The Bismarck Tribune Newspaper, May 13, 1932, Page 9

= Wi HEN Colonel Zack Miller, bluff Oklahoma plains- man of the old school, got up from a sick bed and fired a shotgun into the floor of his house while his 101 Ranch was going under the hammer at a re- ceiver's sale recently, he was simply emphasizing the fact that even a fighting family can have one misfortune too many. The Miller ranch is. older than Oklahoma, and the Miller fam- ily has been prominent in the west since before Oklahoma land was opened for settlement. ‘Through the last half century the Millers have fought against one bad break after another, winning out time and again over disasters that would have overwhelmed most men. But Zack Miller's two brothers, Joe and George, are gone now. The 101 Ranch wild west show has folded up. The oil, cattle, hogs, wheat, fruit and leather produced by the tremendous Miller ranch have been fetching disastrously low prices for years. So, when loans of around $170,000 on the ranch fell due this spring, a receiver's sale was ihe only way out. There was nothing much left for Colonel Miller to do but express his general disgust with the whole proceedings by firing his shotgun, which he did—fired it in- to the floor just behind Neal Sullivan, attorney for the receiver, who had just come in to dis- cuss the sale with him. N all the American west there never was a ranch quite like the 101, and there never was a family quite like the Miller family. And if the present financial difficulties prove too great to be overcome, and the ranch passes from the Oklahoma scene, an interesting and picturesque chapter in the history of the west will be closed. There are 110,000 acres in the 101 Ranch. In the midst of them sits the massive, broad- beamed ranch .house—the White House, as the Miller brothers always called it. For decades this house has been nationally famous for its hospitality. Writers, actors, oil men, cattle men, financiers—all have been its guests, enter- tained with the traditional cordiality of the west. Tt was on the 101 Ranch that the rodeo was turned into a spectacle to amuse easterners. It was on the 101 that such famous movie cow- boys as Tom Mix, Buck Jones, Art Acord and others learned the tricks of their trade. It was there that the wild west show was brought to its peak of perfection as an amusement en- terprise. And it was there, too, that tough old Zack Miller let loose with a shotgun to show the world how he felt about the trick that tate had played on him. The Miller ranch was founded by the father of the Miller brothers, Colonel George W. Miller. It was in 1871 that he reached the Kansas-Oklahoma border, heading west in a covered wagon with his wife and his two-year- old son Joe, bound for California. HeAtTiNc for the winter, in company with a number of other emigrants, Colonel Miller decided that Oklahoma might be better than California, His neighbors had a number of pigs, and he began acquiring them by bar- ter, trading off bits of equipment that were to have gone to California with him. When he had got all the pigs he could get, he butchered them and turned the meat into ham and bacon. When spring came he set out for Texas. Reaching Fort Worth, he traded his ham: and bacon for Texas longhorns. Then, having ac- The White House on the famous 10] Ranch. . . where the open-handed hospitality of the west was dispensed to guests for decades. When Col. Zack Miller defied his creditors with a shotgun, he was defending a western empire founded by his father in the days before Oklahoma was opened to the white man - The home of the Miller brothers, Colonel Joe Miller, who bought twe caroads of apple trees at a bargain . . . and who was first of the three brothers to die. cumulated a herd, he headed north again. In those days Texas cattle were driven north over the famous Chisholm trail, pasturing as they went on the rich grass of the open plains, and getting to market at the railhead in Kan- sas or Missouri. Colonel Miller, having got back to where he started from, proceeded to establish a ranch there. He leased his land from the Indians, settling in the famous Chero- kee strip long before ordinary white settlers were allowed to live there. His first ranch was near the present site of Miami, Okla. But he moved about several _ times, and in 1879 he established his 101 Ranch near where Ponca City is now. Here the other two Miller brothers, George and Zack, were born. Their boyhood home was a sod house, and cowboys were about the only human beings they saw for months at a time. They fairly grew up in the saddle; and before they had become of age they were play- ing prominent parts, with Joe and their father, in the development of the ranch. IHE. ranch went on expanding until 1893, Then came the first of the long chain of misfortunes. There was a panic that year, and a Kansas City firm that had acted as Colonel Miller’s agent in all his cattle dealings, failed. He had had a $300,000 credit on the com- pany’s books; the failure wiped that out, and brought the revelation that certain bills that the Colonel Zack Miller got up from a sick bed and fired his shotgun into the floor just behind Neal Sullivan, attorney for BUTT LU LLL the receiver of his ranch. firm should have paid for him had not been paid. Creditors descended on him. They took his cattle to satisfy their claims. When they got through he had only a handful of cows and horses left. In order to get through the winter he had to sell most of this remainder to the Indians. The next year, in order to re- coup, the Millers decided to go in for agriculture. Heretofore they had never planted anything, de- pending solely on stock for their livelihood. That year they planted 5000 acres of wheat. The harvest was bountiful— more than 70,000 bushels. Wheat was selling at $1.20 a bushel that year. The Millers came back! That was the beginning of their diversification schemes. The Mil- lers continued to raise huge herds of cattle; but they adopted many other lines as well. They had a huge acreage of wheat each year; they established vast orchards, great herds of swine, a tannery where they could make their own leather. It was in connection with this tannery that another typical exam- ple of overcoming misfortune was furnished. The first tannery building was destroyed by a cyclone. Another was built, at a cost of $60,000, and destroyed by fire shortly after it was finished. The next day a third one was begun. Then, when it was finally completed and put into operation, the price-cf tanned hides abruptly dropped from 50 cents a pound to three cents a pound—far below the cost of production. AUMMTNTTTTTATNTN TATU TOTOTOTOTTOT TTT TTT TTT Colonel Zack Miller, as he looked when garbed in his western finery. So the Millers sent Zack down to Austin, Texas, where a wholesale harness house had gone bankrupt. He bought the equipment and brought it to the ranch, hired the defunct firm’s harness makers, and presently the Millers had their own harness-making establishment on their own ranch. The orchards came into existence more or less by accident. Joseph Miller made a busi- (Copyright, 1932, by EveryWeek Magazine—Printed in U. 8. A.) tT nn pm Meee unui TN OULU AT co OPRUNDECUHCCUHNE AE UAT MMM AA atta ao, George Miller, who lost his life in an auto accident shortly be- fore the famous ranch got into financial difficulties. ness trip to Winfield, Kansas, one day, and noticed two car- loads of young apple trees on a railroad siding. He learned that the buyer for whom they were intended had gone broke, and that the trees could be had for pay- ment of little more than the freight charges. He promptly bought them and took them back to his ranch, where he put 50 men to work setting them out. In the years that followed, ap- ples worth $170,000 were picked from those trees. IHE rodeo idea was really .© born way back in 1892, when Colonel Miller hap- pened to visit this same Kan- sas town of Winfield during Fair week. He had his cow- boys put on a series of their tricks, “‘just to help out,’ and discovered that the tricks were highly popular with the spec- tators. From that there was evolved, in turn, the wild west show. In 1906 the brothers put their famous show on the road. It ran steadily until the war, and resumed opera- tions after the Armistice. All in all, it netted the Millers a profit of more than a million dollars. Then the vast Oklahoma oil fields began to be opened—and it was discovered that among the Millers’ 110,000 acres there was much good oil land. Wells were sunk and the Mil- lers got into production. At one time they had an output of 10,000 barrels a day, owned their own refinery and sold gasoline to tourists from their own filling station! A typical example of the way the Millers did things was fur- nished in 1927. The state of Florida had put into effect a se- ries of strict new regulations to govern its cattle-growing industry, and whole herds were thrown on the market at ridiculously low prices. The Millers heard of it, and Zack and George went down to Florida to do something about It. UP and down the state they went, buying cattle. Pres- ently they had accumulated 35,000 head. Then, to the amazement of the Floridians, they moved them back to Oklahoma in 800 cars, comprising 30 long trains. The whole operation, of course, yielded a nice profit to the Millers. Then misfortune began to strike at the family again. Joe Miller, eldest of the three brothers, lost his life in 1927 in an unusual automobile accident. He had been working on the motor of his car, and ap- parently was overcome by carbon monoxide gas poisoning. Two years later death claimed George Miller, when his car overturned and crushed him. Meanwhile financial troubles had begun. The price of farm products began to go down. Then the price of oil dropped. Then the 101 Ranch show went on the rocks. Tt struggled along for several years in a vain effort to get back on a paying basis, but it was unable to do so. Finally, less than a year ago, the show went broke in Washington, and its cowboys and cowgirls were stranded there until Colonel Zack spent $11,000 of his own money to bring them back to Oklahoma. TL sa AULA A ot HUMLEUUSAUGAUAK GLARE ACOULAEAAOEU A COTY a