Nick Eggenhofer (1897 – 1985)
Nick Eggenhofer was born in Germany and emigrated to the United States in 1913. He had been interested in the American West since his father told him about the Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show when he was a boy. His family settled in New Jersey which allowed him to access the boom of Western pulp illustration boom of the mid-20th Century in New York City.
Eggenhofer initially worked as a lithographer and began illustrating for magazines such as Western Story, Dime Western, Cowboy Stories and Ace-High, among others. In West Milfort, New Jersey, he and his wife, Louise, lived in a log cabin he hand-built himself. He was a collector of Western artifacts and also reproduced accurately detailed and life-sized Western models of stagecoaches and wagons. He spent time in Colorado with A.R. Mitchell, an authentic cowboy and artist/illustrator. Eggenhofer retired in 1962 to Cody, Wyoming, the town where his wife’s family lived and also the location Buffalo Bill Cody Historical Center.
The two ink and dry brush images, 60 Acres of Trouble and Cowboy and Horse, were used to illustrate the short story, Why Did Men Kill for 60 Acres of Trouble by Jay Lucas. The story was included in Western Story, the popular and first, all-western pulp magazine,. Set among the details of a Western landscape, the graphic, high contrast imagery creates a dynamic and complex narrative in a small space.