Ranch Swap

In the middle of the 19th Century a roving U. S. couple named Rice arrived in Oregon aboard a sailing ship, heard tall tales of Indian massacres in the interior, hastily re-embarked for Hawaii. There they settled on the island of Kauai. Last week a great-granddaughter of the roving Rices prepared to move from her Kauai acres to the biggest ranch in Oregon, whose 275 square miles include the site of the massacres that frightened off her ancestors. Her husband, big, friendly Frederick Warren Wichman, onetime Stanford University oarsman and footballer (Class of 1914), seven times Representative in the Hawaiian Legislature, bought the famed 200,000-acre Hay Creek sheep and cattle ranch east of the Cascades near the village of Madras, 150 miles southeast of Portland.

What the King Ranch is to Texas, what William Randolph Hearst's San Simeon is to California, the Hay Creek is to Oregon. Hay Creek (and the Bonnyview Ranch with which it is combined) is an L-shaped tract stretching 100 miles from the southern to the western boundary. The main ranch settlement is as big as a good-sized village. In lambing time the huge "maternity hospital" will sleep 3,000 ewes.

For the last 16 years the Hay Creek Ranch has been owned by William U. Sanderson, a onetime Australian sheepman, who took the Wichman house, ranch and cattle in Kauai in part payment for his ranch. The full price for Hay Creek remained a secret. Under Sheepman Sanderson its flock of 20,000 Rambouillets became the world's finest. For breeding purposes the Soviet Commissar of Agriculture has bought a total of 27,000. Hay Creek Rambouillet sheep are so big that the herders entertain visitors by riding them. Other Hay Creek livestock include 100 blooded horses, 5,000 purebred Herefords.

Rancher Wichman believes the drought era is over, plans to build up his new flock of sheep to 30,000. Son of a Honolulu sugar and cattle man, he fought in the French artillery after college, returned to San Francisco to buy a New York Stock Exchange seat, which he sold before Depression, retiring to Hawaii. Now he is returning to the mainland to educate his three sons.

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