Book Description
Founded in 1893, the 101 Ranch was famous across the
country for its touring Wild West shows, which featured
countless cowboys and cowgirls, including Buffalo Bill,
Geronimo, and Bill Picket. Playing to packed arenas from
coast to coast, and even in Europe, the 101 Ranch show came
to embody the spirit of the frontier for the entire nation.
The Miller brothers, who owned the ranch, also found
themselves involved in the formation of Hollywood and western
movies, and the ranch produced many of the earliest western
film stars, including Tom Mix and Buck Jones.
Ten years in the making, this epic story of the 101 Ranch
is nothing less than a sweeping history of the West of myth
and reality. Indeed, the history of the ranch begins in
Kentucky in the early 1840s and continues through most of the
first half of the twentieth century. Describing the legendary
cattle drives from San Antonio along the fabled Chisholm
Trail, as well as the hardscrabble life of cattlemen, Michael
Wallis paints an indelible portrait of the frontier as it
expanded westward in the middle of the nineteenth century.
Colonel George Washington Miller, the founder of the 101,
participated in these cattle drives, and Wallis follows
Miller from Kentucky through Missouri and Kansas and into the
Cherokee Outlet in northern Oklahoma, where he founded the
101 Ranch on the banks of the Salt Fork of the Arkansas
River.
Although the 101 was an enormous, viable ranch that
produced huge profits for the Millers, the family became best
known for its touring shows, in which ranch hands showed off
the kind of bronc-busting activities they performed on the
ranch. Their re-creation of life in the West captured the
imaginations of Americans across the country who longed to
preserve the frontier, even as it began to disappear.
The massive popular interest in the West, evidenced by the
crowds at the 101 Ranch shows, also sparked a growth in
western movies, and the Miller brothers were there to
participate. Dozens of Hollywood's earliest films were shot
on location at the ranch, and man of the 101 Ranch cowboys
starred in these motion pictures.
Following the Miller brothers through their barnstorming
years, Wallis also portrays the origins of the mass
entertainment industry that flourishes today, and shows how
this industry helped to undo the West of reality and preserve
it as a popular mythology. Full of incredible characters and
unbelievable stories, this is an evocative reflection of the
story of America itself, in all its grandeur and all its
foibles.
