-
North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame Celebrates Twenty-five Years
The North Dakota Horizons magazine published a shorter version of “Sentinel on the Prairie” in their Summer 2020 edition and online. https://www.ndhorizons.com/articles/86/north-dakota-cowboy-hall-of-fame-celebrates-25-years.aspx The North Dakota Cowboy Hall of fame is celebrating its 25th anniversary. One man’s dream of preserving the stories and character of the state’s forebears has become a renowned center of western culture. Phil Baird thought about this for a long time. So many stories and moments were passing through time, drifting like the wind across the prairies. Countless hours were spent embracing all the memories and history he could. He hated the thought these stories would be lost to time. Those moments wove together the fabric of…
-
The Wandering Man
This love affair lasted a lifetime; whether consuming, creating, or collecting, the written word permeated his life. He bragged that between 1928 and 1942 he read more than 150 books a year. He built a personal library of over 10,000 books, journals, and periodicals; a varied collection that surprised and delighted visitors. He was one of the world’s most prolific authors writing poetry, over 400 short stories, screenplays and more than 100 books. Sitting in his sick bed, Louis L’Amour was editing his final book the day he died in 1988. Some discounted his writing as just simple westerns, but his stories perfectly expressed the romance and authenticities of Western…
-
In Good Company
The North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame shares its mission, and more than a few of its honorees, with the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. Chester Reynolds had a dream. He was a Kansas City native who rose from sales manager to president of Lee Jeans. He had a creative mind and came up with the idea of Buddy Lee, a doll who “modeled” miniature samples of his company’s clothing line. But Chester’s greatest dream was to find a way to enshrine the cowboy and his era. He worried our great western heritage was being lost in the modern world. The idea for a national museum first came to…
-
Knowing Your Past Carries You into the Future
The past meets the present and future in a quiet little town; from the last lynching in North Dakota to the fellowship of burgers in the park and a farmers market on Saturday nights. Showcasing it all is the Lewis and Clark Trail Museum. Motoring down Highway 85 you now bypass the town of Alexander where traffic and trucks lumbering through town used to be an all-day occurrence. All that commotion goes around town now, but beckoning passersby is a highway sign pointing the way for some quiet moments and a glimpse into the past. In the 1960’s McKenzie County and its towns were as they had been for many…
-
“Come and Get It”
She’s all done up like she would have been back in her heyday when she was perhaps the most important entity in a cowboy’s life on the trail. The horse was a cowboy’s first love, but to start and end the day what could be more important than the chuck wagon!
-
The Wild Horses of Roosevelt’s Badlands
He was an old man, arthritic and without a family band, but still wild and free. Singlefoot was the oldest stallion living in the Theodore Roosevelt National Park (TRNP). He may have been on his own but he still found the energy to play and enjoy life. He looked out over grasslands and rolling hills interrupted by dramatic and colorful badland formations where his ancestors once roamed. The history of the plains horse dates from prehistoric times; disappearing from North America about 11,000 years ago and returning in the 1500’s with Spanish explorers. Singlefoot and the other horses in the park descended from those brought by the Spaniards and other…
-
The Wild Horses of Roosevelt’s Badlands for The Cowboy Chronicle
He’s an old man now – arthritic and without a family band, but Singlefoot, the oldest stallion living in Roosevelt National Park (TRNP)still roams wild and free where his ancestors did, looking out over grasslands and rolling hills interrupted by dramatic and colorful badlands. The history of the plains horse dates from prehistoric times; disappearing from the North America about 11,000 years ago and returning in the 1500’s with Spanish explorers. Singlefoot and the other horses in the park are descended from those brought by the Spaniards and other domesticated stock. Once domesticated, they are feral animals, not “wild” horses as they are generally called. Regardless, these beautiful animals seen…
-
The True Facts
There is a certain beauty in the harshness of western North Dakota winters. Winds howl across the prairie, through the coulees, and sometimes bring the effective temperature as low as forty below. Snow, not always abundant, is often a patchwork with gray and brown rather than a continuous blanket of white. Days are short in deep winter with as little as nine hours of daylight. Men and beasts adapt, putting on their winter coats and hunkering down for those long months until the ground thaws and grasses grow tall again. Those that survive these winters are men with resilience and determination, and animals that herd together for warmth and scratch through frozen ground.…
