Cattle ranchers, attracted by the vast amount of bunchgrass and the
railroad available at Winnemucca, soon began moving herds into the
region. While small, family-owned farms grew on the northern
sections of the county, several vast cattle ranches, financed by
out-of-state owners, developed on the southern end. For the next
several decades, an uneasiness that sometimes erupted in violence
brewed between the settlers and the cattle barons as each jockeyed
for land ownership and water rights.
|
Although the quality of some locations was poor, the federal
government awarded the land grants, the promised incentive. Subsequent
owners of the military road land grant recorded a 24-block plat called
the "Town of Burns" in 1883. One early settler wrote that in the
mid-1880s, "There was nothing attractive about Burns in those days; in
fact it was as raw and crude a little burg as one can well imagine.
There were two saloons, two small mercantile stores, a
rough-and-tumble hotel, a blacksmith shop and a livery stable in the
making." The saloons, by far the most popular businesses, attracted
visiting cow-punchers and settlers, who made it their headquarters
while they were in town.
|
|
|
|
Burns consisted of a hotel, a saloon, and a barber shop in the early
1880s. George McGowan, a merchant from a rival settlement, soon moved
to the town and started a general store with Peter Stenger. When
establishing a post office, Stenger wanted to name the community after
himself, but George Francis Brimlow in "Harney County, Oregon, and Its
Range Land" wrote that McGowan discouraged this, observing that too
many might call it "the Stenger town where they got stung." Instead,
McGowan suggested the name of Burns, after Robert Burns, his favorite
Scottish poet.
|
The
Burns townsite was part of a land grant given the builders of the
Willamette Valley and Cascade Mountain Wagon Road, which extended from
Albany to the Washoe Ferry on the Snake River.
|
|
