Bill Pickett

Pickett's cowboy trade began in Taylor in the late 1880s, when five Pickett brothers went into the business of breaking wild horses. A Gale biography says he was born in Travis County in 1870, left school after fifth grade and married Maggie Turner in 1890. It says a year of blindness left him fatalistic, and that he took bulldogging from watching ranch dogs hold steers by the lip. The same source gives his death as April 2, 1932, noting that some sources say March 23. The plaque says March 25.

What the plaque says

Bill Pickett (ca. December 1870-March 25, 1932) The son of a former slave, Willie M. (Bill) Pickett grew up in Taylor. Working as a cowboy in central Texas, he pioneered the art of "bulldogging," in which a cowboy jumps from his horse to twist a steer's horns to force it to the ground. One of the few black cowboys on the rodeo circuit, Pickett became a sensation, performing in the U.S., Mexico, Canada, and Europe. He retired in Oklahoma in 1930 and died two years later from injuries sustained in a riding accident. In 1971 he became the first African American cowboy inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. (1991)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Williamson County Courthouse — 17 mi
  The fifth Williamson County courthouse, a Beaux Arts building by C. H. Page, rises over a Georgetown square of more than 50 Victorian-era buildings.
• Inner Space Cavern — 17 mi
  A Georgetown cave found in 1963 when highway engineers drilled test holes, holding Pleistocene fossils and 72-degree rooms that visitors reach by an artificial tunnel.
• The Round Rock — 17 mi
  A table-shaped stone in Brushy Creek gave Round Rock its name in 1854; the Chisholm Trail crossed the creek near it, and Old Town stayed behind when the railroad pulled the town east.
• LBJ Presidential Library — 27 mi
  A ten-story travertine archive on the University of Texas campus holding 45 million pages from a presidency of civil rights laws, the War on Poverty and Vietnam.

More markers nearby

• Tex Avery — steps away
• City of Taylor — steps away
• First Presbyterian Church of Taylor — steps away
• Dr. James Lee Dickey — 0.3 mi