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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 1, 2022)
STACY DAVIES POINTS OUT RELICS IN THE GHOST TOWN OF BLITZEN 21st Century Cowboys four-strand barbed-wire fence runs north to south down the middle of the desert flat in the empty Catlow Valley, splitting the town of Blitzen in two. Or at least what used to be Blitzen, before the homesteaders who came to try their hand at dry farming wheat slowly trickled out, more than 70 years ago. Now all that remains of the once-thriving community are dark wood skeletons of the former buildings, their structures skewed to one side or the other after half a century of weathering the elements. Eventually, two ranchers both wanted to buy the property of Blitzen, and they ended up dividing it down the middle. One of those ranchers is Stacy Davies, manager of Roaring Springs Ranch, who wears a button-up collared shirt and a dirty cowboy hat to provide shade from the morning heat as he points to the dilapidated buildings. He tells me there used to be a post office, a store, a church, a saloon. Beyond the ghost town, the sagebrush and short yellowed grass continues for miles, the former town only a blip in the desert. Land east of the endless barbed wire now belongs to Roaring Springs Ranch, one of the largest cattle operations in Oregon. The west side belongs to Rock Creek Ranch, another large cattle operation and friendly competitor. The two ranches share a 40-mile boundary that divides the ghost town of Blitzen, but they operate on very differ- ent philosophies. I drove out to this remote area of southeast Oregon with a Eugene Weekly colleague who took photos, to learn about life on these ranches in this rugged country, where the nearest neighbors are cattle and deer, and a A 8 S E P T E M B E R 1 , 2 0 2 2 big grocery haul entails a seven-hour round trip to the Costco in Bend. These isolated mountains and desert flats feel like another planet compared to the west side of the state, granting a solitude that isn’t lonely. “This is the smallest population that has ever lived in this valley, now,” Davies says. Blitzen faded away after the main road was moved away from the valley, he explains, and bigger companies bought up the land to create larger ranches, eventually ending the homesteading way of life. Although Harney County is one of the biggest in Oregon, it has a population of only about 7,000. Most of the home- steaders eventually left, but the legacy of the American cowboy is still alive. Taking care of cattle and making a living through the harsh high-desert seasons is no easy feat, but for those who fantasize about riding horses into the mountains and sleeping under the stars away from civilization, this way of life is a dream come true. “Living here and working here is really a labor of love. People do it because they love it,” Davies says, adding later, “But it's far more complicated than people think.” Ranching in the Blood Davies knew from a young age he wanted to become a ranch manager. He grew up on a ranch in Utah, his family a part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. When Davies was young, he was really good at school, he says, but was often bored. He started to act up in class. This concerned Davies’ grandfather, with whom he was really close, so his grandfather sat him down and told Davies he needed to choose a career. He was too smart to waste his life. “He could see that it would lead to more trouble if it wasn’t IN REMOTE SOUTHEAST OREGON, RANCHING COMMUNITIES CARRY ON PAST TRADITIONS IN A MODERN WORLD STORY BY TAYLOR PERSE PHOTOS BY BOB KEEFER curbed,” Davies says. Not even a week after, the young man saw an ad on the back of a beef magazine for a ranch manage- ment program at what was then Ricks College, now Brigham Young University - Idaho, in Rexburg, Idaho. He tore out the magazine ad and pinned it to his wall with a thumbtack. “Then I said, ‘I want to manage a ranch,’” he says. Davies met his wife, Elaine Davies, in college in Idaho. Now both in their fifties, they have six grown sons. Elaine Davies is friendly and engaging, with bits of gray shin- ing through her wavy red hair. She says she loves life on the ranch. “I like the feeling of being away from people,” she says. “It doesn’t bug me that bad.” She adds that it’s the best place in the world to raise kids because they’ve grown up having to solve problems most kids never encounter. Roaring Springs was originally a part of the historic P Ranch, put together by cattleman Pete French in the late 19th century. Today, Roaring Springs operates on about 1.2 million acres, Davies says, roughly the size of Clackamas County. This includes 254,000 acres owned, and 980,000 acres of land used for grazing under permits from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and others. In 1992 the ranch was purchased by the Sanders family, University of Oregon alumni who were owners and opera- tors of a timber company in Washington. Before he died, Bob Sanders donated $17 million to UO to build the Jane Sanders Softball Stadium in 2016, in memory of his late wife. The ranch is still owned by members of the Sand- ers family today. In 1997, Davies signed on to manage it, building it up to what it is today with goals of environmentalism and sustainability. E U G E N E W E E K LY . C O M
