The Ultimate Ranking of The Cowboyiest States in America Revealed

Here in Colorado, we pride ourselves on our cowtown, Wild West heritage, but are we actually out there working the land in our Wranglers, or just strutting our stuff at the Grizzly Rose in our Rockmounts? If the cowboy spirit is all self-reliance and hard work, where do hipsters and $10k-a-month apartments fit in?
The True Essence of Cowboy Culture
In movies, cowboys look like the gunslinging John Wayne, the sometimes morally dubious “hero” battling it out with Native Americans and outlaws. But cowboy culture isn’t just putting on a Stetson hat and twirling a gun. It’s truly a way of life. A stubborn, rebellious, unrelenting way of life. It’s venturing into the unknown and blazing trails no matter the cost. It’s living with nature and wedging our humanity into its rugged, vicious ecosystem. It’s an independent spirit and a fight for freedom. Maybe not surprisingly, it tends to involve trouble with the law. Because it’s an election year and we clearly need to pit ourselves against each other more, we decided to rank the states by their cowboy-ness. To do so, we looked at ranches and rodeos. We considered love for the land, grit and resilience. We consulted rodeo experts and learned the real roots of the term “cowboy” itself. We thought about Western movies, Beyoncé and why “Yellowstone” is so great. So giddy up, buckaroos. Here are the ultimate, most definitive of all time and place rankings of the cowboyiest states in the union.
5. Arizona
Tombstone is the home of maybe the most famous gunfight in the West at the OK Corral, and the lore of that alone is enough to challenge the Grand Canyon for Arizona’s most famous landmark.
4. Kansas
Rural Kansas has been home to more shootouts than you can shake a spur at, and Dodge City even employed Wyatt Earp as assistant marshal to try to keep the peace among all the bank robbers and saloon-haunting gamblers that blew through town. With all that history, plus still-thriving crop and livestock industries, Kansas makes the cowboy cut.
3. Colorado
Sure, we might be better known for Denver’s urban culture nowadays, but our state was built by prospectors heading west to seek their fortunes in our gold-filled mountains. And it’s not like they played fair when it came to divvying up the Gold Rush riches. Border to border, you’ll still find artifacts of our legit Wild West past, from Cripple Creek’s Outlaws and Lawmen Jail Museum to southeastern Bent’s Old Fort Trading Hub to the St. Elmo Ghost Town. Not to mention the famous guys buried here, like Buffalo Bill and Doc Holliday.
2. Wyoming
Besides hosting Cheyenne Frontier Days, the “daddy of ‘em all” when it comes to outdoor rodeos, one of its nicknames is the Cowboy State, and Cody is known as the rodeo capital of the world.
1. Texas
Texas raises the most cattle, has double the farmland of any other state, puts on the largest livestock exhibition in the world and even invented the term cowboy. Callies comes from a long line of Black Americans working the Texas land, many as slaves in the 19th century. Texas also has that independent spirit that we don’t want to mess with. For freedom-loving, trail-blazing, term-coining and simply the sheer multitude of cows, Texas is the cowboyiest state of them all.