George T. Beck

George Washington Thornton Beck (26 June 1856 - 1 December 1943) was a politician and business entrepreneur in the U.S. state of Wyoming. Beck was born on 26 June 1856 in Lexington, Kentucky, the son of Jane Augusta Washington Thornton and James Burnie Beck, a congressman and US senator from Kentucky.

Beck, with William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody, Horace C. Alger and others, was responsible for developing the Shoshone Land and Irrigation Company, and for establishing the town of Cody, Wyoming, as the eastern gateway to Yellowstone Park, 53 miles to the west. The story of their collaboration is told in the recent [http://www.oupress.com/bookdetail.asp?isbn=978-0-8061-3829-9 William F. Cody's Wyoming Empire: The Buffalo Bill Nobody Knows] by Prof. Robert E. Bonner.

Named for the world-famous showman, the town of Cody was also the site of his Irma Hotel and a launching point for Cody's trips with dignitaries into Yellowstone. The Cody Country Chamber of Commerce was originally founded as a hunting club at the turn of the 20th century by Beck and a group of local business leaders. There is a street named in his honor in Cody.

As a politician, Beck was elected to the territorial Senate and state legislature as a Democrat, and was that party's nominee for governor in 1914. As an entrepreneur he built an early flour mill in the state, an electric light plant, and developed mineral and oil properties, in addition to the irrigation, land and tourism project with Cody.