The Neighborhood Bachelors

Oil on Barnwood
26″ x 21″
$1300
Contact to Purchase

Steffen Ranch
William Steffen and his brother, Ferdinand, Fred for short, were helping farm their father’s place in North Dakota, but they were searching for a new frontier. They wanted to be ranchers! In 1907 they found their dream outside Glendive – hilly land, which they felt was good for cattle and undesirable to farmers so here their cowboy adventures began.

A serious drawback to frontier life was the scarcity of womenfolk. So, when the boys wanted a night out, they’d dress to the nines, pour their home-made brews and distillates into jugs and bottles, and celebrate a men’s night out. Why they were standing in the dirt near the incipient walls of a root cellar or a barn will never be known. Perhaps they were celebrating its construction, or perhaps it was just a good place to get out of the wind. No one knows, and it doesn’t matter, for they clearly had a grand time. Fred is not among the revelers, for he had been smitten by that wonderful invention, the camera, and took the picture.

The only fellow that can be identified was Bill, the handsome chap on the left. Dressed like a real cowpoke he looks like the fellow any girl would dream of catching. Yet, he is the only one in that group of chums never married. A unique individual, he even lived in a cave for a while. He worked hard too, and when he died he left one of the oldest, hardiest, continuous herds of cattle under one brand in Dawson County.

On top of the highest hill on what was once Bill’s land, his nephews, Clarence and John, have placed a Jayhawk stacker as a monument to their uncle.