Cowboys ride the range to keep ranching heritage alive




ROUND-UP TIME—Above, Jeff Sparrow, left, Tegan Thomason and Bryce Wilcox lead a herd of cattle to Poe Ranch in the foothills of the Santa Susana Mountains on April 3. Above left, Darwin Mitchell’s spur features his family’s branding logo. Cattlemen continue the ranching tradition in the Simi hills.

ROUND-UP TIME—Above, Jeff Sparrow, left, Tegan Thomason and Bryce Wilcox lead a herd of cattle to Poe Ranch in the foothills of the Santa Susana Mountains on April 3. Above left, Darwin Mitchell’s spur features his family’s branding logo. Cattlemen continue the ranching tradition in the Simi hills.

Wild sage swayed in a gentle, easterly breeze as a train whistle blew in the distance in the oak-dotted Santa Susana foothills north of Simi Valley.

Just after 10 in the morning, the guttural croak of a raven overhead was drowned out by the thunder of hooves and disgruntled moos as around four dozen head of cattle appeared on the northern ridgeline kicking up a cloud of dust as they descended a south-facing slope.

Riders on horseback yelled “hey cow” as they directed the cattle down the ridgeline to the west, where metal corrals were waiting for them in Las Llajas Canyon. Rancher Jeff Sparrow rode past the herd on horseback, a lasso at his side and his horse Cisco’s mane blowing in the wind as he galloped toward the corral.

It’s a scene that has been repeated by members of Sparrow’s family in the Santa Susana Mountains since 1872, when his forebear, Andrew Joughin, bought a sprawling ranch in the foothills above Chatsworth. Sparrow’s family sold the 1,722- acre spread to open space agencies in 2003, and it is now part of Michael D. Antonovich Regional Park between Chatsworth and Simi.

Photos by MICHAEL COONS/Acorn Newspapers

Photos by MICHAEL COONS/Acorn Newspapers

Sparrow now leases land with other cattlemen on the nearby Poe Ranch above Simi Valley so he can continue his family’s ranching tradition. On April 3, the families who share the lease met in the predawn hours to seek out and gather the cattle so they could mark the ears of this year’s calves and separate out the cows destined for market.

Sparrow said he’s not in it for the money. During drought years, he and his fellow ranchers lose cash as they supplement the grazing with hay.

“It has everything to do with maintaining our heritage,” he said.

Sparrow has a pair of chaps that are over 100 years old as well as a vintage hat he plans to hand down to his grandson. The Mitchell family he shares the lease with has been ranching this area for the past 50 years.

The youngest brother, Darwin “Slick” Mitchell, a Teamster by trade who also has a list of movie credits under his belt for wrangling cattle on big-budget productions, wore silver spurs emblazoned with his father’s cattle brand, a “T” and a triangle.

ROPE WORK—Dalon Williams, left, and Darwin Mitchell on the move. MICHAEL COONS/Acorn Newspapers

ROPE WORK—Dalon Williams, left, and Darwin Mitchell on the move. MICHAEL COONS/Acorn Newspapers

Ranchers have grazed cattle in the Santa Susana Mountains since the era of Spanish land grants. The April 3 cattle gathering looked like a scene out of the 19th century, save for the radio equipment in the background on top of Oat Mountain and the occasional airplane overhead. Plus a few of the ranchers rode ATVs for convenience.

One of the cowboys on a “ quad” was Darwin’s older brother, Justin, who has ranched the land with his family since he was 12. He wore a shirt that said, “This is my drinking shirt. And I wear it every day.”

“It’s just what we do. Some people go to the river. We come here. Peace and quiet and no one bothering us,” he said as the engine of his four-wheeler rumbled beneath him.

Almost no one bothers them.

Shortly before the cattle crested the hill, a dirt-bike rider passed through the area. Recreational trail users are prohibited from using motorized vehicles on the open space trails that run through the area, but they do it anyway. Darwin Mitchell said dirt-bike riders cut holes in fences to gain access to the area and those holes allow cattle to escape.

Mountain lions are also a bother. Ranch hand Trent Baker recorded video of a young puma in a nearby clearing shortly before the gathering began.

Once the cattle were penned into corrals in the cool canyon bottom, the ranchers took a break under the shade of an ancient oak tree and ate lunch as they joked about who was the best horseman and who had the most ex-wives. Some showed scars of where they had been gored decades ago. They also spoke tenderly of caring for ailing family members.

It’s not exclusively a man’s world.

When it came time to castrate the calves, 20-year-old Tegan Thomason performed the procedure with a knife and bare hands. She had spent the morning gathering cattle, riding a wild mustang adopted from the Bureau of Land Management,

Thomason was raised around livestock and doesn’t take offense when the other ranchers refer to her and her friends, many of whom participated in Future Farmers of America, as the “FFA mafia,” though she said her preferred nomenclature is “cowgirl.”

“I grew up around this. It’s my life,” she said.

It’s been Newhall resident Bob Jauregui’s life for a much longer time. The 76-year-old remembers when cowboy country stretched from Simi to Newhall.

His family, which includes members of the Cowboy Hall of Fame as well as Western movie stars, owned a ranch on the other side of Oat Mountain opposite from Las Llajas Canyon on land they leased from Standard Oil from the 1920s “until civilization took over.” They even participated in the recovery efforts after the St. Francis Dam collapse in 1928 killed over 400 people.

The Jauregui property was sold to the Walt Disney Co. and became part of the Golden Oak Ranch in the 1990s, but the family name still graces historical landmarks in the Santa Clarita Valley.

Darwin Mitchell said Jauregui was “a horseman’s horseman,” and during their most recent roundup Jauregui rode a 5-year-old horse named Grumpy. Jauregui is a contemporary of other ranching scions like Wyatt McCrea, whose family donated hundreds of acres of ranchland between Thousand Oaks and Moorpark to be protected in perpetuity.

Not everyone at the gathering was as expert as Jauregui. Some were hobbyist horse riders with little experience working cattle, often referred to as “weekenders.”

The septuagenarian was asked what the hardest part of gathering cattle was.

“Getting these people to come back a second time,” Jauregui said, standing next to Grumpy.

“Everybody wants to be a cowboy until it’s time to do cowboy things,” Darwin Mitchell said.