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HomeMy Public PortalAboutJones, Grace MunroSheep Ranching in Idaho Grace M. Jones oral history DONATED TAPE COLLECTION IDAHO ORAL HISTORY CENTER IDAHO STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY 610 North Julia Davis Drive Boise, Idaho 83702 RELEASE OF TAPES TO THE WEISER VALLEY ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM Date of Recording March 15, 1987 he.arby give, grant and donate this (these) tape recordings made by us, along with any and all rights therein to the WEISER VALLEY ORAL HISTORY PROJECT and . as a gift for such scholarly amd educational purposes, as at their sole discretion they shall determine, subject to ' any restrictions listed below: Restrictions: Grace M. Jones -Narrator Address Weiser, Idaho Address Date of this release March 15, 1987 THE INTERVIEWER Interviewing Techniques, continued ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM PERSONAL DATA RECORD Name; Grace Jones Date of Birth April 16, 1898 Address �/w Place of Birth Watertown, So. Dakota Year you or your parents came to Idaho about 1910 Year came to the area you now live in Place first lived in Idaho around Meridian Place emigrated from So Dakota Mode of travel railroad Route of travel FAMI LY : Spouse Date and place married Boise 1920 Brothers and sisters (married names) Father's name Robert Munro Date of birth Place of birth Scotland Date of death 1955 Place of death Weiser Ancestor's homeland Scotland Major occupation(s) (what, where, when, if known) Mother's maiden name - Bella Jellis Date of birth10/9/1875 P1ace of birth Canada, Ontario, Date of death June 20, 1955 Place of death Weiser Id Date married Place married Weverly, So. Dakota Ancestor's homeland England and Scotland Occupation(s) Housewife (continued) Jones, Grace Interviewing Techniques, continued Children (yours) Date of birth Place of birth Gracie Keegan Dec 19, 1922 Jerry Robert Jones Aug 8, 1925 Gordon Jones Feb 23, 1930 Ruth Louise Jones Nov 16, 1935 Your career record - Nurse and sheep business what, where, and when Schooling - High school - Meridian, Nursing school Principal activities and interests - did some traveling, Republican party Helped at hospital during WW II other than livelihood Military service and rank Additional notes: NARRATOR: Grace M. Jones DATE OF INTERVIEW: March 15, 1987 INTERVIEWER: Joy Beckman LOCATION: Weiser SUBJECT: Sheep Industry in Weiser Tape Manuscript: Intro by Irene Tallent Getting started in the sheep business in 1919. They had 25,000 lambs. Went to Chicago market by train. Started with 500 old ewes. Mr. Jones learned sheep business from a Basque man. Rented a prune orchard for lambing the 500 ewes and used prune boxes for lambing sheds. No restrictions on land then. They trailed from Melba to Lowman on Forest Reserve. They had an 80 acre ranch in Meridian which they rented to go into the sheep business. They made their headquarters on the Snake River below its rim. Ralph carried water from the river for household use with a stone boat. Hay was brought down from above the rim to the bottom by using an "iron shoe" as a brake to keep the wagons from running away. Below the Snake River rim was a good place to lamb, Summer range was at Lowman. Ralph found "paradise" at Cambridge. They bought Cuddy Mountain. Cambridge was headquarters in summer months; trailed to Butterfield ranch in Weiser. Too cold, so next year decided to trail to Snake River near Nyssa, Oregon. Trailed 2000 sheep across river bridge to Nyssa. This was before Taylor Grazing and irrigation. Today sheep are trucked, not trailed. Had a near tragedy when a dangerous horse broke away. Land was rented from Jim Gilmore in Nyssa two years, then bought land nearby and built lambing sheds. Grace M. Jones (March 15, 1987) Grace had 17 men to cook for. Ruby and husband came to help. They stayed eight years. Men came from Caldwell to shear sheep. Went on the desert to Cambridge. Had 15 "blue sheep dogs" imported by Andy Little of Emmett. Sheep were trailed to Cambridge, Council, and McCall. No Taylor Grazing then. Was a sheep trail above Weiser. Side 2 They went to Cuddy Mountain. Other sheep men were: Trenkles of Vale, Oregon; Stringers of Nyssa, Oregon; and Stovers of Weiser, Idaho. McCall was the biggest shipping center built by Andy Little. He had 1000 bands of sheep. (There are 1000 sheep in a band.) Two oldest children ready for high school, so bought house in Weiser in 1936. Hargrove house rented to Dr. Hancher until 1938 for $35.00 a month. An interesting experience was the trip to West Mountain. They took the trail out of Cascade onto West Mountain and down into McCall at fairgrounds. Lakeview Village in McCall became their summer home. Bought a cabin. Mrs. Jones compares sheep business today to then. Cuddy Mountain was a paradise. "A Day in the Life of a Sheep Camp" Up at 5:00 a.m. Called men to breakfast with a tambourine. Men were at work by 7:00. The women would bake 12 loaves of bread. The men would feed, tend the sheep, and pull cart for lambs. Mothering up of ewes and lambs; adoption of new lamb to the ewe; noon meal; check everything. Final check at 11:30 p.m. and in bed by midnight. At 5:00 the next morning the process started all over again. 2 NARRATER: Grace Jones DATE OF INTERVIEW: March 15, 1987 INTERVIEWER: Joy Beckman LOCATION: Weiser SUBJECT: Sheep Industry in Weiser JB: Grace, would you like to tell me about how you got started in the sheep business? Just talk about when you were young, when you were 21. GG: After my husband and I were married, we went down on a ranch, a big ranch, 80 acres. Imagine! Today that's [unintelligible]. Anyway, we went on the ranch and we spent 2 1/2 years. In the meantime, a lot of the neighbors had some sheep, and I had a couple of pet lambs. We grew those pet lambs up and they were [unintelligible], more than anyone would think,, [unintelligible], get a little calf or something. So, my husband had an idea that there was money in sheep. We were just young and just starting out. JB: How old were you? GC: We were 21, both of us, six months difference in our ages. He thought that the sheep business was a good thing to get into. When we went out on the ranch. hay was $21.00 a ton, and that following fall it was $6.00, down that much. When a farmer- loses that much, he loses quite a lot. And you have to be a dedicated farmer. Well, he wasn't a farmer and I wasn't a farm wife really, because I've had my -- He'd been in the [earthing worms ?] quite a while for some time, and so he thought he'd go and learn the sheep business. There was a sheep man in Boise and I can't remember his name, but he fed 25,000 sheep on the other side of Gooding -- Wendall, that's it. So Ralph went to him to see if he could IE:arn the sheep business. And so the man, being a friend of his dad's, 1 Grace Jones (March 15, 1987) said, "Sure you can go out there." And so he went out there and I stayed in Gooding. That farm was just a short distance from there, and I nursed and he went out there to learn the sheep business. He learned to count sheep and he learned to feed sheep, and all the details that go with handling sheep. He went back to the markets with them and he was very interested. So that's the way we started. JB: Where were the markets in those days? GJ: Chicago, clear back -- JB: And he went on the train? GJ: Oh yes, he went on the train. It was maybe a -- It would be fat lambs and he took those ewes. They had 25,000 growing lambs that they were fattening out. They would fatten them and so many cars would go at a time. They chopped hay and they had everything there for fattening the lambs, Wendell -- [pause]. The first thing we did after he thought he knew about the sheep business we got 500 old ewes, and they were old too, 'cause we couldn't have afforded anything else. I think we paid $3.00 a head for them if I remember and -- What are sheep now, about $60.00 a head? JB: Lambs are selling for about 80 cents now. GJ: Well anyway, old ewes and that was our start. In those days if you had -- I guess I had better back up a little. The first year after he learned the sheep business, he got a job with a Basco [unintelligible] a big Basco outfit in Boise. All the sheep in those days, except Andy Little of Emmett, were owned by Bascos. Well anyway, he went out and tended cattle one year for this Basco, and he had that experience of 6 Grace Jones (March 15, 1987) tending calves and you learn when you're out with those Basques -- I guess it's a hard life, you know, to be out with people that you can't talk their language and all that. Anyway, Ralph stuck it out for that year. The next year, we got the old sheep, the old ewes and we rented an acreage, more than yin acreage, a prune orchard. It was quite a large place. And that's where he put these 500 ewes. He'd get them ready for :Lambing. They were all. going, to have lambs, or supposedly. Some of them were so old that some of them did die. But we had to have some place to put them, and this prune orchard man had prune boxes. In those clays they had prunes in. prune boxes, apple boxes. They didn't do like they do today in bulk. He [unintelligible] and put those boxes, set one cn top of the other and made divisions and protection from the weather, and there's where we lambed out these sheep. And we had pretty good luck with them. In those days you could go out any place you wanted to. There was no restriction on land. Any of this sagebrush land that you saw around the country, that was where the Taylor grazing people came in the scene, the government deal.. You could go with your sheep any place you wanted to. I think he started from Melba and went clear across over to Mountain :Home, this side of Mountain Horne and then back up in the hills. In those days if' you had a ranch you were allowed a forest right. Nowadays that is all done away with. There's nothing like that, so I'd say there's not much chance for young people. But this forest right we got cheap, and we took these ewes and these lambs. And someone he knew at Boise, someone he had known for years, an older man, he was going to tend calves for or herd for him. He was a Tennessean or 90 Grace Jones (March 15, 1987) somewheres up there. He was from Tennessee. So he went with him that summer. They went with that little band of sheep all over the mountains to this forest land which was up there above Lowman. So that's a long stretch of country, but they traveled all over as they went, because, as I said, there was no restriction. So they went up there and spent the summer at Lowman on this piece of forest land, and when the fall come, they got ready to go again. I don't remember about the shipping of the lambs. I think he brought them out early enough to ship the lambs. Then we went to headquarters. JB: Had you bought some property? Is that why you got the forest reserve? GJ: Well, we had the ranch at Meridian. We lived at Meridian, Idaho when we first married, on a ranch. I call it a ranch. It was 80 acres. JB: You still had that ranch then? GJ: Oh yes, instead of selling it, we rented it. Somebody else wanted to live in our -- So that took care of our ranch. We didn't have to worry about payments or anything. They took care of it. So Ralph was free to go about this sheep business, and I was free -- We both got away from it. And, of course, I nursed some of the time. JB: How old were you then? GJ: I was 21 when we were married, but this had been happening all along for two years, about two years or three years. JB: So you were still in your mid - twenties then? GJ: Yes. JB: Then what happened? GJ: Oh, I don't know what happened next. It's been so long ago. 4 Grace Jones (March 15, 1987) JB.: Where did you have your headquarters next? GJ: Well, we had a tarpaper shack that we lived in down on the flat, along the Snake River, below the rim. There's a big rim along the river there. We ha-d this little bunch of sheep and we had tar paper shack and .L cooked for the men. By that time we had two children, a little girl and a little boy. But they were fine little youngsters. I did the cooking and we had to E;et our, water- - My husband fixed me a deal in the house with water so I always had water; a sink and a place to get water. I didn't have to carry the water. He or one of the men would take a stone boat -- Do you remember what stone boats were? Big, square, long logs put together, put planks on top of them. Then they would put a 50 gallon wooden barrel on that. Then they'd go down to the river and fill that with river water, and they'd put tubs on the barrel to keep the water from splashing 'cause it was steep back up to the flat where the cabin was. Then they'd pull that up by the back door, and I had water. I didn't have to go to -the river for water. So that helped out quite a little. Then we had another instance: the hay had to be hauled down off the top at: Kuna, up on top of the bluff where these farmers had put UO J. stacks of hay, and they didn't have the modern way of doing it. They had stacks of hay in those days. We had to go up there after our hay. I mean the men. went after the hay. They would take four horses, but they always had to take what you call an iron shoe -- I imagine some of the old timers would know what that was. It's a big flat, not exactly square, but a deal they chain onto the wheels to keep the wheels from turning, because it was so steep the load would go on down on top of the 5 Grace Jones (March 15, 1987) horses, and I expected to see the whole thing roll down the side of the mountain, but we were very fortunate. We didn't have an accident. We had some near accidents, but no one was hurt or anything. But, that's the way we got our hay down on the bottom. That's the reason we were down there. It's just like being in California, sun shining on that sand and sagebrush. And it was really a nice place for -- The lambs just thrived. They grew like little weeds because it was so warm and nice. Then we stayed there about three years, I think. I just don't remember just how long it was. Anyway, we went back to our stamping grounds, I mean the summer range, but in the summertime. JB: Where was that? GJ: It was Lowman, where we had started out. We still kept that range because we had gotten that with our ranch. And I can remember one time my husband was looking for some sheep, and he came home and said, "Up on paradise I found the most beautiful country in the world." And I said, "Where was that ?" It was at Cambridge, Idaho. Imagine a paradise at Cambridge, Idaho. Well, anyway, you know a sheep man can see a spear of grass anyplace. And he got up here to buy these sheep, and this man had 4,000 head of sheep and he had a lot of fine well -bred yearling ewes. So my husband had bought the sheep. Then he found out the man had the place leased and was selling out and that land was for sale. It was owned by Post, who was the sheriff of Boise. So Ralph knew who he was and went to see him, and sure enough he made a deal. We needed it like we needed those two heads, but we got it on contract and bought his rights. To start with, we gave him a half a share in it, then a year or C:1 Grace Jones (March 15, 1987) two later he lost his being a sheriff and he wanted to sell out and we "bought Cuddy Mountain. We'Ve always called it Cuddy Mountain. JB: Now by half a, share, you mean he got half the profit from the sheep? GJ: lie owned the land, see, and we owned the sheep. So when we bought half ;interest in his ranch and he had half interest in our sheep. So then dater on he wanted to sell out and we managed to scrape -- It was an effort, but we managed to buy his equity. Of course, we had a big expense, a mortgage. Who has that kind of money? In those days, things were a lot cheaper than they are now, too. But anyway, we acquired muddy Mountain. JB: How many acres was it? GJ: [Four thousand ?] acres under fence, and then there was, maybe, a �housand acres outside the fence that was not controlled. There was a house there, and a spring with running water. It was a pretty place, a beautiful place in the summertime. That was when we moved into the :sheep world. The other time, we were just scratching and going along on a small scale, but we €;ot organized and got started. And that's where we made our money. JB: How old were you then? GJ: Oh, I can't tell you tY:.at. Too many years have gone by. I've i= orgotten, but we were comparatively young. We had two children and they were grown, pretty well along. I think the oldest was, maybe, ten. Then we had two children after that, four altogether. But we were comparatively young, maybe 35, 30, something like that as near as I can remember back now. I suppose if I get the Bible out I can tell the 7 Grace Jones (March 15, 1987) dates. Is it important? JB: No. GJ: That's as far as I can remember that part. [tape recorder turned off and on]. Well, we went to Cambridge for the summer months, but we had to find headquarters for winter. So, someone told us -- I suppose through my husband knowing this man, what's his name? Butterfield. He lived in Boise. I suppose through him, my husband had some connection or knew somebody that -- Anyway, he had a lot of hay out here. So the first winter we had sheep at Cambridge. We came as far as Weiser, and we wintered out there. This man provided the sheds, if we'd buy their hay, which we did. Hay was awful cheap then. They couldn't sell it, and it was a good deal for them, but we found a bad deal for us because Weiser's no place to lamb sheep. It's too cold. The weather just isn't nice enough. So, we got by with quite a little loss, and some good points about it, too. And so we decided we're going south. We're going down farther, close to the Snake River. So we finally landed down at Nyssa, Oregon. That was all sagebrush. JB: You trailed the sheep? GJ: Yes, oh yes. They [wandered ?] up the trail. from Cambridge. They came across the flats. on across the river bridge, the old river bri they crossed the river bridge, and from there Nyssa, Oregon. JB: How many sheep did you have at that point? GJ: I think we had 2000, if I remember correctly. n They came through down off They came from there out dge [unintelligible]. And it's open country to Then they crossed the Grace Jones (March 15, 1987) river bridge with the :sheep, and we rented pastures for fall to put the sheep on pasture. Then you put your male animals, your bucks in with them, and that's when 17our sheep are prepared for the lambing crop later on in the year. Anyway, they went from there clear across where Speropulos have their farms now. That was sagebrush. You could go anyplace you wanted to. That= was before the days of Taylor Grazing, or about the time of Taylor Grazing. So the sheep went off down through the country, and stayed out someplace down there up to lambing time, or a month before lambing time. In the meantime, we rented a place down there to winter these :sheep, just a rolling piece of land they couldn't irrigate. But it was an ideal place for sheep. So we put our sheds there. Then joining it was 80 acres, and then there was some land on the other side in sagebrush. We had in our mind we'd get that land eventually, take it ou--. of sagebrush and we'd have a farm there to raise our stock. So that's where we went for several winters. In the meantime, we got this other land and we built a farm there. And that was before there was water above the upper ditch. Now there is an upper ditch that takes in all that country down there, and it's all farms. At that time when we were there, there were no farms, all wide open space. You could go anyplace with your sheep. In the spring when you turned out or in the fall when you came in, you just opened the back gates and away they went. But today you don't do any of those things. Every square acre is taken up by someone. Someone's living on it, and there are row crops or no craps at all. And you put your sheep on a truck and you haul them if you are going to be a sheep man. They're not allowed E Grace Jones (March 15, 1987) on the highways. They're suppose to carry their sheep by truck. The Taylor Grazing people came in about that time, and they took all that land out there, put ditches through, put it all in farms. So that was the end of grazing across the country. JB: What year would that have been about? GJ: There was one -- It could have been a tragedy, but one thing happened you might be interested in. When we bought this hay from this man that had the ranch where we wintered, he had horses he loaned. JB: Was that Butterfield? GJ: That was Butterfield, uh huh. He had horses he loaned to get us to buy the hay and equipment and wagons and all that stuff. And he didn't tell my husband that one of the horses was crooked, dangerous. He would run off if he got the chance, or do things unexpected. Anyway, the man was in the lambing lot feeding the ewes that were going to have lambs, spreading the hay out. And they just finished the last of the hay and were getting ready to leave the lot when this horse shied at something, jumped and threw the man that was driving off balance, and he fell off the wagon. So here came the horses, right out of that lambing shed. The horses made a dash for the opening and over the top of the mother sheep that hadn't had their lambs. Oh, I don't know how many were killed, maybe 20 or 25 lambs were lost, ewes were lost, beautiful animals. And it was really -- To people starting out it was a dreadful loss. The horses and wagon and all came rumbling past the tin house where we lived. I called it a tin house because it was upright of wood and tin on the sides for shelter. And the wagon hooked on one corner of IU Grace Jones (March 15, 1987) the building, tore the tin off, and the horses shied between the car that was sitting in the yard and the house, and went on tearing down through the field. It was just by a miracle that the children had just been out there playing, the two little ones, Gracie and Joey. They were playing outside and I had just brought them in the house for their naps. 'We would have had a tragedy. They would have gone right over the top of them because children don't know what's going on. That was one of the things that was a near tragedy in our life. But they took the corner off the tin house, I rE:member that. They had to fix that up, tore the cover off the foundation. I don't know whether it had a foundation or not. Well, I guess I should back up a little, because when we first moved to Nyssa we rented a piece of rolling ground that was good for lambing, from a man by the name of Jim Gilmore. There wasn't anything there. We had to get the thing fixed up the best we could, but we were used to fixing things up. Anyway, we had a tent to live in, boarded up about part uray up and then just a tent. It wasn't very large. I had to cook and do everything in that little space. We spent the first winter there. In the second yE�ar in the spring, we took our sheep out as usual and had found this other- place, a better place. And when we came back in the fall, we went to the place where we had the land and plenty of room to put the sheep. JB: Did you have a daughter born then? GJ: We had two children by that time. The boy, Gordon, was born when we wE:re at Jim Gilmore's place, before we moved over on our own land. We 11 Grace Jones (March 15, 1987) were determined to have something of our own. So we rented from him a couple of years, and at that time Gordon was born. JB: How many acres were in that? GJ: Well, that was his place. He didn't -- JB: The one you bought? GJ: Then we bought this other place. There was 80 acres cleared and 40 acres on the back of the sagebrush, and 30 acres on the other side of our lambing sheds. That was sagebrush. We burned some of the sagebrush. That's the way we managed that. I had a big Majestic range, and, of course, they have a place to burn sagebrush in them. So we used sagebrush a lot of the time, coal too. But, whenever we could use sagebrush, we did. The men had their tents set up where they slept in the wintertime, and they burned sagebrush. Nobody thought about going down for coal. We burned sagebrush. If I remember correctly, we lived on the Gilmore property, which we rented for two seasons. And we still had our tent, and it was not a very nice place to be when the weather was bad and cold. The little girl, I boarded her over town with a friend of mine, and she went to school. And the little boy was in camp with me, so I just had one child to worry about then. But it was so cold, ice globules on the ceiling. Have you ever been in a tent in the wintertime? The steam from the stove will cause little ice globules to form on the ceiling of the tent, and it's plenty cold. Anyway, I don't know, you're young and you can stand a lot of things. But we were on the Gilmore place two years, and then they discovered they were going to put in the ditches and put in farms a little distance from where his 12 Grace Jones (March 15, 1987) ranch was, and that's where they had to put in the new irrigating system. But they hadn't put it in yet at this time, so we bought this 80 acres. And I believe there was 40 acres behind it that was in sagebrush, and another 30 acres that was in sagebrush on the other side. 'Well, we believed in taking big chunks when we took, anyway. We tried to handle it all, which we finally got done, but it was a hard deal. 'then we built our lambing sheds on the rolling ground in the center. On the side of this 80 acres was a piece of rolling ground which was all :sandy, and ideal for lambing sheds. So we lambed there for several years. And lambing the sheep would come in the fall, and they'd start 7_ambing - -I don't remember - -I think it was February, March, and then was << big time. We had all those little pens. And I had 17 men to cook for, but I had help. I had a girl. A woman and her husband came out to work and they were young people. And they wanted to work on a sheep ranch. So we gave them work, and you know, those people stayed with us for eight years. Finally they went to Salt Lake. But we had them living with us all that time, and we got along beautifully. Ruby and I just seem to hit it off. She helped me with the children. She helped me with everything. She helped me with the cooking, and between us we managed to take care of everybody that came along, besides making bread. You must remember we baked bread for 17 men a lot of the time. We had one big long t:able - -no Electricity- -big lamps, coal oil lamps at each end of the table, which had to be washed and cleaned each day for the next night. We sat seven on each side and on each end of the table. And did those men ever eat! You could imagine. We cooked everything, 13 Grace Jones (March 15, 1987) especially fried beans are a special in a sheep camp, with ham. They really liked that very much. But the hot bread is what really filled them. Anyway, we lambed out the sheep, and the next thing was shearing. The shearing crew came in. We had a shearing crew from Caldwell who also made the rounds throughout the country. They sheared for us and then the lambs were all docked. That means the tails were removed, and they were gotten ready to go out on the desert for our trek to Cambridge. Of course, in those days they only put 1000 sheep together and their baby lambs. Maybe not that many, but depends on grazing conditions. And the men and their dogs - -dogs, we had maybe 15 of them. All those blue dogs with the glass eyes. I call them glass eyes because they're beautiful animals. They had been imported by Andy Little, sheep man from Emmett. So pretty soon the whole country had those blue sheep dogs, and they were wonderfully smart animals. The Scotch people have a way with training their dogs, sheep dogs. You've seen pictures where they train them to jump loops and count sheep and put them in the corrals. And so these were descendants, so they were good sheep dogs. Anyway, each herder got his two dogs and his camp outfit together, tents, and started out across the desert in the spring after the lambs were old enough to travel. The men would go out and see if the grass was long enough for the lambs to eat. And sometimes, I declare, I didn't see any grass, but they'd say, "Oh it's that high." And they'd say, maybe an inch. Well, I couldn't see anything but part of the road. But never - the -less, they would take the sheep and off they went. And the grass grows every day the sun shines. So they went back to 14 Grace Jones (March 15, 1987) Cambridge over the trail. We used to have a trail bought by the sheep men years ago from Vale clear_ through to Cambridge, and from Cambridge on through to Council and on to McCall. That was bought and paid for by the sheep mere., years ago. Now after the Taylor Grazing people came in and took all that land out there and put it under certain kind of a :regulation, they took the trails away from the people that bought them. There weren't many sheep men left. They had been thinned out -- - -by all those regulations. When there was a sheep trail leading along any of this land, the people that owned that ranch got that sheep trail. So eventually there was no sheep trail through this country. The sheep grail went clear up on top of the mountain, the mountains above Weiser, and then all through Midvale, all the hillsides, and on up to Cambridge. Then after they got to Cambridge, of course, we dropped off on our land there, but many of the bands of sheep went on that were coming with us, or behind us, or ahead of us, went all over the mountain along the edge of our land. [Tape recorder turned off and on. Long pause] We went to Cuddy Mountain. That was our mountain. The trail went along the OULtside edge of it. They called that the Cuddy Mountain trail. From there they went to Council, and on up to Cascade, and on up to the upper country. Many of those were sheep men from Vale, Trenkels. There were Stringers from down at Nyssa, Oregon. Stovers were out in this country with their sheep. I just can't remember others, it's been SO long ago. Anyway, those were some of the sheep that went through the country. Then they would stay, up in that upper country and when the 15 Grace Jones (March 15, 1987) lambs were fat and ready, they would come down to McCall to the shipping corrals, and there's where they divided the ewes from the mothers, the ewes from the lambs. And the sheep men shipped out all the lambs, culled their sheep, and sent what they were going to keep back with their herders on the range. And the rest went to market. The culled sheep, some of them were sold to local people, and some of the farmers frequently bought the culls because they could stand these in their barnyards, and they wouldn't be on the desert. Then the others that were not selected, they were shipped to market. McCall used to be one of the biggest shipping centers, sheep centers in the country. Incidentally, it had been built by Andy Little of Emmett. He had 1000 bands of sheep. There's 1000 sheep to a band. I made a mistake. There are 1000 sheep to a band, but he had 100 bands. That was the biggest sheep man. At one time he was considered the biggest sheep man in the world. That's years ago, of course. [tape recorder turned off and on] In 1930 we moved to Weiser. When our two oldest children were ready for high school, we thought we should come to town to live, or at least I thought we should. Maybe we would have been better to stay on the ranch. We moved to town in 1936 and bought a home. And the two older children were ready for high school. At that time I had the little girl who was two, and the boy, Gordon, would have been eight, I think. And Ruth was two years old. The two last ones didn't know much about the sheep camp. They lived in town most of their lives, which maybe was mistake. Maybe children that are brought up on farms are a lot better than children raised in the city. I think they are. I was 16 Grace Jones (March 15, 1987) raised on a farm, and I: knew all how to milk cows, and how to run farm equipment, although it was antique stuff when they did with teams and horses and that type ofd thing. But, I think children that have something to do are better off in town than they are -- Anyhow, they are busy, they are occupied, they have other interests. Children in town don't have that interest. They are too pampered. They have a car to drive and that's all they know about the hardships of life. I think if more of the young people today had had some of that early experience of hardship- -maybe not particularly hardship, I don't think people should have hardship. But in those days it was taken for granted you had hardship. 'You didn't have the modernistic, modern equipment, the modern things to do with that children have today. Today everything is all modern and -hey don't know anything different. They think that they should start where Mom and Dad left off, which is true. All the electric gadgets and all the things. Those that had to sacrifice a little and do without, they seem to have more initiative. They seem to be able to do more for themselves. We moved to town, I think it was 1936. We didn't come here to live until 1938. We rented the house, so we had a little time to get ourselves together. I remember looking at houses at Payette, and looking places in Ontario. We wanted to get centrally located, so Mr. Jones would have not so far to go to get to Cambridge and back and forth to his sheep. So we finally found this Hargrove home in Weiser, which we bought. And when we bought it, I remember, we did a lot of debating. It was a big piece to grab onto. But my husband said as we drove off, "Well Ma, we have as much use for 17 Grace Jones (March 15, 1987) that house in Weiser as we have for the United States Capitol Building." We both laughed, and I guess we wondered where we were going to go from there. As we didn't feel we could come to Weiser at the present time to live. We rented the house, and a Dr. Hancher, who was practicing in Weiser said he would rent it. And believe it or not, it was rented for $35.00 a month. Talk about your high rents. We thought we were doing fine. One other experience, not unusual, but quite interesting, I was with my husband in the pickup - -he was going out to service a camp. This was one of the outlets on West Mountain. You went over through Indian Valley to the camp, or you went around to Cascade and up over the mountain to the camps either way you wanted to go. So this time we went around through McCall to Cascade. Above Cascade there's a trail. The camp tender met us there with horses for us to ride. We went above Cascade. There was a huge big reservoir up there where they save the water for the town of Cascade. A beautiful spot on the side of the mountain. I don't know whether very many see it. 'Course when you're out in the mountains, there's a lot of beautiful scenery, unless you're accustomed to being there, you won't see those things. But we went on the saddle horses up over this mountain, very steep and slick. There [unintelligible] I got off my horse and walked and climbed around over the rocks and the horse scrambled up. It was that steep and that slick. But we went to the top finally, and stayed in the camp that was set up close by. Then the next day we - -in fact, I think it was the second day, we moved on and went across the mountain with the sheep and the whole Grace Jones (March 15, 1987) :getup. Ralph and I decided we'd follow them, and we went clear across the mountain, West Mountain. When we got down off West Mountain -- You come down off the sheep trails, down into the valley, and across to McCall, there's where they had the corrals. And the sheep trail went from there through, up, down the side of McCall where the fairgrounds were at that time, and through the mountains. And then we were on our range. So that's another experience I had of seeing lots of beautiful country and beautiful plants and some of the trees were spectacular, so gall and had been there for years and years and years. Well we crossed the valley, as I say, past the fairgrounds, past McCall and out into the mountains again to take you over onto West Mountain and into the back country. And that's where our sheep went for a couple of months during the summer. While we were up there, we decided it would be a nice place to have a home, a summer home, or a place to stay during the summer. They had a place called Lakeview Village. So we happened to stop there and we rentE:d a tent for a few months, or during the summer, and the children were with us and camped out. I call it camping out because it was just a wood frame with a tent over it, and that wasn't anything unusual. Lakeview Village at that time was covered with wood frames and tents on them. People - bought: that was a luxury. Today you go up there, years later, and they have everything modern, and trailer houses all set in, and camp chairs and everything deluxe. We enjoyed it. We loved nature.. We loved to be out, so it didn't bother us living in the tent with a cover over the top of it. In the meantime, while we were there -- We loved McCall so much. We went around the lakes to see if we 19 Grace Jones (March 15, 1987) could find a piece of ground. 'Cause those days it was all open. There was not many cabins. And what was there were old, and the grass was up to your boot tops, and it was just wide open space. So we went around and looked to see what we could find. And when we got back, the landlady asked where we had been, the lady that owned this Lakeview Village. We told her that we had been looking for a cabin, that we thought we'd like to have a location of our own to keep our supplies for the sheep camp and everything. So she said, "Well, my son has gone away to Ireland." Of course, that was when the war was corning on, [unintelligible] started and she had not heard from him, and she was keeping the Lakeview Village for him. But as time went on, she had came to the conclusion, I guess, that perhaps he wasn't going to come back. So she told us she had this one cabin way out at the edge of Lakeview Village that she would sell. So we looked at it, and I fell in love with it. It was on a point and was a beautiful spot on the lake. And as I say, the grass was up to your boot tops. It was just a beautiful place. So, we made a deal with her. We bought the cabin furnished. She had rented it every weekend to Boise people, or people around with families. So we bought it, and we thought it was the most beautiful place we ever had. So that was the beginning of our getting established at McCall. We built a cabin on that spot in later years, long after- - quite a while after we had bought the ground. And we lived there - -my husband's lifetime we lived there. And we loved that cabin. It was a beautiful place. We were always fixing it and improving it like we always did everything we got a hold of. We had to do something to it. 20 Grace Jones (March 15, 1987) 5o we improved it and fixed it up, and it was one of the prettiest spots on the lake. [tape recorder turned off and on]. Comparing the sheep business with the days gone by, and the lives of the people in the industry, there are very few sheep outfits left in the country; too many government regulations, too much Taylor Grazing, too much, oh, management of people trying to run the affair and not knowing too much about it. Anyway, those days they had the lake shift. They had their horses, they had their pack strings. And they went from one part of the mountain to the other, and they were as interested as anyone else in taking good care of the range. They didn't get the credit for it, the sheep people, but they was as interested as anyone could be, 'because it was their livelihood. Today they have electric wagons. They have eve:rythin:g modern, and they don't go out and stay any length of time. I understand they have to make frequent trips to the city. Our herders long, years ago -- And they were Basque from Europe, they came. In the spring they went out with the sheep. They supplied themselves with their shoes, everything they needed during the summer; tobacco and so on and so forth. They never asked for anything all summer long. A letter now and again, that was the most, from home or something. JB: Did you take food out to them? CJ: Oh yes, they were supplied by the camp tender, or by Mr. Jones, whichever was the most convenient. They lived out 'til fall, and they came in in the fall. They :settled up and then they went to Boise and spent a few months when the sheep were on the winter quarters. I will 21 Grace Jones (March 15, 1987) never forget, I remember one of the men saying to my husband -- He had given him a check, and in those days you hired these people for a lot less money than you do today. I can remember the time when we paid $60.00 a month and their board. And then it kept going up and going up to $200.00 and $300.00. And I understand now that they get at least $400.00. Now, I don't know what they get, but there's a great comparison. I can remember -- Getting back to what I was going to say, my husband paying this sheep herder. And he had been out all summer. I don't know what it was, four or five hundred dollars. In those days that was a lot of money, but that's what he had coming, and that's what he got. So he said, "All right, I'm going to the city. We millionary now. Me get big cigar. Me millionary." I laughed. That was the funniest thing I had heard in a long time. [tape recorder turned off and on] I spoke once before about Cuddy Mountain. It's one of the most beautiful - -my husband was right. He said, "I found paradise. I found one of the most of the most beautiful mountains in the country and if some way, somehow we can get that for our sheep to run on, I'll be very happy." And I said, "It is a beautiful mountain, it's a beautiful place." And Cuddy Mountain was known at that time for the grouse and the wild game and everything on it, because it had been protected. The man that had it, had protected it enough, and there wasn't such an easy way to get up to the hunting grounds as there is today. So there was grouse every place you walked and looked. People carne in from long distances to hunt that grouse. But Cuddy Mountain, itself, is 22 Grace Jones (March 15, 1987) beautiful, not only from the front of the mountain that you can see from the valley, but I've gone up there horseback (which takes about three hours ride,;) and when you get on the top, it used to be, you get off the saddle horse and the grass was up to the top of your boots, and beautiful country. Sheep grazing out on those places around in the ,\Talley was beautiful on the meadows. In the middle of the top of the mountain is a beautiful lake. In those days it had water lilies in it, Find it was a beautiful lake. It really was paradise, and it was a beautiful trip up into the mountain, steep climbing. We had good saddle horses. I had a little mule that I rode that was the surest footed as could be. It was really a lot of fun. Those were the good days. It ,�A►as a good life. I don't regret one minute of it, a beautiful life and EL fine place to raise the children. I had the children ride their horses. One of them had a small Shetland pony. The others had some saddle horses. They loved it. They loved it up there, but everything comes to an end. As time went on, and we both grew older- -my husband retired in '65. And in the meantime we sold our holdings, and someone else is enjoying what we had. I hope they enjoy it as much as I did, because it was a life special. I've really had a chance to enjoy something the average woman does not have, the outside life; the livestock, the beautiful saddle horses, and the beautiful country, the lakes and places we went: and the beautiful trout the herders used to catch in those streams. It was really all very lovely. JB: Thank you Grace, I appreciate- [tape recorder turned off and on]. Grace, I understand that you gave a program for 20th Century one time on 23 Grace Jones (March 15, 1987) a day in the life of a sheep camp. Would you like to tell me about it? GJ: Well, it's quite an experience. I guess we start early in the morning. The alarm went off at 5:00. In the meantime, many a time my husband and I would have been out the night before over at the lambing sheds looking the little lambs over and looking everything over to see what was going on. Then we'd come home, walk back over to our house, and talk about what those lambs were going to bring and about how much money we were going to have the next year. Then it was midnight. Then at 5:00 the alarm clock went off, my husband would get up and he would go out. I don't think any man could make more noise than he made over that Majestic range, rattling those lids and banging things around. I really think he did it on purpose. I think he thought that was the only way he was going to get his wife out of bed. However, after that who could sleep? Anyway, I got up. As I have said, if I had the chance to sleep, I was going to sleep 'til 7:00 every morning. My friends now laugh at me about that. They think that's really something. "You'd better not call me before 10:00." Anyway, the rattling the lids of the stove and that, I knew there was a big fire going on and if I didn't get up maybe the house would burn down. So I'd get up, and in the meantime, the night before the girl and that'd always help me. We'd set the table for the 12 or 14 or whatever number of men there were and put the lamps at each end of the table, and put on the sugar bowl, and all the plates and silverware. We didn't have time to do any of that in the mornings. So as the water would be hot in the big huge coffee pot -- I don't know, I guess the coffee pots were 10 gallon. They were huge, big things. 24 Grace Jones (March 15, 1987) Anyway, it was all used up in the period when breakfast was over. And we had the iron griddles, those huge big round griddles. You know it gook two of them to take care of that many men. They'd each have at least have two eggs, maybe more. And the bacon went into one of the iron griddles. Before that, when we went to bed, I always put the griddles and the heavy stuff in the oven so that it'd be getting hot to put on the top of the stove. And we had a huge big griddle that we made the hotcakes on. I declare, I know, I made a big car load of hotcakes in my life. I just know I did. But, anyway, those men were bottomless when it came to hotcakes and syrup. Anyway, we'd get everything ready, and we'd have at the top of the stairs -- This was a basement house at that time, remember. At the top of the stairs was a big tambourine. We might have to call them other times. But in the morning we didn't have to call theca. We'd ring that tambourine and they'd all be down in that basement, shortly after 6:00 for breakfast, because at 7:00 they had to be out load7_ng the hay out for the sheep. These men all had to go somewhere. The hay haulers had to go on these long jaunts to get their own hay, not: baled hay, modern like it is today. But they had to put that long hay on, and they brought in some of the biggest loads you could imagine. In those days they had narrow bridges, and a few times they got stuck on those bridges with their hay. They couldn't get across the bridges. But anyway, to get back to breakfast, they'd all come in when we'd call, and they'd have their breakfast. Then when they were gone--in those days no dishwasher, no nothing but our own little hands. There the night man would come in and he'd have to be fed. So 25 Grace Jones (March 15, 1987) then when we got rid of there, when they were all gone, I got things straightened around and we'd some days, every other day perhaps, we had to make bread, ten or twelve loaves of bread. Along with all the hotcakes you'd think they'd last a while, but not in the sheep 'camps. Food was devoured and disappeared. I don't know where it all went, but they ate a lot. Then they'd go out - -hay men would have their horses all harnessed and ready while they were waiting for breakfast. They go out and feed all the sheep their hay. Some of the other men would take grain out. Another one would hitch up the little cart that hauls the mother ewe and her baby lambs. If you don't know what that is, they'd go out to the lots where the ewes are having their lambs and they have this little pull cart, a little cart with a form on it, and they put the mother ewe in this little thing on her side so she can't jump out. And the little lambs go in a box in front of her, and the horse and man haul that into the lambing shed. It's built on an angle, an "L ", and there's two or three doors, and they take those lambs in. Inside in the right spot they built a tin stove, oil barrels made into a stove, and they had a fire always in there. That's where they revived the baby lambs that are not doing too good and put some of them behind the stove to stay warm so that if they need another baby lamb -- They'd have a lamb to put on a mother who has lost her lamb. So that is what happens. Outside every morning so many of the ewes and their little lambs go out to the first pens. It takes about three times mixture before they put a group of sheep together. They wind maybe with 50 head of ewes, and maybe not always that many, with their babies in a pen. Then they have these pens W. Grace Jones (March 15, 1987) all over the grounds, i3nd that's the way they inspected each one - -had their little feeding lot and their water and they're kept separate until the lambs get; strong enough and scent- -by meaning the scent, the smell of the baby lambs and the mother so that they won't lose their lambs. They can find their lambs in a band of 1000 if the mother has been with her lamb long enough so that it has the same scent she does, and that's something to know. That's the way to take care of them. Incidentally, if a mother sheep has lost her lamb, they take her in and put her in a pen and feed. her. They find a little lamb that is all right, take the coat off, skin the decd lamb, put the little coat on the live lamb and put it in with the mother. That lamb smells like her, and she adopts the new baby. Once in a while they have a renegade that won't want anyone else's baby, but as a general thing they do take the baby. So that is what. the men do during the day time. They water, they feed, they transfer from one lot to the other. Men are out bringing in the hay. Others are bringing in the grain, and noon comes very fast. We cooks like: to have it come. Anyway, we have their dinner all ready for them. At noon we generally have pudding, or pies, or something good and substanti6Ll for the men. Evening, generally fruit and always cake, and that's the way we fed them. So, the afternoon was a case of feed and transfer again, and we women in the house, it was our job to have plenty of food, and it didn't seem we ever had enough. I think we had to bake bread about every other day, and I think it was ten or twelve loaves. ' 1_ - - -, so I've forgotten, and maybe purposely, -eally hard work for about six weeks. 27 t h c Grace Jones (March 15, 1987) JB: I'll bet you peeled a lot of potatoes. GJ: Ah, that was a job, too. We had potatoes and beans, that was a central thing. Oh my! We baked them, we fixed anything like that was easy for us to fix, you know. And we had something different every day. And, of course, we had no lamb, no mutton. They don't eat mutton during that period of time. The men don't want mutton. So we'd butcher a beef. We generally went to the farmers those days. I don't know how it's done now, but generally there were farmers in the neighborhood and around that butchered purposely. They raised cattle and butchered them and had the beef ready for them to sell to the sheep men, along with the stacks of hay in the fall. That was the farmers livelihood, was the crops they could raise, and beef and the pork that they could sell. That was what they depended on. That was a great advantage. At that time in Malheur County alone, there were thousands of sheep, thousands of sheep. Today they tell me there are just a small number of sheep, a few bands and what is grown on the farms. And cows and sheep, and livestock you just don't see on many farms. You see lots of implements, row crop stuff, but you don't see many sheep, and a few cows. I think all the farmers come to town to buy their milk, and maybe their eggs too. JB: What time did you get to bed at night? GJ: If we weren't too tired, my husband always went to check on everything before he went to bed, and if I wasn't too tired I went along. And we got back and saw all the babies to bed and that everything was okay. Maybe it was 11:30 or 12:00. That was the general time, and 5:00 in the morning was the time, too. I'll never forget those days. However, rr Grace Jones (March 15, 1987) while it was hard work:, and if you have a name and have a desire and you have an ambition, and it's what you like out of life. Everyone doesn't like the same thing. For people that like the outdoor living and the stock business it's just a real pleasant way to live. You took the hardest way out to live. You're subject to the weather, subject to the markets, you're subject to everything. That's what my husband's father told him when he went in the sheep business. He said, "You're subject to everything." He was a city man and a businessman. He had a hardware store. So, he thought his soon was way out going out in the livestock business. But, it was our life and we loved it, and we did it for 60 years. It. was a long time, and I think we were better off for it than living in town. I still say that about city and town. I am a city person now. I wouldn't want to be out in the country. I wouldn't want to be any place but in my home. And maybe you could say I'm reaping some of the benefits of years gone by. JB: Thank you Grace, that was wonderful. END OF TAPE: END OF INTERVIEW Audited and final corrections entered by Mary Drury, December 11, 1991. WO •