Wyoming Cowboy Hall of Fame finds new home at Rockpile Museum

GILLETTE — When one thinks of the West, one of the first images that pops into mind is that of the cowboy.

And in the Cowboy State, you’d be hard pressed to find a county that has been shaped by the cowboy more than Campbell County.

That’s why the Campbell County Rockpile Museum will be home to the Wyoming Cowboy Hall of Fame for at least the next five years.

The Wyoming Cowboy Hall of Fame has been around since 2013, but up until now, it had only existed online at its website. Now, it has a physical exhibit in the front room of the Rockpile Museum.

“We know that Campbell County has a very long and rich history with ranching,” said WCHF Executive Director Candy Moulton. “We all think of it today as energy, but that is not all that’s there. It was built on cattle and sheep and livestock production…. we’re really pleased to be a part of that cowboy tradition in Campbell County and in the Powder River Basin.”

The exhibit, which occupies about one-third of the museum’s opening room, recognizes the achievements of dozens of Wyoming ranchers, including many local names.

Longtime Campbell County residents will certainly recognize names such as Bill Greer, Bob Hladky, Clark Leroy Reynolds and Rod Smith, whose portraits adorn one of the exhibit walls alongside their fellow Campbell County inductees.

The exhibit is made up of photos and interactive displays as well as items selected from the Rockpile Museum’s own collection, including saddles, clothing and even an antique wagon.

It also includes artwork and an interactive digital collection that provides context to the many Wyoming cowboys that have been added to the list over the years.

The organization’s focus is to “preserve, promote, perpetuate, publish and document Wyoming’s working cowboy and ranching history through researching, profiling and honoring individuals who broke the first trails and introduced that culture to this state.”

Robert Henning, director of the Rockpile Museum, said conversations on the Rockpile hosting an exhibit from the hall of fame have been going off and on for the last five years, but a combination of previous funding efforts and a Wyoming 250 grant finally brought the project to fruition.

“We knew the Cowboy Hall of Fame had been looking for a place to have an exhibit for quite a long time, and so we talked to the local committee, and we started just throwing out ideas,” Henning said.

Originally, the idea had been to do an exhibit specifically for the local inductees.

“Things kind of went down the road a little bit, and they started thinking, well, maybe we could do a larger display for the Cowboy Hall of Fame,” he said.

The Wyoming Cowboy Hall of Fame also recently announced its most recent class of inductees, with Campbell County’s Bob Tarver and R.V. Talley joining the ranks.

The WCHF will hold an induction ceremony Sep. 25 and 26 at Little America in Cheyenne, which will be open to the public. The organization also is gathering information on the 25 new inductees which will be added to the exhibit’s interactive database.

“The information about those individuals, their photos, their videos, their biographies, will all be added to that unit, so we can continuously update this and keep it,” Moulton said. “It will always have all of the inductees on it.”

Henning said he was happy to see some of the more well used artifacts, such as the boots and saddles, on display. He pointed out the effort and hard work that goes into the profession, with the wear and tear on the equipment bringing meaning to those walking through the exhibit.

“This whole display is about cowboys who spend their life in the saddle, working cattle, working livestock, and so to show a pair of boots like that, that have basically been worn as long as you can wear them until they fall apart, is pretty cool,” Henning said. “The same with the saddles…They’re not perfect, and it’s almost like a metaphor for the cowboys themselves, you know, they’ve worked really hard. They gave it all to their career and sometimes it shows.”

This story was published on May 9, 2026.