Town rounds up a crowd for cowboy’s 80th birthday/Tom Hall's Last Roundup

Tom Hall’s 80th birthday celebration Sunday was inaccurately billed as an open house. It was actually much bigger — an open town. The crowd at Bruneau’s American Legion Hall filled 18 tables for eight. More people lined the walls, hovered around a mountain of food and told tales in the bar. By most estimates, the crowd exceeded 200. Bruneau’s population is about half of that. Tom Hall — rancher, farmer, historian, public servant, storyteller, Idaho character. A cowboy’s cowboy. Many of those who came to wish him well Sunday were cowboys themselves. Real cowboys — third- and fourth-generation Idaho ranchers. There were more boots, scarves and saucer-size belt buckles than at a cowboy poetry reading. And everyone had a Tom Hall story. Jordan Valley rancher Mike Hanley gave thanks for the broken covered-wagon wheel that kept Hall’s family in Bruneau rather than continuing on the Oregon Trail to the Willamette Valley. But it was Grand View cowboy Dennis Jayo who told the quintessential Tom Hall tale. “We were having a drink in a bar when a woman asked Tom how long he’d been riding a horse, “ Jayo said. “Tom said his folks came out here from Missouri when his mother was still pregnant with him. Their mare was expecting a colt, and Tom and the colt were born the same night. His father was in a hurry, so he went on ahead and left Tom and his mother there. It took Tom three days to break that colt, and he’s been riding ever since.”...more (From 2003)

Tom Hall's Last Round-Up
Tom Hall, a well-known Bruneau-area rancher passed away recently. I was saddened when I heard the news but grateful that I was able to spend an afternoon with this bona fide cowboy last summer. The tall man in jeans and cowboy hat stood on the tree-shaded, well-groomed lawn in front of his tidy home near Bruneau. “Welcome to the Hall Ranch," Hall said, eyes taking in the small group from the Owyhee County Historical Society who were gathered around. “I’m Tom Hall. This is the Hall Ranch. We’re kinda proud of it. We really are. The ranch has been in the family since 1917. We’re proud of that, my wife and I." After a pause, he added, "Nobody will have the love for this place that we do. I get a tear in my eye every time I look at it because I think how beautiful it is.” That was my introduction to a man who lived in the same house he was born in 88 years ago...