Photo by Jens Sens

Missoula Independent; Oct. 1999

William Kittredge grew up on the 15,000-acre MC Ranch in Oregon’s Warner Valley and stuck with ranching until he was 35. Kittredge studied at the Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa and was a Stegner fellow at Stanford in 1973–1974. Kittredge was the Regents professor of English and creative writing at the University of Montana until retiring in 1999. Kittredge is the author of more than 50 magazine and newspaper articles in The Atlantic, Harper’s, Esquire, Outside, The Paris Review, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. His books include A Hole in the Sky, Who Owns the West, and The Nature of Generosity. Kittredge was coeditor, with Annick Smith, of The Last Best Place: A Montana Anthology and A Portable Western Reader. He served as coproducer of the film A River Runs Through It and cowrote the script for the film Heartland. Kittredge has beautifully mapped the emotional terrain of the American West, and understands the power of Western mythology on its past as well as on its future.

Bio taken from http://www.allianceforlifelonglearning.org/course.jsp?c=2104

(Online courses offered by Stanford and Oxford Universities for which Wm. Kittredge was the author)

Excerpt from High Country News

Feature Article, November 24, 1997

Restoring a refuge: Cows depart, but can antelope recover?
by Kathie Durbin

Translated from bureaucratic language, what Nunn is talking about is predator control, a contentious topic.

In 1996, he announced that the agency would begin shooting coyotes from planes to save newborn pronghorns, which were being killed by the animals at an alarming rate. The announcement brought condemnation not only from conservationists and animal-rights groups but from pronghorn biologists as well. Nunn was forced to backtrack .

Controversy is not new to Hart Mountain. The removal of cows from the refuge took five years and came at a high political cost: The Lake County commissioners at one point threatened to block the main access route to the refuge.

But three years (in 1999) later the controversy has largely died down. Of the four ranchers who held grazing permits on the refuge, one has since died. His property, the McKee Ranch, was purchased by The Nature Conservancy, which sold 759 acres to the Fish and Wildlife Service last March for eventual inclusion in the refuge. A Lakeview-based grazing association purchased the vast MC Ranch, 185,000 acres of private land and 900,000 acres of federal grazing leases; it provides alternative forage for the livestock of Lake County ranchers.

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From the genealogical account of the Dollarhide family, I extracted this segment that talks about the Kittredge family ranch in Oregon and more specifically about William, the grandson of this Wm. who became an author:

Ross Cody Dollarhide, Sr. (Leander Dudley2, Jesse1), born Oct 1886 in Jackson County, Oregon; died 9 Jan 1974 in Adell, Lake County, Oregon. He was married (1) in Oregon (?) to Alvira Grace Courtright; and was married (2) about 1926/1935, to Patricia Blackwell. Ross Dollarhide was a ranch foreman in southeastern Oregon for many years. He raised his three sons in ranching and they were probably on horseback about the same time they were learning to walk. His son, Ross, Jr. was to become a famous rodeo performer, but those who knew old Ross knew he was the real cowboy. For over 30 years, he worked for the Kittredge Family, owners of the MC Ranch, located at Warner Valley, Lake County, Oregon, one of the largest cattle ranches in America, with acreage comparable in size with the state of Delaware. Ross Dollarhide was remembered by William Kittredge, whose early years were spent as a cowboy on his family's ranch, and who later in life became a college professor and noted author, particularly known for his insightful essays about the West. In his book, Hole in the Sky: A Memoir (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), Kittredge said, "Somehow Dollarhide became the king of the make-believe in my boyhood, and in all our back-lands empire, boss of all the cowboys for my grandfather. . . Ross Dollarhide was my main vaquero model in matters of grace and manliness." Kittredge also remembered Ross Dollarhide, Sr. (and Ross, Jr.) in other writings, talking fondly about Ross, Sr. as a formidable character who had a profound impact on his childhood. He recalled one event in the 1940s where Ross was leading the young Kittredge boys on horseback, rounding up a few stray steers. The terrain on that part of the ranch was covered with numerous lava beds, and his horse was spooked by a rattlesnake. For several minutes, Ross Dollarhide, a man in his mid-60s, was fighting a twisting, turning, bucking horse who wanted nothing else but to get rid of his rider, and if bucked off the horse the rider would be cut to shreds by the jagged edges of the lava rock all around him. But Ross stayed with the horse, and the horse finally calmed down. The Kittredge boys, with their mouths agape, watched the old man fight to stay on his horse and contain the animal, and witnessed an example of bronc riding they didn't think was possible. Later, at their campfire, noticing that the two young boys were staring at him, Ross said, "I didn't think today was good day to die." Ross Dollarhide, Sr. retired in the little town of Adel, a few miles from Lakeview, Oregon, and where he died in 1974 at the age of 87 years.

(Source: http://www.dollarhide.com/family/histjesse.htm)