Clayton Danks -- January 18, 2019 -- Reason #1 Why I Keep Blogging

There is enough trivia in this note to carry any bona fide NoDak through every social engagement for the entire year. If you don't agree, you are not looking hard enough. LOL. 

This might take a moment to load. When I first saw it this morning, I see that it had "27 views."  It was originally posted March 24, 2015. I have no more information on this video than that.


A reader pointed me in the right direction. The YouTube link is here.

I'm glad the video is only 54 seconds long. I've already watched it a dozen times. I wish it were longer. LOL. For newbies, wondering why the videographer did not pan to the roper: the videographer was watching the horse for a reason. What one sees is really quite remarkable; I have no idea how one trains a horse to do that. It doesn't seem like it would be a "natural" movement for a horse.

The wiki entry is worth a read.

Clarence Clayton Danks (July 21, 1879 – June 23, 1970) was a three-time winner of Cheyenne Frontier Days, an outdoor rodeo and western celebration held each July in the Wyoming capital city of Cheyenne. He is believed to be the cowboy of the widely-recognized Wyoming state trademark, the Bucking Horse and Rider. .....

To Danks, the saddle that he won in 1907 was not a trophy, but a necessity of practical use .... Family members finally located the saddle at King's Saddlery and Museum in Sheridan, Wyoming, where it was obtained after much negotiation. In 2013, the saddle was donated to the Cheyenne Frontier Days Old West Museum.

The soon-to-be-famous Steamboat of the Wyoming State logo was first ridden by Danks at Frontier Days in 1909. Danks was then working as a ranch hand on the 2-Bar Ranch in the Chugwater area, where Steamboat had been foaled in 1896.

As of 2013, Ed Danks of Dunn Center in Dunn County in western North Dakota is the only living family member who ever met Clayton Danks. "We know [he was] a law enforcement officer, and that he was a fair and honest competitor. It's nice to have a hero," said Ed Danks, in an interview with the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle.

Meanwhile, Danks family members have begun searching for another saddle which Clayton won when he rode Steamboat at the CFD in 1909. Foaled at Chugwater, where Danks had lived early in the 20th century, the black gelding named Steamboat sustained a nose injury, which required removing a bone fragment from a nostril. As a result, the horse developed a sound which resembled the whistling of a steamboat whenever he bucked. The riders who could remain on Steamboat were certain to finish in the money.

After Steamboat's death in 1914, Danks rued, "I think a part of the rodeo ended for me, too."

Steamboat was inducted in 1975 into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City, and in 1979 into the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame in Colorado Springs.

Danks died in 1970 shortly before his 91st birthday in Thermopolis in Hot Springs County in north central Wyoming.

Clayton and Marie Danks are interred at Mount Hope Cemetery in Lander in Fremont County in central Wyoming.

It gets even better, for me, personally. This past summer I drove through Thermopolis, Wyoming. I have video of some of the most beautiful country in the world of that area.

One hopes the video above is never removed.

It goes without saying. A huge shout-out to the following:

• the reader who pointed me in the right direction on this one
• YouTube
• the person who uploaded the video on YouTube
• the journalist who was able to find Ed Danks and interview him
• the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle
• the reader who first replied to me regarding one of the drilling units in the Bakken that started this
• the Dunn County Platt book

Did I forget anybody? Good luck to all.