The cowboy epitome of gallantry and fair play will be commemorated in a Kansas museum.

A 700-acre working cattle ranch and western-style tourist attraction 15 miles east of Wichita has been chosen as the site for a national Hopalong Cassidy museum that will honor one of America’s cowboy heroes.

The Prairie Rose Hopalong Cassidy Western Heritage Museum, a 10,000-square-foot facility, is scheduled to open in 2004 near Benton.

The museum will be owned and operated by Thomas and Cheryl Etheredge, who also own the Prairie Rose Chuckwagon Supper facility.

The Prairie Rose facility, open year-round, offers western dining, music and entertainment. It features an old-fashioned opera house, recreational grounds, an outdoor amphitheater and horse-drawn wagon rides, along with a shop selling western merchandise.

U.S. Television Inc. of Greenville, N.Y., which holds all the rights to the Hopalong Cassidy name and image, will provide the museum with memorabilia, films, television segments, movie posters and books that span Cassidy’s career in film and television.

Plans for the museum include a theater where guests can view Hopalong Cassidy movies and TV episodes, and a gift shop.

“This will be the only authorized Hopalong Cassidy museum in the world, and it will have the largest collection of Hopalong Cassidy memorabilia,” Thomas Etheredge said.

“He spanned more time and more generations than any of the other silver-screen cowboys. He wasn’t a singing cowboy like Roy Rogers, but he was one of the first cowboys that was a hero featured on the radio, TV and ultimately movies.”

Created in novels and short stories by writer Clarence Mulford, Hopalong Cassidy later was portrayed by actor William Boyd. The character’s likeness was brought to millions of people through radio, television, movies, novels and more than 2,400 authorized merchandise items in the 1940s and 1950s.

Boyd starred in 66 full-length Hopalong Cassidy films, 52 half-hour television programs and 104 radio shows.

Etheredge is optimistic there will be a steady stream of tourists interested in visiting the museum.

“It will be a continuation of the rich, wonderful Western heritage that Kansas has. People around the world are hungry for this,” he said. “Folks just love Hopalong Cassidy and that whole generation of cowboys.”

U.S. Television conducted a national search to find a suitable location for a Hopalong Cassidy museum, according to Etheredge, and was drawn to the Prairie Rose operation.

Officials liked that the tourist attraction is based on a working cattle ranch that has been in business for four generations.

“Ultimately, the Prairie Rose was selected because of the volume of international guests who come here. The American cowboy is the No. 1 thing that Europeans and Asians visiting the United States want to see,” Etheredge said.

For more information about the coming museum or the Prairie Rose Chuckwagon Supper, call (316) 778-2121 or visit the Web site at www.prairierosechuckwagon.com.