Ranchers round up horses to make way for development

COLOCKUM, Wash. – For 20 years, Claude Miller and Dick Blue have leased 11,000 acres in central Washington's Colockum hills for grazing land for their 250 to 300 horses, which are used in youth camps and resorts across Washington state.

The horses might still travel, but their home base will change beginning this week, as scores of volunteers gathered to help Miller and Blue round up their horses from the open land south of Wenatchee to make room for possible housing developments.

"It's kind of a sad day," Blue said. "There aren't many of these kinds of places, grazing ranches, like this anymore. They're hard to find. This is the end of cowboying as we know it."

Miller-Blue Outfitters opened for business as a small operation in 1970. Today, Miller-Blue partners with at least 12 different youth groups, resorts and churches throughout Washington.

"Over the years, I guess we've seen about 1.5 million children ride our horses and by the summer, we'll have about 1,000 children a day on one of our horses," Blue said. "This wasn't meant to be a moneymaking operation. We weren't really having to make a living with it."

He later added: "The disappearance of ranches is a sign of the times. With property values out of sight, grazing ranches are disappearing because of development and becoming a thing of the past in this part of the country."

More than 200 horses were rounded up on Sunday, and the effort continued Monday.

"It's the end of an era," said LeRoy Gray, one of the volunteers and a close friend of both men. "I guess when one goes away, another begins."

Miller-Blue Outfitters is gearing up to send its horses to summer youth camps as it has done for years. But around Labor Day, once summer activities are over, the horses will go to Miller's 534 acres in the Methow Valley.

While Miller said he's not sure whether their outfit will ever find property large enough to hold all of the horses like the property in Colockum, he said neither he nor Blue have any hard feelings about having to move them.

"It isn't just happening here, it's all around," Miller said. "That's just how life is. It rolls and then it goes on."