https://voicesofignacio.cvlcollections.org/files/original/17b9951c6baea3ec76b0d39f5df501c7.pdf 6566efc2482fbcb0af3ca79806db3541 PDF Text Text ------ - - - - - - Norman C. Wright (Abridged) I was born in Red Wing, CO, probably southwest of Pueblo 35 miles. I was born there and stayed there until 1937; I was born in 1915. I grew up right around Rye, CO and Rattlesnake Buttes (that's well-named, because there were a lot of rattlesnakes there). My dad homesteaded. He must have homesteaded about 1910. At that time he was a forest ranger. I started school in Rattlesnake Buttes. We left Rattlesnake Buttes and went to Avondale, CO when I was a seventh grader, and we stayed there for five years. Then we went back to Rye, CO. We left Rye in the fall of 1937. My cousin and I came across here on horseback; we drove a bunch of horses. We were raising draft horses, at that time, and were selling teams of horses. My cousin Ralph Brier and I, we were over that pass ... what's the name of that pass? Anyway, the first day we got into the horse trade and traded until we were broke. We stopped and slept in a haystack that night, in Gardner, CO. The next day we went over Musket Pass. We probably had 40 head of horses: colts, mares, and broken horses, saddle horses We came over right above the sand dunes in the San Luis Valley. We stayed there the third night at a ranch, came on through to Alamosa, and stayed the fourth night in Alamosa. Then, one day, my dad started and brought seven milk cows alone to drive with the horses. I just blew my stack Well, the cows went dry on the way over here. We were going to this place over here on the Florida River; it was called the CJ Bar Ranch at that time. We stayed there, let's see, about five years. Then we went back to Pagosa, and I stayed there 18 years. I came down here 46 years ago this fall [2004]. That's all my time. I was all breaking horses, and I never had a tractor until I was 25 years old. They never had any. Tractors didn't come out until after World War II. I bought two little tractors; I thought I would get two. And, I thought it would take them what a horse could do, but they did what four horses could do. So it will be 46 years since I came here this November and I've been here ever since. I bought this place here in 1960 (I had leased it). I have this territory: about 800 acres ... lots of walking, lots of irrigating. I had registered cattle here, registered Herefords. I stayed in that and I had some good bulls, but then the exotic bulls started coming in, the foreign bulls, and we couldn't compete against them. Now we cross breed them [Herefords] with black cattle, and that's a disgrace to me but you have to do it. That's what the people, as well as what the feedlots want. My father was John Washington Wright, and he was born and raised in Wentmore, CO. My mother's maiden name was Ethel Lois Churchill. (My middle name is Churchill, and I am a fourth cousin of Winston Churchill.) She was raised in Wisconsin. She came to Colorado and got her degree to teach at the teachers' school in Wentmore; where she and my dad met. My father was a forest ranger, then he homesteaded a place southeast of Walsenburg out in the dry land around Rattlesnake Buttes. It seemed like I was there forever. But, it was well named: lots of rattlesnakes. We lost three wean-er colts (suckling colts). They are quite inquisitive and they see something. An old horse knows the buzzing of that tail, the rattling, like a person and it will just scare you to death. But the colts, they don't know yet, they're real inquisitive and they'll go sniffing around. Killed three of them. �Page 2 of 4 I have been in the cattle business all my life. I tried shearing sheep here on this place once, but coyotes ... coyotes and dogs. So, one year I got rid of them [the sheep] and got my cattle back. We had a permit, east of Bayfield, for about 1,200 acres. We had 226 head of horse, and I sold that ranch. I sold it because I was hard up: couldn't make ends meet. It wasn't much. You couldn't raise a calf for what you'd get out of it. So, I stayed here and had a chance to sell that place up there for a crazy number: a million and a half [dollars]. That seems crazy, don't it? That was in ... right recently ... about 1998, something like that. I was able to pay back some old debts, but I still wanted to raise cattle. I gave half of the ranch to my youngest son, and this half I've kept after and I will give over to my two grandsons (they're both grown men, now). I also have a great-grandson. Four generations on this ranch, the Wright Ranch. It's still known as the Spanish Forks Ranch, because that's what it was when I bought it. The name came from a man that lived in Spanish Forks, Utah. He loaned money on this place some way or another and foreclosed on it. So, he called it the Spanish Forks Ranch and that was in the 1920s. I have two sons. I had a daughter, but she passed away. My oldest son lives in New Mexico, just on the other side of the line. And, Wayne, my other son, lives here. My oldest son has been more into construction. He's living down here, and he had a heart attack about four years ago. He's getting old too, you know. I'll be 89 this fall, and I feel like a kid. I can't walk; I get to where my legs give out. You've got to have a good spirit. It's kept me going from the times when I thought I was going to lose everything. I believe in the Lord, and I trust in the Lord to see me out just as he saw me in. My mother was a Baptist. My father was a Presbyterian. So, I'm a Baptist now, and there're a lot of differences among Baptists. In 1939, I married and went on my own. But, in 1942 I lost her (she passed away), so I went back home in Pagosa for two or three years. Then, I married a girl and we lived together until she passed away. Then, I met this gal and we've lived together for the past ten years, almost eleven. She's my third wife. Third time's a charm. But, I had to get married both times ... I sold mostly wean-er stock. I sold the weaning calves off of the cows, generally. Somebody else put them in a feedlot. My cattle always did good in the feedlot. I went for the stretch-ier type of beef, rougher type cattle. My dad was more of a smooth, pretty yellow [cattle] feller. But, I thought a Hereford was supposed to be good and wide, so I bred them to be good and wide. Some of the Herefords went to a pretty yellow-red, and they went smaller and smaller. A 1,200-pound bull would be a mature bull. I have cows that are 1,200 pounds. The bulls I used as sires I bought out of Canada, and those are big type cattle, good-doing cattle. They could stand bad weather and everything. So, I had a man in Washington who I bought the bulls through. The Anxiety Fourth was a bull, purebred breeder out in Hereford. But, they went for the short-type. The first Anxiety Fourth were good cattle, but the breeders kept getting them pretty and yellow, and fat and easy. But we don't want fat ... we want muscle. That's how I built cattle: with muscle gain and not fat gain. You don't want fat, because you throw it away. That's what the cattle are today. The Limousine and Charle are both French cattle, and that's what they went for. The Americans learned from those breeders in foreign countries that you've got to raise �Page 3 of 4 muscle instead of fat. The muscle is what you eat and what's good for you. The fat you supposed to throw away. The feedlots are mostly in eastern Colorado, and down through the Arkansas Valley there are lots of feedlots. But my cattle, well it depended on who bought them. A man in Pagosa bought mine and would sell them to the feedlot. They gained 3 1/10 pounds per day on grass all summer long. So, he bought my steers, but he wanted to get them smaller. He put less into them, but we still raised good cattle. We've had to sell off our cattle: two years ago there was not feed in this country, and you couldn't afford to ship it in; it made it too high. The government finally brought it to Alamosa, but that cost us $25 a ton to get it here besides what it already cost. So, that didn't go over very big. Now, the cattle are going out more and they're going to the feedlots. There are not many fed around here: the winters are too bad for them. Down towards Farmington, there's a feedlot or two. Some of them learned that one of the real secrets of raising tender meat is to butcher cattle when ... If they're in a storm, they're going to be tough. That meat is going to be a little tougher than if the weather is good. *** I can remember when I was first going to school. .. the first day of school with my sister. We rode horses there; you didn't dare walk on account of the prairie wolves. The prairie wolf is a smaller wolf than the timber wolf, but they're just as vicious. I remember when I hadn't even gone to school yet, my uncle had trapped one and it broke away from the trap. He and my dad tracked it and I got to go along with them on a horse beside them. I could just barely hold on to the horse. They finally come to it and shot him, and I went over and picked up his tail. It went, "Grrrruff." They said I went and jumped up on my horse. It scared me half to death, and I was about 6 years old (first grader). But, we tracked him. I was on a horse myself; he had a small horse. I learned to ride when I was about five years old ... five or six years old. I learned to ride a horse when I went to school (I started when I was five years old, six that October). It was a one-room schoolhouse. It's still there. My wife and I drove over there, I was writing the story of my life, and I wanted to show her some of those places. That schoolhouse is still standing. That was about three or four years ago. It is in Rattlesnake Buttes. There's a South Rattlesnake Butte and North Rattlesnake Butte. This is North Rattlesnake Butte, near where the post office was. But at the other one, there were rattlesnakes ... they were everywhere. Kids learned to stay out of the brush or anything. My dad homesteaded two canyons close in, but it was right next to the prairie. We had two horses when we came here; we left in the fall of '37. My cousin and I rode; we came over the top of Musket Pass. We couldn't go over Wolf Creek, because Wolf Creek was closed then (they were building a new road). So, we had to go over to Cumbres Pass; which is over here down in New Mexico. We got as far as Ananeda and we heard of a bad storm on the Pass, so my dad put me, the horses and the seven old milk cows on the train. I came over the rest of the way through Lumberton, NM back up right over by the river here, the Pine River (there were some �Page 4 of 4 loading pens there). They got there at 1:00 in the morning, and all day that day and through the next night (it was two days travel by train from way down in New Mexico) I unloaded them here. I got them off the train and got them in a pasture from a farmer/rancher where I stayed one night. The next day I drove them across the Florida River going to the top (as if you were going to Durango). At that time it was all sagebrush; there weren't no farmers and ranchers across there. I drove them hungry cows and horses from early in the morning to 4:00 in the afternoon, and I had just one sandwich to eat that morning. I was hungry when I got there, so there were real nice people, who we were going to lease the place from, and I overate ... I got sick. I puked all over the place. I was so embarrassed. They didn't milk the cows the next night, but they were dry ... the cows went dry. I had tried to talk to my dad that they would all go dry, and they were dry. They just couldn't stand that rough abuse. Ranch cows could have, but milk cows can't stand that abuse. So, I had seven milk cows and about 35 or 40 head of horses, and they wouldn't drive together. I didn't have a dog; I had two horses. I left one horse where I could get a hold of him, and I wore two horses riding them, getting them things to not go anywhere else. They would scatter our, and I couldn't keep them together. I was by myself then; my cousin went back with my dad to get stuff and bring it on over here. That was in the fall of 1937: I would have been 22 that fall. I was 22 when I got there, and I felt as though I was 122. We had that place, I think it was, for five years. Then it sold, Land Management sold it and we could not raise the money. We had so much to do on that place. We were intending to buy it, but a rich guy down in Texas wanted to put his money somewhere, so he blew us out. Dad went back to Pagosa, and I went one year above Durango. I went back to Pagosa, but I couldn't find a place to lease, and I had a few stock and I had to find a place. So, I went there and stayed there, then I came down here. It's been 46 years I've been right here this fall. Well, I bought this place in 1960 and that place up there in '66. There's four generations on it [Spanish Forks Ranch] right now and they ought to last a while. Nathan, my oldest grandson is living up there [northern part of ranch], and he has my great-grandson, who's a little over a year old now. He's the cutest little thing I ever saw. He's got grandpa wrapped around his finger. The two grandsons are going to help Wayne, and they're all going to run it together. Interviewed by Michael G. Miller (VISTA worker) on March 5, 2004 at Spanish Forks Ranch, County Road 322. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Michael Miller Interviews Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/CNE/1.0/ Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2003-2004 Subject The topic of the resource Ignacio, Colorado; Southwest Colorado Description An account of the resource Collection of twelve biographies written by VISTA worker Michael G. Miller of prominent people in the Ignacio community. Based on interviews conducted by Miller between December 9, 2003 and March 15, 2004. Some contain the additional attribution "for the Ignacio Historical Society." Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Ignacio, Colorado; Southwest Colorado Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Miller, Michael G. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Norman Wright Biography Date Created Date of creation of the resource. 2004-03-05 Subject The topic of the resource Wright, Norman; Ignacio, Colorado; Southwest Colorado Description An account of the resource Biography of Norman Wright written by VISTA worker Michael Miller and based on an interview conducted by Miller on March 5, 2004. Spatial Coverage Spatial characteristics of the resource. Ignacio, Colorado; Southwest Colorado Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Wright, Norman Extent The size or duration of the resource. 4 pages