Earl W. Bascom Inventions Information

Earl Wesley Bascom (June 19, 1906 – August 28, 1995) was an American painter, printmaker, rodeo performer and sculptor, raised in Canada, who portrayed his own experiences cowboying and rodeoing across the American and Canadian West. Bascom was awarded the Pioneer Award by the ProRodeo Hall of Fame in 2016 and inducted into the Canadian Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame in 1984.

Bascom was born on June 19, 1906, in a sod-roofed log cabin on the Bascom 101 Ranch in Vernal, Utah, United States, the son of rancher and lawman John W. Bascom and Rachel Lybbert. His father had been a Uintah County deputy sheriff and later a constable in the town of Naples in northeast Utah, who chased members of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch Gang and other outlaws including Harry "Mad Dog" Tracy. Both of his grandfathers, Joel A. Bascom and C. F. B. Lybbert, were Mormon pioneers, frontier lawmen and ranchers. Joel Bascom was a member of the Nauvoo Legion and the Utah militia, serving in the Utah War of 1857 and the Utah Black Hawk War of 1865. He also served as Chief of Police in Provo, Utah and as the first constable in Mona, Utah. Lybbert, who served in the Danish army before coming to America, was a blacksmith who served as constable of Levan, Utah and as Justice of the Peace in Naples, Utah.

Members of Earl's family include his grand uncle Ephraim Roberts who was a pony express rider, and grand uncle William Lance who was a soldier in the Mormon Battalion - Army of the West 1846-1848. Noted Bascom relatives include mountain man Jedediah S. Smith, U.S. army Lt. George N. Bascom who instigated the Apache Wars in 1861, and cattle rancher Bryant Brooks who served as governor of Wyoming from 1905 to 1911.

Bascom's paternal ancestors include Minne-tin-ka, of the Turtle Clan, daughter of Chief Miantonomo of the Narragansett Indian tribe, King Edward III of European Royalty, and others from England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Belgium and France with ethnicities including Quaker, French Basque and Huguenot. Bascom's maternal family was of Norwegian, Danish, Dutch and German ancestry.

In 1909, Earl and his two older brothers and their father were riding horseback near Lybbert Gulch, when a bee stung Earl's horse and it bucked across the meadow with him. Earl hung on until his brothers rode in and picked him off the horse like a rodeo pickup man. Earl was just three years old. For entertainment, the Bascom boys rode anything on the ranch that "bucked, jumped, or crawled." The family was at the local Vernal rodeo where they saw the famous bucking horse "Steamboat" in the arena.

In 1912, when Earl Bascom was six years old, his mother Rachel died of breast cancer, leaving five children - Raymond, Melvin, Earl, Alice and Weldon - ranging in age from 11 years to nine months. In 1913, Earl's father, who had cowboyed in Utah and Colorado and worked on ranches in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana, went to Alberta, Canada securing a job as a foreman on the Knight Ranch. John Bascom's brother-in-law, Ike Lybbert, was already working there as the Knight Ranch blacksmith and farrier.

In 1914, the Bascom family loaded their belongings into a covered wagon, traveled a week to the nearest railroad in Price, Utah and rode the train to Canada. After working for the Knight Ranches headquartered on the Milk River Ridge in Alberta, Canada and managing Ray Knight's Butte Ranch north of the town of Raymond, Alberta, John W. Bascom and his sons began ranching on their own using the Bar-B-3 brand. Over the following years, the Bascom family lived at Welling Station and ranched along Pot Hole Creek, at New Dayton on the Fort Whoop-up Trail near Deadman Coulee and ran cattle on the open range, at Lethbridge on the Old Man River, and at Stirling east of Nine Mile Lake.

By Canadian law, all minor children who emigrated to Canada before 1915 and whose parent became a naturalized citizen, automatically became Canadian citizens. Earl Bascom's father became a naturalized Canadian citizen. Earl Bascom was technically an American Canadian. During the winter of 1916, the Bascom family moved back to Naples, Utah, returning to Canada in the spring of 1917.

Schooled mostly in one-room schools, Bascom quit school while in grade three to work on the Hyssop 5H Ranch, east of Lethbridge. It was not long before a Canadian Mountie, who was visiting the Hyssop Ranch, thought that one of the cowboys was just too young looking to be a seasoned cowpuncher and bronc peeler. The Mountie asked Earl Bascom just how old he was - he was 13 years old. Earl was returned to school. Attending school felt better after Earl's father, who had a school district transportation contract, gave him the job of driving an old stagecoach pulled by a team of Bascom horses each day to the surrounding ranches transporting fellow students to and from school.

In 1918, Bascom gained a stepmother and a stepbrother, Frank, when his Earl's father married Ada Romeril Dawley. To this new union was born five more children - Ada Bell, Charles, Luella, Grant and LaMona: making a total of eleven children in the Bascom family.

Bascom was known as the Cowboy of Cowboy Artists due to his wide range of western experiences as a professional bronc buster, bull rider, cowpuncher, trail driver, blacksmith, freighter, wolf hunter, wild horse chaser, rodeo champion, cattle rancher, dude wrangler, and Hollywood actor. Bascom was among the last of those who experienced the Old West before the end of free-range ranching. Bascom reminisced:

For Bascom, ranch life and cowboy life was his life. "The life of a cowboy and the West, I know," he stated. Bascom worked on some of the largest horse and cattle ranches in the United States and Canada — ranches that ran thousands of cattle on a million acres (4000 km²) of land. He broke and trained hundreds of horses. He worked on ranches where he chased and gathered horses, cows and even donkeys in Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Texas, Mississippi, Washington, California and western Canada. He worked on cattle drives out of the Rockies and horse drives through the Teton Range. He took part on large roundups of horses and cattle, and brandings. He made saddles and stirrups, quirts, chaps, spurs, bridles and bits, ropes and hackamores, and even patched his own boots. Earl's brothers and their father, John W. Bascom, were all experienced ranch hands and professional horsemen who were known as the "Bronc Bustin' Bascom Boys."

A professional rodeo cowboy, Bascom followed the rodeo circuit internationally, rodeoing from 1916 to 1940, where he won several all-around championships. He competed in the rough stock events of saddle bronc riding, bareback riding and bull riding, and in the timed events of steer decorating and steer wrestling. In 1933, he set a new arena record, a new world record time and won third place in the world standings in the steer decorating event. He also was a rodeo announcer, performed trick riding and competed in the rodeo events of wild cow milking and wild horse racing. He held memberships in the Cowboys Turtle Association, the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, the Canadian Rodeo Cowboys Association (now the Canadian Pro Rodeo Association), the National Police Rodeo Association and the National Old Timers Rodeo Association (now the National Senior Pro Rodeo Association). Earl Bascom was a life-member of the Rodeo Historical Society and a founding member of the Canadian Rodeo Historical Association.

Bascom has been inducted into several rodeo, cowboy and sports Halls of Fame in Canada and the United States. He received international publicity for his rodeo equipment inventions and designs. Earl's brothers - Raymond "Tommy" Bascom, Melvin "High Pockets" Bascom and Weldon "Preacher" Bascom, along with their father John W. Bascom - were also professional rodeo cowboys and Hall of Fame inductees. Rodeoing financed Earl Bascom's college education at Brigham Young University where he was given the title of "Rodeo's First Collegiate Cowboy" and from which institution he graduated in 1940.

Bascom has been honored as the "Father of Modern Rodeo" and known as an innovator and inventor. He is known in rodeo history for designing and making rodeo's modern bucking chute in 1916 and modified in 1919. He also made rodeo's first hornless bronc saddle in 1922 and rodeo's first one-hand bareback rigging in 1924, for which he has been called the "Father of Rodeo Bareback Riding." In 1926, he designed and made the modern rodeo riding chaps, and then in 1928, a rodeo exerciser made of spring steel. Bascom has been recognized as one of rodeo's greatest inventors.

During his college years, Earl and his brother Weldon produced the first rodeos in Columbia, Mississippi in 1935, 1936 and 1937 while working for Sam Hickman's B Bar H Ranch near Arm, Mississippi. This first rodeo in Columbia is known in cowboy history as the first rodeo held outdoors at night under electric lights. The rodeo arena designed and built under the direction of Earl Bascom in 1936, was the first permanent rodeo arena built in Mississippi.

The bucking horses used in the rodeo were shipped in from West Texas. Sam Hickman and Earl Bascom went to New Orleans where they purchased brahma bulls for the rodeo bucking stock. This was the first recorded use of brahma bulls in rodeo. Sam Hickman financed these rodeos through his Wild West Rodeo Company.

Between rodeos of 1936 and 1937, Earl was a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) in Mississippi, serving under Mission President LeGrand Richards of the Southern States Mission. The Bascom brothers were honored fifty years later for being the "Fathers of Mississippi Rodeo" and given the "Key to the City of Columbia," along with a congratulatory telegram from President Ronald Reagan. In 2016, Earl Bascom and his brother Weldon were officially recognized by the ProRodeo Hall of Fame as the "Fathers of Brahma Bull Riding."

In 1939, Bascom married Nadine Diffey, who was part American Indian, Creek and Catawba. He met her in Mississippi while cowboying and rodeoing there. They were married in Salt Lake City, Utah in the Salt Lake LDS Temple, and raised five children. Later in life, Nadine Bascom became a sculptor in her own right, creating bas-relief sculptures.

Besides being a professional rodeo contestant, Bascom tried his hand as a rodeo clown and rodeo bullfighter during his rodeo career. Just after his 89th birthday, Earl was honored as the oldest living rodeo clown in the world.

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