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Thursday, March 25, 2021 • ThE BuLLETIN
A trip to Pete French country
Story and photos By MAKENZIE WHITTLE • The Bulletin
E
astern Oregon is beautiful in a desolate kind of way. Since spring break still looks different this year and flying to a warm beach is probably still out, head
to where social distancing comes easy in the wild sagebrush landscapes of Harney County — and learn a little about the notorious cattle baron Peter “Pete”
French along the way.
THE MAN
John William French was born in 1849 in
Missouri, after which his family moved to
California, where patriarch Marian French
started a sheep farm.
As John grew, he struck out on his own
and got a job as a horse wrangler for rancher
Hugh James Glenn. French was short in
stature and weighed only about 125 pounds,
but he proved himself a capable horseman,
even learning Spanish from the vaqueros
(Spanish-speaking cowboys, from which the
word “buckaroo” came) in Glenn’s employ.
French was promoted to foreman and en-
trusted with 1,200 heads of cattle to move
to the Blitzen River Valley near the Steens
Mountain in southeastern Oregon, where
land use and open grazing was more open
than California after the U.S. Army had
forced the Paiute and Bannock tribes onto
reservations. He, along with six vaqueros
and a cook, made their way north eventually
buying a few more cows from a prospector
along with his land and the “P” brand, start-
ing French’s P-Ranch.
The Sod House Ranch as seen from the Center Patrol Road at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. BELOW: A great horned owl in its nest at the Pete
French Round Barn.
cattle baron began here at the P-Ranch and
with Glenn’s financial backing and part-
nership, French set out to acquire and buy
more land from early settlers to the region,
some through honest transactions,
some through corrosion, ma-
nipulation of land use laws of
the time and intimidation.
THE ROUND BARN
THE P-RANCH
Today, towering cottonwood trees make
a nice respite from the miles of sagebrush
in one direction and the marshy landscapes
on the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge to
the north.
Located just outside of Frenchglen, the
P-Ranch still bears the chimney of the old
house here as well as its foundation and a
French creation in the long barn.
The barn, which is now on the National
Register of Historic Places, used to house
hay during the 1880s on the ranch. French,
though a shrewd businessman, was also
quite the innovator for his day. He is the first
rancher in the basin to raise hay to hold over
during hard winters for his cattle mixing the
Texas “open range” style of ranching with
the European stock farming techniques, ac-
cording to interpretive signage at the barn.
Today, the 150-foot barn has been par-
tially restored in order to keep it standing
and safe to walk in, but the feeling the juni-
per-beamed barn leaves you with is still po-
tent, driving you back to those early ranch-
ing days in the basin.
French’s empire and climb to become a
French grew the
herd and spread over
140,000 acres of land,
making in good years
over $100,000 in sales —
about $2.5 million today.
After Glenn died, French
was named president of the
French-Glenn Livestock Company
and he set about establishing various sites as
base camps and structures around his land
to better keep an eye on and maintain his
holdings.
One of the more remarkable structures
were round barns with only one example re-
maining today, a spectacular example of this
style of architecture.
The Pete French Round Barn State Her-
itage Site is located along the lonely stretch
of Diamond Craters Road on the back slope
of Steens Mountain.
Not a barn in a traditional sense, the
Round Barn is an enclosed corral consisting
of an inner and outer section divided by a
stone wall.
Cowboys working for French would train
teams of horses and mules to pull freight
wagons in the outer circle while foaling
mares could be tended to in the inner circle
under the grand, umbrella-like roof.
The center is held up by a single juni-
per post with a cone-like hub at the top
where spokes spire from it. On a
recent visit, two nesting great
horned owls had made a
temporary home in the
hub.
When you visit, enter
the barn slowly and check
for any owls or other rap-
tors who may be resting
above. If you see any, stay
quiet and give them their
space.
For French, owls were the
least of his worries.
THE SOD HOUSE RANCH
French purchased land and the Sod
House Ranch from A.H. Robbie in 1877
near the shores of Malheur Lake.
The Sod House Ranch is one of the rarer
parts of the structures from the Pete French-
era still standing in that it’s only open for
a few months of the year, August through
October, after various bird species have fin-
ished nesting.
But you can still see the old ranch from
the Center Patrol Road at the Malheur Na-
tional Wildlife Refuge.
The refuge preserves the ranch and is
slowly restoring the buildings that remain.
One of the most intact 1880s ranches in
southern Oregon, it hosts original struc-
tures including the main house, bunkhouse
and a long barn, though a different style
from its southern neighbor.
END OF THE LINE
By the 1880s more settlers began arriving
in the basin looking to homestead and with
water and land at a premium and French
being the top of the proverbial food chain,
tensions began running hot between him
and settlers.
One settler named Edward Oliver, with
whom French had disputes over land and
water rights in the past, wanted an easement
to drive cattle through French’s land instead
of running them six miles out of the way to
avoid trespassing.
On Dec. 26, 1897, when Oliver rode
through French’s land, the two had a heated
argument. Specifics vary but French was un-
armed and when he turned away Oliver shot
him in the back of the head.
Oliver was tried in the murder, but grow-
ing hostilities toward French in the county
brought the jury to acquit him on the
grounds of self-defense.
French’s name is now Eastern Oregon
legend and much of his land has since been
acquired by the federal government in order
to create and expand the Malheur National
Wildlife Refuge.
For one of the most successful and in-
famous cattle ranchers in U.S. history, his
25 years in the Blitzen valley can still be re-
membered in the places left standing after
his meteoric tenure.
e e
Reporter: 541-383-0304, mwhittle@bendbulletin.com