The Home Ranch

Ralph Moody was eight years old in 1906 when his family moved from New Hampshire to a Colorado ranch. Through his eyes we experience the pleasures and perils of ranching there early in the twentieth century. Auctions and roundups, family picnics, irrigation wars, tornadoes and wind storms give authentic color to Little Britches. So do adventures, wonderfully told, that equip Ralph to take his father's place when it becomes necessary. Little Britches was the literary debut of Ralph Moody, who wrote about the adventures of his family in eight glorious books, all available as Bison Books.

Little Britches becomes the "man" in his family after his father's early death, taking on the concomitant responsibilities as well as opportunities. During the summer of his twelfth year he works on a cattle ranch in the shadow of Pike's Peak, earning a dollar a day. Little Britches is tested against seasoned cowboys on the range and in the corral. He drives cattle through a dust storm, eats his weight in flapjacks, and falls in love with a blue outlaw horse. Following Little Britches and developing an episode noted near the end of Man of the Family, The Home Ranch continues the adventures of young Ralph Moody. Soon after returning from the ranch, he and his mother and siblings will go east for a new start, described in Mary Emma & Company and The Fields of Home. All these titles have been reprinted as Bison Books.

The dime novel and dude ranch, the barbecue and rodeo, the suburban ranch house and the urban cowboy—all are a direct legacy of nineteenth-century cowboy life that still enlivens American popular culture. Yet at the same time, reports of environmental destruction or economic inefficiency have motivated calls for restricted livestock grazing on public lands or even for an end to ranching altogether. In Let the Cowboy Ride, Starrs offers a detailed and comprehensive look at one of America's most enduring institutions. Richly illustrated with more than 130 photographs and maps, the book combines the authentic detail of an insider's view (Starrs spent six years working cattle on the high desert Great Basin range) with a scholar's keen eye for objective analysis.

Diana Phillips, daughter of Canadian folk legend Pan Phillips, shares more extraordinary tales about her life on the ranch in the remote British Columbian backcountry. Two years after publishing Beyond the Chilcotin, her remarkable memoir about growing up on her famous father's pioneer ranch in the Chilcotin, Diana Phillips continues her story. Discouraged by a huge loss of cattle to grizzlies on killing sprees, Pan sells the Home Ranch and decides to set up a fishing and guiding venture on nearby Tsetzi Lake. Diana spends a couple of seasons working with her father at the very rustic lodge, now catering to the needs of guests paying for a wilderness experience, rather than a cattle operation, but soon follows the call of ranch life back to the Home Ranch, until she marries and gets a cabin and land of her own nearby. Working her ranch and raising her young family, as well as helping out a series of owners at Home Ranch, Diana survives lean times and becomes a masterful rancher in her own right--driving cattle along rugged trails to and from Nazko, leading hunts in the Ilgachuz Mountains and midwifing stubborn calves, not to mention fending off grizzlies and mounting rescue missions for all manner of strays. Diana's incredible memory for detail--from the taste of strawberry jam and bannock, and the beauty of a poplar grove in fall, to the time she taught a rude drunk a lesson by hitting him repeatedly in the head with her boot--makes her account of a near-pioneer life in the Blackwater country an inspiring and entertaining read.