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Ride 'Em, Island Cowboy

Cattle, the area's colonial currency, continued to roam into the 20th Century

By Ridgely Ochs | Staff Writer

It was called ``going on'' in Montauk and Shank remembers it well. ``All the local fellows used to help with the cattle drives,'' he said.

Starting at about 4 a.m. on a chilly spring day, Shank, just a teenager in the late '30s, and other hands would meet at his grandparents' farm in East Hampton, saddle up their horses and start driving about a hundred head of cattle -- mostly cows, their calves and a few bulls belonging to farmers from all over the area - down Montauk Highway.

``Going through Amagansett, they'd roam into peoples' yards. You had to have a wagon with a team of horses for tired calves. They'd just lie down after a while,'' said Shank, whose real name is Frank Dickinson.

Twelve to 14 hours later, cattle and cowboys would arrive dusty and tired at Indian Field near Deep Hollow Ranch, three miles east of Montauk village. There the cattle, for $6 a head, would graze from May 1 to Nov. 1, when they ``went off'' Montauk -- this time by trucks back to their farms or off to market.

These cattle drives only lasted three or four years in the late 1930s, Shank said, but they were part of a 300-year history of cattle, horses and sheep on Long Island. Indeed, there are those who say that Long Island is the birthplace of the American cowboy and that Montauk is the site of the oldest cattle ranching area in the country.

These claims are debatable. The Spanish introduced cattle and horses in the 1500s on this continent and other English colonies -- notably Virginia -- had large numbers of cattle by the beginning of the next century. But it is clear that cattle -- and, yes, ``cowboys,'' men who herded them -- were an important part of the early history of the island.

In 1643 John Carman and Robert Fordham bought from the Indians 60,000 acres of blue-green grass known as Hempstead Plains, now the site of Garden City and other communities. Here cattle, sheep and hogs were pastured and then driven into New York City for sale.

Cattle, more than any other livestock, played a critical role in those days. ``The cow was to the Hempstead planter what tobacco was to the Virginian,'' said Bernice Schultz in her 1940 history of ``The Pastoral Period of Western Long Island.'' Instead of hard currency, cattle were used in exchange for goods; the Indians were paid for their land in cattle, and the governor would accept cattle as payment for land patents.

By the Revolution, there were 7,000 head of cattle and as many sheep in Hempstead and Oyster Bay, according to Schultz. In fact, one of the first large-scale cattle drives ever recorded in this country took place on the Hempstead Plains. On Aug. 22, 1776, as the Battle of Long Island was taking place, orders were given for the cattle to be driven eastward across the plains to keep them from falling into British hands. The colonists lost not only the battle, but also thousands of head of cattle.

Cattle -- and pasture lands for them -- were no less important in eastern Long Island.

On Aug. 6, 1660, the East Hampton town fathers bought a tract of land east of the town from the Montauk chief Wyandanch. By 1687, they had bought more land, obtaining all of what was called the ``lands of Montauk,'' about 11,000 acres beginning at Napeague and extending to Montauk Point.

Although perhaps not the waist-high leaves of grass of the Hempstead Plains, these fields, bending down to the shimmering sea, were nonetheless rich pastures for grazing animals. Although now the vista is broken by low trees and scrub, ``when I was a young boy,'' Shank said. ``... It was nothing but rolling hills and grass.''

The land was owned in common by citizens who would each pay to have cattle or sheep driven out to the Montauk pastures, where they would stay from spring to late fall and then be driven back to their farms for the winter. This common ownership system continued until 1879, a ``phenomenon unequalled in the annals of American history,'' said William B. Jackson in an unpublished history written in 1942 on the common pasture system.

Three men were chosen each year to stay out with the cattle, sheep and horses and three houses were built several miles apart -- First House in 1744, Second House in 1746 and Third House in 1797 -- to accommodate these men and their families. First House has burned down, but Second House is now in the middle of the hamlet of Montauk and Third House in Indian Field -- the quarters of Teddy Roosevelt when the Rough Riders were quarantined in Montauk in 1898 -- is now part of Montauk County Park.

Ear marks, not brands, were used to identify the cows. Shank, whose family first came to East Hampton from Southold in the 1600s, said his family's ear marks were a ``hollow crop in the right ear and a slit in the left.'' You can still see original lists of the ear marks in the East Hampton Public Library.

In 1879 East Hampton sold the ``lands of Montauk'' to a wealthy Brooklynite, Arthur Benson, for the grand sum of $151,000. Benson used it mostly for hunting and fishing, but some of the lands continued to be leased for grazing. Except for a 10-year period from 1926-36 and during World War II, cattle have grazed on what remains of the original pasture lands since then.

Shank's son-in-law, Rusty Leaver, bought about 20 acres across from Indian Field, south of Montauk Highway, in the late 1970s to raise horses and cattle. He and his wife, Diane, run Deep Hollow Ranch -- now part of Montauk County Park -- as concessionaires, using the 3,000 or so acres of county land for trail rides, maintaining the family's tie to the land. In the last few years, the ranch, which started as a dude ranch in 1937, has become well known for hosting the Back to the Ranch concerts.

And, yep, it still has cattle. Big ones. Longhorns.