1993 USPS Postcard Bill Pickett Legends of the West

Willie M. Pickett (December 5, 1870 – April 2, 1932) was a cowboy and rodeo performer. Pickett was born in Texas in 1870. He left school after the fifth grade to become a ranch hand. He soon learned to ride horses and how to watch longhorn steers. Pickett married Maggie Turner, a formerly enslaved daughter of a white southern plantation owner. The couple had nine children. Pickett’s reputation as a rodeo contestant grew quickly after he invented the technique of bulldogging, the skill of grabbing cattle by the horns and wrestling them to the ground. It was known among cattlemen that, with the help of a trained bulldog, a stray steer could be caught easily. Pickett had seen this happen on many occasions and thought that if a bulldog could do this feat, so could he. In 1932, after having retired from Wild West shows, Bill Pickett was kicked in the head by a bronco and died on April 2 from the injury. [When the United States Postal Service chose to include Bill Pickett in this set of postcards the commemorative sheet was unveiled in December 1993. One month later, the Pickett family informed the Postal Service that the likeness was incorrect. The USPS’s source material was a misidentified photograph of Bill Pickett’s brother and fellow cowboy star, Ben Pickett. In October 1994, the USPS released corrected stamps based on the poster for the movie The Bull-Dogger.]

Legends of the West was a sheet of 29 cent stamps along with souvenir postcards released by United States Postal Service (USPS) in 1994.

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