Tadpole, the most celebrated cowgirl of all time grew up in the Sandhills

The post office in Cody seems a logical starting place in search of answers to a Sandhills mystery. The postmaster lifts her gaze from sorting bills and ads soon to be delivered to the community of 154 people.

She can't speak with authority about the town's history. But she knows who can.

Walk next door to the Husker Hub, she instructs. Table closest to the salad bar.

There a woman with white hair tightly curled above her glasses sits chewing her cheeseburger. Rocky Richards, a recently retired Cody-Kilgore High School teacher with a passion for collecting newspaper archives of western Cherry County, is Cody's resident historian. 

Richards cautiously asks for the name – strangers rarely come to town inquiring about good news. The name belongs to a businessman, settler and frontier real estate tycoon – Lorenzo Barnes.

"Oh, yeah," she smiled. "Quite the character."

The lunch crowd is filing into the Husker Hub. A few diners turn their shoulders in Richards' direction, leaning in to hear her speak.

She points toward the street where the youngest of Barnes' 24 children - yes, 24 children – started riding. 

This youngest child grew up to become an American heroine, a celebrity who packed Madison Square Garden and rubbed elbows with Babe Ruth and boxer Jack Dempsey. She used the rodeo, her domination of the sport, to rise to international stardom. 

Her name was Tad Lucas, and she's to this day the most decorated cowgirl in American history. 

Two locals at the table raise their eyebrows as Richards speaks. Few are aware of Cody's history, or of the Barnes family. There are no markers, statues or signs noting the town's connection to rodeo royalty. No state or rodeo entity in Nebraska, even the Nebraska Sandhills Hall of Fame, recognizes Lucas. 

So on this June day, the regulars are suddenly less interested in the daily special and more in the story of the soon-to-be superstar who once rode a bronc down main street just outside this Husker Hub's front door.  

Ambition brought Lorenzo Barnes to Cody. Born in Ohio in 1836, he called Illinios, Iowa and Missouri home before Nebraska. He also fought in a war and had 14 children before arriving in the newly formed state.

In December 1862 he enlisted with the 7th Regiment Illinois Veteran Infantry to fight in the Civil War. When the war ended, he went west. The family eventually homesteaded near Battle Creek.

Barnes' mother, Martha "Grandma" Barnes, eventually joined them and became a beloved member of the community. Her obituary captured the remotelessness of the town at the time.

"There were no telephones in those days that connected her little sod hut with the nearest neighbors, for the nearest neighbors and only neighbors were the Indians in their tepees," it read. "Many and many a time ... she had walked across the prairies, barefooted, to get a pound of butter - a distance of several miles, but several miles were brief intervals then."

Barnes, a thin farmer under a burly beard, saw promise beyond Madison County. He followed the new railroad west to Cody and constructed a mercantile store south of the tracks. 

The rest of the family stayed behind in Battle Creek until 1886 when Barnes' wife, Elizabeth Jane Hall Barnes, died of lung trouble.

Barnes' family joined him, and about three years later he married Crawford resident Hannah Gartside. She soon gave birth to the first of their 10 children. 

In the following decades, Barnes built homes, sold homes and did good business in Cody. The town's "Little Brown" Episcopal Church wouldn't have been built without his donation.

"Mr. Barnes has probably built more houses in Cody than any other man," a clip from the Cody Cow Boy newspaper read.

In 1902, they welcomed their final child: Barbara Inez Barnes. Lorenzo called her "Tadpole" because she slithered around their home like a tadpole rather than crawl. The family shortened it to "Tad."

The family raised horses and Tad rode her favorite pony three miles to go to school.

"I rode all my life," Tad said in a 1982 book about women of the American West. "I can't remember when I didn't ride. ... I always had horses and rode all day long."

Her Lakota friends on the Rosebud Reservation taught her bronc riding at 7. She often raced horses against her white and Native friends. When the Red Cross held a World War I fundraiser in town, Tad eagerly watched locals ride broncs and bulls in the main street.

Her boisterous brother volunteered her to ride. Tad can ride anything, he told those within earshot. She agreed and settled into a saddle too big for her and stirrups too far for her feet. The bronc shot out of the gates and tossed Tad off its back. She landed hard in the dirt. She dusted herself off and discovered her father didn't approve.

But it was too late. She'd never felt anything like the adrenaline rush of riding a bucking bronc. Her historic career began that day in Cody.

At 14, Tad rode to nearby Gordon to compete in her first official rodeo. She turned professional the next year. At the fair in Gordon, she won the money and finals every day.

"Miss Barbara Barnes of this place was a favorite in the wild steer riding," a newspaper clip said, "and the remark was frequently heard that she did better than the other lady riders of national fame who took part."

The program for the following year's Cherry County Fair and Cheyenne Frontier Days advertised Tad every night. She became the pride of Cody. An ambitious, determined young woman calloused by the "tough town" that raised her.

"What the women were doing at the turn of the 1900s ... none of that was very fun," said Gail Woerner, an author and historian who has written multiple books on the rodeo. "But some just had a wild streak. They had to have more." 

At 17 years old, Tad joined two of her siblings in El Paso to join Col. Frank Hafley's Wild West Show. Rene Hafley taught her to trick ride and she ascended to superstardom.

She first competed at Madison Square Garden in 1923. She won there seven out of eight years. She competed, and emerged victorious, in Boston, Chicago, Mexico, England and Australia. 

In 1927, the media company MGM created a trophy in response to the rising popularity of western films. The $10,000 silver trophy was meant to recognize the all-around champion cowgirl each year at the Madison Square Garden Rodeo. When Tad won the award three straight years, MGM gave it to her permanently.

Tad kept the sterling trophy at her home in Fort Worth, Texas, next to her rodeo accolades and memories. Her grandson, Kelly Riley, remembered playing with it when he'd stay with her.

"She loved to go to Nebraska," he said. "She had to leave because she needed to find an opportunity."

Tad strengthened her Nebraska roots in another way, marrying Omaha native Buck Lucas, a western movie star and steer wrestling champion.

She continued trick riding and competing in rodeos while she was pregnant with their only child, Mitzi. She took less time out on maternity leave than she did when her worst rodeo injury nearly ended her career.

While trick riding at the Chicago World's Fair in 1933, Tad tried shuffling under the horse's belly and climbing up the other side. It's a trick she'd done countless times. This time  she lost her grip. Tangled in the saddle, she fell under the horse's hooves for several seconds. Cowboys ran to her aid as she clutched her left arm. Doctors told her amputation could be needed. Her rodeo days were done, they said. It ended up taking six operations.

Tad recovered from her injury and rode in a cast for two years. Decades later she still couldn't bend her wrist, lift her pinky finger or roll her left arm over. Her left arm was an inch and a half shorter than her right due to the bone grafts. She didn't retire from trick riding until 25 years after surgery.

While working on a book about rodeo clowns, Woerner visited Tad. Why retire then, Woerner asked. Tad told her, "My horse was getting too old and I don't want to train another one."

Tad died in Fort Worth on Feb. 23, 1990. She was 87. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram wrote that she "went beyond the call of duty in the rodeo arena" in a career that "spanned more than seven decades" dating back to her time riding in Cody. Shortly after Tad's death, Mitzi and Riley founded the Tad Lucas Memorial Award. It is presented each year to the cowgirl who best promotes western culture.

"It's a great honor to get the Tad Lucas Memorial Award," Woerner explained. "She is considered the world's greatest woman rider."

Riley took over the award's responsibilities after Mitzi's death last year. It's an effort to sustain the memory of his grandmother, the only person honored by all three rodeo halls of fame - National Cowgirl Hall of Fame, National Rodeo Hall of Fame and Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame.

On a three-day trail ride to Fort Robinson in 1996, Riley went down Highway 20 through Valentine to Cody. He trotted through town on land his great-grandfather once owned. He wanted to see where his legendary grandmother was raised. A quaint two-story home greeted him.

Within a decade it was left uninhabitable, Rocky Richards regretfully informs the lunch table at the Husker Hub. The county demolished it. Now a lone propane tank sits on the property.

Barnes died in 1923, at the Cody home of his daughter, Bertha Cady. He outlived 11 of his 24 children. A later obituary for one his daughters captured the circumstances that brought him – and his family – to the town they helped build.

"With that pioneering spirit that filled so many of these soldiers, he began his westward trek to build a home for his family."