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New Museum Opens for the ‘King of the Cowboys’
By: Joe Jackson
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The city of Portsmouth is set to open a new museum that will honor their late hometown hero.
The new Roy Rogers Memory's Museum will open this Wednesday during the cities 29th annual festival that celebrates the legacy of the King of the Cowboys, as he was known.
Roy Rogers, born Leonard Slye, grew up in Portsmouth but moved to California at the age of 19 to become a singer.
After gaining success with his popular western cowboy band, The Sons of the Pioneers, Roy Rogers found himself making steady appearances in western movies.
He and his wife, Dale Evans, were featured in more than 100 western movies and were considered hero's among all children according to Executive Director of the Portsmouth-Scioto County Visitors Bureau Kim Bauer.
"A hero can be someone that either saves somebody's life or somebody that just reflects the persona of what being a good person is. Roy Rogers always depicted that."
Although Rogers spent a lot of time making movies in California, Bauer said he always made frequent visits to Portsmouth to visit his family that still lived there.
"I'm a Scioto county girl and, like I said, it was nothing to walk into Bob Evens and see Roy Rogers sitting their. It was just like, 'O… Roy's in town.'"
Although a larger Roy Rogers museum in Missouri was closed in 2010 due to financial troubles, Bauer hopes to see this new museum stand the test of time.