RANCH TALES: Greaves tries to corner the cattle market

Joseph Blackbourne Greaves (pronounced Graves) was born in Pudsey, England and came to B.C. in 1864. After successfully driving cattle from Oregon to the goldfields, he settled near Savona’s ferry on the Thompson River( so-named by the English drovers pronunciation of Francois Saveneau ‘s name). During the 1870s, when markets for cattle were few in B.C., Greaves regularly drove cattle down the Cariboo road to the head of steamboat navigation at Yale and then to the cities of New Westminster, Victoria and Nanaimo. Victoria’s British Colonist newspaper extoled the cattle as, “fine specimens of that section of the mainland for stock raising.” But Greaves was looking for greater success. He watched with interest as the Canadian Pacific Railway was being constructed through the Fraser Canyon. Railway contractor Andrew Onderdonk employed 5,000 men during the summer of 1881 and to feed them, invited tenders for a large and steady supply of fresh beef for the work crews. Their requirements were so great that only the largest ranches could hope to answer their needs. Not surprisingly, Thaddeus Harper, who, with his brother Jerome, had been a cattleman since the early gold rush years, won the contract. Harper sold off all his surplus cattle from his massive herds on the Gang Ranch and set about purchasing all the cattle he could from Cariboo and Chilcotin ranchers. Prices for cattle began to move upwards to more than $20 a head and the market for 1882 looked even more promising as railway construction reached its peak. As the 1882 construction season approached, Greaves saw the potential for controlling the market...more