Orson Behunin was born in Utah in 1908. Orson was the fifth of ten children, losing his mother when he was 10 years old. At the age of about thirteen, Orson took a job at a sawmill and also began working with his father on the Knight’s ranch in Utah. Besides fishing and camping in the mountains, one of his favorite sports was riding bucking horses. When Orson was around twenty, he rode over the Uinta Mountains to Lonetree, Wyoming, with his brother Mel and some other boys to work in the hay fields for Owen Bullock, Harry Buckley, and Joe and Cal Hickey. Orson sent money home to help his father with raising his family. Later he bought a Model A Ford Roadster and drove back to his hometown of Altonah, Utah, and brought his sisters, Emma and Hattie, back to Lonetree with him. Then his dad and brother, Dick, trailed their sheep and a few cows over the mountain to Owen Bullocks’ ranch where they spent the winter. Orson married Christena Slagowski on December 23, 1930.
Christena was born in 1913 on the Slagowski homestead and cattle ranch on the Henry’s Fork below McKinnon, Wyoming, the sixth child of nine. Christena was fourteen when she lost her mother in 1927.
Some of Christena’s earliest memories include riding seven miles to school up the Henry’s Fork Creek to McKinnon on a small black horse that her brother ran off Dry Creek as a slick. She and her siblings were always a horseback and loved to race each other. Christena recalls, “I have helped my brothers get our horses in that were running free at that time. Running wild horses is a thrilling experience!” For Christena, the faster the ride the better.
After marrying, Orson and Christena moved to Lonetree, Wyoming, where Orson and his father herded sheep for the Lonetree ranches. “Our first home was a tent backed by a sheep camp,” Christena remembered, a home they shared with Orson’s father and two sisters.
Later they went to work for Owen Bullock for their first cow. During that time Christena graduated to skidding logs. Her helper was a tired old black mare. She skidded logs to a pile where they could be loaded on a wagon to haul to the ranch. They cooked on a campfire and slept on pine bough mattresses.
During 1932-33, the Behunins worked for Joe and Cal Hickey on the Kern place at Lonetree. Christena was pregnant with her first child during this time. They worked hard. Christena would ride the plow while Orson cleaned the ditches and drove the team, when he couldn’t handle both the team and the plow. These were the Depression years. They ate a lot of venison (Christena was a sharp -shooter) pigweed greens, potatoes, rice, raisins, coffee, whole-wheat cereal, and homemade bread.
Orson decided shortly after these years that if they were going to get anything of their own, that he would have to lease a place. The years from 1933 to 1940 saw them moving from place to place. After two more children arrived, they had about 20 head of cattle that they had built up over the years from that first cow. At about that time they leased the Ike Edwards place on Burntfork Creek.
Orson was a very good storyteller and was able to bring his stories to life for whoever was listening. He was very comfortable around people and well-liked. He could recite cowboy poetry as well. He rode bucking horses in Rock Springs, Lyman, and the Uinta Basin. He and Fred Stoll won a wild horse race in Rock Springs in 1929.
In 1940 the William Stoll ranch was up for lease so they moved there so the kids could catch the school bus to go to school in McKinnon. After having two more children, Christena was caring for five children, gardening and preserving food, and working their cattle operation. Moving to the Stoll ranch proved to be their final move as it came up for sale by the State of Wyoming, which they won by bid. Now they owned a 2000-acre ranch with a burned down home, mangled fences, silted-in ditches and they had $19 to their name. Moving into a two-room log cabin on their own ranch, Orson and Christena began to build their own life and cattle ranch. Their sixth and final child was born on the ranch.
They became successful cattle ranchers, running about 300 head. They worked side by side, buying and breeding Hereford cattle, calving, branding, milking, doctoring, and driving cattle to the summer range on Cedar Mountain. Haying involved dragging and irrigating meadows and pastures, then building loose stacks they fed all winter. They also ran wild horses off the high plains on Cedar Mountain. Orson and Christena worked together to break these horses, and Orson kept shoes on them, in order to keep a fresh supply of horses for running the ranch. The Behunins became very good at finding good horses, buying and breeding them as well.
Orson and Christena had several grandchildren spend summers with them as part of their haying crew. The kids also helped with branding calves and breaking horses. Christena was an exceptional horse breaker and passed her personal secrets for breaking and training horses on to her grandkids.
Orson and Christena became good friends with Swanny Kerby, a rodeo stock contractor. Swanny sometimes boarded his rodeo stock on the Behunin Ranch when they were traveling between rodeos. The Behunins bought a stud horse from Swanny, which produced many good stock horses for their ranch, their children, and their grandchildren. One of these horses became a bucking horse in Swanny’s bucking string that they called Ox because of the large Behunin O X brand on him, one of three Wyoming registered brands they owned.
Upon establishing their ranch and home, the Behunins became active and contributing members of the community. Christena was active in her homemaker’s club, contributed to the Sweetwater County Fair, served as a school board member, cooked for crews for the canal construction and the highway construction through their area. Orson held the president position of the Sweetwater County Farm Bureau for nine years. He was also instrumental in bringing the Rural Electric Association into the Henry’s Fork Valley. Asking for permission to hold a mountain man rendezvous reenactment on their ranch, because it was the location of the first historic mountain man rendezvous, the American Mountain Men Association made Orson a member of their association, then giving him the name of Gray Bread.
Their children were always very important to them. After selling some uranium claims in the seventies, Orson and Christena distributed the money between their children, hoping to help them along in their own ranching endeavors. Several of their children followed in their footsteps, continuing the cowboy way of life, raising their own families on cattle ranches.
After two years of retirement, Orson was killed in a car accident in March 1975. Christena passed peacefully in her granddaughter’s home in McKinnon, on December 9, 2011. They also had 22 grandchildren, 41 great-grandchildren and numerous great-great-grandchildren.