Before 1900, cattlemen had the rangeland to themselves except for wild horses, but when sheep appeared tempers flared instantly. Haystacks put up by sheepmen mysteriously burned, and the hostility reached its climax one night in the spring of 1903 when several hundred sheep owned by A.A. Curtis were slaughtered with clubs about half a mile behind this site. For years, sun-bleached bones lay scattered about. In time, the ill feelings died away, and the trouble had been much more between cattlemen and sheepmen than between cattle and sheep.