Buffalo Bill, {Caty?} Story

Oakley, Kansas, is a small town in the northwest part of the state that sits near the intersection of Interstate 70 and U.S. Highway 83. And in spite of what many may think, Oakley is not named for Annie Oakley, although she did perform there once, along with famed Buffalo Hunter Buffalo Bill Cody. And because Cody competed in a Buffalo shooting contest there against William Comstock in the 19th century, it's only fitting that the town was picked as the site for a massive statue of the Buffalo Hunter. U.S. Evans was one of the people who helped raise funds for the project. There was no public support for this. It was all private donations of time and money. We had tried to get some public support, but run unsuccessful in that endeavor. We're not totally to our fundraising goal, you know, another 25,000 about what we need, but I think we'll be able to get there. The sculpture of Buffalo Bill Cody, sitting astride his horse, coat flapping in the Kansas wind, aiming his rifle to the Buffalo, is the creation of Oakley artist Charlie Norton. He says creating the artwork was a big challenge because of its size.

Any monumental sculpture of this magnitude has a lot of, you know, of its own problems, just due to the mass, the size of the piece. And as I understand, it is probably the world's largest of Buffalo Bill and with a horse and Buffalo. And it's a little larger than twice life size. Many large sculpture are built on an underlying supporting framework. The Norton says that technical necessity did not inhibit the lifelike nature of the sculpture. A lot of times large sculpture becomes rather stiff. To start these projects, you have armature 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 the overall movement or flow of the piece. I think we have pretty well succeeded in maintaining the flight of the piece, the light field that I wanted to convey. Al Huffman, who re-enacts characters from Cody's period in history, says the sculpture's

attention to detail are impressive. As you look at this weight of his boots, you notice that on his left, left boot has got more pressure on that strip than the right one because he's leaning forward. And then the gun is pressed up against his cheek and you can see his cheek is wrinkled a couple of places there where he's holding the gun up there next to him. And another thing in real life, when Cody was shooting, Brigham was a horse's name when he was shooting Buffalo. Brigham is a horse. And when Cody would come through, you see he hasn't got the whole of the reins at all. He's just the loose reins. The horse would come in and zero in on the Buffalo, Cody would pull the trigger and soon as the shot, the old Brigham would go off to one side because he didn't want the Buffalo to roll right in front of him, stumble over him. Norton says that attention to detail also went as far as to accurately reflect the breed and confirmation of the horse written by Buffaloville Cody.

The horses that they used back in the 1860s or if you're talking fur trade prior to the 1840s were certainly different horses entirely than what we have today and the whole confirmation. You know, there's so many things different about them that I tried to maintain that old historical look in the horse, a little rougher head and carry through that Spanish barbed look in those mustangs. The statue of Buffaloville Cody by Kansas artist Charlie Norton is on the west side of Oakley, Kansas off Interstate 70. Oakley is near the intersection of I-70 and U.S. Highway 83. Norton Bashroom High Plains Public Radio News.