S. Omar Barker

Who was S. Omar Barker?

S. Omar Barker, an oft-recited cowboy poet was born in a log cabin in New Mexico where he lived his entire life as a rancher, teacher and writer. He published many books, includingVientos de las Sierras, Buckaroo Ballads and Rawhide Rhymes: Singing Poems of the Old West.

Squire Omar Barker, named after his father, was born on a small mountain ranch at Beulah, New Mexico, in 1894, youngest of the eleven children of Squire Leander and Priscilla Jane Barker. He grew up on the family homestead, attended high school and college in Las Vegas, New Mexico, was in his youth a teacher of Spanish, a high school principal, a forest ranger, a sergeant of the 502nd Engineers in France in World War I, a trombone player in Doc Patterson's Cowboy Band, a state legislator and a newspaper correspondent. He began writing and selling stories, articles, and poems as early as 1914 and became a full-time writer at the end of his legislative term in 1925. He married Elsa McCormick of Hagerman, New Mexico, in 1927, and she also became a noted writer of Western stories.

He once estimated his career output at about 1,500 short stories and novelettes, about 1,200 factual articles, about 2,000 poems. They appeared in a broad range of publications from pulp magazines to such prestigious slicks as Saturday Evening Post and a varied array of general newspapers and magazines. He produced five volumes of poetry, one book of short stories and one novel, Little World Apart, as well as one western cookbook with Carol Truax. He was even a co-writer for one episode of the TV western "Sugarfoot" in 1957.