“I’m a horseman. I’ve lived on a horse outfit all my life and I’ll die on a horse outfit...The fun, the feeling of the horse traveling fast and the wind in your face and a good looking bunch of horses ahead of you...Tails in the air laid straight. It’s the greatest way in the world to live.”-

- Paul Ledyard ‘Spike’ Van Cleve III, “Spike: A Montana Horseman”, 1976.

BIG TIMBER — Author, speaker, rancher, horseman, the late ‘Spike’ Van Cleve of Big Timber is a posthumous 2026 inductee into the Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center in Great Falls, per the nonprofit’s annual inductee announcement last weekend.

He was nominated for the Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame’s seventh district encompassing Sweet Grass, Stillwater, Big Horn, Carbon, and Yellowstone counties. One living

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