Description

Binfords & Mort, Published 1967. Hardcover, 312 pp.; 23 cm; Second Edition, Second Printing (first published 1961); illustrated with black-and-white photographs; endpapers printed with Grant County cattle brands and their owners, drawn by Virginia Turner. Edited by E. R. Jackman. In Good+ condition, no dust jacket. Tan cloth boards with rust lettering on front cover and spine and A2 brand on front cover; mild to moderate shelf and edge wear, with a hint of nicking at corner tips and spine ends. Spine rubbed and faded, with lettering faded and some color loss along hinges; light soiling and scattered small spots, more on rear cover. Binding tight. Previous owner's name at head of half-title, and below the title a pencil note by the owner's son recording that his grandmother cooked on Herman Oliver's ranch and befriended the family. Pages mildly toned, otherwise clean and unmarked. A first-hand history of Grant County and Oregon's John Day Valley by the rancher who ran the Oliver family's A2 brand for more than half a century. Oliver (1885-1970) was born near John Day, the son of Joseph Cayton Oliver, an Azores-born immigrant who founded the ranch; by the 1920s he and his brother had built it to more than 40,000 acres. The book begins with the history of the A2 brand and moves through the 1862 gold strike, stage lines, freighting and the coming of the railroad, ranch work, horses and wild horses, and cattle country life, then to Oliver's years of public service as president of the Grant County Bank, president of the Oregon Cattle and Horse Raisers Association and a member of the Oregon State Board of Higher Education (1929-1957). Photographs include the Oliver family and ranch, placer mines and gold dredges, stagecoaches and homesteaders. Edited by E. R. Jackman, the Oregon State extension range specialist and co-author of The Oregon Desert. Contents: Introduction; History of the Brand, A2, for Eighty-Four Years; Part One, The Oliver Ranch: A Ranch Is Born; Gold Settled the John Day Country; The County Grows Up; A Boy in Grant County; Readin' and Writin'; Stage Coach and Jerk Line; Putting a Ranch Together; Life on a Ranch; What Makes a Ranch Tick; Part Two, Cattle Country: Horses; Wild Horses; Other Life, Tame and Wild; What Goes on in Cattle Country; Cow Country, Fact and Fancy; A Whistle Comes to Grant County; From Horseback to Jet; Part Three, Public Service: The Bank of Grant County; New Financing for Oregon Agriculture; Years in Public Service; The National Farm Program; The Nation Needs the Livestock; Part Four, Recognitions of Public Service: Gifts, Awards and Rewards; Letters; Conclusion; Index.