"Stock raising was the first remunerative industry of Garfield County, and the first settlers believed that stock raising would be the only industry that would pay them best for their labor.
Parson Quinn was one of the first settlers. In 1862 he settled on the place that Gilbert Dickson now owns, and started in the horse business. Soon after William McEnnery, Frank and Archie McBrearty and others settled along the lower Pataha and brought with them small bunches of cattle.
J. M. Pomeroy settled where the city that bears his name now stands, in 1864, and brought with him 140 head of cattle which he drove from Salem, Oregon, over the Barlow route to The Dalles, and on up the Columbia.
The Owsleys came in '68 and brought with them fifteen head of cattle and a few horses.
Mack Tatman settled on the Tatman Gulch in 1869, and launched into the cattle business. Newt. Estes, about this time, settled on the Deadman and became the largest cattle owner in what is now Garfield County. All of the early pioneers settled along the streams where they fed.
It was thought at that time that the hills you now see growing such bountiful crops of wheat and barley were fit for nothing but grazing. When we came, in 1873, they told us we couldn't raise anything on the old Pataha Flat. In '73 we found the western portion of the county well stocked with cattle and horses, but the eastern part was sparsely settled, and there were very few cattle and horses.
At this time a few sheep were ranged, but in a few years the sheep men began to come in—Charles Seeley, the Logans, Charles McCabe and, a little later, J. H. Walker, but the sheep industry did not grow to any great extent in this county. Cattle was the main industry up to '90, when it began to decline.
From 1873 to 1880 the hills began to settle rapidly, the '70s bringing such stock men as Tom Burlingame, the Buchets, Williams, Bentley, Pings, Johnny Lynn, Brown and Wellers. Some of these men acquired large herds. I have no way of knowing the number of stock when the industry was at its zenith, but we had lots of cattle to drive and ship out.
The first buyer to come to Garfield County operated on the Tucanon, near Marengo, about '76 or '77, and the price paid was fourteen to sixteen dollars for two year old steers, and about eighteen to twenty dollars for threes. They drove them East, taking one more years to make the trip.
J. M. Pomeroy was the first to bring in good stock. In the bunch of 140 head were some of the best Shorthorns, or Durhams, as they were then called, that ever came to this county. People bought and sold "Pomeroy Durhams" for forty years. Perhaps a large portion of the readers will remember the roan Shorthorns that Vannattan had on his place below town, when he sold his ranch to Campbell & Sanford in 1902. They were descendants of the Pomeroy roan Durhams. Perhaps the majority of the people living here now do not realize what a stock county this was in the '70s.