Victor Hugo Stickney

Great Westerner

Inducted 2025

The “Cowboy Doctor,” Victor Hugo Stickney, was born April 13, 1855. He was raised on the family farm in Vermont. Stickney had two sisters and seven brothers. Stickney worked his way through college with an assortment of jobs.

Graduating from Dartmouth Medical School in 1883, Stickney went west to the Dakota Territory’s open spaces. His practice covered 50,000 square miles. He would often be gone for days at a time when he was called to a remote camp or ranch to attend the injured or sick. He never hesitated, no matter the conditions in which he would find himself. He traveled by horse, buckboard, and occasionally the caboose of a freight train, and worked in often primitive conditions. He often slept out on the open prairie wrapped in a tarp.

In 1885 Stickney was able to have his fiancé Margaret Hayes join him. They had two daughters.

Stickney contracted with the railroad in 1886 to serve as surgeon for all railroad employees in the northwestern Dakota Territory, holding this position for 26 years. He was elected the Stark County Superintendent of Schools and was on the library board that acquired a Carnegie Foundation grant to build Dickinson’s first library. In 1915, he was elected president of the North Dakota Medical Association. Stickney served as a captain in the Medical Corp during World War I.

Stickney assisted with the establishment of what is now Dickinson State University. He worked to establish banks in the area, serving as vice president of the First National Bank of Dickinson, and worked as director of the Roosevelt Memorial Association. He built the first building in town used exclusively as an automobile garage.

By the turn of the century Stickney was a major stockman in the area.

In 1966 Dr. Stickney was honored as one of the first 10 individuals from North Dakota inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.