Oregon’s rangelands to the east were prime grazing country for cattle, sheep, and horses. The state’s ranching traditions were brought north by Californian vaqueros, called “buckaroos” by the Americans they worked with. The late 1800s saw the rise of massive ranches in the Southeast Oregon-Idaho-Nevada area. In these great ranges thousands of heads of livestock were raised on ranches many tens of thousands of acres in size.

 

Cattle and sheep had different needs and benefits to the people who ranched them. Cattle grazed the open plains while sheep summered high in the mountains and wintered at lower elevations. In addition, cattle could be driven to market, but lambs and wool needed mechanized transport before they could be sold.

Over time, the ranching economy altered the demographics of people living in Eastern Oregon. Early on, forced resettlement of natives to reservations opened central and eastern Oregon to occupation by settlers. Ranching was one of the first means for Euro-American settlers to sustain their families in the inhospitable eastern regions.

Over time, the small homestead ranches of the settlers gave way to massive commercial operations. These huge ranches functioned as the modern fiefs of neo-feudal cattle barons. The buckaroos and shepherds who worked them were overwhelmingly young, single, white men. Some Chinese laborers were hired as range cooks and for domestic labor. The region’s Latino influence dwindled by 1900. Around the same time, however, American women began making themselves vital to the growing range economy.

Workers count off sheep in 1941. Enlarged image of counting off the sheep courtesy of Library of Congress​.

Livestock drives continue in eastern Oregon. This 2014 sheep drive is along Highway 244 in Umatilla County. (Oregon State Archives, 2014) Get a high resolution copy of the sheep from the Oregon Scenic Images Collection​.