Harold J. and James H. Cook papers, 1876-1986

James Henry Cook (1857-1942) a naturalist, cowboy, and rancher was a guide and scout for the Texas rangers in the early 1870s, participated in several cattle drives during the 1870s, and was a scout for the U.S. cavalry in the Geronimo Indian Campaign of 1885-1886. He purchased the O-4 Ranch (renamed the Agate Springs Ranch) near the Wyoming border in Sioux County, Nebraska, in 1887, where he had discovered the Agate Springs Fossil Beds in the early 1880s. Cook married Kate Graham in 1886, and their son, Harold J. Cook, was born in 1887. James H. Cook wrote two books, "Fifty Years on the Old Frontier" (1923) and "Longhorn Cowboy," published posthumously in 1942. He was elected to the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in 1960.

Harold James Cook (1887-1962), a paleontologist, geologist, and rancher, attended the University of Nebraska (1906-1908) and Columbia University (1909-1910). Harold Cook was curator of paleontology at the Colorado Museum of Natural History from 1925 to 1930, first custodian of the Scottsbluff National Monument from 1934 to 1935 and taught at Chadron State Normal College, Nebraska, from 1925 to 1926 and Western State College, Colorado, in 1929. He was a consulting geologist involved in oil exploration and development, chiefly in Colorado, Nebraska, and Wyoming. Throughout his life, Harold Cook participated in paleontological research at the Agate Springs Fossil Beds; the quarry was designated a national monument in the mid-1960s.