from Joseph Beezley, a resident of The Dalles, about 1870, a homestead sheep ranch on a small mill stream there, called "Fifteen-Mile" (estimated that distance from The Dalles). They moved onto this farm and starting with a moderate flock began, by irrigation, to farm for the winter care of their sheep. Excepting a few acres under fence at Four-Mile and Eight-Mile, watering places, no fences existed between The Dalles and the Dufur farm at that date. They enlarged their crops as their flocks increased, and were the first to purchase swamp lands near the base of Mt. Hood for summer range for their flocks.[1] From first a house of entertainment for settlers locating further south, and next a blacksmith shop, gristmill, and post office, the seeds of a rural town were planted and rapidly grew, until the lands around and beyond from The Dalles were occupied, first for grazing, then for wheat growing. Within about ten years a corporate town had grown, supported largely by stock-raising families, who builded for winter residence and winter school facilities. The district now produces about 1,000,000 bushels of wheat. Heppner was planted by a young unmarried Englishman, who brought capital to buy a flock of sheep and the small gristmill there, erected by a Frenchman; he took the cream of the beautiful grazing lands near and sold out to a grain-raising compatriot from North Britain, who made flour and mill feed his chief
- ↑ They were also among the first to breed thoroughbred Merinos as range sheep for improvement of their own and neighbors' flocks, taking a colony of the writer's flock on shares about the date of Doctor Baldwin's locating at Hay Creek. This did not interfere with my taking my surplus bred in the Willamette Valley to districts further east and south. For twenty-five years after buyers ceased coming to me at Salem I did a moderate but very interesting business as sheep merchant on Lower John Day and its tributaries, Rock Creek and Thirty-Mile, and from Heppner to Prinesville, near which I also had a colony in the hands of Hon. J. N. Williamson, who, however, from the time he was as well known in Crook County as I knew him as a youth at Salem, has been called to public duties by his fellow-citizens in too many ways to make a successful sheep breeder. To me the business was an instructive pleasure.
