America's Cowboys Get Their Due

An iconic saddler’s shop houses a heritage Nevada museum that honors the first cowboys.

- Jana Bommersbach

First, thanks go to the Franciscan priests who established 21 missions along the California coast starting in 1769, bringing with them the first ranches of the American West—and the vaqueros who were our first cowboys.

Second, thanks go to the power company—NV Energy—which not only donated a historic saddle shop for a new museum in Elko, Nevada, but then restored the 1907 building on its own dime.

And finally, thanks go to Paula Bear Wright’s family and Jan Petersen, for realizing their community’s “dream come true” by opening the Cowboy Arts & Gear Museum last February to showcase vaquerobuckaroo-cowboy history.

“We always dreamed of a museum in this building, and here came a golden opportunity too good to miss,” Petersen says. “This museum brings history to life and is the perfect companion to the great mix of museums already here.”