A Small Dugout and a Big Corral

You made your own tools then, if you were like us and hadn’t brought any machinery with you. Louis got timber from the Canyon and made a planter and put a pipe on it and I went along behind him and dropped the grain in the row. Two or three years after arrival, Louis traded a span of mules for some mixed cattle, and about a year or so later he traded the cattle’s increase for the digging of a well at the dugout. Up until then, they had hauled water 3 miles and had hauled wood for fuel from the canyon. Our dugout was about half way between the JJ and the JA Ranches, and the boys could not make the whole distance in a day driving anything, so they used our corral and stopped over a lot of the time. My brother had made a good corral from pickets. We took cattle during the winter months to feed for Goodnight, the Dyers and others, so we had to have a good, big corral.

Marie Barbier Hess Interview Nov 22, 1956