Basque Sheepherder Aspen Carvings

 

Artwork, from pigs' faces to skulls and crossbones, can also be seen on the opposite side.

T. Medford

For over a century, inhabitants and visitors alike have been leaving their mark on the smooth white bark of quaking aspen trees found throughout the Great Basin. Called arborglyphs or dendroglyphs, these carvings are often historic. Many were left behind by herders working in the region’s sheep industry, which boomed at the turn of the twentieth century but has since been in decline.

The oldest arborglyphs throughout the region were left behind by Basque sheepherders. These Basques were immigrants, often young men, who dominated the industry’s workforce in its heyday. While Basques are usually associated with historic arborglyphs, later arborglyphs were carved by sheepherders from Peru and Mexico. Cattlemen also carved, but less frequently. The most recent carvings have been left behind by hikers, but this is strictly prohibited!

Sheepherding in the Great Basin

The region’s sheep industry can trace its roots to the California gold rush in 1848. Thousands sought to strike it rich, creating a demand for animal products like meat and wool. Mining booms in what is now Nevada brought that demand across the Sierra Nevada and into the Great Basin’s high deserts.

Neavada’s unregulated and mostly un-peopled open ranges provided excellent forage for sheep. While droughts had hurt the cattle industry, sheep were well-suited to being fattened up in a dry, harsh environment. While cattle grazing was dominant in the West (and remains so), it required more property and more labor than sheepherding. Lone sheepherders with no experience could watch over bands of hundreds of grazing sheep for weeks at a time.

 

In this example, we see initials, a home country, and even a useful message - H20, water, may be found nearby.

T. Medford

The Basques

The West’s early sheepherders were a diverse bunch, including immigrants from Ireland, Scotland, China, and Mexico. But no group gained as much notoriety as the Basques.

The Basque region stretches across a swath of northern Spain and a bit of southwestern France, and includes both coastal and hilly inland areas, like the mountainous terrain of the Western Pyrenees. The Basques are believed to be one of the oldest ethnic groups in Europe, and are held together by a common language, euskara.

Some of the earliest and most notable Basque sheepherders gained experience herding in South America before making their way to the American West. Later on, inexperienced Basques joined them. The largest wave of Basque immigration was between 1890 and 1920, the heyday of sheepherding. By 1910, there were 1.1 million sheep in Nevada, but only about 81,000 people. Twenty-five percent of the state’s population were foreign-born immigrants!

But why did they come? Traditionally, in Basque culture, family property was only transferred to the eldest male. Furthermore, in Spain, economic conditions were difficult. So many young men followed in the footsteps of other male relatives and made their way to America to find opportunity and upward mobility.

Sheepherder Life

Sheepherding can be a lonely occupation. Basque immigrants were also unaccustomed to living in a desert, so it could be quite the shock. Dominique Laxalt, a French Basque who came to Nevada, later recounted that “they sent me into the deserts with a dog and 3,000 sheep…in the first months, how many times I cried in my camp bed at night.” He was just sixteen then.¹

Herders like Laxalt were responsible for moving with the sheep and with the seasons, protecting their grazing sheep from predators. The days were long. They often went weeks without seeing another person, but some were periodically resupplied by a camp tender.

When we look at historic aspen arborglyphs, we have a tangible link to one part of the Great Basin’s story. We are reminded of sheepherders’ resilience in the face of loneliness and adversity, and of the courage that it takes to move thousands of miles away from one’s home.

 

This herder, probably the same one known as "CP," calls himself "El muchacho universitario" — the university boy!

T. Medford

Arborglyphs

Arborglyphs throughout the region share many common themes. Often, herders carved their names, the year, and the names of places, like hometowns or their country of origin. Sometimes, carvings were messages or even artwork depicting animals, women, or faces. We can assume that sheepherders likely didn’t expect for their carvings to be seen by anyone, and if they did, only by other sheepherders. The West was even more sparsely settled at the time, and the idea of being considerate of the environment was still very new.

Much of the “why” for carving trees can be attributed to boredom. While sheepherders may not have had friends around or other ways to pass the time, they usually had a knife or nail — and plenty of trees. Naturally, human beings want to be remembered. Or writing one’s hometown, for example, might’ve created a link to what the herders had left behind.

Aspens can survive up to 100 years or even longer in the West. This unfortunately means that many of the earliest Basque carvings have already been lost to naturally-dying trees; disturbances like wildfire are another threat to these historical resources. Some folks have been working to record arborglyphs throughout the region, including in Great Basin National Park. A project to document arborglyphs here began in 2006.

Sheepherding and Arborglyphs in the Park

Many of the park’s arborglyphs are concentrated in the Strawberry Creek area, on or near the Upper Strawberry Creek trail.

Sheepherding first reached White Pine County in 1897, and by 1914, a prominent Basque named Guy Saval even owned a large ranch in Baker. While little is known about early sheepherding here, we know that Basque herders were grazing sheep at Strawberry Creek in the early-twentieth century at the same time as cattlemen.

Sheepherding in the Great Basin began to decline after 1934 following the passage of the Taylor Grazing Act. It established stricter grazing regulations, and permits often favored cattle operations. In addition, conditions in the Basque region had begun to improve, so fewer were immigrating. By the late-twentieth century, many sheepherders were Peruvian or Mexican rather than Basque; the occupation could still still draw industrious young men seeking a better life. At Strawberry Creek, many of the arborglyphs were probably carved by a Peruvian herder in the 1980s.

Although sheepherding in the Snake Valley is starting to disappear, it is a way of life that has sustained many families even into the last few decades.

Remember that new aspen carvings are considered vandalism. The area’s resources — including the aspens — are protected within park boundaries, to remain unaltered for the enjoyment of other visitors. Historic arborglyphs allow us to step into the shoes of folks that walked this ground before us, during a different era of land use. Creating new ones defeats that purpose.

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¹ Robert Laxalt, “Basque Sheepherders: Lonely Sentinels of the American West” in National Geographic vol. 129, no. 6, 1966, p. 877.