Frank Benton

author

Frank Benton

1853–1921

A rancher and storyteller of the American West, he wrote with dry humor and a strong sense of firsthand experience. His best-known work captures the rough, funny, day-to-day realities of cattle shipping and cowboy life.

1 Audiobook

Cowboy Life on the Sidetrack Being an Extremely Humorous & Sarcastic Story of the Trials & Tribulations Endured by a Party of Stockmen Making a Shipment from the West to the East.

Cowboy Life on the Sidetrack Being an Extremely Humorous & Sarcastic Story of the Trials & Tribulations Endured by a Party of Stockmen Making a Shipment from the West to the East.

by Frank Benton

About the author

Frank Benton is known for Cowboy Life on the Sidetrack, a lively collection of sketches about stockmen and cowboys moving cattle from the West to eastern markets. Archive.org records him as Frank Benton, 1853–1921, and presents the book as a humorous, sharply observed account of ranch and trail life.

The book has lasted because it feels close to lived experience. A LibriVox summary on Archive.org describes Benton as a wealthy rancher who drew on stories gathered from working cowpunchers, preserving details of a world that was already beginning to pass.

Reliable biographical information about his personal life appears to be limited in the sources I could confirm here, so it is safest to remember him mainly through his writing: plainspoken, funny, and rooted in the culture of the late American frontier.