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The Cudahy Ranch - Narrated by Wilse Dennis

In the spring of 1913 the Cudahy Packing Company came into Crowley County and bought up about 7500 acres of grassland. At that time there was open range land around, what they bought. Their plan was to develop a cattle ranch, and to do some farming. This ranch was located three miles east and about nine miles north of Olney Springs.

The farm project was begun at once. They would need water to irrigate, so a big reservoir was started. There was already a natural lake called the Antelope Lake. This was a mile or so north east of the ranch. The dam for the big reservoir was a dirt dam. It was approximately one hundred feet wide at the top and one half mile long. All the dirt was moved with dump wagons and teams. Rock was shipped by rail to King Center and hauled by teams to the dam site. Hand labor was used and the entire face of the dam was rocked. As I remember, this work must have been contracted. One hundred Negroes were brought in to do this work. A camp was set up and it was a project by itself. The dam was completed before winter came. The ditches made to bring water to the reservoir and the outlet ditches to get the water onto the farm land.

The ranch headquarters, the land for farming and the plans for bring in the cattle were moving along, also. I will try to tell each one as I remember, and some of the work that was done. As I think back today, I can recall that no money was spared and everything was done with the very best of materials. Just as the rock was shipped to King

Center and freighted out to the ranch. During this time the road going north, out past the place where Roy Hughes lives now, and across the canal was almost a constant string of wagons.

Plowing the ground for farming was done with horses. Mules, and a steam engine and it was operated by different ones. The one fellow that I can remember operating it was Russell McFall, but a big farm crew was working all the time.

Building at the main ranch site was going ahead rapidly and went up in a very short time. Many people will remember these buildings, for they stood as a landmark for many years. There were many crews of men working here, too. Carpenters, painters and well drillers were hired. Four modern houses were put up for families, and a bunkhouse for 42 men, (I have seen it full). In one end of the bunkhouse was the kitchen and the dining room for the men, who worked there. There was also a storeroom for ranch supplies and commissary where the men could buy necessary items. All these buildings were modern, with steam heat, electricity and running water.

A large horse barn was built with double stalls on each side of a driveway. There was a tack room and a room for the man who took care of the barn to live. It was as nice and modern as the other living quarters. His duties were to keep the barn clean, and to feed the horses. This barn was for the farm horses. The cowboy's horses were kept in a big corral with a feedrack, through the center - they took care of their own horses. Another smaller barn was built for the mules which were used for freighting. The loft in the big horse barn would hold one hundred tons of loose hay. A ramp into the loft let the trams pull the wagons into the loft to be unloaded by slings.

A drilling crew was busy drilling for water. They hit a dry hole, but gambled and went for artesian water. At about 1700 feet water was found, but the flow failed to reach the surface. A pump was installed to raise the water about 300 feet. This consisted of the pump and a pump house. I don't recall too much about the working machinery in the pump only it was a fairly large building and was filled with many batteries and generators. This system pumped the water and furnished the electricity to light up the whole place like a small town.

In the summer time there was always plenty of ice for the cook to use. The ice was cut from the lakes in the winter and stored in the ice house. There was also a big dairy herd of about fifty Holstein cows and a large hog farm which required a foreman and several men.

One large beautiful house - for this period - was built across the road. This was intended for company men from the east who came out at various times to check on operations, but was never lived in as a home until later years.

In the first months, the men who were working just had camp quarters for living. Cudahy was not first to plan on developing some of this grassland into farming land. A Mr. George Lewis who lived in Rocky Ford had encouraged some families to homestead, then he would buy the land.. He had built up a place which he used as a location for his contract work, leveling and ditch work. When Cudahy came in they bought his holdings and this is where the men lived until work at the ranch advanced enough for them to move.

There was a house on this, which could be used for the cook shack and a big tent was put up for the men to sleep in. At one time Mrs. Charley Hale was the cook here. Corrals were built and the regular ranch work was carried on from here. The farm hands moved to the ranch in the fall, but the cowboys stayed at the camp. They were breaking horses and looking after some cows that had been bought. The George Lewis place that I have referred to was not the place that many think of as the Old Lewis Place. He bought another place farther south and built a nice house there.

Gus Ericson was the ranch foreman and a Mr. Hadley was the farm manager. I went to work, as a cowboy, for Gus in the spring of 1913, and it was soon after that the first big herd of cattle were shipped in from Old Mexico, and unloaded at Manzanola. In this there were about 2000 steers and 500 cows. Three cowboys were sent to drive them to the ranch. The men were Gus Ericson, Emphris Dennis, and myself. I have said steers, but they were a mixture of steers and bulls and ranged in age from two years to seven years old. A few weeks later we went to Manzanola again to drive in 800 head of steers, and then, the work began all these cattle had to be dehorned and branded. When this job was done, we had a stack of big horns that covered a space fourteen feet in diameter and peaked to seven or more feet. Gus had told me when I asked for a job that he would hire me, but I would do a man's work, well, when this work was finished I felt that I had qualified. I was 14 years old then.

Gus Ericson quit as foreman in the fall and our next foreman was Charley Auckland. Mr. Hadley left also, and Charley took over Managing both crews, but he made Emphris Dennis foreman for the cow end of it. Early in the spring of 1914 Charley went to Granada and bought 32 head of broncs. He picked these broncs from a herd of 300 horses. They ran in age from 4 to 8 years old and had never had a rope on them since they were branded, as colts. Emphris Dennis, Charley Hale, and Robert (Boots) Mock were the bronc busters. By this time the farm crew had moved to the main ranch and just the cowhands were still at the camp. Mrs. Charley Hale was the cook at the camp during this time. Out of these 32 head of horses, two horses killed themselves bucking and 3 did not break out to be good cow horses. This gave 27 head of good horses. Another thing that this ranch did besides furnishing the horses, was to furnish each cowboy a saddle,bridle, and rope and sometimes men would prefer to use their own, but the tack was there if he needed it. I do believe that they wanted to and really tried to give their men the best treatment and accommodations of any cow outfit I have ever worked for.

Had this company came in here a few years earlier their success would have had a better chance. The farming was a failure from the beginning. They did raise a little grain the first year, and I don't believe they tried too much farming after that. In 1916 that their timing had been wrong for a large cattle operation. The open land that they had planned on using was being taken up by homesteaders. I can recall hearing that at one time there were seven different round-up wagons working in this area, in the fall. Some of them were Ab Enyart, John Cowden, Watt Wright, and the Thatcher Cattle Co. - or IL ranch. But as the land was opened up for homesteading they were all forced to move off the land. Some cut down their large herds, and some closed out. The Cudahy Ranch decided to sell. So in the fall of 1916 we began gathering the cattle to ship. Most of these were shipped from Boone, Colorado.

Robert Mock, Oscar Lundahl, Emphris Dennis, and I were sent with the roundup wagons to gather the ranch cattle. The wagons worked north and west toward Boone, and the cattle were shipped from there.

Later in the fall I was sent with the I L Wagon to pick up any strays that had been missed. I left the Cudahy, and met the wagon at the Henderson Ranch - south of Forder. I covered the course to Boone again this trip I was out two weeks and found one steer and a cow and calf. These were shipped from Boone. So I was working when they unloaded the first cattle and when the last ones were loaded and Cudahy closed out their cattle ranch in 1916.

The ranch was leased by several others who were running cows, and others tried to do some farming, but it has never been the top cow ranch that Cudahy developed in the few years they were here.