Shirk, David L., Ranch

About this property

The David L. Shirk Ranch is a historic ranch located in the Guano Valley of eastern Lake County, Oregon, United States. The ranch was originally homesteaded in 1881. It was purchased by David L. Shirk in 1883. He operated the ranch until 1914. The property was acquired by the United States Government in 1942. The ranch is now administered by the Bureau of Land Management. The remaining historic ranch buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Shirk Ranch is located on Bureau of Land Management property in the remote Guano Valley of southeastern Oregon. The ranch complex is in the Oregon high desert, just south of the Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge in the northwest corner of the Great Basin region of North America. Native peoples inhabited the area for at least 10,000 years prior to the arrival of European explorers. The Northern Paiutes occupied the area prior to the arrival of European settlers. They had adapted to the high desert environment by living in scattered groups and moving frequently to take advantage of season lakes and migrating game animals. In the first half of the 19th century, the area around the Shirk Ranch was explored by trappers and several military expeditions. In 1865, the United States Army built Old Camp Warner on the southeastern slope of Hart Mountain along upper Guano Creek. However, the post was abandoned within a year. A few years later, the Oregon Central Military Wagon Road was built through the Guano Valley on its way from Eugene, Oregon to Silver City, Idaho. However, that venture was really a scam intended to acquire government land rather than create a viable road. As a result, the "road" was never more than a desert track. There was no permanent settlement in the area until a decade later when cattlemen began to take advantage of the open range in southeastern Oregon for grazing. The Shirk Ranch property was originally homesteaded by R.A. Turner around 1881 and then sold to William Herron. Shirk bought the ranch from Herron in 1883. When Shirk purchased the land, there were three building on the property, a house and two sheds. There is no record of the size of the property when Shirk bought it, but county tax records show the ranch was 480 acres in 1887. David L. Shirk was born in Parke County, Indiana in 1844. He was the oldest of nine children. He left home at the age of 22 to travel west. He spent several years working as a cowboy on cattle drives from Texas to southern Idaho. His younger brother William joined him in 1874, and together they moved to Oregon. They both made land claims in the Catlow Valley in what is now Harney County, Oregon.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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