101 Ranch

Along the road to Ponca City, Okla., last week, two motorists halted at the sight of an overturned roadster. They found under the car the body of a man, his head pinned beneath a front wheel. On the way to a hospital the injured man died. He was George Miller, millionaire ranchman, oilman, farmer-man, circus-man. With his death passed the second of the three Miller Brothers whose 101 Ranch was famed throughout the Southwest, whose 101 Ranch Wild West Show was famed throughout the world. Col. Joe Miller, onetime head of ranch and show, was found dead in his garage, killed by monoxide gas, less than a year ago. Surviving is Brother Zack Miller.

Circus. To thousands of U. S. citizens the 101 Ranch Wild West Show represented the embodiment, the incarnation of that vanished West in which cowboys had not become associated with drugstores and Indians were not graduates of Carlisle. Many a European, too, saw the 101 Ranch Show, doubtless gained from it the impression that travelers in the western portion of the U. S. trembled before the tomahawk and the six-shooter. Begun informally, casually, when the Millers permitted some of their cowboys to perform at a local fair, the 101 Ranch Show grew into a circus that netted the Millers a million dollars a year. Sideshows it had, and freaks, and many a Bearded Lady and Human Skeleton vacationed during the winter in elegant quarters on the Millers' luxurious ranch at Marland, Okla. But it was essentially a Wild West Show, with buffaloes and cattle, cow-men and cowgirls, pistols and scalping knives, and the sure-fire big scene of the Attack on the Stage Coach, with round-eyed, heart-pounding spectators writhing on the edges of pine-board seats.

Farm. Yet though it is the 101 Ranch Show that has carried the fame of the Millers from Tulsa to Borneo, it is the 101 Ranch itself which represents the Miller Brothers' greatest accomplishment. The Ranch today includes 110,000 acres, 45,000 of which are owned by the Miller family.

In 1903, at the death of Colonel Miller (father of the Miller brothers) the family was, as Zack Miller remarked, "flat as the prairie." Once it had been a great cattle family. In 1880, old Colonel Miller had built the first barb wire fence in the district. But the very necessity for a barb wire fence was an indication that the old free days were passing. In 1893 the district, opened to homesteaders, began to change from a cattle to a farming region. The old Colonel continued to raise nothing but cattle, ran into the Panic of the '90's, crashed. A Kansas City commission house, owing him $300,000, failed. Creditors arrived, drove off the cattle, left the Millers with 88 ancient horses and cattle, cripples and runts.

During the winter the Millers sold their few remaining cattle to the Indians; decided that they too would change from cattle to farming, but on a scale that would bring back the departed glory of the Miller house. Next spring they put in 5,000 acres of wheat, harvested a record crop of 70,000 bushels, sold at $1.20 a bushel in Chicago. The Cattle Millers were the Farmer Millers then.

On the 101 Ranch today grows everything that the soil will bear, from figs to okra. They have an annual yield of 45,000 bushels of wheat, 150,000 bushels of corn, 40,000 bushels of apples in an orchard that is as yet only one-third bearing. There is an experimental orchard of 175 acres, with no two trees of the same kind. From results obtained in this experimental orchard has come a tract of 50,000 black walnut trees. The Millers have also their own oil wells, and a refinery in which crude oil turns into gasoline for Miller tractors, engines, power houses. On the ranch are 400 employes, 450 work mules, 100 brood mares, 100 cow ponies.

Said the Millers: "We figured that it wasn't much harder to do things in a big way than it was to worry along in a small way. We figured it was no worse to fail big than to fail little; but ever so much better to win big."

The Millers, having become farmers, by no means ceased to be cattlemen. Last year when the cattlemen of Florida were alarmed by a tick plague and began dumping their stock on the market, two strangers from the west appeared in Florida. They said they were just "a couple of farmers" looking for "a few cows." They were the Miller brothers, and the "few cows" they purchased totaled 36,000 head, requiring 800 freight cars for their westward journey. Just on their way home the Millers sold 26,000 head at fat profit.