Lifetime Leaders of Rodeo & Ranching Rodeo Ranching Great Westerner Western Entertaiment & Arts Rodeo Producers & Livestock Special Achievement Cowboy Long Rider Legacy Award

Ranching

Matt Crowley
2010 Award
Pre-1940 Ranching

Matt Crowley, born in southern Minnesota in 1875, was the third North Dakotan to be inducted into the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma.

His Irish-born parents boarded an immigrant train and moved their family to Dakota Territory to stake a claim in 1887. They brought purebred registered Herefords from Iowa along to start their ranching operation.

After only four years of formal education, Crowley worked with his dad until 1910, when he established his own ranch near Elm Creek in Mercer County on railroad land. Crowley later increased his holdings by purchasing acreage from homesteaders who were leaving the area. He allowed those homesteads to revert to grasslands to provide pasture for cattle and horses.

His original ranch house was only a sod shack, and he boarded cattle on shares to get a start. Crowley drilled the first artesian water wells in the area.

He married Pauline Shoemaker in 1914 and built a wood frame house for his bride. The house had running water and a Delco plant to provide electricity. Together, they raised three cowgirls on their spread north of Hebron.

In 1933, Crowley donated 2.35 acres of land to the State Historical Society of North Dakota, which is now known as the Crowley Flint Quarry State Park.

He supplied horses for the Beulah rodeo for many years and did plenty of horse trading, mainly with "Badlands Bill" McCarty of Medora. Crowley's brands were the Lazy J and the Jumping J.

Active within the Western North Dakota Stockmen's Association, North Dakota Farm Bureau and American National Cattlemen, Crowley was honored by North Dakota Agricultural College's Saddle & Sirloin Club in 1937.

Crowley served as a County Commissioner during the 1930s and was a representative to the North Dakota State Legislature during the 1931 session. He died at home in 1955.