Chris LeDoux Park

Chris LeDoux Park and the “Good Ride Cowboy” monument were unveiled in 2010 at a ceremony which drew thousands of people to the small town of Kaycee. To this day, the park and the sculpture serve as a colorful and peaceful place of reflection in honor of LeDoux, a world champion bareback rider and celebrated country musician who died in 2005 at the age of 56.

LeDoux, who was born in Mississippi in 1948, went to high school in Cheyenne. He was an accomplished rodeo rider who found an outlet in songwriting and recorded his first album in 1971. He married his wife, Peggy, in 1972, and they settled in Kaycee. He went on to be a five-time National Finals Rodeo qualifier, the 1976 World Champion Bareback Rider, and he released 18 albums that sold more than 6 million copies. In 2002, after flooding destroyed much of Kaycee, the LeDoux family bought the land where the Rusty Spur tack shop had been.

After Chris LeDoux’s death in 2005, the land was donated for the creation of the memorial park. The centerpiece is the 3,500-pound statue, “Good Ride Cowboy,” sculpted by noted Buffalo artist and family friend D. Michael Thomas. The statue shows LeDoux on the bucking bronc Stormy Weather, which he rode when he won the National Finals bareback riding championship in 1976. The statue’s base is a guitar with the title of one of LeDoux’s songs, “Beneath These Western Skies.”