Voices from the Wild Horse Desert

In this book, Jane Clements Monday and Betty Bailey Colley bring together the voices of men and women who make ranching possible in the Wild Horse Desert. From 1989 to 1995, the authors interviewed more than sixty members of vaquero families, ranging in age from 20 to 93. Taken together, their words provide a panoramic view of ranch work and life that spans most of the twentieth century.

The vaqueros and their families describe all aspects of life on the ranches, from working cattle and doing many kinds of ranch maintenance to the home chores of raising children, cooking, and cleaning. The elders recall a life of endless manual labor that nonetheless afforded the satisfaction of jobs done with skill and pride.

The younger people describe how modernization has affected the ranches - from the use of helicopters at roundup to computers that track data on cattle - and how it has changed the lifeways of the people who work there.