Badger Clark

Badger Clark, born Charles Badger Clark, was an American cowboy poet, and the first poet laureate of South Dakota. He was born in 1883 in Albia, Iowa and his family moved to the Dakota Territory where his father served as a Methodist preacher. After contracting tuberculosis, he moved to Tombstone, Arizona where he spent four years watching a ranch and writing letters containing poetry describing what he saw. He moved back to South Dakota in 1910 to care for his ailing father. He published his first poetry collection in 1917. In 1937, he was named the Poet Laureate of South Dakota.