Settling the Land
Early Settlement and Expansion
It took ten years after the passage of the Homestead Act for settlers to arrive in the Blitzen Valley. Dr. Hugh Glenn of California took advantage of the 1862 Act to begin building a vast cattle empire in southeastern Oregon. In 1872, he sent Peter French to Oregon with 1,200 head of cattle, six vaqueros, and a cook. French used the Act to claim 160 acres at the south end of the Blitzen Valley for his employer. Using this property as the headquarters for the ranch he managed for Glenn, French continued to acquire land over the next 25 years through the Homestead Act as well as the Swamp Land and Desert Acts. He eventually managed a ranch encompassing more than 140,000 acres, including the Blitzen, Diamond, and Catlow Valleys.
Changes to the Landscape
Under each of these Acts, applicants were required to make “improvements” to the land for agricultural purposes, including improvements related to livestock grazing. These requirements transformed the Blitzen Valley and surrounding areas from the more natural conditions associated with the period before European contact into the highly altered landscape seen today.
Roads were constructed, and water was directed into ditches to drain or irrigate areas. Streams were impounded to control the direction and velocity of their flow. Meadows were hayed, and uplands were grazed.
The Blitzen Valley Land Company
After French’s death in 1897, the ranch was managed as the French-Glenn Livestock Company. In 1907, debts forced the sale of the land to Henry L. Corbett and C.E.S. Wood of Portland. They formed the Blitzen Valley Land Company and placed area rancher William Hanley in charge. The company’s goal was to return the property to a successful working ranch.
To achieve this goal, the company needed to improve water distribution throughout the valley. Between 1907 and 1913, it channelized 17½ miles of the Donner und Blitzen River to improve drainage in adjacent wetlands. The company also authorized the construction of eight miles of the Busse Ditch and four miles of the Stubblefield Ditch to improve water distribution in the northern end of the valley.
The Eastern Oregon Livestock Company
In 1916, the company was reorganized as the Eastern Oregon Livestock Company (EOLC). During the reorganization, Louis Swift of the Swift Packing Company of Chicago purchased 46 percent of the company. That same year, the construction of a Union Pacific rail line from Ontario to Crane made it easier to ship livestock to market.
Swift was interested in both the cattle raised on the ranch and the thousands of feral pigs in the Blitzen Valley. Under his direction, the pigs were rounded up and herded to Crane, where they were loaded onto stock cars and transported to his meat-packing plant in Chicago.
Reclamation, Dairies, and the Sale to the Government
In 1920, the company established the Blitzen River Reclamation District. Tracts of 160 acres were laid out and leased through a sharecropping arrangement. Several dairies were established on these tracts, and the EOLC used the railroad at Crane to ship dairy products out of the county.
The EOLC also established a hotel and store at Frenchglen in the mid-1920s. In 1918, an irrigation ditch was constructed from Page Springs along the west side of the valley to what is now known as Krumbo Lane. In 1928, Swift bought out Corbett’s controlling shares in the company and owned the ranch until 1935, when he sold it to the U.S. government.