Content warning: this article contains descriptions of violence and animal cruelty.

In an article in the Steamboat Pilot on March 1, 1929, “Stock Owners Waged War for Northwest Colorado Range,” E.V. Haughey wrote:

“In the early 1870s, the northwestern part of Colorado and that part of Wyoming lying along the north boundary was noted for its superb grazing on open ranges. Cattle were trailed from Texas and other southern states … and turned on this range. Then sheep commenced to come … and it developed that sheep and cattle did not do well on the same range together, and the sheepmen and cattlemen quarreled over who had the right on the range.
“In 1922 a man by the name of Durnell had a small band of sheep in western Moffat County. He was warned that the sheep would not be tolerated, and unless he moved them there would be trouble … he answered that he would kill anyone that molested his sheep. One morning he was found dead, being killed by someone unknown. Also quite a number of the sheep were killed.”

Between the 1870s and 1920s, at least 54 men were killed and tens of thousands of sheep were slaughtered, in what came to be called the Sheep Wars. As a sheepman in the early part of the 20th century, Elmer Bair experienced firsthand the violent opposition by Western Slope cattlemen. Bair’s autobiography, “Elmer Bair’s Story, 1899 to 1987,” reads like a Larry McMurtry novel. He describes an incident that occurred while he and his partner were wintering their sheep in the Utah desert:

“A group of cattlemen were trying to control the Book Cliff Mesa country from Cisco to Green River, Utah. This covered the country we wintered in … They stayed at a rock cabin in a canyon between Crescent Canyon and Horse Canyon. When the herder was away from camp, the cowmen … piled all the equipment such as saddles and etcetera in the tent, soaked it with kerosene and set it on fire. When they were doing their dirty work they always wore black mufflers over their faces. They were known to catch a lone herder out by himself, rope him, tie him up … and beat him almost to death.
“I heard George let out a yell. Putting the spurs to the mule, I headed for camp as fast as I could. I arrived just in time. The masked men were rounding a cedar knoll in front of the camp. I turned my mule sideways, slid off with my rifle and sat where I could see under the mule’s belly with a bead drawn on the man that had the reputation of being the most trigger happy.
“George came out of camp with the gun in one hand and a box of cartridges in the other. George told the men, now if you want those sheep moved you try to move them! It had taken the wind out of [their] sails … when they saw me there, since they thought George was alone. They told us, ‘We’ll go down a half mile and mark a line with some cedar boughs and if you and the sheep are not around there by tomorrow morning, we’ll be back and drag you around. Then they headed back the way they had come.”

The incident was resolved without violence, but other sheepmen weren’t so lucky.
Bair’s story:

“The winter of 1920-21, there were several Greek and Basque sheepmen coming into the country. A Greek sheepman … was roped and beaten over the head until the blood soaked through his hat. Another Basque was shot and killed.
“In some respects, one couldn’t blame the cattlemen. The old tales about the sheep leaving a smell that would cause the cows to quit the range, and the sheep eating the grass two or three inches below the ground, had been handed down from father to son for several generations, until many of them believed it.”

In truth, sheep don’t interfere with cattle or degrade the grazing area. Conflicts such as sheepdogs chasing cattle away from watering holes, combined with a hefty amount of prejudice, fueled the Sheep Wars.
But the problems weren’t limited to the winter range.
Bair’s story:

[In 1919, ] “The word was out that Maine, Bair and Dunston had purchased the Allen Ranch between Glenwood Springs and Gypsum. The Cattlemen’s associations in Eagle Valley and Cattle Creek were up in arms. The men [Maine, Bair and Dunston] received several threatening letters from the Cattlemen’s Association.
“One letter… signed by 33 cattlemen, said they would meet the sheep at the stockyards in Dotsero and if the sheepmen didn’t turn back they would shoot the first sheep and men that went out through the fence.”

By the 1920s, the horrendous toll on men and sheep prompted action from the government.

The Glenwood Post, Feb. 7, 1924:

“Federal warrants for the arrest of 12 Garfield County cattlemen, some of them wealthy and men of prominence, were issued Friday … following investigation of the sheep and cattle war that has been waged on the Western Slope.”

In 1934, the passage of the Taylor Grazing Act, introduced by Edward T. Taylor, a Congressman from Glenwood Springs, empowered the Department of the Interior to regulate grazing districts on public lands by granting permits to ranchers. In 1946, the Taylor Grazing Service and the General Land Office were merged as the Bureau of Land Management.
Elmer Bair’s sheep business thrived well into the 1940s. Bair’s success allowed him to purchase property on Cottonwood Pass and in Marble, as well as a home at 116 South 8th Street in Carbondale, where he lived until his death in 2002 at the age of 104.

“Elmer Bair’s Story, 1899 to 1987,” is available at the Carbondale Library and the Carbondale Historical Society’s Lending Library.