Reminiscences of a Ranchman (ePub)

"Reminiscences of a Ranchman...will quickly fire the love of adventure in all red-blooded readers...Edgar Beecher Bronson...describes the incidents of his experiences in the wilds of Wyoming where he was engaged in cattle ranching years ago...courage testing trials that beset a tenderfoot cowboy...a sensational broncho buster." -Boston Globe, Sept. 24, 1910

"Adventure packed the life of Edgar Beecher Bronson, daredevil hunter and writer...had thrilling experiences in many lands...established his home ranch on Dead Man's Creek...the very heart of what had been the favorite camping ground of the Ogalala Sioux...had many a brush with the Indians." -NY Times, Feb. 11, 1917

"Bronson is the type of strenuous American hunter of big game and like Roosevelt got his first inspiration in following the wild animals of the West while a ranchman in Wyoming, the account of which he published in his book 'Reminiscences of a Ranchman.'" -St. Lous Post-Dispatch, Feb. 27, 1910

"The Reminiscences of a Ranchman...forms a record of the redevelopment of a tenderfoot newspaperman into a seasoned campaigner of the early west, of a man who was a gun man when the cause was just and a teller of tales that are brimming full with action and the red blood of a ranchman and men of the open country." -El Paso Herald, Dec. 21, 1910

How did the adventurous Clarence King inspire a "back East" sickly tenderfoot newspaperman to head West and become a seasoned Wyoming cowboy who eventually owned his own successful ranch in northern Nebraska?

In 1910, Edgar Beecher Bronson (1856-1917) would publish the story of his transformation from back East newspaperman to tenderfoot to ranchman in his book titled "Reminiscences of a Ranchman." It is this book of 250 pages that has been republished here for the convenience of the interested reader.

As Bronson explains in introducing his story,

"The trials of a tenderfoot cowboy on the plains in the early '70's were only exceeded by the trials of such of them as survived their apprenticeship with enough hardihood left to become tenderfoot ranchmen. One not only caught it going and coming, but often got it hardest when neither going nor coming. And the harder one got it the greater the kindness to him; if his metal rang true under test, the sooner was he accepted into the grim and more or less grizzled Order of Old Timers."

"Reminiscences of a Ranchman" is not only a story of Wyoming, but it is written by a writer who made it his home for several years, Edgar Beecher Bronson. The writer tells of his trials as a tenderfoot ranchman. He arrived in Cheyenne on a beautiful June day and stepped from the Overland Express into "an atmosphere that set his blood tingling like a glass of champagne." He was met at the station by our oldtime citizen, N. R. Davis; went to Menea's and John Harrington's for his outfit, and then drove out with Mr. Davis to the "Lazy D. Ranch" where he worked for several months, before becoming his own ranchman in Nebraska near the Sioux reservation. The book is, as the title suggests, a collection of reminiscences, and, needless to say, the tenderfoot made good.