Dockery, Brown inducted into Cowboy Hall of Fame

Over the weekend, two Thermopolis residents were inducted into the Wyoming Cowboy Hall of Fame during a ceremony in Laramie.

Carl Obe Dockery was born on Owl Creek in 1936 and raised there by parents Clifford and Edna. During his childhood, he said, much of time was spent going places with horses, except for the quarter-mile trip to school, which he walked. The family ranch had 15-20 mares at the time, as well as some saddle horses. The main trip they took was going up the creek to pick buffalo berries.

Sitting in a chair at his home, Dockery pointed out a picture of his father sitting on Jerry, the horse Carl learned to ride on. Among the other prominent décor of the home are several animal mounts, both from Dockery and other family members.

In 1959, he married Carol Ireland, and from that marriage they had four children – Pam, born in 1960; Claudette, born in 1962; Billee, born in 1966; and Thad, born in 1975. When he first got married, Carl worked on a drilling rig for about three months but when they moved he chose to stay because he didn't want that type of life.

Being brought up on a ranch helped Dockery decide what he wanted to do with his life. "It's what my dad done," he said. In 1968, while working for Landis Webber, he bought the ranch where he currently lives, out on Mud Creek Road, from Mack Bryson. Prior to that, he worked on various ranches in the area. After he was done with school, instead of going on to college or trade school he worked the Arapahoe Ranch with his dad, caking cows with pack horses.

Before settling on Mud Creek, Dockery would also work for the Pitchfork, with George Woods on the Nowood, for the Sprats at the Lost Cabin, at the Antler Ranch in Montana and for Kennedy and Brown over by Sheridan. He also trailed cows for 33 weeks, up the north fork of Owl Creek into the mountains. As to the appeal of the ranch life, Dockery said it was working and handling cows that drew him into it. These days, Dockery isn't so active on his ranchland, as it's been leased. He noted his son Thad and Mike Baker bought the cattle. To those youngsters who are looking at getting into the ranching business, Dockery said, "To thine own self be true." In other words, "don't deceive yourself."

Dockery also belongs to the Farm Bureau, as well as the Hot Springs County Historical Society and the Pioneer Association. When the local Kiwanis chapter started here, though he was not the head he helped get it going.

Further, he helped get the local Natural Resources Planning Committee (NRPC) going as well. "That was a pretty big undertaking," he said, "getting all those rules." He is also a member of the Church of Christ – Thermopolis and used to ride in the local rodeos, his first one in 1954.

As for being inducted into the Wyoming Cowboy Hall of Fame, ever reserved Dockery said, "There's a lot more people more eligible than me."

Ernest Nathan "Nate" Brown, who passed away in 2016 and was honored posthumously, was born in Lander on May 11, 1921, the son of Eunice Williams and Ernest Nathan Brown. His father was also born in Lander. Brown's parents had two children, including his sister Linda Mae Brown. His earliest memories were of Crow Creek at the foot of Black Mountain in Fremont County, where his family started out on the Shoshone Reservation. Due mainly to their Chief, Washakie, who was a diplomat before his time, the Shoshone Tribe of Indians never fought the white man. In the early 1900s, they opened the portion of their reservation North of the Wind River to homestead by the white man and leased them grazing from the tribe. His parents bought one of the homesteads and started from there.

In the 1930s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs changed the picture. The Council determined that land should not be leased to non-Indian families. They appraised land owned by white men, paid them for their land and said they could no longer lease grazing on the reservation. At that time, Brown's parents bought a ranch on Grass Creek. They gathered up all the brood mares and unbroken horses and sold them. In 1941, when Brown was 19, they trailed the cattle across the mountain to the new ranch, which took ten days, bringing saddle horses, workhorses and cattle at the same time.

Over the next 40 years, the ranch would endure through droughts, hard winters, divorces, good and bad cattle prices, a sale and a repurchase. In the 1940s it became obvious the ranch would have to sideline to stay in business, and Brown's sideline became breaking horses for the public, which he combined with working cattle. This sideline helped provide money to pay living expenses.

As an adult, Nate provided a safe haven for lots of kids, including his own children Ron, born in 1943; Shirley, born in 1944; and Karen Sue, born in 1968. Nate made work fun. "There are two kinds of ranchers," he said, "the kind who have horses to work their cows and the kind who have cows to work their horses." Nate is the latter. Everything he did with horses is part of their training.

A fixture in parades and local saddle club competitions, Nate and his gangs of kids, "adopted" kids he helped raise and kids' friends, were for some years the Indian riders in the Wedding of the Waters parade, once attempting to trail the buffalo ahead of them in a failed effort to increase the authenticity of their role. Remaining friends with the Shoshone and Arapahoe from his youth on the reservation and horse dealings, Nate was honored to wear the Shoshone Chief's headdress in the Denver Stock Show. His daughter, Shirley, wore the headdress of the Arapahoe.

Brown's influence extended to two-thousand girls each summer who went through the Girl Scout National Center West during the 10-plus years when Nate was the Horse Program Coordinator. Many a Girl Scout started the summer intending to keep up with Nate, but only one, Bea Webster, was able to match him stride for stride as a Girl Scout, then as a wrangler. She would later become a successful horsewoman from Wyoming to California to the east coast, and her son Rick spent a summer with Brown before being mentored by Buck Brannaman and becoming a much sought after trainer and clinician in his own right.

In 1989, Brown retired, sort of. He sold the ranch and moved to Arizona. Retirement wasn't very interesting to him, so in the summers he returned to Grass Creek to help their neighbors at the High Island Ranch with their guest operation. In 1994, he met MaeCile, who would later become his wife. Much to their surprise, in 2003 they were offered the Grass Creek Ranch back. They took the plunge and loved every minute of being back on the old place.

In 2009, at the age of 88, Brown joined the Mexico to Canada trail ride at the New Mexico-Colorado border, saying that he'd ridden across enough desserts in his life to skip New Mexico. While in South Dakota, he was named 2009 Cowboy of the Year on the National Day of the Cowboy. Asked how he enjoyed the trip that lasted from May to September, he said he rides harder and faster every day on the ranch than on any day of that trip. In 2014, he was an honoree in the Cody Stampede Parade on July 3 and 4. When the parade committee called to ask him if they could book the limo, he said, "I'll be riding my old horse, Nicole."

Brown said he was killed three times and refused to die – once by a horse he figures was locoed and ran through a fence as if it wasn't there when she got sweaty, once by a yellow-eyed Clyde Duncan horse that pawed out his spleen, and once when his cinch broke as he loped around the remuda landing him hard under the horse with six broken ribs and a punctured lung. After each wreck, he healed up and went back to riding sooner than anyone expected, often on the same horse, but with a different attitude. One of the most important lessons he learned with horses was to call a lesson a lesson.

His favorite horse was, "Whichever horse I happen to be riding."