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Show Don F. Hill a breed apart . .The following is the third in a series honoring ranchers in this area who are members of the Uintah Cattlemen's Association and have passed their 80th milestone. Don F. Hill was born in Rangely, Colo., near the turn of the century, Jan. 24, 1892, the second son of Charles P. and Caroline Blakeslee Hill. An older brother, Charles, was also born in Rangely. A native of New Hampshire, their father came west as a young man, working on farms in Iowa and cutting ties for the railroads. He and his brother then came to Ashley Valley where they farmed on Upper Ashley Creek. The ditch they dug to irrigate the farm is now the head of the Central Canal. Later they hired out for a cow outfit and the creek where the ranch was located became known as "Hill Creek." "Sometime around 1881, Hill Creek was made an Indian Reservation," relates Don. "While driving cattle across the Bear and White Rivers, Pa, as we all called him, had seen a place where he wanted to settle. So in the fall of 1882, Pa sold his cattle, quit his job and he and a man by the name of Joe Studder loaded up a wagon and headed for the place Pa had pictured as his home. Just a sagebrush flat by the White River. "They came by Baxter Springs and it was a hard job getting down to the river and across, but they made it late and set up camp. That night, with a noise like thunder, the trees bent and the earth shook. Turned out to be an earthquake ear-thquake tremor." "Pa and Joe commenced to build a cabin the next day. ..it was November and winter had se,t in. Pa could make lumber out of a log and an axe. They put up a cabin and he hued all the material they needed for the doors and furniture with his axe." "My mother," continued Don, "was born and raised in Massachusetts. When families began homesteading the Rangely area there was need of a school and so Pa advertised for a teacher. Caroline Blakeslee sent a reply that she wanted to come west and take a homestead, that is was just the place for her. She taught school for one year in Rangely, proved up on her homestead and married Pa." "My brother and I attended school in different places along the White River and we had to either go on horseback or afoot. We started to be cowboys early in life. I remember being the ripe old age of eight when Pa left Charlie and me on the mountain to keep track of a bunch of cows. We were alone most of the time. If I had shoes I didn't wear them as I recollect riding horseback with no saddle and no shoes." "I don't remember what we ate. I do know we didn't have orange Juice and green vegetables. I don't believe we even had a milk cow up there. Mother always had milk cows on the farm in Rangely but sometimes in the spring we couldn't use the milk as the wild onions were so thick that when the cows ate them the milk could stand alone." "A favorite story of my mother goes like this. As a small boy I lisped and mother had turned out the cows with their calves because Rhe couldn't stand ''--." ' '' ' I '. ; -v ,, S. ;!! . : - v r .. . i ... j .. the smell of the cows or the milk. We boys kept begging for milk so she put Charlie behind and me in front on the horse and we went for the cows. While we were driving them along I said, 'Oh mother, don't that milk thmell good?'" "I wasn't home much of the time. I was always out with Pa and the cows. One year when I was 12 and Charlie was 14, mother took us back to Massachusetts so we could go to high school. We came home early in the spring as seed had to be sowed, cows and calves worked and put out on the range. That was the end of my schooling." "Pa's homestead was on White River. Mother's desert claim on Bitter Creek. Charlie and I homesteaded on the Big Park, 20 miles south of Rangely. Charlie had married, so he built a house on his place and mother built one on mine. My folks spent several winters in Florida and came back to the high mountain country in the summer." "The winter of 1924 a lively young lady came to Watson, Utah to teach school. She and some of the girls who worked at the hotel would attend dances held at the school house. One time they came to Dragon, a thriving settlement before the Black Dragon gilsonite mine explosion. This was my territory. I was doing some writing in the dining room of the little hotel after the dance when the girls came for a few winks of sleep before returning to Watson. The owner of the hotel, Mrs. Ziegal, introduced them to me. After they'd gone she asked, 'Don, which one of those girls would you pick?' I answered an-swered back, 'I think I'll take the schoolmarm.'" "After that I often had an excuse to ride down around Watson to see if any of our cows just might have drifted down there. Of course, I always just 'happened' to go by and see the schoolmarm." "When spring came and school was over, the schoolmarm went to Grand Junction, Colo., to go to business college. Either she thought I wasn't going to pop the question or she didn't want to live in such a country. But I kept going to see her. I found several errands in Grand Junction that summer. sum-mer. She came to the ranch and met my folks. Then she moved back to Vernal and I kept going over there. We decided if I was ever going to get 'iny work done we'd better get married. I don't know if I Bfked her or is she Just Raid that she'd marry me. ..anyway, it was leap year. She wanted to set a date but I had a lot of things to get done. Cows to gather, calves to wean and some beef to sell before I'd have enough money for a marriage license. We waited until December 11)24 and I married the schoolmarm, Julia Herriott, in a small home wedding in Vernal. Honeymoon? We just went to Dragon where I had a little two-room cabin rented for the winter." "When World War I broke out. one of us had to go. Charlie went and I stayed to take care of the ranch and the cattle In 1917, Charlie had married Lula Goss, a schoolteacher in Rangely. They homesteaded Bitter Creek, living there in the summer and in Big Park in the winter until Charlie's death in 1930. Bill Havens and I bought Lulu's share of the ranch and the cattle We then began to buy out the homesteaders on Bitter Creek. The last one we bought, we had to take the sheep to get the land and thought we might make a little money, but I soon found out 1 was not a sheepman, so we sold the sheep." "Julia and I had been married 25 years when we look our first honeymoon. We went by train to Chicago and joined the National Cattlemen Cat-tlemen and their wives. After that we took a trip every winter. We had two grown sons, Hurry and Donald (Dick), and they did the winter work. We'd put together a good cow outfit but w e hadn't decided what kind of handle to put on it. Well, Harry and this hired hand were riding around the town of Dragon (long since a ghost town), and the cowboy's horse stepped in an old hole, which caved in and crippled him pretty bad. He quit. On top of that, it seemed like Harry was always stove up from some fall or other. But what really gave it its name was the winter a real good hand was down the canyon working and didn't show up for supper. It got late and Harry went looking for him. He found him in a deep wash just a short ways from the house, lie and the horse had gotten too close to the bank and it had caved off with him. There was no way out. He was down there with a broken leg. Harry built some kind of a slide and made a trail out. The leg was badly crushed and the hand was laid up all winter. Harry stormed, 'I known now what this place is gonna ! named... Cripple Cowboy... somebody's always crippled around here!' Now the Cripple f lowboy Cow Outfit is well known all over the country." "Dick was killed in a car accident in 1952. Harry died Dec. 7, 19711. Harry married one the Chew bunch, Melba, daughter of Doug and Elanor. She and our grandson, Jon Hill, now own the outfit. We also have two grnnd-daugliiers, grnnd-daugliiers, a great granddaughter and great grandson." "Looking back I recall my father telling about the hard winter of 1H7II 79 when they wintered in Ashley Valley. The only way out was on snow shoes. The cattle just starved and froze l death, some still standing upright in the brush. The Hill brothers could not get Ivick to Hill Creek to look a Her their herd, and when spring came Ihev were in no hurry because they thought the cattle would be (lend. ' |