The Johnson County Cattle Wars...

Well, that's what it was called before Wikipedia allowed someone to re-write the whole story. Currently that reference tells the tale of cattle rustlers in Johnson County. Earlier the story was about the contentious relationship between cattle and sheep ranches. I cling to that earlier version since it relates to my family story.

My paternal grandfather had an interesting life-

• at age 16 he kidnapped his brother and sister and took them to Buffalo, Wyoming to fulfill a deathbed promise to his father;
• while a young man living in Buffalo he met Margaret Lothian and asked her to marry him, but she said no and married the guy who owned a ranch;
  
• he herded sheep in the midst of Wyoming cattle country, then...
• moved to California and enrolled in a business school. After graduating he...
  
• moved to Arizona where he worked at or ran various trading posts and general stores in the mining areas while Arizona was still a territory.
• While in Arizona he met and married Ida Francis Penn; Ida was a school teacher (with a wicked sense of humor!).
• In 1911 JO and Ida moved to Venice, California. Venice is adjacent to Santa Monica where Ida's family lived. Not long after arriving there they had their only child.
  
• He worked at and managed various grocery stores in California including a Piggly-Wiggly plus at least 2 Safeway stores. He even owned a small store once himself- Bowman's Grocery in (I believe) Big Pine, California.
  
• Safeway closed the Merced, California Safeway store he was managing during the depression and suddenly JO was out of a job. He tried his hand at selling real estate while actively operating their tiny 2.5 acre farm in Stockton. He augmented their limited income by selling eggs, dried corn (used for chicken feed), walnuts and dried apricots to local groceries. [The Central Valley of California was rife with similar stories of survival during a horrific downturn in the American economy.]
  
• Along came World War-II and he found war time employment supervising a warehouse for the US Army in Stockton, California. While he worked for at the US Army's Sharpes Army Depot he continued operating the small farm. In fact my earliest recollection of him was when he told his son (my father) that one of the idiots driving a fork lift had come so close to his foot he had cut the leather. He was not a happy camper that day, And getting replacement shoes during war time was next to impossible!
  
• He and my paternal grand mother Ida eventually sold the farm and retired to the coastal town of Santa Cruz, California in about 1952.
• Sometime after Ida died he connected with that same high school sweetheart who had dumped him for the rancher. Margaret was also widowed and something like a year later they married (after her lawyers insisted he sign a prenuptial agreement to guard the title to the ranch and its holdings). 
• He finished his days once again living in Buffalo, Wyoming but this time he was running the Occidental Hotel. That landmark hotel was owned & operated as part of the Smith ranch. His aunt Ella Smith Jones (she was my paternal great-grand aunt), who had taken in JO and his siblings in 1910, was still alive then but suffering from dementia when I visited there in 1958.
  

The business with herding sheep in cattle country was interesting. In his late teens JO finished attending school and started to working for the Rand Outfit as a shepherd. The Rand Outfit raised sheep but not exclusively on their own land. Yeah, they owned some pasture at lower elevation in the vicinity of Buffalo, but the upper elevations, land held by the US government, was better for summer grazing and also gave lower elevation pasture time to recover. Not owning that land and thus not paying taxes on it was a great alternative to the extent taxes on owned-land would be more costly than the rented-land. Cattle and sheep ranches both wanted access to that land and are able to rent it from the US government thru the Bureau of Land Management. That summer-grazing arrangement goes on to this day.

One of the grazing areas the Rand Outfit used was Crazy Woman Creek (#1 below). It wasn't clear to me if it was BLM land or state controlled open grazing land (BLM = Bureau of Land Management). The creek runs thru a narrow canyon with the same name. The canyon is especially useful in that it keeps grazing animals somewhat contained. If you are grazing sheep, the sheep dogs easily keep the sheep inside the bounds as well as guard them in the evening from predators. 

Crazy Woman Creek about 20 miles SW of Buffalo, Wyoming

And the creek has a decent flow so there's water available. There were (are?) beavers living on the creek so there were beaver dams. The dams were especially useful as they create ponds for the grazing animals to drink. But there was this one tiny problem...

Crazy Woman Creek is about 20 mile ESE of Buffalo. What's more Buffalo and Crazy Woman Creek are both in Johnson County of Wyoming. And Johnson County is decidedly 'cattle country'. The ranches these days run both cattle and sheep as a hedge against price swings, but in the early 1900's you were either one or the other and the stronger voice was decidedly 'cattle'.

The shepherd stays with the herd from the time they arrive at a remote grazing location till the sheep are again driven back to the lower pastures before winter-snows start. The wagon the herders use is a little different than what they picture as the 'chuck wagon' in movies about cattle. The sheep wagon has canvas covered roof that is not supported by ribs but rather is applied over a smooth half-cylinder of wood support. 

Shepherd's wagon ca. 1900. It was invented by James Candlish in about 1884. Candlish was a 

Canadian living in Rawlins, Wyoming)

The inside of the sheep wagon has living accommodations like a bunk, shelves, lanterns as well as space for storing food, supplies, clothing, tools- everything you would need for several months of remote living as the sheep graze. My grandfather told me he would read in the evening using the kerosene lamp; I've tried reading with that sort of light and you really have to want to read because it's nowhere near enough light! He also said he was armed with a side arm and a .22 caliber rifle, the latter for hunting small game. The Rand Outfit allowed the shepherd to slaughter only one sheep per month- never a lamb. It was during this time as a shepherd that he developed a taste for mutton. Mutton (the meat from a mature sheep) has a much stronger taste than lamb- and no one else in our family could stand it but him!

JO developed some skills for cooking during his days as a shepherd. He told me nearly everything was cooked in a cast iron skillet including both fried or baked items (he was a master at baking biscuits in a cast iron skillet). In his case he heated the skillet over an open fire though there was also a stove inside the sheep wagon. JO had a distinct talent for cooking- apparently a skill not passed on genetically to descendants! In fact he was the cook for his Bowman household once he was no longer working in his grocery business.

I thought it was interesting that having lived with and depended upon sheep dogs as a shepherd he never had a dog in his household as an adult. Apparently the dogs were thought of as a tool and not at all in terms of a dog becoming part of a family as a pet. My father never developed a love of dogs either even though my mother was emphatically a dog lover- as a child I can remember her dog Pat- an Australian sheep dog (mix).

In the 1800s and into the early 1900s there was great contention between the cattle ranches and the sheep outfits. They both needed grazing land and water. Cattle ranchers saw sheep as detrimental to the grasses compared to how cattle graze the meadows. As it was explained to me the cattle graze off the the ends of the blades of grass which allows the grass to re-grow; sheep bite lower on the grass and pull it out so that it can't re-grow. I have no idea if that is truth or myth; it's my impression grass re-seeds itself and that both cattle and sheep are getting the seeds as well as the blades of grass. Regardless, both cattle and sheep needed inexpensive grazing land if the respective ranchers are going to make a living.

During the time he was herding sheep for the Rand Outfit, the conflict between cattlemen and sheep herders was coming to a head. One evening while he was with his flock in Crazy Woman in probably 1904 or 1905, he was visited one night by masked men on horseback. As my grandfather told the story to me, one of them said "we don't have anything against you personally, but if you're still here when we come back there's gonna' be trouble". The inference was very clear and has been portrayed over and over in movies about similar events.

John Oscar took the warning to heart. He saddled his horse and rode back to the Rand Outfit ranch house leaving the sheep and the wagon in the care of the sheep dogs in Crazy Woman. The owners told him they understood the situation, paid him his back wages, and said they would take care of it. He must have gone back to the sheep wagon to gather his belongings but that was the abrupt end of his time as a shepherd. I have no idea if he worked for the Rand Outfit for one season or if it was a longer period.

After being routed from Crazy Woman canyon he took a job at a trading post in Montana the next spring (the name of the reservation has gotten away from me), then returned to Buffalo at the end of that season. At that point he started making plans to move to Santa Monica, California to stay with his brother Charles David (Charlie) for awhile.

I found a story about Crazy Woman Canyon on http://www.onlyinyourstate.com about how the canyon got its name. That story seems to have disappeared from the site. Fortunately I managed to save the story here before it disappeared...

"#1- The most known legend (about Crazy Woman Canyon) is the story of the Morgan family.    The family was traveling via covered wagon when they were attacked by Sioux warriors.        Three children and their father were killed, but Mrs. Morgan survived the attack. After witnessing these horrors, she lost her mind. She stole an axe from a warrior and attacked (her captors), killing four as the Sioux fled.

"Soon after the (event), a mountain man named Johnson came upon the bloody scene. He buried the husband and children, and tried to get Mrs. Morgan to leave. She refused, and he built her a small cabin. Eventually, he found her frozen body, dead from starvation. Locals knew about her presence near the stream, and dubbed it Crazy Woman Creek."