Kansas Cowboy Hall Of Fame Induct New Members

Jim Gray

Five legendary Kansas cowboys will be honored for their contributions to the western life as they are inducted into the Kansas Cowboy Hall of Fame in Dodge City. The Kansas Cowboy Hall of Fame will honor these five men at a ceremony to be held on September 15, 2012, in Dodge City, KS

The Kansas Cowboy Hall of Fame committee is happy to announce the 2012 inductees:

Willis Ray Negus, Brookville, KS                                    Working Cowboy
John Franklin Vallentine, Springville, UT              Cowboy Historian
Geffery Dawson, Alma, KS                                            Cowboy Entertainer/Artist
Ernie Love, Manhattan, KS                                             Rodeo Cowboy
William F. “Bill” Ebbutt, Geary County, KS                      Cattleman/Rancher

Kansas Cowboy Hall of Fame inductees are selected by committee in five different categories: Working Cowboy, Cowboy Historian, Cowboy Entertainer/Artist, Rodeo Cowboy and Cattleman/Rancher.  Each inductee has contributed significantly to the western heritage lifestyle and preservation of the cowboy culture in Kansas.  They personify cowboy ideals of integrity, honesty and self-sufficiency. They have state-wide historic significance and are a native or current resident of Kansas.

Dodge City is perhaps the most famous of all America’s cowtowns, partly because it has certainly been committed to celluloid more times than any other.  Established in 1872 along with the Santa Fe Railroad, by 1875 the town of traders, trappers, and hunters had to find a new economic base – the buffalo had been exterminated. The era of the great cattle drives was already under way, and Dodge City became a den of iniquity where gambling, drinking, and general lawlessness were the norm.

Dodge City today centers on the museum located on the single-sided Historic Front Street, which was constructed in 1958 and has been acquiring old buildings from all over the West ever since. There’s a bank and a grocer, stagecoach rides, a funeral parlor, a smithy, and even a full-sized railroad station, as well as the Long Branch Saloon. The notorious Boot Hill cemetery is higher up the hill behind the museum.

This year’s festivities include a special presentation honouring James Arness who portrayed a Kansas lawman, Marshal Matt Dillon, in the long running television series Gunsmoke. A debt of gratitude is owed to Arness and the cast and producers of Gunsmoke for bringing the western way of life and cowboy ideals into countless homes for decades. Although Arness was not geographically a Kansan, he certainly was a Kansan at heart.