“The Cowboy,” Jim Gray is a 6th generation Kansan, whose family migrated during the territorial days.  In 1996, Jim co-founded the C.O.W.B.O.Y. (Cockeyed Old West Band Of Yahoos) Society to promote and preserve Kansas’s cowboy heritage through the bi-monthly newspaper, Kansas Cowboy.  In 2009, Jim authored the book, Desperate Seed:  Ellsworth Kansas on the Violent Frontier.  His newest venture, The Way West, is a weekly column available in newspapers across the state.  Whether it’s his latest column, book, or Kansas Cowboy article, Jim writes in a style that puts flesh and blood onto the bones of stories; buried but not forgotten.  He joined the KHC Speakers Bureau in 2010.

Texas Longhorn cattle, rowdy cowboys, gamblers, gunslingers, and tempting women combined to produce the archetypal Kansas cattle town.  Chronicled in literature, music, and movies, the cattle town has been a common setting for adventure and intrigue, but the real meaning and importance of cattle towns has rarely been explained.  Many misconceptions have endured to distort the actual history of the Kansas cattle town.  Gray’s presentation will reveal the Wild West as it really was.

Kansas Cattle Towns is part of the Kansas Humanities Council’s Kansas 150 Speakers Bureau commemorating the Kansas sesquicentennial.  The special edition Speakers Bureau features presentations and discussions about Kansas and what it means to be a Kansan over time and across generations.