Kevin Campbell, of Bondurant, is one of four Sublette County cowboys selected for induction into the 2024 Wyoming Cowboy Hall of Fame. Campbell is a horseman, a teamster, a cowboy and a stockman.

Courtesy photo

SUBLETTE COUNTY — The Wyoming Cowboy Hall of Fame (WCHF) selected 23 inductees for the Class of 2024. Among them are four cowboys from Sublette County — Kevin W. Campbell, Bondurant; John C. Budd, Big Piney; Gary Lozier, Big Piney; and Steven C. James, Daniel. The Pinedale Roundup will highlight one recipient each week. A special thanks goes out to Jonita Sommers for her assistance with each cowboy’s profile. 

The WCHF State Board of Directors voted on the nominees from across the state during its annual meeting on April 27. The 11th Annual induction ceremony will be at the Ramkota Hotel in Casper on Oct. 11-12. It is open to the public.  

Regional committees in ten different areas of Wyoming researched and scored over 50 nominations and sent the top picks to the WCHF State Board of Directors. The State Board also selected several nominees.  

Formed for historical, cultural, literary, and educational purposes, WCHF’s chief goal is “To preserve, promote, perpetuate, publish and document Wyoming’s working cowboy and ranching history through researching, profiling and honoring individuals who broke the first trails and introduced that culture to this state. WCHF plans to collect, display and preserve the stories, photos and artifacts of such individuals and anything else that will honor and highlight their contributions to our history.” 

The WCHF Board is comprised of one member from each of the state’s ten regions. To learn more about the WCHF visit www.wyomingcowboyhalloffame.org.

Kevin Campbell, Bondurant
Kevin is a third-generation cowboy/rancher of the Campbell Cattle Company, Bondurant, Wyoming.  He was born August 27, 1954, the oldest son of Walden and Pat Campbell. He married Tammy Hill in 1977. He has a daughter, Heidi, and a granddaughter, Daviel. Kevin, his mother, two siblings and a nephew (Lennie, Katherine and Walden) live and work on the ranch in Bondurant. He also has another sister, Colleen, along with nieces, Jenny and Anna. Anna teaches Vocational Agriculture and is an FAA Advisor in Pinedale.  The Campbells always fed and hayed using work horses until 1995. They still feed with a team in the winter and use horses to mow hay.   

Kevin Campbell does a wonderful job of working draft horses. When Campbells did all the haying with horses, Kevin drove the team on the buck sweep. Kevin works two- and four-horse teams in the winter feeding their cattle. Kevin is a horseman, a teamster, a cowboy and most prominently a stockman. He can read horses and communicate with them easily. He never turns a horse loose, draft horse or saddle horse, without a gratitude pet or speaking to the horse as he slips the halter off.  He knows the cattle and can read what they are going to do next. He has never needed ear tags to remember a cow or her calf. It is amazing to anyone who knows him how when pairing off cows and calves, he will look at a cow and say that is not her calf; she had a heifer calf or a bally calf, etc. He remembers cows by where they calved one year, or if they were a dogfighter when they were somewhere on the range. His cattle herd may not be as large as some but sometimes he even remembers the old marker cows of the neighbors. He can predict when a cow is going to calve and spot her in the whole herd. One of the ranch jobs he has excelled at is calving. In his youth, he had the day horse and the night horse. They would help him do the day calving as well as the night calving. He took the responsibility of calving primarily by himself for 50 years of his life.

Ranching takes all day everyday most of the time. Kevin never let his love of good horses take second priority. In the winter months for a few years when the ranch was short on help for the daily tasks, he would turn on the light at the round corral and work with his colts after dark.  Most of his friends and family would be inside or in bed doing what most people do at night. Kevin however was working with his colts. When the colts were ready to leave the corral he would haul them down the county road in the horse trailer and take them on the road since at home the snow was really too deep to go anywhere but the feed trails. By the time calving came, he’d have some new horses to calve on. Working his colts was what he did instead of watching TV, which he has never owned. 

Kevin worked hard from a young age, learning all aspects of cowboying and ranch life, while attending a one-room schoolhouse in Bondurant.  At a young age, he started breaking horses for ranchers Fears, Millers, and whoever else needed a horse trained.  Kevin is highly respected as a cowboy who could get the job done on about any kind of horse, either trainable or unruly.  He had the highest-selling ranch gelding in the Wyoming Gelding Sale for 8 years.  He trains his horses on the job, calving, trailing cattle, roping, and cutting and sorting the herd for the ranch.  Kevin is still breaking colts, alongside his nephew Walden. He has been a working cowboy his entire life.  Kevin has run cattle in every corner of Sublette County-South Cottonwood Creek, Boulder, Horse Creek, Big Piney, Beaver Creek, The Rim and Antelope Run on North Cottonwood.  He also had cattle in the Hoback, Dell Creek and Jack Creek Associations. 
Kevin has been president of the Hoback Cattle Association for 40 years, to present, board member of Green River Valley Cattlemen’s Association, vice-president, Green River Cattlemen’s Association 1986-1987, president, Green River Valley Cattlemen’s Association 1987-1988,  past president and current member of Sublette County Predator’s Board, fed the elk in the winter for 28 years at the Riley Draw Feed Ground to present day and along with his family have helped and donated beef for the Bondurant BBQ.