On the other side of the coin were hard times and ethnic cleansings in Europe that made America a shining goal to many immigrants. The Irish Potato Famine that was catastrophic for the Emerald Isles in the 1840s and 50s brought a wave of workers to the High Plains with dreams of establishing ownership in the new land. Two of the earliest settlers in southwest Kansas were John O’Laughlin and Richard Joyce. O’Laughlin was the first permanent settler in the entire region, opening a dugout trading post at Lakin in 1872 when the railroad was being built. He saw the vast opportunities available to those willing to diversify, and he joined a handful of men who developed the open range cattle industry in what is now Southwest Kansas, Southeast Colorado, and the Oklahoma Panhandle. He based his cattle operations in current day Grant County, a mile east of Wagonbed Springs, a major watering stop on the Santa Fe Trail. He called the place Pig Pen Ranch, named not for pork production, but for the cattle brand, which was a square (similar to a hashmark) that resembled wooden rail fences used to build pig pens.
Another Irish immigrant came to America as a young man and found work on the new Santa Fe railroad as it inched its way through the west. As he laid track he made plans for his future, and in the Cimarron Valley, he took a job baling hay and buffalo hides near Camp Supply in the Indian Territory. Five years later in 1879 he returned to take a job as foreman on O’Loughlin’s Pig Pen Ranch. He immediately found a place he wanted for his own, and filed papers on the ground where Wagonbed Springs was located, making him the first permanent settler in what is now Grant County. Over the years he built up a small herd of cattle, and he also married. His wedding in Salina on January 7, 1886 began as a bright day which became a black one in the history books. The Blizzard of ’86 wiped out cattlemen big and small and marked the beginning of the end for open range ranching. Richard Joyce’s herd of 200 cattle were reduced to 30 when he finally located the survivors after the spring thaw.
The Pig Pen Ranch by today’s standards would be considered primitive at best, but in the early days of settlement it served as a major stopping place for anyone on their way west. It also provided a temporary camp ground for new settlers. Water was available for newcomers until they could establish their own windmill wells. In some ways Pig Pen Ranch was the center of activity in a land yet to be named. The scant number of settlers became ‘next door neighbors’ from a distance of miles, sharing home remedies for sickness, distributing mail from place to place, and rejoicing together at a rare dance or entertainment, where you could always count on the cowboys from the Pig Pen to be in attendance.
Thanks to the Historic Adobe Museum in Ulysses, Kansas for providing information for this story. For High Plains Public Radio, I’m Lynn Boitano.
High Plains History is a production of High Plains Public Radio.
