Stan Lynde was a Montana cartoonist and writer who turned his love of cowboys and the West into popular comic strips and books.

Stan Lynde (full name Myron Stanford Lynde) was born in Billings, Montana, on September 23, 1931, and grew up on his family's sheep and cattle ranch near Lodge Grass on the Crow Indian Reservation. As a boy he helped with ranch work, lived in all kinds of simple ranch housing, and spent his free time drawing cowboys and reading comic strips, which gave him the idea that people could make a living by creating cartoons. After serving in the U.S. Navy during the Korean War and trying ranching and newspaper work, he moved to New York, where he created the Western comic strip Rick O'Shay in 1958, mixing humor and adventure; it ran in about 100 newspapers until he left it in 1977. Lynde later drew other Western comics such as Latigo and Grass Roots, wrote several Western novels, co-founded Cottonwood Publishing with his wife Lynda, and helped lead Montana's 1989 Centennial Cattle Drive before dying in Montana on August 6, 2013.