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The life of a sheep-herder is a peculiarly lonely one. Often months pass without giving him the opportunity of seeing a human being. His faithful dog is his only companion. He generally has a team and a covered wagon in which he sleeps at night during the winter, and wherein he stores the necessary provisions for his daily food. It is his duty to seek the best available pasturage, and, when the grass in one neighborhood has been exhausted, to drive the flock to a new and fresh supply. It is not to be wondered at that such a life often ends in insanity. It is said that the asylums are repleted year by year by a large contingent of these unfortunates. Indeed, their lot is a most pathetic one, and they sometimes even lose the power of speech and forget their own names.
If you only knew the hardships these poor men endure. They go two together and sometimes it is months before they see another soul, and rarely ever a woman. Thus, without telling Mr. Stewart [Writer's note, In Burntfork there was a mutual hatred between cattlemen and sheepmen], for Christmas, Elinore and a neighbor prepared care packages for the sheepherders. On Christmas Day the two women made the rounds of the sheep camps in a four-horse sleigh delivering the goodies: There were twelve camps and that means twenty-four men. We roasted six geese, boiled three small hams and three hens. We had besides several meat-loaves and links of sausage. We had twelve large loaves of the best rye bread; a small tub of doughnuts; twelve coffee-cakes, more to be called fruitcakes, and also a quantity of little cakes with seeds, nuts, and fruit in them,--so pretty to look at and so good to taste. These had a thick coat of icing, some brown, some pink, some white. I had thirteen pounds of butter and six pint jars of jelly, so we melted the jelly and poured it into twelve glasses.  Sheep wagon, 1936
 Interior Sheep Wagon, Photo by Geoff Dobson
 Sheepherder and his dog, 1906 Mrs. Stewart wrote of the daughter of settlers whose sympathies lay with the cattlemen: The Edmonsons had only one child, a daughter, who was to have married a man whom her parents objected to solely because he was a sheep-man, while their sympathies were with the cattle-men, although they owned only a small bunch. To gain their consent the young man closed out his interest in sheep, at a loss, filed on a splendid piece of land near them, and built a little home for the girl he loved. Before they could get to town to be married Grandpa was stricken with rheumatism. Grandma was already almost past going on with it, so they postponed the marriage, and as that winter was particularly severe, the young man took charge of the Edmonson stock and kept them from starving. As soon as he was able he went for the license. Mrs. O'Shaughnessy and a neighbor were hunting some cattle that had wandered away and found the poor fellow shot in the back. He was not yet dead and told them it was urgently necessary for them to hurry him to the Edmonsons' and to get some one to perform the marriage ceremony as quickly as possible, for he could not live long. They told him such haste meant quicker death because he would bleed more; but he insisted, so they got a wagon and hurried all they could. But they could not outrun death. When he knew he could not live to reach home, he asked them to witness all he said. Everything he possessed he left to the girl he was to have married, and said he was the father of the little child that was to come. He begged them to befriend the poor girl he had to leave in such a condition, and to take the marriage license as evidence that he had tried to do right. The wagon was stopped so the jolting would not make death any harder, and there in the shadow of the great twin buttes he died. They took the body to the little home he had made, and Mrs. O'Shaughnessy went to the Edmonsons' to do what she could there. Poor Cora Jane didn't know how terrible a thing wounded pride is. She told her parents her misdeeds. They couldn't see that they were in any way to blame. They seemed to care nothing for her terrible sorrow nor for her weakened condition. All they could think of was that the child they had almost worshiped had disgraced them; so they told her to go.The young man's house and lands were placed in the name of the infant daughter. Twelve years later, the grandparents, themselves, were raising sheep.
 Sheep wagon, March 1940, photo by A. Rothstein Sheep wagons were supposedly invented by Rawlins blacksmith James Candlish in 1884. Around 1900, Schulte Hardware Company of Casper standardized the wagon as 11 feet long and 6 1/2 feet wide, canvas top and stove. By 1904, sheep wagons were being manufactured in the Big Horn Basin by D. V. Bayne of Thermopolis. The wagons later could be purchased from, among others the Studebaker Brothers of Southbend, Indiana. Some are still in use in the Big Horn Basin. The Basin is not the only place in the state, however, where sheep wagons were used until comparatively recently. The above scene is on U.S. Highway 30, the Lincoln Highway, in Sweetwater County.
 Sheep wagon, March 1940, photo by A. Rothstein
 Wool awaiting shipment, Cokeville, approx. 1910. With World War II, due to a shortage of manpower the decline increased. Although Wyoming in 1910 had approximately 5 1/2 million sheep, today it has barely 10% that number, hardly more than the number of people in the state.
 Sheep, U.S. Rte. 30, 1941, photo by J. Baylor Roberts And yet although the sheepgrowing industry has faded and many of the shearing sheds have fallen into rack and ruin, on short-grass plains traces of the lives of the lonely sheepherder may still be seen. Across Montana, the Dakotas, eastern Oregon, and Wyoming on distant ridges and buttes occasionally will be observed cairns, called by some "rock johnnies." They at first may remind one of cairns seen in northern Scotland. They are sheepherder's monuments constructed by sheepherders in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when sheepherding was a major industry. Writers now disagree as to the purpose of the monuments, did they serve as a guide or signpost pointing to water, or were they constructed to relieve lonliness? Both hypothesises have been put forth. Cope in "Sheep-Herder vs. Cow-Puncher": All over the sheep country in the mountains you may see what are locally known as "herder's monuments"; they are piles of stones which have been slowly gathered by the herders and built into fantastic forms, the attempts of the men to save themselves from the insanity that comes from perfect idleness. Frequentlyt hey find the bleached bones of a man on the bench lands, a herder who has yielded; whose mind has given way under the strain of the great wastes and the life with the band; who has shot himself. His band has wandered away, dropped over a precipice, or coalesced with some other band.
 Sheepherder's Monument, 1942, photo by John Vachon
"I builded me a Monument
"It stands just south of Punkin Butte
"No, it'll not be lonesome for me;
"And the Kiote will sing his song
From Shipp, E. Richard: Inermountain Folk Songs of their Days and Ways;
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