Oldest Cowboy in Dodge City
Dodge City, Kansas
Back in the 1920s, Dodge City was still close enough to its Wild West past to be embarrassed by it.
But Dodge City dentist Oscar Simpson saw things differently. Having perfected the art of dental molding, Oscar wanted to use his skills to create a statue of a life-size cowboy. He decided that a local policeman had the proper cowboy look, dipped him in dental plaster (he had to breath through a straw), and the result is the surprisingly lifelike Oldest Cowboy statue. Unveiled in 1928, it was Dodge City's first acknowledgement of its Western history. The statue was so well-liked that it was placed on one of the highest spots in town, the front lawn of the town's new city hall.
New city hall eventually became old city hall, and is now a whiskey distillery. Dr. Simpson went on to restore Dodge City's famous Boot Hill cemetery before dying himself in 1935 (He's buried elsewhere in town). And after years of weathering, in the summer of 2015 the statue was restored to its original ghostly splendor.