The sprawling 101 Ranch, spread across four Oklahoma counties, was a place of innovation for farming, livestock and the film industry in the early 20th century, but its fascinating history was cut short through tragedy and financial difficulties.

Among the hundreds of thousands of visitors to the ranch were the wealthy, presidents and celebrities. Workers on the ranch included future Hollywood cowboys and rodeo stars.

A pair of factory engraved and silver-plated first generation Colt Single Action Frontier Six Shooters from the 101 Ranch will be available in Rock Island Auction Company’s Aug. 21-23 Premier Auction in Bedford, Texas. What brought them to the 101 Ranch?

This pair of Colt Single Action Army Frontier Six Shooters were shipped on October 18, 1926 to Richards & Conover Hardware Co.’s Oklahoma City location. A factory letter confirms the revolvers 4 3/4 -inch barrels in .44-40 caliber, silver plating, grip material, carved steer head motif on the grip and level 2 factory engraving.

Meet the Millers of the 101 Ranch

George Washington Miller was a native of Kentucky who after the Civil War couldn’t afford to operate his grandfather’s plantation without slaves. Seeing his fortune in the West, in 1870, he sold out his part of the plantation with plans to go to California, but instead found his opportunity in Missouri. With an eye for livestock and his business acumen, he traded for hogs and in the winter slaughtered them for ham and bacon.

Bacon was a valuable commodity in Texas, so in the spring he set out for cattle country. He traded 10 wagonloads of bacon for cattle and headed back to Missouri with 400 heads. He established his first ranch near Baxter Spring, Kan., in the southeast corner of the state. He received permission to graze cattle on the Quapaw tribe’s reservation.

This close-up of the underside of the revolvers show the serial numbers for the Frontier Six Shooters, confirming the factory letter that states they were sent to an Oklahoma City hardware store as the only guns in a two-gun shipment before going to the 101 Ranch.

He learned the trick of cattle trading: That Texas cattlemen had no interest in paper money. Those that fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War were paid in worthless Confederate money. Cash wasn’t king. Gold was. Miller started carrying gold with him on the trips to Texas knowing he could get a $6 steer for $3 if he traded in gold.

In 1879, Miller leased 60,000 acres in the Cherokee Strip from the Ponca tribe and moved his family to a town nearby.  George Washington Miller and his wife, Molly, had three sons, George Jr., Joseph and Zach, and a daughter, Alma.

The 101 Ranch

The 101 brand was born in 1881. One reason given was that the ranch had 101,000 acres, but that wasn’t true. Joe Miller claimed the name came from a San Antonio hotel at 101 Second Street that was called the 101 and was where Miller’s cowboys stayed before a drive. One of those cowboys stole the sign from the saloon and when they returned to the ranch, the sign was mounted on the cook shack, giving the ranch its name.

George Washington Miller wanted a mansion like the plantations of his youth, but had to settle for a dugout house in 1892 because he couldn’t buy the land until the Ponca tribe received ownership documentation. Eventually, the ranch expanded to 110,000 acres at its peak and a ranch house was built.

The house erected in 1903 had a waterworks plant in the basement. George Washington Miller never lived in the house. He died in April 1903, only a matter of months before the family shared Christmas dinner. It was their first meal in the new home. This original ranch house burned down in 1909.

One of the relief carved steer head grips from the pair of Frontier Sharp Six Shooters of the 101 Ranch. Inside the grips are marked “101” and the initials “JM” are for Jack Webb, a trick shooter employed by the 101 Ranch.

The ranch had a dairy that could support 500 cows, a meat plant that could dress 500 head of cattle and 1,000 hogs a month, an ice plant that produced 10 tons of ice a day and a rodeo arena that could seat 12,000. It had a school, general store and café, newspaper, blacksmith shop, leather shop, oil refinery and even its own money, including $10 and $5 Examples are included with the revolvers.

After the financial crisis of 1893, the ranch diversified from cattle and started growing wheat, cotton, corn sorghum, alfalfa and had fruit orchards, too. Along with cattle, the stock included bison, hogs, poultry and horses. A menagerie of exotic animals -- ostriches, zebra and camels, inhabited the ranch. A bear named Tony that came from Mississippi that drank soda pop purchased by visitors at the general store lived on the ranch until 1931.

At the time of George Washington Miller’s death, he paid the Ponca and Otoe tribes $32,500 for land rental and other expenses totaling $75,000 while the ranch earned income of $400,000 to $500,000. The year before his death, the ranch planted 13,000 acres of wheat, 3,000 acres of corn and 3,000 in forage crops while melons, cucumbers and pumpkins were also raised. The ranch employed 200 men, and 200 ponies were kept for cattle herding. Rather than divide up the ranch after her husband’s death, Mollie Miller put it in a trust created by Mollie Miller.

The undersides of the Colt Frontier Six Shooters sent to the 101 Ranch in Oklahoma show the intricate factory engraving.

The Miller Brothers of the 101 Ranch

While Alma went off and got an East Coast education, graduating from Vassar in 1889, the brothers worked on the ranch. Joe Miller had been his father’s right hand man and took over general management of the ranch. Zach Miller was a true cattleman and managed the ranch’s livestock. George Jr., the youngest son, was a financial genius and took over managing the ranch’s finances. All three were each made an honorary “colonel” by governors of Oklahoma.

None of the brothers drew a salary from the ranch, but shared a checkbook for personal expenses. When the house burned down in 1909, all the occupants escaped safely but the house and all the Millers’ contents, including clothing, were lost.  Almost immediately, construction of a new, fireproof house – to be called “The White House” -- was started, built with steel and concrete. Completed, the three-story, 17-room house with a view of the Salt River valley had electric lights, hot and cold running water and steam heat, modern conveniences that were luxurious on the Oklahoma prairie.

The 101 Ranch’s three-story house was built after the original burned down. It was constructed with steel and concrete making it fireproof, had 17 rooms and many modern amenities not normally seen on the prairie.

In 1918, Mollie Miller, the family matriarch died at age 72. She had been active in ranch life and made visits to the Wild West show on the road, but now the 101 Ranch was left to the sons to run. The brothers diversified crops and brought in shorthorn cattle rather than the stringier longhorns. They built modern farm buildings wired for electricity and brought in power machinery and put up hundreds of miles of fences.

The ranch was the home of the largest privately-owned American Bison herd in the world because of the Miller’s devotion to maintaining and preserving the nearly extinct animal.

The 101 Ranch Roundup

The Millers liked to celebrate the end of the summer with a roundup that was occasionally used as a fundraiser for a local cause. In 1904, Joe Miller and others from Oklahoma traveled to convince the leadership of the National Editorial Association to host their convention in Guthrie, Oklahoma. Joe Miller promised a large Wild West exhibition if they would attend.

The NEA accepted and the Millers put on a spectacular show that included a parade with cowboys and Native Americans in their finery, exhibitions of sports and ranch tasks like roping and trick riding. The elderly Apache Geronimo, considered a prisoner of war, was brought from Fort Sill to ride in a car during the entrance parade. The event brought in thousands of people.

Apache warrior Geronimo, a prisoner of war at Fort Sill in southwest Oklahoma, was brought to the 101 Ranch in 1905 when it hosted the National Editorial Association and put on one of its roundup Wild West style shows. Here he is seen riding in an automobile before the show’s entrance parade.

The roundup and the Millers’ hospitality attracted people from all over and all ways of life. Theodore Roosevelt, William Jennings Bryant, John Ringling, Jack Dempsey, Warren G. Harding William Randolph Hearst and John Philip Souza were among the 100,000 people who visited the ranch annually. The success of the NEA roundup convinced Roosevelt to invite the ranch to represent the cattle business at the 1907 Jamestown Exposition. So well received, the Millers sent the show to New York City for several weeks.

Among one of the novelties of the roundup didn’t start until 1924 when the multi-day event featured a “terrapin derby,” or turtle race. The first event drew 114 turtles at $2 per entrant with a first prize of $68. The second race drew 1,679 entrants and the third 2,379.

Turtles are penned up and ready to start the “Terrapin Derby” a turtle race held during the 101 Ranch’s annual roundup. Wagering was allowed. The winner was the first to cross over a large drawn circle.

The 101 Ranch Wild West Show

By 1908, the 101 Wild West Show was touring the United States and Europe. It performed for the King and Queen of England. The stars of the show were the ranch hands and Native Americans that lived on and around the ranch as were the ranch’s American Bison since they were so rare at the time.

Many of the ranch hands went on to be rodeo champions and entertainers. Tex Ritter and Hoot Gibson were among the performers as was Bill Pickett who invented “bulldogging” or steer wrestling. Zach Miller called Pickett “…the greatest sweat-and-dirt cowhand that ever lived – bar none.” At the high point of the show, the 101 Ranch employed 2,000 to 3,000 seasonal employees. After selling his Wild West show, Buffalo Bill Cody was a performer for one season.

A poster for the Miller Brothers’ 101 Ranch Wild West Show.

While touring England in 1914, the show’s stock and vehicles were confiscated for war use, leaving the show stranded before the Millers could get their performers back to the United States. The show wouldn’t perform again until 1924 and by then, films had supplanted Wild West shows and they were no longer profitable.

The 101 Ranch in the Movies

The Millers saw an opportunity to draw on the talent at their disposal and started making films on the ranch. That brought to the silver screen Tex Ritter, Hoot Gibson and a ranch hand named Tom Mix who would go on to be the highest paid actor in Hollywood and earn the nickname “King of the Cowboys.”

The Millers formed a production company in 1911 and produced silent films like “Setting up the Strip,” “On with the Show” and “The Big Show,” shot in 1926 that was a backstage melodrama of the Wild West show.

In 1912, the New York Motion Picture Company ventured to make “Bison-101 Ranch” western films near Santa Monica, Calif. For authentic Oklahoma location companies visited to the 101 Ranch where Paramount’s “North of 36” and Pathe’s “Wild West” were shot in 1924 and 1925 respectively.

A closeup of the barrel of one of the pair of Colt Single Action Army Frontier Six Shooters from the famed 101 Ranch in Oklahoma.

The Demise of the 101 Ranch

In 1927, Joe Miller, the heart and soul of the 101 Ranch, died of an accidental carbon dioxide poisoning in his garage. Two years later, George Miller, the ranch’s financial mastermind, died in a car accident as the Great Depression loomed.

As the Great Depression deepened, oil prices bottomed out and livestock prices sank. The Millers announced the end of the Wild West show in 1931. The family took on a $500,000 mortgage with the belief the financial downturn would be short-lived, only to get worse. By the end of 1930, the ranch was losing money and had no cash reserves. Creditors started coming for assets.

Zach Miller tried to fix the ranch’s financial position but wrote it was like “piloting a ship across an uncharted sea.” The ranch went into receivership in September, 1931, and the last of the ranch property was sold in 1936. All that remains of the ranch headquarters are the foundation of the glorious ranch house and historical markers, remnants of a remarkable undertaking at the close of the Wild West.

A view of the right side of the pair of silver-plated factory engraved Colt Single Action Army Frontier Six Shooters that were sent to the famed 101 Ranch in Oklahoma. Only 4,500 pre-war Colt SAAs were factory engraved.

101 Ranch Revolvers

The incredible 101 Ranch and its ranch house are gone, but the memories, photos and this gorgeous pair of factory engraved first generation Colt Single Action Army revolvers remain. The revolvers, with relief carved steer grips, shipped to Richards & Conover Hardware Co. where the Miller brothers were customers. The back of the grips is handwritten letters “JW” and the number “101.” The number was commonly used to identify 101 Ranch property while the initials correspond to Jack Webb, a trick shooter employed at the ranch at the time the revolvers were ordered. At the time of his death in 1956, Webb was known as one of the world’s greatest trick shot artists with either pistol or rifle.

These revolvers show the work of Colt Master Engraver Wilbur Glahn through his deeply cut floral scrolling as well as a “V” shape design behind the hammer that has been seen on other examples of his work. Only 4,500 pre-war Colt SAAs are factory engraved and the silver plating and rare steer head grips are rare factory special order features making this a truly elite pair of revolvers.

These guns, shipped as a pair on Oct. 18, 1926 were likely separated when 101 Ranch assets were sold off when the ranch succumbed to bankruptcy. The pair were reunited in 2018, so these spectacular and  rare revolvers will be offered as a pair at public auction for the first time in six years during Rock Island Auction Company’s Aug. 23-25 Premier Auction in Bedford, Texas.

Sources:

“The 101 Ranch,” by Ellsworth Colling in collaboration with Alma Miller England

One last look at these historical Colt Single Action Army silver-plated and factory engraved Colt Single Action Army Frontier Six Shooters of the famed 101 Ranch.