He created over 3000 covers for magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, Country Gentleman, Farm Journal, Boys' Life, The Open Road for Boys, along with advertisements for companies such as Coca-Cola and covers for over 300 books, including the Zane Grey Western novels of the 1930s and 1940s.
Back in Council Bluffs during the winter months, he began to take art classes in high school and worked in the studio of a portrait painter.
As a teenager he belonged to a group led by Ernest Thompson Seton that was a forerunner to the Boy Scouts program.
[1] He worked on book jackets, magazine illustrations and advertisements for the likes of Stetson Hat Company and Coca-Cola.
Some of the magazines that he did illustrations for were The Saturday Evening Post, Collier's, McClure's, Liberty, Gentleman's Quarterly, Boys Life.
His studio is filled with volumes of books he used to research his subjects and reference photos he took in order to get the level of detail and accuracy he desired in his work.
When he died in 1997 his family honored his wish that his Carversville art studio, and many of his Western works, be donated to the Dakota Discovery Museum where it can be seen today.