One of my favorite pictures of my trip through Wyoming.
Freckles was born Warren Granger Brown in Wheatland, Wyoming
on January 18, 1921, the youngest of 10 brothers and sisters.
He got the nickname “Freckles” from a dairyman he went to work for
in Tucson Arizona when he was 14.
Years later someone noted the freckles were all gone and Freckles replied,
“The bulls knocked them all off!”
In 1937 Freckles, at the age of 16, entered his first rodeo in Willcox, Arizona.
His rodeo career would span 37 years, from age 16 at that first rodeo in 1937,
to age 53 riding in Tulsa at his last rodeo in 1974.
But it wasn’t until 1941, after riding his horse 50 miles from the ranch
where he worked to the rodeo in Cody, Wyoming,
that he won his first bull riding trophy. After his win,
he rode the horse the 50 miles back home.
Through his rodeo career he competed in bull riding, saddle bronc riding,
bareback riding, team roping, and bull dogging.
Freckles’ wife Edith was by his side through it all, when he was stationed
at Fort Sill in W.W.II, and when he rode in rodeos in Europe,
and when he returned to Oklahoma to raise cattle and hay.
