Newspapers In Education Visit NIE online at www.sidneydailynews.com, www.troydailynews.com or www.dailycall.com
NIE Coordinator: Dana Wolfe / Graphic Designer: Scarlett E. Smith
Cowboys in Ohio You might be thinking from the title that this article is about two famous movie cowboys from Ohio—Hopalong Cassidy (also known as William Lawrence Boyd from Cambridge), and Roy Rogers (Leonard Slye of Ducks Run, near Portsmouth) But it’s not. Ohio has real, honest-to-goodness cowboys who work for the Dickinson Cattle Company, the largest cattle ranch east of the Mississippi River. You can see the company’s steers with their six-foot-long horns grazing alongside Interstate 70. The company is based on reclaimed mining land in the Muskrat Valley area of Belmont County, where it raises Texas Longhorn, Dutch BueLingo and African Watusi cattle. Darol Dickinson was a Colorado rancher facing big problems during the drought of 1993. The grass in his pastures was gone and hay was expensive, if he could get it. Then he met Bill Farson, a visiting Ohio beef farmer, who showed him pictures of his cattle in waist-high grass in Ohio’s Appalachian foothills. His interest piqued, Dickinson and his family visited the area and discovered a great place to raise longhorn cattle that was also close to interstate highways. He leased land and soon moved 1,400 Texas longhorn cattle and exotic Watusi steers to the 2-mile-by-4-mile ranch. The exotic—by Ohio standards—cattle and the cowboys with their ten-gallon hats and cowboy boots caused quite a stir in the area. There was so much interest that ranch work wasn’t getting completed; too many people were stopping by to view a real working ranch. So the working ranch became a tourist attraction. In the summer months, purple and white school buses with local guides offer visitors a 75-minute escorted tour. One stop includes a lake where guests may feed huge fish, visit a pheasant aviary and see an educational historical narrative about raising cattle, conservation, and modern ranch practices.
Darol Dickinson on his ranch (photograph courtesy of the Columbus Dispatch)
Words to Know: narrative exotic drought aviary piqued Interstate For Discussion: 1. Many people travel in the summer for vacations. What farm animals could you see while traveling? What animals would you expect to see on an Ohio farm? 2. You can see cattle and dairy cows at county fairs. What breeds are most commonly shown there? How do the breeds that are raised on the Dickinson differ from the ones you usually see? 3. If you were to visit the Dickinson Cattle Company, what would you expect to see?
Newspaper Activity: Create a newspaper advertisement that encourages vacationers to visit and tour the Dickinson Cattle Company.
“Ohio: The Inside Story” is produced through a grant from The Ohio Newspapers Foundation, a nonprofit charitable and educational organization affiliated with The Ohio Newspaper Association. This is one of a series of 24 Ohio profiles.
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