Charlie Dye, John Hampton, and Joe Beeler were all three accomplished artists with successful careers and established individual reputations by the time they found themselves together in that Mexican cow camp in 1964. Thinking back on that time below the border, each of them knew that they had been enlivened and inspired by the experience because they had been there and shared it all together. All three lived in Arizona, and they stayed closer in touch now, encouraging each other's efforts and swapping stories about horses and art. They sought out others too, who, like themselves, kept a boot in each of the two different worlds of cowboys and artists, and seemed somehow not to belong entirely in either.

A hot sun hung in the bright blue Arizona sky on the afternoon of June 23, 1965. George Phippen, who also painted cowboy pictures, drove over from Prescott to join Dye, Hampton, and Beeler at Sedona's Oak Creek Tavern, where the beer was cold and kept coming. Phippen, like the other three who sat in the shadows of a back booth in the bar, was well known to the relatively small and regional audience for contemporary Western art. Together, the four of them in the bar that day comprised the best of the bunch of artists scattered from Texas to Montana who made a modest living painting pictures of cowboys and Indians and were active participants in the life they portrayed in their art. And in Sedona, on that hot Arizona afternoon, the four of them talked, laughed, drank beer, and founded the organization of artists that would become a full-blown cultural phenomenon.

A few days later, in Charlie Dye's Sedona studio, the four met again to formalize their ideas for the new organization. They agreed on the name, Cowboy Artists of America, and stated their objectives:

To perpetuate the memory and culture of the Old West as typified by the late Frederic Remington, Charles Russell, and others; to insure authentic representations of the life of the West, as it was and is; to maintain standards of quality in contemporary Western art; to help guide collectors of Western art; to give mutual assistance in protection of artists' rights; to conduct a trail ride and campout in some locality of special interest once a year; and to hold an annual joint exhibition of the works of active members.