EP 37 BOB RICHARD
Wendy Corr:
Music. Well, hey there, folks. Welcome to The Roundup. We're a Cowboy State Daily podcast, and we focus on interesting people here in the Cowboy State. And I'm telling you, I can't think of anybody who is more interesting than the gentleman sitting across from me here at the podcast studio at Gunwerks in Cody.
Bob Richard is the historian for Yellowstone, for Park County, for all of the amazing things that have happened in this region. But it's not just his life experience that he brings us, it's his father's and his grandfather's, going all the way back to when his grandfather and his uncle were scouts for Buffalo Bill Cody himself.
And it's just a pleasure, pleasure to be able to introduce anybody who hasn't met Bob Richard. And I'm not sure how many people haven't met Bob Richard, but to introduce anybody who hasn't met you, Bob, what a gift it is - your life experience and the things that you have brought to us and how you've enriched our experience is, just there's just no words for it.
So welcome, Bob Richard!
Bob Richard:
Thank you, Wendy. It's a pleasure to be here and to be with you, and having shared stories with you over the years is a delight. And thank you for inviting me.
Wendy Corr:
Oh, I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled.
Bob, you are the repository of so much knowledge, but it's your passion. You have lived an amazing life. You've had incredible experiences of your own. You share those with us, but you also share those with us in a larger context, and you're still doing that with your Local Lore series that you host at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West one Thursday a month.
Bob Richard:
We've been doing that for three years,
Wendy Corr:
and you've got a whole bunch of them racked up, and you just choose a different topic every time you go. But there's so many topics to choose from.
Bob Richard:
Well, it's all history, and if we can get it recorded and in the museum, it's an asset for future generations.
Wendy Corr:
It really is, but, but let's talk about the asset of Bob Richard here. Let's talk about Bob your your life experience is so rich. Born and raised here in Park County Wyoming, let's, let's go back a little farther, though. Tell us about going all the way back to Buffalo Bill Cody and and going forward, how is your family relation there?
Bob Richard:
Well, going back to the early family, Frost and Richard, Granddad came here in 1900. Ned Frost came in 1886 as a young man, about six years old. And their first year when they came here by wagon, went through Yellowstone Park, came back out, and this was up through Cooke City.
And then they went up and camped with the Crow Indians on the South Fork all winter. And wintered up there. Then they moved down on Sage Creek near what is now the Hoodoo ranch, and opened up a stage station on the Meeteetse stage route between Meeteetse and Red Lodge.
And then, when granddad got here in 1900 he joined Ned Frost as hunters for the railroad to provide meat to build the men working on the railroad, and they provided all the meat to feed them. And then from there, they started doing trips to Yellowstone and hunting trips, guiding people.
And in 1913 Buffalo Bill came to them and said, I'm bringing the prince of Monaco here, and he’s going to be here three weeks, and he wants to go hunting. And Bill Cody made his staff, his horses, his equipment, available to Fred Richard because granddad spoke French when he was growing up and when he moved here.
And took him about three days to get fluent. And he took the prince out of Pahaska up the North Fork, hunting for big game. And the prince brought with him three bodyguards. They were German soldiers, and the first day, they went out, and the bodyguards made too much noise. And so that night, at dinner, Granddad said, we're leaving your bodyguards in camp, which made them very unhappy.
And basically, for the next three weeks, they hunted and got moose, bear, elk, and had a wonderful time, but the bodyguards stayed in camp, very unhappy, and when they finished the hunt and rejoined Bill Cody at Pahaska, the prince had made arrangements for another hunting trip with Frost and Richard - or my granddad - in two years.
But of course, World War One opened up, and so he didn't make it. But we have had his great grandson here several times, taken him to the park. I've had lunch with him. He's done pack trips here with a local outfitter.
So the connection has gone all the way back from Buffalo Bill with the current young prince and his visits here to our community four or five times, and he'll be back again.
Wendy Corr:
To another Richard guide. Oh, my word. That's so great. So your family obviously stuck around, the Frost and Richard lines connected
Bob Richard:
Well, not only as partners, but they married sisters. Yes, my grandmother went on a Frost and Richard Tour of Yellowstone for 18 days, and granddad asked her on that trip to marry him, went back to Chicago, and then they came back out here.
And about a year later, my father was about to be born, and my grandmother's sister came out, helped deliver my dad, and then Ned married the sister who was a nurse. And so not only were they partners, we have become related, yes, and I've written 12 books on the Frosts and Richards, just for family, telling about Ned and Fred, as well as the first and second generations of children, and so they have history, and they can get it through a couple of different ways.
Wendy Corr:
That's amazing. That's amazing. So then another notable Richard, your father, Jack Richard, was a photographer, and his photographs appear in so many historical repositories, I guess. And you have also published a lot of your father's photos in your books, but he was a newspaper man.
Tell us about your father, because Jack, his name is still hallowed in this area.
Bob Richard:
My memories growing up is we were in Cody in 1941 when Pearl Harbor happened, and dad was the publisher of the Cody Enterprise, along with my mother, and within a year, he went to the Marine Corps, was commissioned and went to the South Pacific.
My mother stayed in Cody, published the Enterprise, and also the Heart Mountain Sentinel, which was the relocation center newspaper, right. And she published that at night. And then dad came home from the South Pacific in 1944 and Senator E.V. Robertson hired dad while he was in the Marine Corps to serve as his assistant in Washington, DC.
So dad was now stationed in Washington. My mother turned the paper back to Ernie Shaw, and she moved back with dad, and they took me, and here I am, nine years or 10 years old, and they put me in a boys school to get me educated.
And the Secret Service picked me up and picked me up at night to bring me home, and after a week, they said, you have to have a I called it a little Lord Fontleroy suit with knickers and bow tie. And so I would get dressed in it and go to St John's. And when I'd get there, I'd go in the bushes by the front door and change into my Levi's, my Western shirt and my cowboy boots.
And after two weeks of this, the father called dad and said, Your son hasn't gotten his uniform yet. And dad says, Well, I saw him leave with it today. Well, that night, dad picked me up, not the Secret Service. We got home, lots of upset with mother, and I said, I'm not going back to that school.
And after two days of struggling, they put me on a plane to Billings Montana, and my granddad picked me up, and I was re entered in school, in the Wapiti school, that's a one room schoolhouse, and I was a happy boy. My mother was unhappy, and it was what it was.
Wendy Corr:
I have never heard that story. Bob, that is a fantastic story.
Bob Richard:
And dad stayed with EV Roberts until 1947 and then he moved back to Cody and started the Cody. Times, which was a lithography, photographic newspaper.
Wendy Corr:
Oh, my goodness.
Bob Richard:
And he, with the help of some other people here in Cody, bought the Cody Enterprise, and it was owned by the Shaws, and they insisted they keep the masthead of Cody Enterprise, which dad went along with, and then it was bought by several different people that published the Enterprise for about 10 years.
But Dad supplied for the next 15-20 years, the photographs for the photographic edition in the Enterprise as a professional photographer. The museum has over 260,000 negatives of dad’s, and we've digitized over 1000 photographs that are online of just Yellowstone.
But you go online through the McCracken library at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, and call up photographs, but he also took portraits, and all the history of Cody is there, and I've used that in my talks. I've used it in publishing the first book.
Wendy Corr:
Yes, show us this. Show us this.
Bob Richard:
This book was my first, and I co published this with the Buffalo Bill Museum, and it's on sale there.
Wendy Corr:
with a forward by Alan K Simpson, yes,
Bob Richard:
And Al has been very involved in my life since we were growing up, but that's another story about he and Pete.
Wendy Corr:
There's too many stories. There's too many stories for one podcast, folks, just saying.
Bob Richard:
And then, as I started doing books, I self published, and my next one is the Cody Road To Yellowstone and all the rock formations. This is my best seller. I've republished this three times.
Wendy Corr:
Yes, and I mean, I've, I've bought those and given those away, and they are a must have if you're going to go to Yellowstone, and you want to just really know what all these rock formations - and the flora and the fauna and the animals and things like that going up to Yellowstone.
Bob Richard:
And then I published a book on when I was a front country horse ranger in Yellowstone Park.
Wendy Corr:
Let's talk about that just for a moment, because you've got the book here, but that's a good segue into that, that part of your life. Because what we've got, Bob, is you, you came back to Wyoming. You have done a number of amazing things, but one of the things that you did is you were a horse Ranger. You were THE horse ranger in Yellowstone National Park.
It's a great story, but you've got stories attached to that. We don't have time for all those but what was that experience like?
Bob Richard:
Well, I went with my dad when he was interviewing Lon Garrison, the superintendent. And dad had finished his interview, and it was talking about reducing the amount of Buffalo and elk in the park.
And when he finished the interview with dad, Lon Garrison looked at me. He says, Bob, can you ride a horse? I said, Yes, sir. I was raised on one. He says, it appears you can talk. He says, How would you like to be my first front country horse Ranger?
And I says, I'd like that. He says, You're hired. And I says, You got to be kidding. He says, No. I says, Well, what do I do?
He says, Well, I want you to report next Monday at Lake, where you're going to be stationed, and you're going to be doing all the work of a ranger, but also you have to stop the buffalo ranch and pick out three horses that you want for the summer as a summer seasonal Ranger. And I said, that sounds great. I'm still going to college. He says, I understand that.
And so Dad and I drove out to the buffalo ranch. And here's an old cowboy, and he's got 70 head of horses milling and a big corral. And he handed me a bucket oats, a halter and a Lariat. And he says, You go pick out your horses you want? Wow. And I stood in this and watched these million horses, and I thought, How do I pick a horse?
And all of a sudden, over my shoulder is this horse's head that sticks his nose in the bucket of oats. I put the Lariat over his head, and I led him to the gate, and the old cowboy says, you can't have him, and it was a big sorrel stallion. And I said, why not?
He says, he's bucked everybody off. He's going to the fox farm. We're selling him. And I said, you have a small, round corral? He says, yes. I said, I need a saddle, a blanket and a hackamore. He says, you'll get killed. I says, That's my choice. I'm picking out the horses.
And I led the horse over. We went around the corral, and he brought out the equipment. I put it on the horse, walked him around, got on him, rode him a couple of times, and I said, Dad, open up the gate. And the old cowboy that was a caretaker, says, you're gonna get killed. I said, I'm going out to the Lamar River and back, and I'll be back shortly.
And we rode out there and back. And I said, I want him and two more just like him. He says, You can't have him. I said, you call Lon Garrison and tell him. Well, the next Monday, three horses arrived, and I learned that the one I picked out was the last Morgan stallion the Park Service raised. And I could not see over his back.
And for the next many summers, I was went from seasonal ranger to a career conditional. I also had to do road patrol. I had to do boat patrol, or whatever, do talks to the public as a naturalist. And I loved my job. I loved the horse, he never bucked.
And I would ride through the campgrounds. I'd check fishermen, and then I would go to different parts of the park and horse trailer in a single axle old horse trailer, and I would meet the superintendent, Lon Garrison, who said, every other week, I want to ride with you, and I will ride your horse. I had to take another.
And we would ride. And he would look at me every time, whether we were at Old Faithful, Canyon, Mammoth, and he'd say, Bob, you've got the best job in the park. And I agreed with him.
And I finished college in 1960 and when I was about to get my degree, a Marine officer showed up at my home and said, Bob, you had enlisted back in 1956 and you're now getting your commission. Do you still want to be a Marine and I said, I want to fly. He said, If you pass the physical, you can fly. And I said, All right, I'll take the commission.
I went back and worked that summer at Yellowstone, and at the end of the summer, turned in my commission to Lon Garrison, and he kept tracking me all the way through the Marine Corps, and I served 12 years in the Marine Corps.
And when I got out, I came back, visited with Lon, and he said, I can start you as a GS seven. I said, I can't raise three boys as a GS seven. And I ended up becoming a school administrator of a school district in California.
But I missed going back to the Park Service, but I made that connection with Lon, and he was in my life, the rest of my life, and communicating - he kept an eye on me. And I had to live up to his standards, yes, but he made so many changes when he was superintendent here.
And my last book that I published, I dedicated to Lon garrison. All the photographs are either my dad's, mine or a couple other people, but every Ranger and park employee receives this as a retirement photograph.
But I'm very proud of the park, proud of the superintendents that lead the park and take care of, not only the people that come to visit, but their staff. And our current superintendent is making sure that the people that work there have decent living quarters and have a good, happy way of life. And it then reflects to the people that visit Yellowstone.
Anyway, Lon Garrison had a big part in my life.
Wendy Corr:
I think that's fantastic. He must have been superintendent for several years.
Bob Richard:
And was involved with in ‘66 he got the garbage cans that look like the mailboxes so the bears couldn't get in - before that garbage was scattered all over the park. Park's cleaner now than it's ever been, but he was very involved in improving things in Yellowstone.
Wendy Corr:
Well, you have watched superintendents come and go, Bob, and you have had wonderful relationships with all of them. And that's something that's served you well then too, when you went into a different stage of your life, which was eventually, you led your own tour company.
Bob Richard:
I came back to Cody after other things in my life and started the Grub Steak Expeditions, which was following up on the Frost and Richard tours of Yellowstone. Except I did it with a Suburban and I had five different licenses in Yellowstone, hiking, fishing, photography.
And I loved sharing with people from all over the world, all the geologic formations, as well as the animals and the wildlife. And I did that for 37 years, and Yellowstone is second nature to me. I call it my backyard. Dad speaks of it as the foothills to heaven.
And very special, because I met people from all walks of life. Did step-on tours. I had 20 guides that worked for me, stepped on bus tours and retired Park Service, retired Forest Service, retired Game and Fish, people that were knowledgeable. And when people booked with me, whether it was a day or a week, either one family or a bus tour, I provided the best guide possible that knew a whole lot more than me, and I built it into a really big business, and I'm still proud of what they're doing today.
And I still volunteer and train the current guides, and have been doing that for years. And the reason that I volunteer is I get to sit in the back seat and I have somebody else driving, and the guides that I have trained since I sold it are still coming. ‘Bob, we got to do another tour. We need to learn more.’ And they pick and we tour the Big Horn Basin, the Bighorns, the Beartooths, Yellowstone.
But I enjoy it, and if I need a nap, I get that in to boot.
Wendy Corr:
There you go. That's great. That's how I first met you, the Grub Steak tours. I remember when I first started at the radio station, we did a tour of going up in the Beartooths. So your knowledge is not just limited to Yellowstone National Park. It's this whole region, which you have explored, and like you say, has been your backyard for so many years.
Bob Richard:
It is, and that backyard goes back to when I was 10. Granddad would put me in the pickup, and said, Bob, you can drive at the age of 10 to Yellowstone as long as you remember every feature going up the North Fork, every stream and every mountain.
Well, if I didn't remember them, then I had to sit between he and grandmother, and he'd light up with a big black cigar that was a gagger, and I hated that, so I learned very quickly all the streams, all the formations, so I could drive all the way to Yellowstone.
And I didn't know why I was learning them, but that's where I started.
Wendy Corr:
And then you have passed that on to us through these books. So going back to the Cody to Yellowstone, you've got another book that was your second one, which is the Gateway to Yellowstone, the one, the Visual Guide to Buffalo Bill’s country. And that's the second one that I had was that, and it really is, again, so much more information, of very specific to this region.
Bob Richard:
And they're all fun, but I learned more than anyone else because I had to research and be sure of the information. And my favorite is how my uncle Ned and Fred Richard took people by wagon and horseback through Yellowstone for 18 days, self contained with all their food.
And they took up to 150 guests at a time through the park. And they did three trips every summer. The first of July was the earliest they could get through Sylvan pass, okay? And they did this till they allowed cars in in 1915, but I've put that history in here, and it's one of my favorite stories of Frost and Richard.
But that carried over into my Grub Steak tours, and dad has been licensed as a photographer in Yellowstone.
My relationship with this country has been wonderful because of the opportunity to learn and to share it with others, and I even have shared them with guests from Europe that came and they showed up with a cowboy hat, cap guns in their holsters and say, ‘I belong to the Buffalo Bill club in Germany.’
And there are Buffalo Bill clubs all over Europe, and they show up here, and they book tours with me and others, but they were living what they did back at home in the Bufffalo Bill club, and it's still going on today.
Wendy Corr:
That's so great. You know, I want to, I want to just quickly, because we're getting close to being out of time here, which is amazing. But I want to talk about some of the people that you have, not just created, close relationships with, but who you have you've had just very interesting encounters with - and one of them is in your book here.
This is Fleet Admiral Nimitz and naval war heroes. These are, again, historical figures, not just the Al Simpsons of the world.
Bob Richard:
He's historical.
Wendy Corr:
He's historical too. And you and Al go way back, but but a situation like this that you wrote a book about, and it's really a fantastic historical recollection of when Admiral Nimitz came to Yellowstone in 1946.
Bob Richard:
He brought his battle staff from World War Two, flew out here as guests of Senator E.V. Robertson and my dad, and they started at Cheyenne Frontier Days. Came up to Yellowstone, spent time fishing in Yellowstone, touring Yellowstone, then coming to Cody.
And this is a painting that Ed Grigware did of Admiral Nimitz, and he became a friend of the family. He came back several times, but it shows my cousin and I riding down from the ranch and meeting the staff in a big yellow bus at the mouth of Rattlesnake Creek before they came to Cody.
And then he came back many times afterwards, but he was another leader and a part of my life growing up, and my desire to be a naval aviator and be a part of the Marine Corps.
And one other thing, my dad's brother was a naval aviator in the Marine Corps and was a dive bomber pilot in Guadalcanal, and came home halfway through the Pacific Theater with his squadron or his group commander, and they hunted and fished and took me with them.
And when they got ready to get on the plane and leave, my uncle Bob, who I was named after, took his gold Navy wings off and pinned them on me at the age of nine, and said, Someday, Bob, maybe you can earn the right to wear these.
And then I earned that right. And the admiral pinned them on, looked at me, and he said, I had a roommate by the name of Bob Richard back in 1937 and I said, Yes, sir, that was my uncle. And I mean, it was accomplishing a goal that my uncle set for me.
And I'm very proud of those things and proud of the people I've met and shared Yellowstone, the Cody country, the Bighorns, our Bighorn basin.
Wendy Corr:
That is phenomenal. How many missions did you fly? Because it's an insane number.
Bob Richard:
No, I was the air officer on the ground with the seventh Marines, but I had to get paid for my flight time. So I flew over 50 combat missions, and I'll tell you right now, I didn't like somebody shooting at me, but they were doing that whether I was on the ground or in the air, but those were decorations that I received.
And I've had a good life. I've done what I've wanted, and I've tried to raise my kids backpacking and riding horses in all of this country and sharing all the stories. And through Local Lore, I've shared more.
Wendy Corr:
That is a great segue, because that's where I was going next. Your Local Lore, you have chosen topics like, say, three years now that you've done these Local Lore, they are one Thursday every other month at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West here in Cody.
So these are your opportunities to dive into a story. You do photos and maps, and you bring in guest speakers, and this is something that I think is fantastic. Are these available? Can people log on to them? Can they view them from their home and their computer?
Bob Richard:
Yes you can. And you go online through the museum and through the McCracken library, and they're working to put them permanently in the McCracken library so we don't go to an outside company that's furnishing them presently
I also have them on my web page, BobRichardphotography.com which you can go to, or to my other website, Codyyellowstone.com, and you can look at all 26 of the hour long Local Lores.
Wendy Corr:
That's fantastic. I'm so glad that we are benefiting from your years of experience, and that you have chosen to share those - and that history of this area is your absolute passion. That is what is kind of the common thread through all of the amazing things you've done - working for the Red Cross, being a swim instructor here in Cody, you have done so many amazing things. And we are, we are your beneficiaries, and we are grateful for that, Bob.
Bob Richard:
Thank you.
Wendy Corr:
Absolutely. We're about out of time here. So I just wanted to ask one more, one more question. What is, when you look back at your really, wonderfully rich, rich life, is there one period of time that stands out to you and say, Boy, I’d go do that again?
Bob Richard:
I think I'd go back and do almost all of it again. Being a front country horse Ranger, visiting with people, sharing the highlights of Yellowstone with people in campgrounds.
In the six summers that I worked there, I didn't write tickets. There were six serious problems that I had, and they were taken to jail. But I enjoyed correcting things that people were doing wrong, because they were there on vacation and they were enjoying Yellowstone, and I helped them correct what they were doing wrong.
And that's all it took. It didn't take a ticket. And I constantly say to our law enforcement in Yellowstone today, remember, these people are on vacation, correct? What's wrong? And it's not about giving people tickets when it's serious. That's a different matter.
But I love sharing my backyard with others, and I learn more when I do the talks by researching and doing books, and I try to give time to others. And I'm still doing it. I'm giving talks at the Buffalo Bill Scout camp up the North Fork. I'm involved with them, and I've been involved in scouting, raising boys, and I was involved in scouting, went to a Jamboree in 1953.
Wendy Corr:
We've got to get this story, because this is a great story.
Bob Richard:
We had people from all over Wyoming that went to the Jamboree in California, and we had a 12 year old by the name of Mike Sullivan. And it took two explorer scouts to keep an eye on him the whole time, because he was always disappearing and always in trouble. But that's an interview you have to talk to Mike about, and let him tell you, from his point of view, what it was to put up with us in 1953.
Wendy Corr:
Obviously you did something right, because he went on to become governor of the state of Wyoming.
Bob Richard:
He was a good governor. Thank you.
Wendy Corr:
That is great. So you have so many stories. Sometime, folks, there are stories out there that you're going to have to research, because we don't have time today to talk about the legend of the burial of Buffalo Bill Cody. Where is he really buried? Bob Richard has the answer, and that's a great, great story.
Bob, thank you for your time today. Thank you for the gift that you've given us in sharing all of your history and sharing your photographs and sharing your father's photographs, for the legacy that you and your family represent - and we are grateful that you're continuing to do that.
Bob Richard:
Thank you for having me, and it's always a pleasure to share stories with you and and be a part of your life and what you're doing.
Wendy Corr:
We've got great things going on. Folks, thank you for tuning in to The Roundup today. We have such a rich repository in just a very short time of amazing people that are Wyoming treasures. And so if you've missed any of these podcasts, go back to our website. Get on our video page. You can find those. You can listen to us on any of your podcast platforms. Look up The Roundup - Cowboy State Daily.
And if you have an idea for another Wyoming treasure that we need to talk to, that we should introduce the rest of the state to, please let us know that - but until next week, thanks for tuning in, folks. Thank you, Bob Richard.
Bob Richard:
Thank you. A pleasure to be with you.
Wendy Corr:
I completely agree. Thanks, folks. Have a great week.
