Wally Wales papers, circa 1870-1960

Wally Wales (1895-1980) was born Floyd Taliaferro Alderson in Sheridan, Wyoming. Along with his two brothers, he founded the Bones Brothers' Ranch in the 1910s in Rosebud County, Montana. He left Montana in 1915 and briefly worked as a stage driver in Yellowstone National Park. He then went to Hollywood to work as an actor where he adopted the stage name of Wally Wales and starred in a series of western films, successfully making the transition from silent films to sound motion pictures. Around 1936, he adopted the stage name Hal Taliaferro, and worked as a character actor until the early 1950s. He died in Sheridan, Wyoming.