Buffalo Bill, {Caty?} Story

Oakley Kansas is a small town in the northwest part of the state that sits at the intersection of interstates seventy and US highway eighty three and in spite of what many may think Oakley is not named for Annie Oakley although she did perform their once along with fame buffalo hunter buffalo Bill Cody and because Cody competed in a buffalo shooting contest there against William Comstock of the nineteenth century it's only fitting that the town was picked as the site for a massive statue of the buffalo hunter. Louis Evans was one of the people who help raise funds for the project.[Louis Evans] There was no public support for this involved in private donations of time and money. We had tried to get some public support we were un- successful in that endeavor were not totally to our fundraising goal you know another 25,000 is about what we need and I think we'll be able to get her in. [Narrator] The sculpture of Buffalo Bill Cody sitting astride on his horse coat flapping in the kansas wind aiming his rifle though to the buffalo is the creation of Oakley artist Shirley Mortin. He says creating the art work was a big challenge because of its size. It is a monumental sculpture this magnitude has a lot of and on its own problems just due to the

mass the size of the piece that as I understand it is part of the worlds the world's largest buffalo Bill and with the horse and buffalo and it's a little larger than twice life size. [Narrator] Many large sculpture are built on an underlying supporting framework the Norton says that technical necessity does not inhibit the lifelike nature of the sculpture. [Norton] A lot of times large sculpture becomes rather stiff to start these projects you arms around on the inside a lot of steel to support the whole system that you build around that and sometimes the armature tends to dictate too much of the overall movement or flow of the piece and so I think we have pretty well succeeded in maintaining that the flight of the piece the light feel that I wanted to convey. [Narrator] Howl Hoffman who reenacts characters in Codey's periods in history says the sculptures attention to detail are impressive. [Hoffman] As you look at this weight of his boots you notice that on his left boot is got more

pressure on that stirrup than the right one because he's leaning forward and then and that the gun has pressed up against his cheek and you can see his wrinkle a couple places there where he's holding the gun up there next to him and another thing in real life when Cody was shooting Brigon was the horse's name the Buffalo Reagans the horse and when Cody would come through you could see see he hasn't gotten a hold of the reins at all he's just the loose reins the horse would come in and zero in on buffalo Cody would pull the trigger and as soon as the shot the old brigon would go on one side because he didn't want the buffalo to stumble over on him [Narrator] Norton says that attention to detail also went as far as to accurately reflected breed and confirmation of the horse written by buffalo bill Cody. The horses that they used back in the eighteen sixties and or if you're talking for draper eating fourteen there were certainly different horses entirely on what we have today and whole confirmation there's so many different about him

but I tried to maintain that old historical look in the horse a little rougher head and through the Spanish barb look and those mustangs. The statue of Buffalo Bill Cody by Kansas Artist Morton is on the west side of Oakley Kansas off interstate seventy Oakley is near the intersection by seventy and us highway eighty three. Gordon Bashum High Plains public radio news.