A Northwest Cattle Baron

A Northwest Cattle Baron

Susan Allen
Susan Allen

 

Texas has a rich history of cattle barons and so does the Northwest. While not nearly the scale of Texas or as famous there  were interesting characters in our early cattle history.   I’m Susan Allen, I'll tell you about one of them after the break. In 1854 nineteen year old Ben Snipes traveled through the rich grassland of the Yakima Valley and Kittitas County and saw a land filled  with opportunity. The teenager learned that British Columbia was full of hungry gold miners, so with an young  Indian boy as his only hand,  Ben drove 102 head of cattle into Canada. Meat starved miners paid as much as a hundred times the herd’s original price netting young Ben $12,000, a huge sum in that era that launched  his cattle dynasty. Snipes became the first white man to settle in the Yakima Valley and in his 20’s, (think about the twenty year old’s you know),  it is estimated Ben ran one hundred and twenty five thousand head of cattle and twenty thousand  horses.  Forecasting the end of the drives, Snipes diversified and invested in a flour mill at the Dalles and banks in Ellensburg and Roslyn Washington while building his mansion on over 100 acres of what would become on day become downtown  Seattle.   Ben Snipes was inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame’s Hall of Great Westerners. His intuition regarding the fortune to be made supplying meat to hungry miners, and his skill at moving herds of cattle through raw wilderness made Ben Snipes one of the  Northwest's first cattle barons.  
 
Previous ReportOpen Range Law
Next ReportFall Pasture Warning