It’s fall – even if the temperatures are unusually hot for this time of year. And that means it’s time for cowboys to ride high mountain pastures to get the cattle and sheep headed down country to winter ranges or shipping corrals where they can be loaded and hauled to market.
For the past eleven years, it has also been the time for some of the best working ranch cowboys in the state to be recognized with induction into the Wyoming Cowboy Hall of Fame. It is an event that attracts friends and family from across the state and nation to celebrate those being inducted.
I’m the current Executive Director of the Wyoming Cowboy Hall of Fame so I have been immersed in the stories of this year’s inductees for several months. And let me say, they are all top hands. The work they do is essential to the state’s livestock industry and they follow in the footsteps of other well-qualified cowboys.
Joining us for this year’s induction were Sen. John Barrasso, U.S. Rep. Harriett Hageman, Miss Rodeo Wyoming Bailee Mackey, the Platte Bridge Company color guard, and 400 folks who both live and love the working cowboy way of life.
Among those inducted in prior years include Scotsman Peter McCulloch who immigrated to the United States in 1853. McCulloch spent time in Boston and St. Louis and served during the Civil War in the Union Army, with the Missouri Mounted Volunteers often carrying dispatches throughout Missouri and Arkansas. He became a wagon boss. After the war he worked with a survey party staking out the transcontinental railroad for the Union Pacific Railroad in Nebraska. Leaving the railroad, he continued west and by 1864 he was at Fort Bridger.
Judge William A. Carter, whose family roots are at Carter’s Grove in Virginia, had served as the post sutler at Fort Bridger, and his presence in the Bridger Valley led him to begin raising cattle for his Carter Cattle Company. Peter McCulloch became the range foreman for Carter’s operation, establishing himself as a top-notch cowboy and manager.
In 1879, McCulloch ramrodded a crew that trailed 3,800 head of Carter cattle into the Bighorn Basin. McCulloch took the cattle from the Bridger Valley near Evanston and Fort Bridger across the Red Desert to South Pass, through the Lander area and across the Wind River Basin before continuing into the Bighorn Basin where he established a headquarters west of where Cody would eventually be established, on Carter Creek, named for his boss.
McCulloch and Carter had effectively expanded Wyoming’s cattle operations across the western half of the Wyoming Territory. The McCullough Peaks, east of Cody, well known as the habitat for one of Wyoming’s wild horse herds, are named for Peter McCulloch, but as often happens, the spelling is different.
Some of the earliest livestock in the Upper Green River Basin around Pinedale and Big Piney were cattle herds trailed in from the west: Nevada and Oregon. The Green River Drift – a cattle trail in use since the 1890s to move cattle between summer and winter ranges – is a 58-mile-long route that has been on the National Historic Register since 1913. The Drift is still used by the members of the Green River Cattle Association and crosses both public and private land.
The history of the ranching and homesteading culture of the Upper Green is interpreted at the Sommers Homestead Living History Museum north of Pinedale (open Friday-Sunday during the summer). Restored buildings include the 100-year-old two-story log homestead house, the shop, log icehouse, underground cellar, log bunkhouse, meat house, log barn, and the historic outhouse.
Sublette County has many cowboys already inducted into the Wyoming Cowboy Hall of Fame. Judging from the young men and women who attended this year’s induction in support and honor of fathers, grandfathers, cousins, and friends, there is a long line of men and women who’ll be ready to join the ranks of inductees….when they, too, get at least 45 years of cowboy work from the back of horse under their belts.
Nominations for the WCHF Class of 2025 will open in November. Watch www.wyomingcowboyhalloffame.org for details.
Candy Moulton can be reached at Candy.L.Moulton@gmail.com
