Raised in the cow camps of Texas and New Mexico, Leroy Webb took his first cowboying job at age 14.
Leroy’s first ranch job was with the WS Ranch near Raton, New Mexico, working for $60 a month. He went on to work for 25 ranches during his career.
Along his path through cow country, he met Jack Kyle, who became a lifetime friend, introducing him both to Hank Wiescamp and to the idea of show horse competition. Leroy was already known as a talented rodeo performer, capable of both riding broncs and roping calves; and in 1960, he went to work for Wiescamp in Alamosa, Colorado.
Leroy also started putting together his own band of broodmares and began a breeding business that got him recognized as a 30-year cumulative breeder in 2003. One of the nice colts he bred, Pawnee Eagle, a 1965 sorrel stallion, became an AQHA Champion and a year-end winner in steer roping in 1971, the sort of horse Leroy could take to a show and win every single class he entered.
With a growing reputation as a horseman, Leroy became a horse trainer on his own in Monte Vista, Colorado, making AQHA high-point horses and world champions; and he also bred top performers.
In 1978, Leroy dispersed his herd and returned to cowboying in New Mexico with his wife, Nora, and his son, Hurley, raising his own cattle and rodeoing.
Throughout his life, Leroy has been known as a man of his word who mentored younger horsemen and treated everyone he met with courtesy.
“I’ve worked with so many great cowboys, so many good hands,” Leroy says. “I could name a bunch of good hands like Jack Kyle and Matlock Rose, but there are a bunch of younger guys, too, who are really good hands.
“In my world, about the best thing you could say about somebody was they were a good hand,” Leroy says. “That’s what I hope they say about me when they lay me down.”
Leroy Webb was inducted into the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame in 2014.
Biography updated as of March 2014.