Submitted photo

ENTERPRISE – There are cowboys and there are wannabe cowboys.

Mike McFetridge is the real deal.

McFetridge is due to turn 100 Nov. 16, and for nearly all of his century he’s been a real-life cowboy.

He began riding horses at age 8 and was still riding his tractor harrowing his field at age 98.

He was still working his place on the outskirts of Joseph doing chores like irrigating and mowing his yard.

“He still kept everything up,” his son, Gary, said.

McFetridge started work at age 8 – helping move cattle and greasing the log chute on Elk Mountain.

He was born on his dad Millard’s ranch that Millard homesteaded in 1901 on Elk Mountain about nine air miles north-northeast of Enterprise.

McFetridge ranched at Tryon Creek on the Snake River until he was nearly 70, Gary said.

In 1926 McFetridge won the Wallowa County Fair All-Around Champion Cowboy award at the Wallowa County Rodeo in Enterprise.

His mother, Mertie, took his $125 winnings and went to Pendleton and bought him a saddle with his name across the back in silver, Gary said.

McFetridge rode saddle bronc in the 1930 Pendleton Round Up.

“He rode with the best of the world, champions such as Wayne Davis and Cody Dodson,” Gary said. “Wallowa County has more world champions, including the late Lew Minor, than any county there is.”

Back when McFetridge competed, rodeo was different. Rodeos were more or less an extension of life on a ranch, not a professional athlete’s sport.

McFetridge had said that they just did it for fun back then.

In McFetridge’s day, saddle bronc riders had to stay on a full 10 seconds rather than today’s 8 seconds required in Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association events.

And, bucking chutes didn’t come along until a year after McFetridge’s Round Up competition.

Promoters added the chutes to pick up the pace to try to make rodeos more appealing to spectators.

Instead of mounting the horse in a chute, the bronc was “snubbed” to the saddle horn on another horse. The bronc and everything around it was in motion while the cowboy was trying to mount up.

It was up to two cowboys with ropes and another cowboy, holding the horse’s head, to hold it well enough for the competitor to get his foot in the stirrup and swing up on the animal and try to get set before it exploded.

For a couple of years McFetridge competed in saddle-bronc riding, mostly in Eastern Oregon’s small rodeos.

Then after the highlight of his rodeo career – the Round Up – his life changed.

He met Joyce Clark, and two months later they were married. They stayed together some 68 years until her death.

McFetridge became interested in rodeo again around 1944.

McFetridge and several friends like Harley Tucker joined the Joseph Chamber of Commerce to sponsor its first rodeo, atop Wallowa Lake’s east moraine in a natural amphitheater owned by Ben Peal, Gary said.

However, vehicles of the time had trouble getting up the rough road on the back side, so the next year it was moved to Joseph.

To make that possible, organizers had to build an arena.

McFetridge had a ranch on upper Prairie Creek, so he and a couple of his hired hands went out and cut 100,000 board feet of timber donated by the Knapper estate, which had forest land at the base of Mount Howard.

McFetridge skidded the logs with his farm Cat, Gary said. Mose Miller of Miller Mills in Joseph cut the lumber used to build the arena.

Roy Daggett donated the land and heavy equipment, and it seemed everybody in Joseph jumped in to construct the rodeo arena, now known as the Harley Tucker Memorial Arena.

McFetridge loaned the chamber $3,400 to buy a brand new 1947 Hudson automobile for a raffle to raise money.

Volunteers drove the car to other rodeos and sold chances on it there too.

After repaying McFetridge, the chamber netted $3,000.

McFetridge was also one of seven who signed a bank note for construction costs.

McFetridge was the arena director for the first six years, and continued to volunteer at the event for an additional six years.

Chief Joseph Days involvement runs in the family. Mike has two children. His daughter Jackie (McFetridge) Goodman was the 1950 Chief Joseph Days queen and rode in the parades until recently.

When McFetridge had quit rodeoing to begin ranching with Joyce, it was in the Flora area where she grew up.

Her parents had the general store, a sawmill and a warehouse in Flora, Gary said.

Mike and Joyce lived on Buford Ridge, Gary said.

In 1941 they moved to upper Prairie Creek and leased 640 acres and some 500 acres on the lake hill for six years.

They milked a half dozen cows by hand.

“We sold whole milk during World War II. We kept the milk cool by keeping the cans in the creek,” Gary said.

When electricity came to the upper valley McFetridge bought one of the first milking machines, and their dairy herd was expanded to 48 milk cows, Gary said.

McFetridge ran the Wallowa Lake Lodge Corrals, pack and guide operation at Wallowa Lake for about four years in the early 1950s. They had 160 head of horses, Gary said.

Later he worked as a packer for the U.S. Forest Service. In building the Hawkins Pass trail, Gary helped his dad pack in Army surplus “ditching powder” – a dynamite that looked like butter used to blast trenches, Gary said.

Of the seven mules, six carried dynamite and one carried the blasting caps, Gary said.

“The trail would just jump out of that hard rock,” Gary said.

He also hauled in supplies for “Silvertip” at Aneroid Lake. Gary remembers him packing in 30 cases of beer for Silvertip to sell in his little store up there.

“In the 1970s they ranched three or four years on the Snake River where they had 150 cows and 15 yearlings and calves,” Gary said.

When the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area was created, the U.S. Forest Service gave the McFetridges 30 days to get everything off the place.

That included two tractors, mowing machines and a hay baler that were helicoptered to Dug Bar, then trucked out, Gary said.

Along the way McFetridge managed ranches such as the Lightning Creek Ranch for the late actor Walter Brennan. Later he came back and managed it for Andy Holmes, Jackie said.

He managed Lyman Goucher’s operation on Marr Flat, and also Carl Patton’s.

“Carl said that he (Mike) was the best hand he ever had – that he could send him anywhere and he’d show up on time and get the job done,” Gary said.

Mike was good with cattle. Gary remembers him mothering-up 400 head of all-black cattle (which all look the same to many people) on the 3,000-acre Gene Robison ranch that he managed. It is now the Don Huff place, Gary said.

“He was one of the best horsemen in the world. He could do just about anything with a horse. He trained them his way. He didn’t need a bridle and a quirt like other people,” Gary said.

McFetridge learned to break mules to lead and drive before they were sold on his folks’ homestead at Elk Mountain.

Of the six children, only he and his sister, Jean Johnson, are left. They reside at the Wallowa Valley Care Center.

In 1992 McFetridge was selected as the Chief Joseph Days grand marshal.

At about ages 83 and 84 McFetridge was nominated two years running for the Haines Old Hands contest.

He and Joyce were Hells Canyon Mule Days grand marshals in 1982.

“He always had a good horse, and he would help anybody with ‘let in’ (roundups) or ‘let out’ (to range),” Gary said.

Doug and Janie Tippett were among those from whom he cowboyed for years.

“He’s quite a Mike. He was steady, and he always has a smile,” Janie Tippett said.

He trailed cattle 20-25 miles into the deep canyons like Salmon and Butte creeks in the spring and would bring them out in the fall, Tippett said.

“He is amazing. He rode up until his 80s. He had all these sayings and they were all true. One was, ‘Snow doesn’t lie long on green grass.’ You could always rely on him, and he knew the country,” Tippett said.

For instance, he knew where to turn the cattle at Tulley Creek to get to the range.

She recalls one of the years when snow was chest-deep on the horses and it took two days to ride through Crow Creek Pass.

The riders’ eyelashes were freezing together and they had to break the ice off with gloved hands. “This sure is fun, isn’t it?” Tippett remembers McFetridge saying to her.

“They grow ’em tough out on Elk Mountain,” Tippett said.

Mike McFetridge had to be tough his whole life. As a cattleman and packer, he rode a horse or a tractor from age 8 to 98.

He is a cowboy’s cowboy.