Editor’s note: Our staff was saddened to hear of the passing this week of an iconic American cowboy, Lowell Johnston. We last saw Lowell in Eads on Saturday of the Fair just a couple of weeks ago—he was taking in the parade. The following interview took place in 2016 and was published in one of our first Summer Guide magazines that year.
When people try to picture an image of the classic American cowboy, there’s a good chance that what comes to mind looks a great deal like Lowell Johnston. More than 80 years old, he’s slender, straight-backed and probably still more at home on horseback than afoot. A quiet man of few words, he looks a person straight in the eye when he speaks. He listens the same way, patiently, yet there’s no doubt that, while he’s listening, he’s also weighing the truth of the words he hears and the trustworthiness of the person who’s saying them.
It was no easy feat getting Lowell to agree to an interview. When asked, he was always polite and honest and offered up his hesitation without apology. “We’re pretty isolated out here. We like to keep it that way. And I’m a very private man. We don’t like to brag.” Of course, he would say those things. It was the truth about who he is, who his wife is. Eventually, after three months, that many phone calls and the promise to not ask or write anything that made him uncomfortable, he agreed. But it was, by no means, a done deal. His last words before hanging up, “I’m not sure about this.”
The Johnston’s ranch is located in the far northwest corner of Kiowa County, just a mile east and a mile south of the Lincoln County line. It’s also where Lowell and his wife, Joyce, have lived since the day they married 59 years ago. Their house is over 100 years old, the only change, a family room they built on themselves. (“The bathroom was the other addition,” Joyce adds, with a chuckle.) Despite the “dobe” soil that can be hard as a rock when dry and stick to the shovel when wet, there are splashes of flowers in the front yard of the house, a testimony to Joyce growing up on a farm.
This property is not the only property in the Johnston family; Lowell’s father, Ernest, had a homestead south of Haswell, and his mother, Almee, had a homestead east of Arlington. Some of the property is also co-owned with his brother, but, unsurprisingly, Lowell wasn’t willing to share the exact number of acres they own. In his words, “People will say we’re either braggin’ or lyin’, and we don’t do either.”
Size notwithstanding, the Johnston property is a reflection of their family values and, perhaps, the practices that enabled them to continue ranching when others were not. There are no shiny, new pick-ups in the driveway, no fleet of fancy equipment in the shed. The property, like its owners, is unassuming, modest and maintained to last.
For the last few years, Lowell and Joyce have leased out their pasture and run no cattle of their own. Their only responsibility is making sure there’s water, which, Lowell says, is a full time job. Yet, despite wooden corrals that now stand empty and outbuildings with doors now pulled shut, it’s easy to see that, when the ranch was up and running, it was quite a place in its day.
Lowell greets me at the door, with a nod hello. I step inside the house, and Joyce nods at me from where she stands at the window. She’s friendly but guarded. And her goal? Protecting Lowell.
They lead me back to the kitchen, and take seats side by side at the kitchen table, the place where all major decisions are made. “My father and his brothers came here from Eastern Kansas in a covered wagon,” he says. “That was in 1910. They surveyed—or did what they had to do—and then came back on the train in 1911 with the horses and equipment and things. There was a history of TB in my family and they needed a dry place to live.” At this point, he pauses with just a hint of a smile. “They sure found it, didn’t they.”
And so begins the story of Lowell Johnston.
Lowell’s father and uncles originally settled not far from where he now lives. “When they first got here,” he says, “they thought it was really something. Gramma grass up to their knees. Couldn’t hardly dig a well without hitting water.” But then came the dirty thirties, and that changed everything. “They all left. My dad was the only one who stayed. So, he sold out this place here and moved us all north about four miles.”
“Into Lincoln County,” Joyce adds.
Lowell picks up an old black and white Polaroid of a small wooden schoolhouse surrounded by miles and miles of open country. “We rode horses four and a half miles to school,” he says. “We’d let them loose in the yard and have to catch them to go home. We always had our own horses. My dad had some mares. I don’t know where he got the kid ponies. I don’t even remember learnin’ to ride. It seems like I just always knew how.”
He hands me the photo. “We only went to school for eight months a year. September to April. Got off for Christmas, but that was it.” A moment, and then he says, “Play…? We never learned to play. I never held a golf club in my hand or had skis on my feet. We just learned to work. That’s all we did. We worked. And I’m glad we did it, too. We didn’t miss out on nothin’.” He taps the table, thinking, his voice just a shade quieter. “Nothin’ just comes to you. You’ve got to work to get it. That’s just the way it is. This is a poor country. You have to live poor to survive. You have to make a lot of sacrifices.”
Lowell is the youngest of three sons with one brother older by four years and the other by just a year. “My oldest brother left after he got married. He was educated and went to work for Firestone. My other brother…we was involved together. We still are. Him, me and my wife.” He looks over at Joyce. “I was very fortunate. I married a country girl who understands this kind of life. She’s the difference between success and failure.” The smile they exchange is barely perceptible, but it’s a smile that says it all.
Joyce was raised north of Ordway where she and Lowell met at her school. “I come back from the service,” Lowell says, “and went down there one time. Met her at a carnival or something…”
“I was looking for a cowboy,” Joyce breaks in, a sudden youthfulness in her voice, “in cowboy boots and a hat. And there he was.”
“Sixty years together, that’s sayin’ somethin’, isn’t it.” He pauses, and then adds, “We’ve had a good life. A good life. But things around here have changed.” He points to a tablet where a list of names are written. “These are all the families that used to live around here. Bartz. Philipy. There’s nine of them there. Nine families, all gone. Moved away. We’ve included all these ranches in our ranch. Now there’s hardly any natives left. New people’s movin’ in. And they’re different…they come from different places. Not like the ones who left.”
“We used to all work from home,” Joyce says. “This was where the ranch is. This is where we worked. Neighbors knew neighbors. Neighbors kids married one another. We did things. Maybe after church we’d all get together for a meal or something. But now…”
“People are all over, goin’ everywhere, aren’t they,” Lowell says. “Nobody knows where home is anymore.”
It isn’t enough to just be a good cattleman. Running a ranch, making it profitable, requires a man or woman to have a whole set of skills that were unheard of not that long ago. Even if the skills are present, there are other obstacles that stand in the way.
Ranching requires less men to operate than it used to, but there’s still a shortage of help. And ranchers are now prohibited from hiring what used to be a vital pool of labor—13, 14, 15 year old kids who are looking for a part-time or summer job. “Because of worker’s compensation,” Joyce explains, “you can’t hire them before they’re sixteen.”
“If they don’t know how to work at sixteen,” Lowell adds, “which a lot of them don’t, you can’t teach ‘em, either. They’re ruined. It’s too late.”
“We had a man with us for thirteen years,” Joyce says. “When he left, we couldn’t find anyone to replace him. And with Lowell getting older, well, we had to scale down. A lot.”
Of course, there are always the old enemies. Rules. Regulations. Laws. “Taxes going up,” Joyce says, “and price of beef is going down.”
Lowell nods, listening. “You have to love what you’re doin’, otherwise you need to get out. Cattle business is ups and downs. Mostly downs, lately. “
But there’s one thing ranchers face every day, and it’s the one thing that can cause the most devastation. Too much sun. Not enough rain. Too much rain. And, worst of them all, blizzards.
“People say the weather’s changing,” Lowell muses, “Getting warmer. But I always tell them the same thing. History repeats itself.”
In Colorado, March and November are the worst months for blizzards, and blizzards are deadly for cattle.
“The storms, the really bad ones that can take thousands,” says Lowell, “those only come once every twenty years. March, ’57,” he begins, ticking off his fingers. “ ‘77. ‘97…”
“We were hit hard a couple of those years,” Joyce comments and goes on to describe a storm that carried such snow and wind that it completely buried a shed that held some cattle. She gestures toward the building which can be seen from the window. “Snow was all up and over the top of that shed. When it was over, we found some cattle dead in a stall. Others that were trampled. But the ones that made it, made it by just stomping on the snow. It would blow in. They would stomp it down. Meanwhile, that snow was building up, and they were getting higher and higher until they were all the way up in the attic,” she says. “Lowell had to climb up on the roof and take off the tin so they could get out. I think we lost half our heifers that year.”
Lowell then speaks of the storm of 1946 when parts of the area were hit with a 50 mile per hour wind and more than 30” of snow on the level that fell in a 3 day period. It was the second biggest snowstorm to hit the state in its history. All the moisture resulted in a record crop for the farmers. But, for the ranchers, it only brought loss.
The storm started dropping snow at an incredible rate, and it just didn’t stop. Ernest, Lowell’s father, knew that, if they didn’t move the herd, they stood to lose a number of cattle. So, Ernest, Lowell—who was roughly 14 years old, and his brother set off to trail 300 head of cattle to Arlington, 16 miles away. The trip took them 4 days.
“My dad found somebody with a tractor, and he went ahead of us breaking up the snow. We followed behind on horseback, keeping the cattle moving. They got hungry and tired. They didn’t have any food.” He looks down at the table where his finger traces an invisible pattern. “If one of them stopped, we’d have to ride back and get them turned around. We ruined our horses. We ruined every single one of horses. And the first day, we only made it four miles. Four miles, and cattle was scattered all along the trail a good three miles back.” He stops for a moment, remembering. “We stayed at people’s houses along the way. People did that back then. In fact, we stayed at this very house that first night. When we hit the trail again the next morning, some of the cattle just couldn’t get up. They just laid there, and we had to leave ‘em. That was hard.” And then, softer. “That was hard.” He looks out the window. “When we got them about 10 miles south of here, they started livin’. They didn’t get as much snow there as we did up here. We didn’t lose anymore, once we hit that ten-mile mark. But we still lost over half. Nothin’ to be done about it. Just had to try to build up again.”
He describes dead cattle piled up along fence lines for miles and rendering trucks that came from all over the state to haul the dead away.
“After a few days, the government did hay drops but it didn’t do us no good,” he says. “We’d already moved them all out. What’s to be done about it. Nothin’. There’s nothin’ that can be done.”
Within themselves, cowboys seem to be an odd mixture of contradictions.
On the one hand, they speak as if a situation, any situation, is most likely going to go badly. And with good reason, too. Yet, day after day, season after season, they continue to do what they do. There must be some optimism in that, some belief—no matter how small—that things might actually go well; otherwise, the life they lead would drive a man insane.
The interview was drawing to a close and the most important questions still remained.
When asked what he loves about ranching, Lowell seems at a loss to answer, as if he’s being asked to explain something that is essential to who he is and inexpressible in words. “I don’t know…” he starts. “I like working with animals. Even though some of them were mean, I liked every horse we ever owned.” He stops, searching for more and finally puts it the only way he can. “I like the everyday of it.”
“We have things other people don’t have,” Joyce adds. It’s so quiet, you can hear things you’d never hear in town. Birds. Insects. Wildlife. When it was running, we could even hear the train, and that’s 16 miles away.” Lowell smiles a bit, listening to her. “And we have stars. People in town don’t know how many stars there are in the sky at night. They come out here and that’s the first thing they say. ‘Look at all those stars!’ We have that. Every night.”
Any advice for other cowboys? “Don’t mistreat an animal,” Lowell says. “You treat ‘em right. They’ll treat you right.”
Given the chance, would he do it again? He doesn’t even hesitate. “I had a chance to leave. I went to CSU and I coulda chose to not come back. But ranchin’ is all I know. It’s all I ever done. It’s all I ever wanted to do.” He moves slightly in his chair as if a thought pains him. “Two of my granddaughters want to work in ranchin’, but how? How can they do it? They can’t make a livin’. It’s almost impossible for anybody to make a livin’ at this anymore. Too many rules. Too much is put on you. It takes sacrifice. And a lot of hard work. It’s a battle every day.”
The last question, the hardest question, just hangs in the air. What will happen to the ranch after he’s gone. Lowell leans forward and speaks more loudly, more clearly than at any other time. “Can you tell me? Because I don’t know. I don’t.”
I go to leave and both Lowell and Joyce walk me to the door. I turn around to say good-bye and find Lowell staring out the window at the miles and miles of prairie. “It’s been maybe ten years since I stopped,” he says. “I tell people I knew it was time when the wind got colder and the stirrups got shorter. It was time.” He looks back at me one last time, the icon of the American cowboy. “But I miss my horses and my cattle. Always will.”
