4/10/2008

By Ron Wilson, director, Huck Boyd National Institute for Rural Development at Kansas State University.
    

The huge buffalo runs with mighty strides across the prairie, as the buffalo hunter and his horse draw near in hot pursuit. It´s a scene from the old west, but it is also a scene you can see in modern times, immortalized in giant bronze in western Kansas. We´re going to
visit the community which built this bronze sculpture and which serves as the birthplace of the legend surrounding Buffalo Bill in today´s Kansas Profile.
    
Lewis Evins of Oakley is a board member of the Wild West Historical Foundation. This foundation was founded to create and promote the opportunity to discover a Wild West experience. It turns out a genuine wild west experience happened right here, west of Oakley.

The story goes back to the 1860s, when the Union Pacific Railroad was building the railroad westward. William F. Cody became a buffalo hunter to supply meat for the railroad crews. His contract called for him to provide 12 buffalo a day. Cody was paid $500 per month for his services, which was highly lucrative at a time when railroad workers´ wages were about $30 per month.
    
Bill Cody´s friends began calling him "Buffalo Bill." But then they encountered another man who was also sometimes known as Buffalo Bill. He was Bill Comstock, a contract buffalo hunter who was supplying meat for the soldiers at nearby Fort Wallace.
    
Here were two men with the same nickname. So to decide who got to keep the name Buffalo Bill, they held a buffalo hunting contest in the territory west of Oakley, complete with a $500 wager. The man who could shoot the most buffalo in a day would win.
    
The day of the contest arrived, and Bill Cody and Bill Comstock rode out to pursue the buffalo. At the end of the day, or when the proverbial smoke had cleared, Bill Cody had gotten 69 buffalo and Bill Comstock had gotten only 46, so Bill Cody earned the title of
Buffalo Bill.
    
Buffalo Bill Cody went on to become the most famous person of his time. He created Wild West shows which would travel the world.
    
Lewis Evins heard the story of this famous buffalo hunt when he was a kid growing up in northwest Kansas. Decades later, when he moved to Oakley to become president of Farmers State Bank, he learned the hunt took place just ten miles west of Oakley. Remembering a statue which he had seen at a Buffalo Bill museum in Wyoming, Lewis thought, "This is something that could put Oakley on the map."
    
And so the Wild West Historical Foundation was created. A lot of private fundraising was conducted. The foundation commissioned Kansas sculptor and painter Charlie Norton and his wife Pat to create a tribute to this event. They live near the rural town of Leoti, Kansas, population 1,601 people. Now, that´s rural.
    
On May 22, 2004, Charlie and Pat´s magnificent statue was dedicated on the west side of Oakley. The sculpture depicts Buffalo Bill Cody astride his favorite buffalo running horse Brigham, in pursuit of a giant bull buffalo. Cody is aiming his favorite Springfield rifle,
nicknamed Lucretia Borgia.
    
This statue is awesome. It is a twice-life sized bronze sculpture standing 16 feet tall and weighing 9,000 pounds. It is so big that the head of this horse would just barely fit in the back of a pickup. The sculpture is so remarkable that it is already attracting an estimated 20,000 people per year. The Buffalo Bill cabin stands nearby. Lewis Evins says. "One day I looked in the log book where visitors register and on a single page, I saw names from six different foreign countries." Wow.
    
For more information, go to www.buffalobilloakley.org.
    
The huge buffalo runs across the prairie, but Buffalo Bill and his horse are drawing near to make the shot. It´s a classic scene of the west, captured in bronze near the city of Oakley. We commend Lewis Evins and all the people of the Wild West Historical Foundation and the Oakley area for making a difference by capturing this history and
honoring the true American icon Buffalo Bill.