Father’s Not Coming Home

Oil on Canvas
10″ x 8 ”
$400
Contact to Purchase

Tucker/Branum Ranch
With his wife and ten children, William Tucker claimed his second homestead at the age of 56. Their first had been in South Dakota, but the government took the land away when minerals were discovered on the property. Unfortunately his 161 acres consisted mainly of rocks, pines, gullies and hills. The land could never support a family of this size, so his wife and children did the farming, while he was the hired hand on other ranches and graded the new roads for the county. He did manage to build a tiny two-story cabin for his family and a few barns. His neighbor, Rufus Branum, with a wife and four children, claimed their 280 acres from the federal government when Rufus was 44 years old. As he did for the Tuckers, President Wilson signed the patent allowing Rufus to claim the land. He, too, built a house and some out-buildings, and drilled a well for water which caved in forcing him to use water from a now defunct spring. Little else is know about these two pioneer families. Both probably moved on in the Great Depression, and all that remains are the stone fragments of two buildings, rotting boards, some square nails, fencing, a dug-out place, and the pipe leading to the well. It is rather symbolic that on the day I saw these remnants a dead bird lay in the dust.