“John Hardison Redd freed his slaves in 1850 and moved from his Tennessee plantation to the Salt Lake Valley in Utah. His son, Lemuel, married two wives and eventually had twenty children. He left both families in the town of New Harmoney and joined a Mormon mission group traveling to establish a community called Bluff. This party of 70 families, 400 horses and oxen, and 1,000 head of cattle incredibly trekked a virtually impossible route 150 miles across Read More …
“Dean established the ranch’s horse-breeding standards with ten athletic quarter horses that were gifts from his father. In 2000, the American Quarter Horse Association recognized Dean with a unique award for his 50 years of champion quality quarter horse breeding. The patience and perseverance of the Reeves family is seen in their son Tom, who consistently placed in the World Saddle Bronc Championship but never won throughout his seventeen years of competing. Showing a spirited determination, Tom finally Read More …
“Likely, California, population 200. The town may be small, but it’s even smaller from my airplane window, where miniature buildings and ant-sized vehicles continue to shrink with each dizzying foot we climb. I try to relax a white-knuckled grip on the arm of the passenger seat of John Flournoy’s vintage 1952 light plane. I laughed earlier when John asked if I was sure I wanted to go up to take aerial photographs of the ranch. “The last plane Read More …
“Geese, ducks, and other birds fill the streams and small ponds that we drive by. Passing a wheat field, we startle some pheasants on one side of the trail and sage grouse on the other. Richard prefers to use this ‘mule’ on many parts of the ranch since it is gentler on the land than his pickup. When I remark about the abundant wildlife, Richard mentions that Malheur Migratory Bird Refuge nearby, established in 1908 by President Theodore Read More …
“The story goes that Jack fell in love with a young lady whose brother had promised her to a polygamist. However, Jack secretly married her, angering the brothers so much that they plotted to kidnap the new bride. They decided to frame Jack for stealing a cow – which he didn’t do. He was arrested and thrown in jail. His sentence was eighteen months in prison or a fine of $25. Jack told the judge he’d need to Read More …
“The Vermilion is the Goggins’ headquarters, but is only one of several ranches the family owns. The Diamond Ring Ranch runs commercial Angus cattle on 55,000-plus acres along the Yellowstone River. The Pryor Creek Ranch has 30,000 acres of dry-land ranching. If you watch any Western movies, you’ve seen the Pryer Creek ranch – the production location for fourteen major movies – some of them starring Marlon Brando, Liza Taylor, Tom Cruise, and Nicole Kidman, just to drop Read More …
“Near what is now the Duff Ranch, Cody and Comstock competed in a day-long ‘Champion Buffalo Hunter of the Plains’ contest. Cody won 69-48, and thereafter was known worldwide as Buffalo Bill. In 1882 he launched his ‘Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show’ featuring legends such as Annie Oakley, Sitting Bull, Red Cloud, and Frank North. Touting re-enactments of Custer’s Last Stand, the show toured the East Coast, England, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, and Belgium. The size, weight, Read More …
“I’m instantly enchanted by this family – by their appreciation of history, their concern for the land, their creativity. For example, Ladd’s wife Ree recently launched a modern Little House on the Prairie blog that gets more than 3,000 hits a day. Is she a pioneer woman like the last century’s Addie Drummond? ‘I am nearly a mirror image of her,’ she says. ‘Well, except I grew up in the city and never set foot in the country Read More …