bearing lands of Nebraska. The mutton sheep trail in this direction kept as near as possible to the old Oregon trail over which the first sheep were driven west in 1844, until the close of the century, when local settlements and locally owned sheep and other stock, and especially locally owned watering places, so intervened that shipping by railroad had become the prevailing practice as most economical in 1892, and "trailing sheep" has fallen or is now falling into past methods.[1] Up to 1890 stock sheep from Eastern Oregon were purchased and driven on foot to the ranges of Eastern Washington, Idaho, Montana, and mutton sheep reached Chicago via the feeding farms of Nebraska, Kansas, and Iowa; but by 1892 buyers for North and South Dakota generally preferred to ship by rail.
The history of the occupation and development of Dufur and Heppner will indicate the general growth of well-watered sheep camps to towns and cities, and centers of wheat growing. The Dufur family, after some years conducting a dairy farm near Portland, concluded to change to sheep husbandry in the early '70s. They purchased
- ↑ There is probably no fiercer tirade against range sheep husbandry in the English language than that of the committee of the National Academy of Science, asked for by Hon. Hoke Smith at the suggestion of the executive committee of the American Forestry Association, in order to secure the counsel of this learned body as to an administrative policy over the forest covered portion of the public domain as secretary of the interior. Sheep were "hoofed locusts, leaving desolation and ruin on the grass lands and destroying the forests," driven by "nomads and marauders." The epithets used are the worn coin of the half insane but charming Carlylian writer on mountains and forests, John Muir. Much bitterness, doubtless, was caused by sheep trailers as they passed through; sometimes it was in resentment for extortion for water and feed purchased. The laws of Spain under the rule of her grandee and clergy, who were the chief owners of the fine wooled flocks, provided by law wide roads for their migration; but this body of highly respected men, who it may be said are our only grandees, made no suggestions for the benefit of this important industrial interest. In many localities of our State the annual movement of sheep to and from the mountain ranges causes serious injury to the wheat farmer and homestead settler. This is at present tending to induce our best flock owners to purchase their summer ranges as near as possible to their winter homes, and is bringing into the public service as lawmakers practical men like Hons. J. N. Williamson and Thomas H. Tongue, Douglas Belts, and others.
