The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-02-21
THE COWBOY IS
 PASSING AWAY Foot of Locomotive Again
 Vanquishes Him. IS AGAIN ON THE RUN Driven From Great Stronghold in Ore gon-FOrest Ranges in America to Be Cut to Pieces-Farm-
 CT Is New Ruler.

From the Portland Journal.
 With the construction of the railroad into central Oregon next summer the fence" will be broken down which for 40 years has surrounded the greatest cattle country in the northwest and the widest and freest ranges in America. Perhaps the first real indication of the change in the order of things comes in the announcement of the Hay Creek Sheep and Land copany that it's immense ranch will be broken up, the herds and fiocks sold to the butcher and the land disposed of to settlers, who will be given an opportunity to increase it's production and build up a permanent civilization on the wrecks left by the cowboy
 Less than year ago the Oregon Val ley Land company sold the biggest ranch in. the northwest, and one of a few of similar size in the world. dsposing of over 3O00OO acres, located largely in Lake county where for decades immense bands of cattle and focks of sheep have ranged as free as the air With the coming of spring hundreds of settlers will go upon the land and begin its permanent i'm proVement. Many of these farmers come from the central states, with means and there promises to come with them new era Of development and prosperity to southern Oregon. Truly '"rhe old order changeth" in Oregon.
 With the coming of the farmer with his blow and his harvester must necessarily come the extinction of a type of men and the annhilation of their business type of men known only to the western section of the United States, and in the course of events to be known nowhere | a Lnn T the Indian, to whom he has been a com panion and guide in many of his expedi- tlons, the cowboy is vanishing race a disappearing people. Except in parts of Wyoming, Colorado and Arizona the cowboy, as he has been known for many years, has disappeared. Texas at one time the home of the cattle kings of America. has been given so largely to agriculture in recent years and the call for land has become so irresistible, that the Immense cattle ranches have been disposed of and the men who controlled the destinies of the Lone Star State and dictated the conduct of her people for a score of years have retired to the cities to spend the fortunes made from the handling of 'longhorns"
 Master of the Range.
 Down in Harney and Malheur counties, removed a hundred miles from the near est railroad surrounded by thousands of cattle grazing on the nutritious bunch grass which grows on the sage brush plain, the cowboy fourshed in his most picturesque and care free style. He had been able to ride upon a hill view the country and practically own it. he could shoot when and what he pleased and no one nterfered with him; he was lord of all he surveyed. With this freedom of restraint the cowboy naturally became careless, rugged. fearless. As a horse man and as marksman he became per feet, not perhaps as much from inclina- tion as from necessity. For where men are much alone, where necessity is the mother of invention" men certainly be- come thorough in the few things which come to their hands.
 Deceiving himself with the idea that white men will never come here to live," the Oregon cowboy felt safe in his se- clusion. in his supremacy. But he fell upon evil days. Civilization came and pushed aside the captains of the range as 1t had driven back the red men in its resistless march across the continent | Decadent days set in when the sheep men and cattle men began to fight among themselves years ago, when bands of sheep would die in night because they crossed the 'dead line." Farmers began | to recall that old maxim about honest men getting their due when thieves fell out. Then they set their faces toward the stock barons estates and-found
 
 | fence.
 A number of conditions have combined | to drive the cowboy from the land of his adoption and to reclaim the range. | Hunger for land has been and is un- | satisfied. But last year the government offered to the people over 100000 acres of land taken from the Indians This was scarcely a taste for those who were willing to undergo practically any priva- ton or hardship to secure quarter sec ton as a home. Immense immigration | to the northwest added It's part. Then came investigations along the line of dry farming in Oregon and southern Idaho and everywhere the soil responded lib- orally to scientific cultivation. And, fin- ally, all of these things combined made a noise like business for a railroad or | two railroads. and the ear of the Hill and the Hartman interests heard the sound | The story of surveys up the Deschutes, of the building of grades and of bridges of the laying of steel, that story is now | in the process of the telling.
 l In> Quest of Experience.
 | Where did the cowboy come from? | From the people, and back to them he will go when the range is closed to him, to his pony and to his gun. Perhaps Horace Greeley should be called the fa- ther of the cowboy. For 1t was he who urged young men to go west. Back in the old home in the east the call of the west rang clear 10 the young man who was little wild. Filled with the spirit of the boy. with the desire of adventure, and for fame, chafiing under the re- straint of perhaps too careful parents, the young man started out to 'see the world" Naturally he went westward. With little education and no experience, he sought work that he could do. With love of the open, with a pride in the noble horse, he sought the cattle range and it's freedom. From it's lure he could not escape when once he had donned l "schaps" and learned the tricks of the plains Nothing but the abolition of the cattle business will ever drive many of the riders from the cattle country; noth- ing but death will ever deaden their love for the care-free life which will soon be but a memory.
 Linked inseparably with the life his tory of the cowboy is the story of the pony express rider, who dared the plains with Uncle Sam's mail, and the stage driver who penertates the inner recesses of the remote sections of the great Amer ican desert One in spirit and in purpose. 1 each engaged in an occupation requiring physical skill and dauntless courage, these three classes of men made an in delible impress upon the civilization of