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January 21, 2006 -
Sheepherders gather to spin yarns - Salt Lake Tribune
January 26,
2006 - Sheepherders flock to party on West Desert - Millard County
Chronicle Progress
Border Inn’s annual get together a big
hit with range workers
©Salt Lake
Tribune -
January 21, 2006 - By Nate Carlisle
Baker, Nev. – Horses and cattle helped build
the West, but here on the Utah-Nevada
border, sheep kept Denys Koyle’s inn afloat.
Van Warnick, of Delta, Jay
Johnson, of Magna, and Jay Warnick, of
Delta, talk about the old days of
sheepherding at the Border Inn, at the
border of Utah and Nevada on Highway 50. The
Inn’s annual party to thank sheepherders for
their business draws people from all around
Utah and surrounding states.
In the winter when few
motorists made the lonely trek through Utah
and Nevada on U.S. Highway 50 and U.S.
Highway 6, sheepherders tending flocks in
the desert would stop at Koyle’s Border Inn
for a beer, hamburger or shower. Twenty-nine
years after she opened her now-landmark
filling station, lodge, bar and grill that
straddles two states sheepherders and former
sheepherders have begun flocking back to the
Border Inn every January.
This year’s flock
arrived Friday for Koyle’s third annual “Old
Sheepherder’s Party” – Koyle’s way of
showing her appreciation to the sheep men
and families.
“It’s a thank you for
the business is how it started,” Koyle said.
“Now it’s taken on a life of it’s own.”
About 100 people, most
of them from Utah and most of them senior
citizens, attended Friday’s party. Old men
in baseball caps or cowboy hats who once
cared for sheep grazing the winter-time
desert filled the inn’s restaurant and
spilled into a covered patio outside. They
brought their wives and grown children to
the party, too.
Some herders were old
friends who caught up on their lives and
shared stories about the days when they and
their families lived in wagons that traveled
with the sheep.
“This is the only place
in the desert we could call our families or
have a good meal,” said Francisco Colqui, a
54-year-old Hinckley resident who herded
sheep in the 1970s and visited the inn a
couple Saturday nights every winter. In the
spring Colqui and other herders would move
their flocks to less-arid pastures in places
such as northern Utah or Wyoming.
Koyle said she intended
only to have one sheepherder’s party, but as
festivities were ending that first year,
people kept asking her, “You’re going to do
this again next year, right.”
The party grew to
include people who worked as sheepherders
decades before Koyle purchased the inn in
1976 as well as people who worked elsewhere
in the sheep industry.
“I miss all those old
people. I miss the old ones and the young
ones, too,” Jay Warnick, 81, of Delta, who
used to work for the Utah Department of
Agriculture and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service trapping the coyotes and mountain
lions that preyed on livestock.
Attendees began
arriving about noon and by the late
afternoon the inn’s lounge was filled with
conversation and the occasional ring or ding
from a slot machine. Some guests provided
oral histories that were being recorded by
the Great Basin National Heritage Area. The inn
served the free lamb dinner at 5:30 then
opened a microphone so people could tell
stories about their time in the sheep
business.
Koyle’s parties have
occurred as sheep production in Utah is on
what some in the industry has described as
its last gasp. Utah had about 590,000 sheep
in 1976 and had about 270,000 sheep in 2005.
Nevada hasn’t fared better, with 70,000
sheep in 2005, about 45% of what it had in
1976. Foreign competition and a move toward
synthetic fabrics have hurt American lamb
and wool prices over the years and
encouraged many people to find other work.
“One man takes care of
10,000 sheep in New Zealand,” said Bruce
Nielson, a livestock broker from Richfield
who attended the party. “Do you know how
many people it takes to care for 10,000
sheep in the United States?”
Fewer sheep has had an
impact on Koyle. She said her inn routinely
loses money the first three months of the
year, and 2006 is off to a “horrendous”
start, in part because there are fewer
sheepherders. And so Koyle called her party
bittersweet.
“Ten or 15 years from
now, there may not be a sheepherder in
Utah,” she said.
ncarlisle@sltrib.com
Bruce Nielson, of Richfield,
left, talks with historian Dave Tilford, of
Ely, Nev., at the Border Inn near the
Utah-Nevada border on Friday. Tilford is
compiling an oral history of sheepherding
stories.
Sheepherders flock to party on West Desert
©Millard
County Chronicle Progress
January 26, 2006
By Dean Draper
The third annual “Old Sheepherder’s Party”
was held at the Border Inn on the
Utah/Nevada state line on Friday, Jan. 20.
Food, fun and story
swapping attracted a people to the annual
Sheepherders gathering at the Border Inn.
Lamb and mutton, what
else, were served to over 100 people
attending the party co-sponsored by the
Great Basin Heritage Area Partnership and
the Border Inn. Sheepmen, sheepherders, government trappers
and members of their families gathered to
share old times with each other. They
swapped stories, poems, lies, and nuggets of
unrecorded history. These stories are being
preserved by the Heritage Area.
Unique to the western
Utah and eastern Nevada are the sheepherders
of mostly Scandinavian descent. Many herders
winter and wintered their northern and
central Utah flocks out in the vicinity of
the state line. The Snake Valley providing
lots of open solitude for men to think and
sheep to graze in during the winter.
This year’s party
included invitations to the Basque
sheepherders in White Pine County as well as
the predominantly Scandinavian herders of
central Utah utilizing the Snake Valley.
Eldon Johnson, Nephi,
started his herding career at age 16 in
1937. He herded sheep for three and one half
years before looking elsewhere.
Johnson was living in
Fountain Green and had decided not to return
to school in the fall of 1937. He was
approached by the local truant officer and
told he needed to be back at school. Johnson
said he got an offer to herd sheep that same
day and accepted it.
His new employer, Henry
Jackson the truant officer, met him in Nephi
and took him out to the west desert. He
equipped him with a dog and gave him
instructions weekly on where to graze the
sheep. Asked if
he ever got lonely, Johnson said: “It never
bothered me. I just didn't get lonely. After
three and one half years I decided I'd
better go and see my family.”
Johnson didn’t return to
tend the flocks, but enlisted with a friend
in the Navy. Johnson is proud of his public service.
While out on the desert he met up with Bob
Aagard who proclaimed Johnson the mayor of
Tule Valley as he spent so much time there.
“I’m the mayor of Tule
Valley for life and preside over my
constituency of no one,” said Johnson.
Peruvian sheepherders
have contributed to the history of the
desert. “I
started herding sheep in Callao when I was
19 years old,” said Francisco Colqui, a
native of Peru and now living in Hinckley.
“I didn’t speak a word of English. I was one
of the first sheepherders from Peru.”
Colqui eventually learned
English, gave up sheepherding, got married
and started a family. He is now employed by
Millard County. Elvon Holman used to trail his sheep about
250 miles from Skyline Drive to the west
desert for the winter. His sons Arden and
John accompanied him to the party to
re-visit the area so loved by their father.
Part of sheepherding is
varmint control. Government trappers were
called in to eliminate offending predators.
Van Warnick of Deseret was one of those
trappers and came to enjoy the party.
“I trapped and hunted as
a government trapper for 26 years,” said
Warnick. “In the winter time I was gunner in
Fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters. We were
after trouble coyotes, not just any
coyotes.” Several representatives of the media were at
the Border Inn to record as much of what was
happening as possible. The Chronicle
Progress was joined by the Sanpete
Messenger, the Deseret News, and
the Salt Lake Tribune.
Hal Cannon, Western
folklorist, canvassed the crowd to record
stories for National Public Radio. Dave
Tilford, Great Basin Heritage Area, recorded
histories on video and tape as did Dr. Kevin
Marie Laxalt from Nevada. She was on hand to
record the Basque influence on White Pine
County. “In
Utah, at one time, there were 300,000 head
of sheep. Now you’re lucky to scare up a
1000,” said Tilford. “We’re taping and
recording people’s accounts of sheepherder.
they are to be shared with the University of
Nevada Reno’s Oral History Department and
with the Utah Humanities Council.”
“The response to the ‛Old
Sheepherder’s Party’ has been remarkable,”
said Denys Koyle, owner of the Border Inn.
“It keeps getting bigger every year. We’re
here to not only honor the people who worked
here, but to record their experiences before
they are lost.”
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