Dime Library

Texas Jack Omohundro shaped the American West not just in the perceptions of theater-goers who watched him on stage, but through the lives of the men he took on treks throughout the West, and specifically in Wyoming. In 1878, Texas Jack headed for Rawlins with Count Otto Franc von Lichtenstein and Doctor Amandus Ferber. Both men were wealthy Germans who had earned their fortunes in America; Franc importing fruit and Ferber as one of New York City's finest medical doctors.  The trio spent three weeks exploring south of Rawlins followed by six weeks in the Bighorn Basin. As they fished and hunted for deer, antelope, elk, and buffalo, Franc and the former Texas cowboy discussed the region's potential for cattle ranching. The next year, Franc returned to the area to start his own cattle operation along the Greybull River, naming it Pitchfork Ranch.  Franc died in 1903. He never married and had no children, and the ranch was left in his will to two sisters who still lived in Germany. Franc's brother traveled to Wyoming from his home in New York City and arranged the sale of the property for his sisters, and Pitchfork Ranch was purchased by L. G. Phelps. L. G.'s son Eugene traveled throughout Europe and Russia with some college friends from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the summer of 1909. One of those friends was Charles Belden, who decided to join Eugene at the Pitchfork when the trip ended, spending time working as a cowboy and falling in love with Eugene's sister Frances.  Frances and Charles were married in 1913 and moved to the ranch full-time in 1914. L. G. Phelps died in 1922, leaving the Pitchfork to his son Eugene and his son-in-law Charles Belden. Neither was adept at running a ranch. They met in the engineering school at M.I.T. and Eugene remained preoccupied with inventions while Belden was devoted to photography. He had taken pictures for much of his life, including during his college trip to Europe and Russia with Eugene Phelps, and he continued to use his camera to document life on the Pitchfork Ranch.  His photographs document the entire cycle of ranch life, from birthing and branding cattle to sheering sheep, making camp, repairing fences, and pitching hay. He sold his photographs to a range of publications. Belden's photographs were printed in livestock magazines like The Cattleman and The American Hereford Journal, newspapers like the Denver Post and the Chicago Daily News, and broadly read magazines like National Geographic, the Saturday Evening Post, and Life. His work shaped the way that cowboys and ranching were perceived by the American public in much the same way Texas Jack's writings on cowboy life featured in the Spirit of the Times and reprinted for Buffalo Bill's Wild West had fifty years earlier.  If you're ever lucky enough to spend time in the Bighorn Basin, you can visit the Pitchfork Ranch as well as the Charles Belden Western Photography Museum in Meeteetse, Wyoming.

Only one general landed by sea with the first wave of troops to brave the beaches of Normandy.  The man who led the 8th Infantry Regiment and the 70th Tank Battalion at Utah Beach was not a young and exuberant West Point graduate–at fifty-six years old, this General was actually the oldest man in the invasion.  He was also the only man to participate in the Normandy invasion whose son was also on the beaches that day, among the first soldiers to climb from the sea at Omaha Beach.

Texas Jack and his horses.

This long poem about Texas Jack is from the 1890 book May-Day Dreams, Passion Flowers, Poetic Flights and Prosy Thoughts by Sam Brown Jr., "the Cowboy Poet of the Platte."

Reading this one, a couple of lines stuck with me. "He was all that any maiden might wish for in the shape of man. Half cowboy and half scout, he seemed a youthful errant knight.  Poor Texas Jack, how pure thy spirit was! The world hath judged, yet known thee not—hath called thee "wild," "inebriate." A mirthful, bold, but reckless scout, yet, oh, what melancholy and heartache were thine!  How tirelessly upon thy track care, despair, and sorrow ever trod."

Doctor W. F. Carver went from his dentist office in North PLatte Nebraska to become the world's most accomplished rifle marksman.

Just off a quiet stretch of US Highway 34, just 3 miles east of Trenton, Nebraska, stands a 35-foot tall shaft of Minnesota pink granite.  Near the top of the 91-ton monument is a carving of a Sioux warrior named John Grass facing west, and a Pawnee brave named Ruling His Son stares east.  The quiet prairie that surrounds the monument gives little hint at the events of August 5, 1873—the last battle between Great Plains Indians in North America that gave this location its name—Massacre Canyon.

Texas Jack on the “Wide Range”—The History of Lazy Kate

(Chicago Field - Saturday, March 19, 1881)

By Texas Jack

From The Spirit of the Times, March 24, 1877.  Written by Texas Jack, this piece was included in the show programs for Buffalo Bill's Wild West as an introduction to the cowboy.

There are many names that one might think of when they consider Texas Jack on stage.  The earliest exploits with Buffalo Bill Cody and Ned Buntline, the spark with costar Giuseppina Morlacchi that developed into romance and marriage, drinking fake whisky with Wild Bill Hickok on stage, going through thick and thin with “Arizona John” Burke.  But one fascinating costar that has been largely lost to history is Donald McKay.

The following article was originally printed in The Boys of the World, a serial printed by Street & Smith, the same publisher that produced Ned Buntline's Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack stories.  This is Jack's account of his 1874 trip into the Yellowstone with Lord Dunraven, George Kingsley, and Captain Wynne.

TEXAS JACK’S EXPERIENCE

OF

IN

His description of that marvelous country after a hunting expedition there with The Earl of Dunraven and others.

WRITTEN BY HIMSELF

Ned Buntline had already introduced the world to Buffalo Bill, and had included Texas Jack as his stalwart friend, in dime novels before the three joined forces for a dramatic tour of Buntline's play The Scouts of the Prairie; Or, Red Deviltry As It Is.  It was just before the play opened for its run at New York City's Niblo's Garden that Texas Jack starred in his own dime novel, Texas Jack, the White King of the Pawnees.  The title references Jack's association with and fondness for the Pawnee tribe, which he joined on the annual summer buffalo hunt in 1872.  Jack often referred to the Pawnee as "my tribe" or "my Indians," occasionally boasting that with a dozen Pawnee warriors, he could take out any number of Sioux warriors.

Jack's family may have had some French ancestry, but he wasn't the heir to a grand castle as Buntline fancies here.  According to Jack, the Omohundro name was actually Powhattan, and meant "the place where fresh and salt waters meet."

Ned Buntline had already introduced the world to Buffalo Bill, and had included Texas Jack as his stalwart friend, in dime novels before the three joined forces for a dramatic tour of Buntline's play The Scouts of the Prairie; Or, Red Deviltry As It Is.  It was just before the play opened for its run at New York City's Niblo's Garden that Texas Jack starred in his own dime novel, Texas Jack, the White King of the Pawnees.  The title references Jack's association with and fondness for the Pawnee tribe, which he joined on the annual summer buffalo hunt in 1872.  Jack often referred to the Pawnee as "my tribe" or "my Indians," occasionally boasting that with a dozen Pawnee warriors, he could take out any number of Sioux warriors.

Jack's family may have had some French ancestry, but he wasn't the heir to a grand castle as Buntline fancies here.  According to Jack, the Omohundro name was actually Powhattan, and meant "the place where fresh and salt waters meet."

Ned Buntline had already introduced the world to Buffalo Bill, and had included Texas Jack as his stalwart friend, in dime novels before the three joined forces for a dramatic tour of Buntline's play The Scouts of the Prairie; Or, Red Deviltry As It Is.  It was just before the play opened for its run at New York City's Niblo's Garden that Texas Jack starred in his own dime novel, Texas Jack, the White King of the Pawnees.  The title references Jack's association with and fondness for the Pawnee tribe, which he joined on the annual summer buffalo hunt in 1872.  Jack often referred to the Pawnee as "my tribe" or "my Indians," occasionally boasting that with a dozen Pawnee warriors, he could take out any number of Sioux warriors.

Jack's family may have had some French ancestry, but he wasn't the heir to a grand castle as Buntline fancies here.  According to Jack, the Omohundro name was actually Powhattan, and meant "the place where fresh and salt waters meet."

Ned Buntline had already introduced the world to Buffalo Bill, and had included Texas Jack as his stalwart friend, in dime novels before the three joined forces for a dramatic tour of Buntline's play The Scouts of the Prairie; Or, Red Deviltry As It Is.  It was just before the play opened for its run at New York City's Niblo's Garden that Texas Jack starred in his own dime novel, Texas Jack, the White King of the Pawnees.  The title references Jack's association with and fondness for the Pawnee tribe, which he joined on the annual summer buffalo hunt in 1872.  Jack often referred to the Pawnee as "my tribe" or "my Indians," occasionally boasting that with a dozen Pawnee warriors, he could take out any number of Sioux warriors.

Jack's family may have had some French ancestry, but he wasn't the heir to a grand castle as Buntline fancies here.  According to Jack, the Omohundro name was actually Powhattan, and meant "the place where fresh and salt waters meet."

Ned Buntline had already introduced the world to Buffalo Bill, and had included Texas Jack as his stalwart friend, in dime novels before the three joined forces for a dramatic tour of Buntline's play The Scouts of the Prairie; Or, Red Deviltry As It Is.  It was just before the play opened for its run at New York City's Niblo's Garden that Texas Jack starred in his own dime novel, Texas Jack, the White King of the Pawnees.  The title references Jack's association with and fondness for the Pawnee tribe, which he joined on the annual summer buffalo hunt in 1872.  Jack often referred to the Pawnee as "my tribe" or "my Indians," occasionally boasting that with a dozen Pawnee warriors, he could take out any number of Sioux warriors.

Jack's family may have had some French ancestry, but he wasn't the heir to a grand castle as Buntline fancies here.  According to Jack, the Omohundro name was actually Powhattan, and meant "the place where fresh and salt waters meet."

Ned Buntline had already introduced the world to Buffalo Bill, and had included Texas Jack as his stalwart friend, in dime novels before the three joined forces for a dramatic tour of Buntline's play The Scouts of the Prairie; Or, Red Deviltry As It Is.  It was just before the play opened for its run at New York City's Niblo's Garden that Texas Jack starred in his own dime novel, Texas Jack, the White King of the Pawnees.  The title references Jack's association with and fondness for the Pawnee tribe, which he joined on the annual summer buffalo hunt in 1872.  Jack often referred to the Pawnee as "my tribe" or "my Indians," occasionally boasting that with a dozen Pawnee warriors, he could take out any number of Sioux warriors.

Jack's family may have had some French ancestry, but he wasn't the heir to a grand castle as Buntline fancies here.  According to Jack, the Omohundro name was actually Powhattan, and meant "the place where fresh and salt waters meet."

Ned Buntline had already introduced the world to Buffalo Bill, and had included Texas Jack as his stalwart friend, in dime novels before the three joined forces for a dramatic tour of Buntline's play The Scouts of the Prairie; Or, Red Deviltry As It Is.  It was just before the play opened for its run at New York City's Niblo's Garden that Texas Jack starred in his own dime novel, Texas Jack, the White King of the Pawnees.  The title references Jack's association with and fondness for the Pawnee tribe, which he joined on the annual summer buffalo hunt in 1872.  Jack often referred to the Pawnee as "my tribe" or "my Indians," occasionally boasting that with a dozen Pawnee warriors, he could take out any number of Sioux warriors.

Jack's family may have had some French ancestry, but he wasn't the heir to a grand castle as Buntline fancies here.  According to Jack, the Omohundro name was actually Powhattan, and meant "the place where fresh and salt waters meet."

Ned Buntline had already introduced the world to Buffalo Bill, and had included Texas Jack as his stalwart friend, in dime novels before the three joined forces for a dramatic tour of Buntline's play The Scouts of the Prairie; Or, Red Deviltry As It Is.  It was just before the play opened for its run at New York City's Niblo's Garden that Texas Jack starred in his own dime novel, Texas Jack, the White King of the Pawnees.  The title references Jack's association with and fondness for the Pawnee tribe, which he joined on the annual summer buffalo hunt in 1872.  Jack often referred to the Pawnee as "my tribe" or "my Indians," occasionally boasting that with a dozen Pawnee warriors, he could take out any number of Sioux warriors.

Jack's family may have had some French ancestry, but he wasn't the heir to a grand castle as Buntline fancies here.  According to Jack, the Omohundro name was actually Powhattan, and meant "the place where fresh and salt waters meet."

Ned Buntline had already introduced the world to Buffalo Bill, and had included Texas Jack as his stalwart friend, in dime novels before the three joined forces for a dramatic tour of Buntline's play The Scouts of the Prairie; Or, Red Deviltry As It Is.  It was just before the play opened for its run at New York City's Niblo's Garden that Texas Jack starred in his own dime novel, Texas Jack, the White King of the Pawnees.  The title references Jack's association with and fondness for the Pawnee tribe, which he joined on the annual summer buffalo hunt in 1872.  Jack often referred to the Pawnee as "my tribe" or "my Indians," occasionally boasting that with a dozen Pawnee warriors, he could take out any number of Sioux warriors.

Jack's family may have had some French ancestry, but he wasn't the heir to a grand castle as Buntline fancies here.  According to Jack, the Omohundro name was actually Powhattan, and meant "the place where fresh and salt waters meet."