John C. Budd was born in 1878 to a pioneer family which was beginning a new life on the banks of North Piney Creek, near Big Piney, Wyoming. His father, Daniel B. Budd was trailing a herd of cattle from Nevada to Point of Rocks, Wyoming and needed to stop for the winter, so he took the cattle up to the Piney Country and turned them loose. In the spring, he decided it looked like good country, so he decided to settle there. John and his five siblings grew up as many pioneer children did: doing whatever possible to help the family survive. That included becoming a Cowboy. In his own words: “I started riding horses as soon as I was weaned and by the time I was ten years old I was a real cowboy and one of the gang; at least I thought so.”
During the 1880s and 1890s, the Piney Country and Upper Green River Valley was just the place for a young cowboy to learn the ropes. The vast country from Fontenelle to the Upper Green became an attractive, untapped area for grazing cattle. Its reputation for ungrazed, unsettled country with good reliable water drew big cattle outfits, such as the Spur, and settlers with smaller herds of cattle alike.
There were no formally organized associations yet, but there were loose agreements among cattle owners in order to logically manage the cattle. In the winter, most of the cattle were east of the Green River, and then grazed west of the river the rest of the year. In the Spring, cattle had to be dispersed into different drainages. All the bulls were grouped together and had to be herded in a different area.
In John’s words, “In early spring here in the Piney country, the ranchers would turn all their bulls out together and hire cowboys to take care of them until the July Roundup went out… They would take pack horses with a tent, bedrolls, food and their cooking equipment. They took turns herding the bulls and doing the cooking. When the roundup was ready to go out the foreman would send a couple of riders with pack outfits to help these herders scatter the bulls on the different creeks and then joining the wagon on Beaver. We sure had some real bullfights and had a lot of fun betting on which one would win. Fred “Happy” Gootch was one who helped with the bulls. I never saw anyone go quite so crazy over a bullfight. He wouldn’t watch from the distance but would ride right up beside them. Once up on Myrna Flats he rode up too close to a red hot bullfight. Suddenly one old bull had enough and wheeled to run and knocked over “Happy” and his horse. Gootch was lucky and came out with nothing more than a dislocated shoulder, but we had to kill the horse.” (from – Tales of the Seeds-Ke-Dee, article Cowboy Days of Long Ago by Helen Budd Tanner, John’s daughter)
In mid-summer, the cattle were rounded up into several different locations so the calves could be branded. After branding, the cows and calves were pushed onto various drainages toward higher country and fresh feed. As John tells us, “Packing to go on roundup in those days didn’t take much time. We took an extra change of clothes, a few extra socks, and rolled them up in the bedroll. A cowboy had to have a pair of boots, a J.B. Stetson hat, and a pair of chaps; most of them carried a slicker rolled up back of the saddle. The bedroll consisted of wool blankets, and a heavy homemade wool quilt which was wrapped in a piece of canvas or ‘bed tarp’…”
This process took weeks. The crews began down on LaBarge Creek and worked north. Each ranch owner would take a turn at being or providing a foreman, and were obligated to send a rider for every 250 head of cattle, furnish riders with extra horses and also a work team for the mess wagon and the bed wagon, and share in the expense of the chuck wagon and salary for the cook. Usually, the crew would be 25-30 cowboys riding on each roundup. The cavvy of horses was a big one with 8-10 horses per cowboy.
After a short break it was time to start the beef gathering. This time, crews started up near Beaver and worked south. John remembers, “…we would work out the beef, then move the rest of the cattle back into the mountains. Here began the serous business of night herding. Each rider would take a two- or three-hour shift as night herder to keep them from straying back with the other cattle. At sunup we’d move south, part of us driving the beef herd and part of us gathering more cattle to be added to the herd.” The beef were then driven to the railroad. Three or four outfits would usually agree to throw in together for this drive. Again, there would be a wagon for food and beds. The points of loading varied through the years, but generally the drive took from six to eight days.
And then it was time for the Fall Roundup to bring in all the cows and calves and then back ride to be sure no cattle were still at the heads of various creeks. John told his daughter Helen, “The Green River valley developed quite a reputation for its quality beef. Each cowboy took pride in that reputation. His life was a hard one for he had to be in the saddle all day, every day, from sun up until sun down, regardless of the weather. Often, he had to take his turn with the night herd. Still there was a feeling of independence and adventure about being a cowboy. For those of us who enjoyed working out in the open, riding horses and working with cattle, there just wasn’t anything equal to being a cowboy on those early roundups.”
In the early 1890s Roundup Associations began to form in a more structured way. The “Equalizer Winter” of 1890 made ranchers begin to put some hay up and fence some areas of for irrigating. The Big Piney Roundup Association was one of the early Associations. When John was still in his 20’s he began to participate in the formation of that association, serving as President, Secretary and foreman at various times during the years. He was certainly qualified, having spent his youth cowboying in the vast area the Association covered. He liked to point out to his younger friends that when he was a young cowboy, he had ridden the length of present-day Sublette County and never encounter a fence. The country covered ranged from Fontenelle and LaBarge creek in the south to Fall River Basin near Bondurant, the Black Buttes in the upper Green and country on the west side of Fremont Lake.
In 1895, John filed for a patent on land in the Meadow Canyon drainage, a long valley watered by small springs. He continued to cowboy for the Association. In 1905, he married Lula McGinnis, daughter of another pioneer family living near Midway. Together they gradually added land and began to accumulate cattle of their own. He continued to be part of the Roundup Association. He was part of the notorious conflicts between the sheep men and the cattlemen. He writes, “For several years we had quite a lot of trouble over the range and as a result, a lot of sheep and several sheep wagons were destroyed. When the Forest Reserve was established, it helped a lot, but the sheep men couldn’t seem to keep their word and this caused a lot of trouble. But with all of this, there were never any men killed over it in the Piney country.”
As the range became more settled and later more fenced, the reliance on grazing associations lessened in the Piney country. John shared a large in fenced BLM allotment with 7 other ranchers, covering country on both sides of North, Middle and South Piney creeks, running from very near the town of Big Piney to the Forest Boundary. Again, the pattern of distributing, herding and gathering cattle continued for many years. This time, what was called the Deer Hill Roundup occurred and continued for many years; minuscule compared to what John had cut his teeth on. He remained active in that until he was in his 80’s, until a smashed knee made horseback work painful; then he and Lula began doing the camp cooking, making Dutch Oven meals for all the cowboys on a high bench north of Middle Piney Creek.
He and his son Joe acquired a ranch on Middle Piney Creek in the late 1930s and it had a Forest Permit, so in his 60’s and 70’s and some into his 80’s he managed the cattle in that country; taking the Budd cattle from the Deer Hill Roundup onto his deeded land on Middle Piney creek and then on to the Forest Permit where he dispersed them on various creeks including Indian Creek, Bird Creek and Straight Creek.
A kind of a monument to him, which he built in 1905 is a huge, beautiful barn, still standing on our ranch. It was always painted red. It was built to accommodate 14 big draft horses at a time, two to a stall, munching hay, plus a foaling stall, a bronc stall and a huge tack room big enough to store all the harnesses required to hitch those big horses up and either harvest or feed hay, depending on the season. Horses were part of his life—riding them, hitching them to wagons or sleds, and using them to dig miles and miles of ditches and grubbing hundreds of acres of brush to make way for hay meadows.
He loved good horses and good cattle. He was immensely proud of the Registered Hereford business his son Joe developed.
John C. Budd died on December 11, 1967. He had two children, Helen Budd (Frances) Tanner and Joe (Ruth Peterson) Budd. He had six grandchildren, John (Shirl Dibler), Bob (Helen Sulenta) and Dick (Linda Garris) Tanner; Betty (Frank Fear), Mary (Stan Flitner), Nancy (Gary Espenscheid). Great grandchildren are Lynn (Mike Rodell), Gayle (Bill Holder) Tanner; Dana (Bob Martin), Kim and Bill (Kenda White) Tanner; Kenna and Ryan (Abby Davis) Tanner; Mark (Mary Lind), Susan (Doug Nessan), John (Jody Alexander) Fear; Brian (Annie Hittle) and Chad (Gudrid Thayer) Espenscheid.