- 272 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
The only thing the Herrins and the Burkes had in common was their Irish ancestry. Opposites in most ways, the families nevertheless personified two common threads in the history of the West. As the owner of an iconic Montana stock-raising operation—the famous Oxbow Ranch on the shores of Holter Lake—Holly Herrin ruled with frontier violence and legal action over an empire of cattle and sheep that covered thirty square miles. George Burke was a real estate agent, a sheriff, a game warden, and a civil engineer in a family of professionals—newspaper editors, lawyers, and politicians, including a U.S. senator. The country-mouse Herrins voted Republican, the city-mouse Burkes Democratic. Both patriarchs, fighting with their fists and their lawyers, were active players in the far-reaching dramas and ludicrous comedies that shaped the politics and economy of modern Montana. In 1949 the clans joined their fortunes together when rancher Keith Herrin, Holly's grandson, married George Burke's daughter Molly, a wire service reporter. It was a union that produced five girls and one boy—an heir. Twenty years later, the marriage and the Herrin ranches were failing. The story of the Burkes and Herrins has never been told before, and the history they made has been largely forgotten. The Last Heir recounts twelve decades of Burke and Herrin triumphs and tragedies: the story of Montana's Missouri River heartland, a history seen through the eyes and daily lives of those who lived it.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Maps
- Preface
- 1. Without a Trace
- 2. First-Generation Americans
- 3. The Migrants
- 4. The Home Front
- 5. Girl Reporter
- 6. Lighting Out for the Territory
- 7. Wild and Wooly
- 8. A Man of Means
- 9. Wool Mania
- 10. The Water Below and the Air Above
- 11. In the Grease
- 12. Under the Swaying Palms
- 13. For the Love of the Game
- 14. No Longer the Lazy Crop
- 15. How to Prosper When Times Are Dark
- 16. Greener Pastures
- 17. An Heir Is Born
- 18. Dark Acres
- 19. Res Ipsa Loquitur
- 20. The Last Acre
- Appendix 1
- Appendix 2
- Appendix 3
- Notes
- About Bill Vaughn