Horseshoe Ranch, Nevada

Horseshoe Ranch, Beowawe, Nevada

Hilary Hinckley, the great great granddaughter of George W. Grayson whose family owned the Horseshoe Ranch, Beowawe, NV from approximately the 1880s into the 1930s, contacted us to kindly share an archive of family and vintage Nevada ranch photos.

She said, "I have recently finished scanning, editing, and labeling about 600 photos taken in the late 1920s. I can’t believe that with all the stock work, farming, cowboys and maintenance that they allowed for the expense and time to hire a phototograher. The prints are fabulous and somehow endured several house fires and plenty of moves.
"There are some GREAT cowboy shots, landscape, farming, and life in general. My grandfather Grayson W Hinckley, Sr, was the manager for for about 7 years, his mother Mary Grayson Hinckley was the daughter of George.

"George Washington Grayson was born in Kentucky in 1829. By the age of 20 he rode across the country to California before the Gold Rush in 1849. He made some money there and returned to Kentucky to marry Eliza Jane Baker in 1851. They returned to California in a covered wagon. George's interests turned to mining and livestock with the intention of selling meat to the miners and the new cities of the West. In 1862 he and a partner bought the Horseshoe Ranch on the Humboldt River forty five miles west of Elko, Nevada near the town of Beowawe. The ranch controlled 200,000 acres at the time, some 25000 under fence.
By 1890 George owned the ranch and after his death in 1912, ownership passed to his two daughters. His son had proceeded him in death. His grandson Grayson W. Hinckley, Sr. managed the ranch from 1924 to 1936. The Hinckley family home base was in San Francisco and Oakland, California, but the heart of family, evidenced by the continual gatherings, remained at the Horseshoe Ranch, a legacy kept alive in the family by the photos of that era."
Click on photos for larger views.