Chadron and the Great Cowboy Race

Chadron sits in the Nebraska Panhandle near the Pine Ridge, a town that mostly serves as the commercial hub of Dawes County. But in the summer of eighteen ninety-three, it was the starting line for one of the strangest endurance races in American history.

Nine cowboys left Chadron on June thirteenth, eighteen ninety-three, each riding to reach the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, about one thousand miles away. The finish line was the entrance to Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, a thousand dollars was on the line, and the western press went wild. Animal welfare groups tried to stop it. In the end, John Berry arrived in Chicago just under fourteen days later, though the organizers disputed his route. The race captured the romantic dying image of the open-range cowboy just as the frontier was being declared officially closed. Today Chadron is home to Chadron State College and the Museum of the Fur Trade.