HomeMy Public PortalAboutJones, Grace MunroSheep Ranching in Idaho
Grace M. Jones oral history
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RELEASE OF TAPES TO THE WEISER VALLEY ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM
Date of Recording
March 15, 1987
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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,
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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,
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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,
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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.
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