Editor’s note: This is the first story in a two-part series on the Black Leg Ranch in central North Dakota. This installment focuses on the ranch’s history.
MCKENZIE, N.D. — Jewell Doan Sr. was an entrepreneur before anyone knew what that word meant.
A second-generation North Dakota rancher whose grit and boundless sense of derring-do ran thick in his veins, Jewell Sr. would build the land his father homesteaded into a sprawling ranch located about 25 miles southeast of Bismarck.
He would be among the first to introduce
to southern Burleigh County in 1930 — a move that was met with suspicion and animosity in what was then Hereford country. His neighbors complained about the wildness of the
so often that Jewell Sr., who always had a healthy sense of humor, roguishly christened his spread as the Black Leg Ranch.
It’s just one of the many stories surrounding Jewell Sr., who is also credited with buying land when others thought that was fool-hardy, working extra jobs to ensure he didn’t lose his land and monitoring his ever-expanding operation with an airplane.
“He built a lot of the makings of this place,” says Jerry Doan, an affable, no-nonsense guy who is Jewell Senior’s grandson. “I always wished I could have found a diary or something. When you’re young, you could care less, but when you get old, it intrigues you and you wish you knew more about it.”
Today, Black Leg is one of the oldest working cattle ranches still in operation and is run by Jerry and Renae Doan, along with their three sons, Jeremy, Jay and Jayce. The thriving, 20,000-acre operation is rich with history. Jerry says their land encompasses a couple of “buffalo drops” where Native Americans drove buffalo over cliffs during hunts and their land is home to Brittin, N.D., a ghost town now marked only by a single abandoned elevator. “It’s just standing,” Jerry says.
The Doans’ entrepreneurial drive also still stands. Besides tending to 3,000 Angus (now the most popular cattle breed in the country) and a sizable bison herd, the Doans have ventured into agritourism by adding an
and
direct-to-consumer grass-fed beef and bison business.
Contributed / Kyle Martin
Jerry’s great-grandfather George H. Doan was born in Ontario, Canada, in 1856 and was descended from Deacon John Doan, who came to North America From England in 1629, just nine years after the Mayflower landed on Plymouth Rock.
According to Jerry Doan, George moved from Canada to the United States and lived in Kansas with family members
before moving to Dakota Territory
sometime between 1882 and 1890.
George married Louisa Corder in 1889 — the year North Dakota gained statehood — and filed his first homestead claim in 1890, according to information on Findagrave.com. He added another quarter by filing a tree claim, then in 1902 bought another quarter for $500.
“He was a bit of a pioneer,” Jerry says. “We found news articles in the Bismarck Tribune way back when he helped other people get land.”
George built a sod house, where all the Doans’ children were born.
Contributed / Rolling Plains Adventures
“I always think, as crazy as the world is and how we think we have so many problems, it can’t be like trying to stay warm and put food on the table in a sod house,” says Jerry Doan, seated in the comfortable Grand Lodge, a spacious lodge-pole building which is just a stone’s throw from the long-gone sod dwelling.
In 1917, George sold the ranch to his son, Jewell Sr., and moved to California, where the climate was more favorable to his daughter May’s tuberculosis.
Contributed/Find a Grave (used with permission from Jerry Doan)
The ranch’s new head, Jewell Sr., was visionary, hard-working, fearless and deeply devoted to the ranch.
“He lived life to his fullest,” Jerry says. “They worked hard and they played somewhat hard. I remember them telling stories that they’d walk to Sterling or Moffit, which is 10 miles away, to go to a dance.”
When Lidgerwood native Julia Goff was spending time with family in nearby Brittin, N.D., it didn’t take long for news of marriageable young women to reach the ears of local bachelors. “I always tell the joke that Jewell Doan somehow heard that there’s new chicks in Brittin, rode a horse over and ended up getting married or I wouldn’t be here,” Jerry says.
Contributed / Jerry Doan family
They were married in 1917. Fortunately, by then, they upgraded from the sod house. They erected an original
Sears and Roebuck mail-order model home,
which “was a grand house for its time,” Jerry says. In 2010, the home became part of the log-walled “Grand Lodge.”
Jewell Sr. kept up with modern farming techniques, as the ranch transitioned from horse-drawn equipment to highly mechanized machinery.
Yet some of his approaches reflected the nostalgia and charm of earlier, simpler times. When he sold cattle in St. Paul or Sioux Falls, he would load the cattle on the train in Brittin, then ride the train to the sale and back. “And sometimes he’d get paid in cash and bury the cash in a fruit jar,” Jerry says, laughing and shaking his head at the thought of it.
Jewell also set to work expanding the ranch. “He bought land for a dollar an acre when people thought you were crazy,” Jerry says. “They thought it wasn’t worth it.”
Sometimes, he struggled. “Twice, he took a fence down on a quarter of land because he thought he was going to lose it,” Jerry says. “Then he worked a couple of jobs off the place and somehow put money together to pay taxes and save it again.”
‘Those black-legged SOBs’
Jewell Sr. also took pride in his cattle operation, made up of the black Angus which were then considered highly exotic for the region.
His neighbors complained that the cattle were crazy and wild, although Jerry says their skittishness was due in part to the fact his grandfather flew an airplane over the herds. “If you’ve had an airplane over your back, you’re going to get a little nervous,” he says, laughing. “He had this reputation of the wildest cows and he loved it.”
Contributed / Black Leg Ranch
This reputation continued for years. As a boy, Jerry remembers once witnessing a neighbor who charged through the Doans’ front door and yelled, “Those black-legged blank-blank-blanks are in my pasture!”
Later, as more people became familiar with
a bovine disease called black leg,
Jerry sometimes wondered if they’d chosen the wrong brand. When speaking to groups about the ranch, he’s even been asked by people if the ranch suffered an outbreak of the disease. “But now the history is too much,” he says. “So now you have to keep it.”
Besides, he thinks Grandpa Jewell would have found it funny.
The friendly flying farmer
With an ever-growing operation to manage, it made sense for Jewell Sr. to become a pilot. He did so in 1945-’46 and his airplane soon became a frequent fixture on the Burleigh County skyline. He flew with skis in the winter, when the roads grew impassable.
People still talk of Jewell’s flying escapades. Like the times a hired hand was working in the hayfield and Jewell flew low to drop off a sandwich and a can of pop. “You had to let the pop settle down a little bit before you opened it,” Jerry says, laughing.
Contributed / Rolling Plains Adventures
Or the time he buzzed in, seemingly out of nowhere, to help a stranger with a flat tire. “All of a sudden, this crazy guy is landing in a ditch,” Jerry says. “He came walking up and said, ‘It looks like you need a little help.’”
After Jewell fixed the tire, the man asked what he owed him. “Oh, you don’t owe me anything,” Jewell responded.
In a scene that seems out of a movie script, the motorist asked, “Well, who are you?”
His grandpa replied, “I’m Jewell Doan,” then hopped in his plane and flew off like a Good Samaritan of aviators.
“That’s just the way he was,” Jerry says. “He loved people and people liked him.”
He remembers driving around with his grandfather when he sold handyman jacks, which he always had in his vehicle. “He’d pull into a guy’s yard and he’d set a jack by the post and a Hershey’s bar on top of the post,” Jerry says. “I don’t know if he ever got paid for those jacks.”
Jewell Sr. and Julia had one child, Jewell Jr., who was born right on the Doans’ kitchen table in 1921.
Everyone called him Babe.
Contributed / Jerry Doan family
In 1945, Babe married a farm girl, Hazel Peterson, and they had two sons (Jerry was the youngest).
Raised at a time when he had clear memories of Depression scarcity and wartime rationing, Jerry’s dad was not as much of a risk-taker as his father.
But he did take to the skies like his dad did. When Jewell Sr. bought a brand-new Cessna 140, it was Babe who flew it home from the factory in Wichita.
Jerry’s dad was active in
and the
for years.
“The planes my dad and grandpa had used to have a banner on that said ‘The Flying Doans,’” Jerry says. “They did many good things flying to help people.”
Jerry also became a pilot while studying animal science at North Dakota State University in the 1970s and his oldest son, Jeremy, also flew for a period of time.
Jerry says his grandfather stayed airborne for as long as he could. “My grandpa lived and breathed that until he had a stroke,” he recalls. “Then they had to take the wings off the airplane or he would have tried to fly it. It had to be hard on him.”
Contributed / Jerry Doan family
Although stories on Black Leg Ranch tend to focus more on the Doan men, Jerry says the women in the family also played a big role in helping the ranch succeed. “They were very hard workers, supporting the family, cooking for (hired men) and doing field work, too,” he says.
Jerry recalls his mother, Hazel, as a loving, June Cleaver-type of mom who always stood in the window of their Sears-Roebuck house when he pulled into the yard, which made him feel he was home. “She’s been gone 20 years and I’ll drive into the yard and I’ll glance at the window. Isn’t that dumb?” he says. “But it’s the tradition of this ranch.
“I have a real admiration for what those early generations gave us, or else I wouldn’t be doing this.”
