Clarence A. Oster

Oregon Places

The P Ranch House Fire

An Eyewitness Account

John William (Peter) French was twenty-three years old when he arrived in eastern Oregon in 1872 with six Mexican vaqueros, a Chinese cook, and twelve hundred head of cattle. Dr. Hugh J. Glenn, a California wheat baron, sent French to the Harney Basin to establish a cattle ranch. Glenn financed the initial operation, and he and French eventually became partners in the French-Glenn Livestock Company.¹

French was a dynamic and complex individual, small in stature but large in ambition and drive. A wiry five-feet-five-inches tall, he never weighed more than 135 pounds. He had dark hair, with brilliant gray eyes set in a large head. By all accounts, he was a shrewd businessman and an industrious and skilled cattleman.² A tireless worker himself, French expected much from his employees. "He was not a drinking man and did not approve of gambling," his biographer, Giles French, explained, but he "liked to dance and women liked to dance with him."³

French settled in the Blitzen Valley, where he eventually created a massive operation based at the P Ranch. He claimed or purchased land, established a large cattle herd, and built fences and a system of dams and canals to channel the water of the marshy lowlands. By the 1880s, the French-Glenn operation controlled more than a hundred thousand acres of land and owned around forty-five thousand head of cattle.⁴

By the 1880s and 1890s, conflicts over land and water rights had developed between large cattlemen and smaller farmers who claimed homesteads in the Harney Basin. French had initially maintained friendly relations with homesteaders, sometimes hiring them, offering them beef when they needed food, and buying them out if they failed, reportedly at a fair price. As he continued to aggressively seek control of land, however, animosity toward him grew. In addition to buying out homesteaders, French also acquired land by manipulating the Swamp Land Act, directing his employees and others to establish homestead claims that he could then purchase, and fencing land in the public domain.⁵ In 1894, French filed a lawsuit to evict homesteaders who had settled on land he claimed around Malheur Lake, which served to escalate the hostility. Finally, in 1897, a homesteader named Ed Oliver shot and killed French.⁶

The Harney Basin, shown here in 1939, supported a number of large cattle ranching operations in the late nineteenth century, including Peter French's French-Glenn Livestock Company.

OHS neg., OrHi 56187 (detail)

Peter French and some of his crew eating dinner in the 1890s. French is leaning on the tailgate.

OHS neg., OrHi 4277

At the time of French's death, the P Ranch ran some seventy miles from the foothills of Steens Mountain to the south edge of Malheur Lake. French's partners had little expertise or interest in the cattle industry, and after French's death, the income from the P Ranch dwindled. Eventually the ranch was sold, but the land continued to be used for livestock production. The ranch was located along the Pacific Flyway and the lands within the meander lines of Malheur, Mud, and Harney lakes were already a national bird refuge. In May 1935, the federal government, interested in making the land into a bird sanctuary, purchased nearly sixty-five thousand acres of the former P Ranch from the Eastern Oregon Livestock Company. Additional small tracts of land were added to create the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, one of the largest wildlife sanctuaries in the United States.

The P Ranch land purchase included Peter French's home at the ranch headquarters, which was located near the southern end of the refuge, about a mile east of Frenchglen.⁷ Different stories exist about the construction of the P Ranch house. One holds that French wanted to have a nice home for his socialite bride, Ella Glenn, his partner's daughter. Royal Jackson and Jennifer Lee, who compiled an inventory of historic properties in Harney County, claim that the house was patterned after one of the Glenn family's homes.⁸ A note on a popular postcard depicting the house explains that "the builders put Pete French's 3 room cottage in the middle and built a 2 story wing on each end."⁹ French's biographer describes the house being constructed over time:

The single-story part of the house in the center was but sixteen feet wide. The second-story section to the right (west) was presumably French's bedroom. The eastern two-story part of the house was a later addition, built after there was more need to entertain business and personal guests, nearly all of whom stayed overnight because there were no other accommodations within seventy miles.¹⁰

On August 3, 1947, the P Ranch house was destroyed by fire.

In 1945, my father was hired as the resident caretaker for the south end of the refuge. Dad's duties included day-to-day dealings with local ranchers who leased winter range for their livestock from the refuge. Our family moved into the P Ranch house, which we rented from the refuge. My parents — L.E. (Red) and Fannie — my brothers — Arlie, Jess, and Leonard — and I lived in the east wing of the house. Clayton and Verdi Bonner lived in the west wing. Clayton worked for the refuge, and Verdi was the teacher at the Frenchglen school.

The fire occurred when I was fourteen years old, the summer before I started high school. My oldest brother, Arlie, and I were working at neighboring ranches that summer. Arlie was working at a ranch near refuge headquarters, some forty miles to the north, so he was not living at home. I was working only about three miles away from home, at Barnes Spring, currently a popular birding spot just south of Frenchglen. I spent Saturday evenings and Sundays at home.

The P Ranch house in the 1940s, not long before the fire. The one-story section in the middle was Peter French's original cabin. The fire started in the chimney on the west end of the east wing (left) of the house.

OHS neg., OrHi 4278

August 3 was a Sunday, so I was home for the day. The day before, a grass fire had started about two miles away from the house, and Dad had been on the fire line all night. Clayton Bonner probably was part of the grass-fire crew as well. Dad had come home for a rest on Sunday morning.

I occasionally amuse myself by telling others that I set the house fire. That much is true, but it was an accident. Water in the house was heated with a beehive water heater — a small, coal-burning stove shaped like a beehive. In mid-afternoon I started a fire in the heater so we would have hot water that evening. Then Jess and I went to the barn. The water heater was in the basement and vented through the east wing chimney. I had fired up the water heater many times before, and there was nothing different about this time. I suspect that tar and creosote deposits in the chimney ignited, creating a very hot, fast-burning fire. Burning material thrown out of the chimney ignited the roof. Strong winds from the west-southwest carried the fire along the roof of the east wing. The fire burned upwind, destroying the entire house.

Leonard, Mom, and Dad were just getting into the car to run an errand when Leonard spotted smoke near the chimney located at the west end of the east wing of the house. Dad immediately grabbed a ladder and garden hose to attempt to fight the fire. Later, he recalled: "I have never felt so helpless in my life" as he stood on a ladder with water barely flowing out of the hose and down his arm. The water system had been designed to supply water to the second-floor bathrooms and had little extra pressure. Dad then got on the party line telephone network and notified Refuge Headquarters and the neighbors.

Thirty or forty minutes later, Jess and I returned from the barn. As I opened the last corral gate, I saw flames all along the east wing roof ridge. To me, it appeared as though help materialized immediately.

The fire from the northwest (top) and the west-northwest (center). The drawing shows the relationship of the buildings and the wind direction.

Courtesy of the author
Dean A. Shapiro

Whenever there were grass fires, which were not uncommon during the dry summer months, neighbors would respond quickly to calls for assistance. Eight families had permanent homes near the P Ranch house, with the nearest ones just over a mile away at Frenchglen. Two families were some eight miles away, and the rest were within three miles of the house. This was haying season, and there were two large hay crews within an eight-mile range as well.¹¹ Some equipment and manpower were diverted from the nearby grass fire to fight the fire at the ranch. As many as a hundred people came to help us.¹²

A view from the south (top) shows the window of the dining room, where duck figurines still hung on the wall. The southeast corner of the house viewed from the southwest (middle) and the view from the east end of the house (bottom) show additional destruction.

Courtesy of the author

It was apparent early on that little could be done to save the house itself, so efforts went toward removing the furnishings and preventing the fire from spreading to other structures. Because the fire burned upwind, we had time to remove most of the household belongings from the main floor of the east wing.

Immediately south of the house, no more than thirty-two feet away, was a building with a large, insulated food storage room on the east end and the electric power plant on the west end. The heroic efforts of a fifty-man bucket brigade saved that building, helped by the strong west-southwest wind that carried away much of the heat. This building was destroyed in a later fire.

I joined a group that was removing furnishings from the main floor of the east wing and depositing them on the lawn some fifteen feet north of the house. A second group of helpers then moved the items to a safer area west of the burning building, making room for more salvaged furnishings. I still vividly remember one point when I was inside the east wing with an armload of goods, heading toward the living-room door and the north lawn. Two fellows were just ahead of me pushing a large pedestal dining-room table, which was too large to fit through the door. They backed up a couple of steps, turned the table on its side, and delivered two quick, sharp kicks — separating the top from the base and scattering leaves in the process. I was sure the table was damaged beyond repair, as I saw the pieces fly through the door. The breakup of the table, the noise of the kicks, the flying leaves, and the excitement of the fire itself all combined in my memory as symbols of the destruction of that day. Fortunately, the pieces were saved, the table was eventually repaired, and my parents used it for many years.

This view from the northeast shows the remains after the fire burned itself out. The east wing's chimney (left) was later knocked down for safety reasons. The other chimney remains to mark the site. The building in the background was a bunkhouse.

Courtesy of the author

Everything in the upper floor of the east wing was destroyed. Arlie, Jess, and I lost most of our personal belongings. Fortunately, Arlie and I had our work clothing at the ranches where we were employed. Nearly all of the Bonners' household goods were safely removed from the west wing of the house.

Viewed from the southeast, the west end of the house just after the fire showed the few remains that had not burned.

Courtesy of the author

The fruits of my labors had allowed me to purchase a 35-mm camera that summer, and at the time of the fire it was located on the main floor of the house. I rescued it early and put it in Dad's pickup truck. When the fire got too hot to reenter the building, I retrieved the camera and set about taking pictures. The camera required some manual settings and the lighting was tricky, but I took the photographs that are published here before I ran out of film. There was considerable shade from the many mature trees, in contrast to the brilliance of the fire. All in all, I am surprised at the quality of the photos.

In the summer of 2002, when I last visited the site, all that remained was the foundation, the single tall chimney that was located at the west end of the house, and the stately Lombardy poplar trees that survived the fire and still surround the site. Remarkably, only five poplar trees were lost in the fire.

The remaining chimney at the P Ranch house site

OHS neg., OrHi 67605

Notes

^1. James Orin Oliphant. On the Cattle Ranges of the Oregon Country (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968), 95–7; Giles French, Cattle Country of Peter French (Portland, Ore.: Binfords & Mort, 1964), 41; Oregon History Project, "The Death of Peter French," interpretive essays, www.ohs.org/education/oregonhistory/learning_center/ and "Oregon Biographies: Peter French," www.ohs.org/education/oregonhistory/Oregon-Biographies-Peter-French.cfm (accessed May 3, 2005).

^2. Elizabeth Lambert Wood, Pete French, Cattle King: A Biographical Novel (Portland, Ore.: Binfords & Mort, 1951); Rankin Crow, Rankin Crow and the Oregon Country, as told to Colleen Connaughy Olp (Ironside, Ore.: Rankin Crow, 1970), 26–32; French, Cattle Country, 109–14.

^3. French, Cattle Country, 110.

^4. Nancy Langston, Where Land and Water Meet: A Western Landscape Transformed (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003), 17, 20–3, 38.

^5. Ibid., 35–7; "Oregon Biographies: Peter French."

^6. See Crow, Rankin Crow, 30; Oliphant, On the Cattle Ranges, 96–7, 189–90, 208–10; William Kittredge, Owning It All (St. Paul, Minn.: Greywolf Press, 1987), 49; French, Cattle Country, 137; Royal Jackson and Jennifer Lee, Harney County: An Historical Inventory (Burns, Ore.: Gail Graphics, 1978), 35.

^7. E.R. Jackman, John Scharff, and Charles Conkling, Steens Mountain in Oregon's High Desert Country (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers, 1967), 57; George Francis Brimlow, Harney County, Oregon, and Its Range Land (Portland, Ore.: Binfords & Mort, 1951), 248.

^8. Jackson and Lee, Harney County, 35. Peter French and Ella Glenn were married in 1883 but divorced in 1891, and Ella never spent time at the Oregon ranch. French, Cattle Country, 101.

^9. "Old White House" Frenchglen, Oregon, #7F, Geneva Publishing, Bend, Ore., 97708, copy in author's possession. The postcard states that the house was built in 1898. There is clearly some confusion, because Peter French was killed in 1897.

^10. French, Cattle Country, 113.

^11. Distances given here are "as the crow flies." The travel distances were longer. In 1947, there were no paved road in the refuge area.

^12. Burns Times-Herald, August 15, 1947.

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