Image provided by: Morrow County Museum; Heppner, OR
About Heppner gazette-times. (Heppner, Or.) 1925-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 14, 1935)
Page Two WOOLGROWERS SOUVENIR EDITION HEPPNER GAZETTE TIMES, MONDAY, JANUARY 14, 1935 tlmmMtMimitlMIIHIHf IIHIIItll lIllMllllllllllllllllltlltlMllllltMIIIIIIIIIIMIIIIIIIIIIIIIItMltlMIIIII nilltHttlllllllllllllllllltlllllllllllMIMIIIMMIMlHIIIIIIIIIIIIIMIIIMMM Mtlllllllllllllltllllllllllll lllllllllllllltllttlllllllHIIItlMIIIIMIIIMtlllllllHIIIt iMItMllllllllliMllllllimiHUHIHIItlllUf HIIHIIHItltlll Heppner Early History Interwoven With Industry HENRY HEPPNER By JOSEPH BELANGER, County Agent (From radio broadcast given over KOAC Thursday, January 10) For the first time in twenty years, the Oregon Woolgrow ers association is holding its an nual convention in Heppner, the county seat of Morrow county. Heppner is one of the early pio neer towns of eastern Oregon and its history is interwoven with the early history of stock raising. When the early settlers came into this territory all of the land which is now in wheat was in bunch grass. Early cattle outfits ranged all the way from the Umatilla Forest Reserve to the Columbia River in the winter season and during the summer would trail thru Umatilla and Union counties and even into Malheur. There were no fences, there were no wheat fields, there was nothing in all this open country but bunch grass. Supplies for the ranchers were brought up the river on boats and for the whole territory now comprising Morrow, Grant and Wheeler counties, were un loaded at Umatilla Landing. God Father Early Day Peddler Henry Heppner was first known in this eastern Oregon country as an itinerant peddler. At first his stock of goods was carried in a pack on his own back. Business was good and he bought a mule. Soon he was running a pack train. All supplies that were not handled by water were handled by pack train in those days and Henry Heppner became one of the large pack train owners that hauled supplies all the way from the present state of Washington down into California. At the height of his prosperity as a freighter, al most his entire outfit was stolen and destroyed by Indians. Fol lowing this loss he started in a small way packing from Umatilla Landing to a small cabin at Stans bury's Flat at the junction of Wil low and Hinton creeks. Consign ments of goods would be taken off at Umatilla Landing and sent to Henry Heppner's. Shortly a settlement grew up around this trading post and the town of Heppner was formed. A young man by the name of Jack Morrow went into partnership with Hepp ner in the trading post and when, in 1885, Umatilla county was di vided and the west portion made a separate county, its name be came Morrow. Gradually the sheepmen began to come into this bunchgrass coun try and with the sheep came the early cattle and sheep wars. It would be difficult to say horn many men were killed and how many hundreds of cattle and sheep were A SHEPHERDESS? E 9T Mrs. Luke Bibby, then Miss Reita Neel, as queen of Heppner Rodeo. Her parents, Mr. and Mrs. R. A. Thompson, are among Morrow County's leading sheep operators. slaughtered before this war was ended by the Federal Government when it established its Forest Re serves and allotted each livestock man his own territory on which to run his stock undisturbed. Many of these old pioneer stockmen are still living in this county and the tales they tell read like a book. Indian Scare Recalled The early history of Heppner was far from being a smooth, even development. In 1878 the Indians in the Snake River country left their river territory to join the Umatilla Indians with the express purpose of going over into Wash ington to combine with tribes there. The purpose was to sweep down into western Oregon to wipe out all of the whites. Special in formation gained from one of the Indians showed that Heppner was directly in the path of the pro posed punitive expedition. For tifications were built, guns were shipped in by the Federal Gov ernment and distributed to the citizens. One day while forty of our men had gone over to Long Creek to help defend that settle ment, a small group of Indians did come to Heppner. However, they proved to be friendly. In a few days these Indians departed and later on the same day word was received that three men on Butter creek had been found dead, killed by Indians. Perhaps the most important sin gle factor in the development of Morrow county and Heppner was the establishment of the branch railroad into Heppner in 1888. Prior to that time some wheat had been grown but only for local con sumption. The price of wheat was so low that it would not stand the cost of freighting as was done wfth wool. This railroad made Heppner the shipping point for a vast interior country. Freighters hauled, wool from Long Creek, John Day and even parts of Wheeler county. In one year there were three million pounds of wool shipped from Heppner. All kinds of supplies came to Heppner to be freighted to this interior country. So truly was Heppner the outlet for several parts of Umatilla, Grant and Wheeler counties that a bill was introduced into the legislature en-, larging Morrow county to include all of the country south to the John Day river. This bill passed the lower house but was too late to be considered by the senate. At the present time, in Morrow coun ty, sheep have very largely re placed cattle until now there are about 3000 beef cattle in the county and upwards of 150,000 ewes. , 1 Sheep Raising Today Sheep are ordinarily handled in units of 1200 ewes, commonly called a band, although any one operator may have all the way from one to six or more bands of sheep. Most of the Morrow coun ty sheepmen lamb all the way from February into April on their home ranges here in Morrow county. Sheep and lambs are grazed on the home range until the latter part of May or into June and are then moved into the mountains. As more and more sheep have come into this western country, ranges have become crowded and our sheep men have been forced to go farther and farther afield for summer range. Some of our men trail their sheep 150 to 200 miles into Wallowa county others range in Grant, Umatilla, Union and Baker coun ties, in addition to the thousands of acres of Government grazing land in the southern part of Mor row county. Of late years we have been sending many carloads of ewes and lambs to Montana W' Aj;- .w Heppner's God-father, early day merchant prince. From a wood engraving of his time. for summer grazing. This move ment has assumed such propor tions that already Morrow county sheepmen own thousands of acres of summer range land in Mon tana. With this deeded land, of course, go many thousand more acres of forest reserve land. - In the fall the sheep are trailed back to the home ranch, this movement taking place anywhere, from the middle to the last part of September, to the middle of November, depending on the sei son and the condition of the grass on the range. These conditions, of course, vary considerably from year to year and from one locality to another. Ordinarily sheep grazed in Montana will be able to stay on the range until Novem ber. Most of the wether lambs and some of the ewe lambs in these Montana outfits are shipped direct from the range to the east ern markets as fat or feeder lambs. The balance, of course, are brought back by train to the home ranch here in Morrow county-Morrow county sheepmen or dinarily sell from one and one quarter to one and three-quarters millions pounds of wool each year, making us the third highest wool producing county in the state. Heppner, the host for ,the 38th annual Oregon Woolgrowers con vention, is the center of all this vast sheep industry. U. S. D. A. yearbook for 1934 gives Oregon sheep and lamb pop ulation of 2,391,000, valued at $3.90 per head, a total investment of $9,310,000. ; $-$ The United States in 1932 had the second largest sheep popula tion of any country in the world, 53,155,000. Australia led with 110,619,000. s-$ The five-year average price for lambs in Oregon, 1929-1933, was $6.02 a hundred pounds. The av erage price in December, 1934, was $4.60. - The U. S. D. A. reports the five year average price for lambs, 1909-1914 (the pre-war period) at $5.87 a hundred pounds; average price for sheep for the same per iod was $4.53. This was compared with $5.01 for lambs and $2.66 for sheep in December, 1934. The figures represent weighted aver ages for all the United States. . $ The five-year average price for sheep in Oregon, 1929-1933, was $4.20 a hundred pounds. The av erage price in December, 1934, was $2.70. . -s-s . Heppner is permitting ewe turns during the convention. . s-s Many old-time cattlemen are now running sheep. There's Dil lard French, for instance. 111 ICE 1 We are proud to have been able to serve the sheep industry within Heppner's large trading territory these many years, and we are proud of the large, modern establish ment their friendship has helped make possible. May You Enjoy Your Stay in Heppner! GILLIAM & BISBEE Hardware & Sheepmen's Supplies HAPPY NEW YEAR to the Wool Growers of Oregon We appreciate the support you have given the PACIFIC WOOL GROWERS for the past fifteen years, and are doing our level best to discharge this responsibility in a manner satisfactory to you. Wool growers marketing their wools through the PACIFIC their own marketing organization have the seasoned, experienced service of an agency which has specialized in Northwest wools for FIFTEEN YEARS. The PACIFIC does not buy or speculate in wool for its own account. It is purely a growers' agency, strictly cooperative, where MEMBERS ELECT and DIRECTORS DIRECT Let Us Serve You in 1935 E. A. McCornack J. G. Barratt L. B. Pierce J. T. Alexander Carlyle C. Eubank R. A. Ward, Manager DIRECTORS Fred W. Falconer R. L. Clark Remie DeRuwe Mark Maynard G. A. Sandner Fred A. Phillips C. E. Grelle J. 0. Sorenson Edwin Bunnell L. A. Robertson Edgar L. Ludwick, Asst. Manager PACIFIC WOOL GROWERS 1205 N. W. Davis Street, Portland, Oregon Telephone Broadway 2631