It’s hard to imagine that there was a life before all the new homes filled in the spaces
of the spacious lands around our towns. With all the high-tech innovations and new
homes rising, ranch-life as it was in the late 1800’s isn’t thought about much.

We’re visiting today with John Murphy of the Murphy Ranch to capture some of the
labors of ranch-living as he remembers it--before it is all too forgotten.

The Murphy Ranch sits just outside of the Town of Granby and on a somewhat
overcast morning, John Murphy is seen ambling down the road heading toward the
cabin just above his log home where he enjoys life with his wife Carolyn. Driving next
to him, I ask if he’d like a ride. “No”, he said, “this is a good walk for me”. In his hand
he holds an electric bill that he is passing on to his tenant. He looks at the company
car and asks, “Is that one of those hybrid cars?” I replied that it wasn’t and he just
shook his head.

John with his gentle face sits with Carolyn on the sofa and begins the story of the
Murphy Ranch. Jim and Margaret were the oldest Murphy siblings; John being the
youngest. It wasn’t uncommon to ride to school on horseback. John attended school
in Granby where the apartments now stand across from the Community Building. In
the winter, the horses would be stabled in a barn by the Trading Post (now Grand
Mountain Trading).

“On the ranch, we milked cows and sold cream,” John said. “Mom sold a lot of butter
too. She’d milk 5 gallons of cream and head to the depot. Most of the cream was
shipped to Denver and Boulder. We had a well out back and Mom would store the
butter in a bucket and put it down in the cold well-water.

In the winter, we would saw off blocks of ice from the river and pack it in sawdust to
store in the cold shed where we kept our meets. Meats were screened in. We raised
goats for meat.

Our first electric poles were set in 1942. Got all the poles in past the Barnard Ranch.
Then the war started in 1945. Before we had electricity, we used kerosene lanterns.
Mom loved to read and she read by the light of oil lamps. We used kerosene lanterns
to milk the cows and the wind would often blow the flame out. With no bathroom
facilities, you would have to use the outhouse in the middle of the night.

We’d go to bed early because we had no lights. It was dark except for the oil lamps.
Once we had electricity, we stayed up longer and read the Farmer’s Almanac and
Capper’s Weekly.

Every year we shipped 35 carloads of cattle to Omaha with cattle from Kremmling
and North Park ranches (Linkes, Ainsleys, Sheriffs) and it was a big excitement for us.
We’d ride in the caboose and travel back on the California Zephyr.”

After the war, Japanese families would live in colonies above the ranch. They helped
harvest the lettuce fields. Lettuce was a big commodity and there were four packing
plants set up on the riverbed. They shipped lettuce to Chicago, New York and Yuma,
Arizona. They were hard working families. A lettuce warehouse was sitting where the
Old Grand and Silver Spur Restaurant now sit. Lettuce was raised from Yampa to
Tabernash in those early years. Suddenly, it disappeared because they found rust
in the lettuce. Some say it was the soil.

“Things were tough but we always had meat and potatoes. Never missed a meal. The
only thing we didn’t have was fresh fruit. At birthdays, we always had a special treat of
concord grapes. A juice guy would come every few weeks. We’d love to see him, and
he loved to see us—Mom always fed him.”

After the war, there were more responsibilities on the ranch. There was lots of physical,
hard labor. Brother Jim was commissioner for two terms.

John and his family have seen a lot over the years. Like many other ranchers, they have
seen and experienced it all. Unlike today with all the modern conveniences, their lives
were much different then and few today would know what it was like in those early years.
Each ranch story is different in its way, but all have the same backbone---hard working
families with a labor of love for ranch-life.

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