The Stearns Ranch

Story by Steve Lundgren, Photos by Joyce Barney

If you’ve lived in Central Oregon for any length of time, then you’ve driven through the heart of the Stearns Cattle  Company Ranch – more than once.

In fact, the historic cattle operation lay at the center of some of the most desirable real estate in the region. Yet 36 years after the operation was divided and sold off, few remember the name or the significance of this ranch which covered thousands of acres along both the Crooked and Little Deschutes Rivers. For nearly 90 years, members of the Stearns family raised prize-winning Hereford cattle, as well as shaping the foundation for Central Oregon as we know it.

At its peak, the operation spanned tens of thousands of acres, divided between two areas in Deschutes and Crook Counties. The headquarters of the ranch once filled the Crooked River Canyon, from a few miles below Prineville Reservoir and north to within five miles of the Prineville city limits. The southern portion, made up of parcels interspersed with federal and other private lands, ranged from what is now Crosswater Golf Course near Sunriver, to Long Prairie south of La Pine. Twice yearly cattle drives between the two areas included up to 1,500 mother cows.

The story of the Stearns Cattle Company is not unique. It’s almost an archetype of the classic Western story about an ambitious young man who through hard work, tenacity and a little luck built a cattle empire. What makes the Stearns story read like a historical novel is that it is so tightly entwined with the history of this region.

That story was documented in the book, “The Triangle Outfit,” by Nita Lowry in 1995. Lowry’s husband had been the ranch’s cattle boss through the latter half of its history. Much of the following comes from that book, with supplemental information from other historical texts, as well as interviews with family members.

Pioneer Stock

The Stearns family came to Oregon with a wagon train that set out from Northern Illinois on April 5, 1853. Thirty members of the family made the trek, led by 76-year-old Rev. John Stearns. They arrived in Oregon that August, a bit worse for wear from dysentery, but otherwise alive. Some settled in Southern Oregon around Jacksonville, while others gravitated toward the Creswell area.

In 1884, 28-year-old Sidney Sumner Stearns, who was born in Jacksonville, came to Central Oregon with his cousin, Billie Pengra. Stearns filed a preemption claim on 160 acres along the Deschutes River at what was then called Farewell Bend. The land is now the site of the Riverhouse Resort and Hotel in present-day Bend. He and Pengra built and lived in a log cabin there. With only a few neighbors in the area, he and his cousin continued both their business and family connections in the Willamette Valley.

Traveling over the mountains to purchase cattle in 1886, Pengra met and married a woman for whom he stayed in Springfield. The next year, Sidney Stearns, known informally as Sid, met Frances Day while on a cattle buying expedition to the valley. He married her, but he wasn’t ready to abandon his dream of becoming a cattleman. He traveled back to Farewell Bend to tend his stock. In November 1888, twin daughters Nora and Lora were born. The next spring Sid Stearns brought his family to the homestead along with a Jersey cow to provide milk for the girls.

The winter of 1889-90 was so harsh that they kept the dairy cow alive by feeding it the stuffing from a mattress, according to Lowry. Many of Stearns’ and other settlers’ cattle didn’t fare as well. Cows were reportedly found frozen to death while still standing. Some settlers lost the majority of that year’s crop of calves.

Looking for better grass and better winter pasture, Stearns filed a new homestead claim on 160 acres of the Paulina Prairie while retaining the claim at Bend. Paulina Prairie is the long, broad meadow that runs west from the foot of Newberry Crater and juts northwest toward the Little Deschutes River. He built a bigger cabin there for his growing family. His search for better grass was realized. Naturally subirrigated by Paulina Creek and by the Little Deschutes, the grass was lush and nutritious. It continues to be fertile land, according to Stearns’ great-grandson, Brian Barney, who now farms in the Ochoco Valley. That good grass helped Stearns prosper in the cattle business.

However, the move did not solve the problem of the tough winters of the late 1800s, which by historical accounts make modern winters look mild. So in 1893, Stearns created a partnership with two men in Prineville. Tom Baldwin, a banker, and Joe Howard, a druggist, owned land along the Crooked River, south of Prineville. The new partners purchased additional land on the Paulina Prairie near Stearns’ homestead. The arrangement provided winter pasture in the relatively balmy Crooked River Valley and rich summer pasture in the higher country. In 1897, they registered the triangle brand, which would give the ranch its nickname as the Triangle Outfit in later years. The cooperative ownership created the necessity for cattle drives which continued into the 1960s, according to Brian.

The Crooked River Valley’s warmer winters didn’t impress Mrs. Stearns, who preferred the verdant pines of the upper Deschutes country to the dull gray and brown she found near Prineville. Worse, she feared the rattlesnakes that inhabited the canyon. She and Sid purchased and turned loose pigs to kill the snakes. The ones that escaped the hogs fell prey to Frances’ firearm. Despite her misgivings, the family moved to a small two-story house five miles south of Prineville. By that time, a son named Cecil had been born to the family. Frances and Sid Stearns had five more sons while living there: Carey, born in 1894; Harry, in 1897; George in 1900; Roland in 1904; and Gordon in 1907.

The house into which they moved still stands, though it has been much added onto over the years. It would ultimately be home to three generations of the Stearns family. Joyce Stearns Barney, 85, the daughter of Harry, was born in the house. She still lives in Prineville. The house sits just off Highway 27 near the main gate of what is now called the Quail Valley Ranch I. It was completely renovated in the 1960s.

Sid Stearns and his partners continued to purchase land and cattle during this early period. In 1898, Stearns purchased 900 head of cattle and trailed them to the Deschutes country for grazing. He became one of the early growers and champions of Hereford cattle, the ubiquitous brown cows with white faces. In 1907, Stearns bought his first registered Hereford. The ranch continued to produce registered, as well as commercial, Herefords for more than 50 years. It wasn’t until the 1960s when Harry Stearns began to experiment with Charolais crossbreds.

In 1902, Stearns bought out Baldwin and Howard for $13,000 and formed the Stearns Cattle Company. He also continued to buy land adjacent to both the upper Deschutes ranch and the Crooked River ranch. One of the more significant purchases by merit of its location was the Findley Dairy, which he purchased in 1909. In 1910, Stearns sold 80 acres of that dairy to provide the present site of La Pine. He sold 80 more acres in 1912 to enable the town to expand.

As with most ranches, the Stearns operation was not able to operate on private land alone. Prior to 1906, federal land was available for open range grazing. Stearns grazed cattle at various times on the desert to the south and east of the Crooked River place, as well as on public land in the upper Deschutes basin. But this system led to an intense competition between various livestock raisers, as well as overgrazing. The conflict came to a head during the first part of the 1900s when a shadowy group, calling itself the Crook County Sheep Shooters, killed thousands of sheep and threatened sheep raisers in the eastern part of the county. Because that action took place east of Stearns’ outfit and because no family legends include it, Joyce does not believe her grandfather was involved in the Sheep Shooters.

The U.S. Forest Service was created in 1905, partly to manage grazing that was taking place on areas that were then called forest reserve lands. In 1906, Sid Stearns received a grazing allotment on Crane Prairie, which the family held until 1923 when cattle were moved off to make way for a new reservoir. In lieu, they received an allotment at Davis Lake. In addition, some of their lands were in a checkerboard pattern with federal lands which became available as allotments.

Grazing and cattle issues inspired some of the Stearns family members to become politically active. In 1913, Sid Stearns was among the founding members of the Oregon Cattle and Horse Raisers Association. Though initially conceived to combat cattle rustling, the organization evolved into the broader Oregon Cattlemen’s Association. Sons, Harry and Cecil, took over management of the ranch when Sid Stearns died of a heart attack in 1923.

Harry, the father of Joyce, served as president of the Cattlemen’s Association and later became vice president of the National Cattlemen’s Association. In 1934, he went to Washington, D.C. to help plan the implementation of the Taylor Grazing Act. The act was designed to protect public rangeland from overgrazing and erosion while also providing livestock operators with a consistent source of forage. Harry Stearns would meet both President Franklin Roosevelt and President Harry Truman through that effort. Joyce remembered in later years, the ranch would also host a number of political VIPs, including Earl Warren, the California governor who became chief justice of the United States.

Political activity was not limited to the men. Nora Stearns took a job as deputy county clerk for Crook County in 1919. In 1929, she was elected county clerk, a position she held until her death in 1952.

Tough Times – Good Times

Ranch life by its nature has a rhythm. Calves are born, cows are moved to pasture, hay is cut and steers are hauled to market. Another constant for the Stearns Cattle Company was the acquisition of land. “My father was always buying and selling land,” Joyce said.

Harry and Cecil would buy out old homesteads as the smaller operators gave up or moved on. Carey Stearns, second oldest of Sid and Frances’ boys, returned to ranching upon mustering out of the Army following World War I. Instead of joining his father, and his brothers Cecil and Harry, he acquired his own ranch in the La Pine area but continued to work cooperatively with the family.

The Great Depression made a lot of land available through “sheriff sales.” The Stearns Ranch expanded to the east of Crooked River in the Dry Creek area along what is now Davis Road, as well as to the south and west.

But the depression wasn’t easy on anyone, including the large Stearns operation. Cattle prices fell from $17 per hundred pounds live weight in 1929, to $7.60 in 1933, according to Lowry. In her book she writes of destitute travelers coming to the ranch and getting a meal. And like many ranchers, the fact they were land rich didn’t always mean they were cash rich. They had to be self-sufficient. Joyce said her mother, Crystal Stearns, had a 5-acre garden and an orchard in the Crooked River bottom lands.

Until the family built a cookhouse at the main ranch, Joyce recalls that all ranch hands, as well as family, would eat together in the main house. Sometimes there were 15 people there. After they built the cookhouse and hired an Irish woman named Hattie O’Hara to cook, everyone, including the family, took their meals at the cookhouse.

Joyce said there was never class delineation. Rather, she recalls there being a sense of family among the Stearns and the hired hands. That could be, because everybody worked on the ranch regardless of station. “That’s the way I remember the ranch,” Joyce said. She also remembers that some things were tough. For example, driving into town was not the simple event it is today. She and her siblings went to school in Prineville. Usually someone drove them into town, and sometimes it would be her 13-year-old sister. However, in the spring, the road could become impassable because of the mud. During those times, the children would stay with their grandmother Stearns at her house, just off of Main and First Streets.

Travel in the winter and spring was historically dicey in the Crooked River Canyon because of flooding. The river usually froze over in the early days, and sometimes ice jams would develop as the river ice broke up. The Stearns lost cattle, more than once, to the out-of-control water. In 1908, even part of the house was flooded. “Those ice jams, I remember well,” Joyce said. “The river was just in back of the house.” This constant threat continued until the Bowman Dam, which created Prineville Reservoir, was completed in 1958.

Despite floods, depression and war, the Stearns Cattle Company and family prospered through much of the 20th century. In 1937, the Stearns family trailed 1,200 cattle to summer pasture, and by 1941, they drove 1,500 mother cows through Swartz Canyon, which leads from the river onto the flat east of Alfalfa. The drives took three days, with the buckaroos camping their first night near Alfalfa, their second just east of Bend and their third near Lava Butte. Brian recalls cattle drives continuing into the 1960s. He even participated in them as a child.

Through this period, Joyce said she and sisters, Shirley and Ann, enjoyed a cultured existence. The Stearns had always been a musical and artistic family. Sid and Frances’ son, George, graduated from the University of Oregon in 1924, and had gone to Hollywood to be an actor. Sadly, he died of blood poisoning just before his first audition. All of Harry and Crystal’s girls took piano lessons, and Shirley and Ann became singers and music educators. There were also trips to Portland, as well as a steady stream of interesting people coming to the ranch. “We lived in a very broad world,” Joyce said.

But the world was also changing. The cattle drives that had been a part of the ranch’s rhythm since 1893 came to an end in the 1960s as vacation homes sprung up along the upper Deschutes, and as the land between Prineville and La Pine became more populated. The family trucked cattle for a while, but that was expensive, and according to Brian, the land had become more valuable for other uses.

The biggest hit, however, came in January of 1971, when Harry Stearns died of natural causes while checking on bridges as ice piled up against them. Joyce, separated from her husband, ran the ranch for a time. Cecil had never married, nor had the twins, Nora and Lora. George had died young, and another brother, Roland, had moved away from the area.

With her children in their early 20s or younger, Joyce found there was nobody to run the ranch. That, plus a healthy pinch from the federal government in the form of inheritance tax, forced her hand. Joyce sold off most of the ranch, starting with the headquarters south of Prineville, although she continues to own land in both Crook and Deschutes Counties.

The Stearns Cattle Company Ranch saga ended in 1973 – the classic Western story entwined in the roots of Central Oregon, started with one man’s ambition and carried forward through nine decades of hardships and triumphs.