About thirty five miles northeast of Reno is Pyramid Lake, the gem of Paiute Indian country, its glassy, still waters a mystical barrier between the dimensions of sky and the subterranean geothermal forces below. Beneath the stillness is a network of hot springs that release their energy to the waiting world above. Natural cathedrals of tufa rock formations line the northern shores of the lake, their distinctive primeval architecture forming the gateway to the Smoke Creek watershed area. To pass through this hauntingly beautiful landscape is a transformational experience for mind and senses.
Continuing northward along the dirt tracks you will discover an unusual and unexpected virtual oasis surrounded by mile upon mile of parched alkali desert flats, formed from a dry lake bed, reminiscent of the ancient lake system that once covered the Great Basin area in the Pleistocene era. Mud flats of this type comprise the famous playa, home to the Burning Man counterculture celebration that annually graces the nearby Black Rock desert.
The Smoke Creek region is steeped in history from primeval to early Native American, to the gold rush, the white settlers, military expeditions, government acquisitions, battles over land and water rights, the incoming railroad and the rise of the cattle and sheep industry to the relative calm of the present day. The watershed still supports seven ranches and their complements of ranch hands, running mostly cattle; although the canyon area no longer sustains a single permanent resident The ranchers, nowadays, are all visitors. This is a far cry from the height of the sheepherding era when, at the end of the nineteenth century, there would have been up to a hundred people living off the land.
Among those to take on the challenge of the shepherding life was Dominique Laxalt, a folk hero of Basque tradition in Nevada. According to Basque scholar and founder of the Basque Studies program at the University of Nevada, Reno, William A. Douglass, Dominique is believed to have shepherded for the Smoke Creek Canyon ranch. By coincidence, this property is the very ranch Douglass was able to recently purchase.
According to Dominique’s granddaughter, Monique, her grandfather would have worked from the Smoke Creek Canyon ranch during his employment as a sheepherder in the American West. In this capacity, Dominique wouldn’t have been mentioned in the U.S. census, so knowledge of his family movements rely on word of mouth passed down within the family. He would have spent much of the year up in the mountains with the sheep but would have been based at the ranch for at least part of the time.
Douglass thinks it quite probable Dominique and his wife, Theresa were at Smoke Creek Canyon during the 1920s. Their son, Robert Laxalt, Monique’s father, has written in his literary classic, Sweet Promised Land, that his father had married his mother when, ”he was rich in sheep,” but lost his own band of sheep to bad fortune and had to go back to sheepherding. He says his mother “had to bear her children in rough camps and ghosted little towns, she had taken what little money they had and bought into a small hotel in Carson City.” Later, as they prospered, his father was able to go back into the hills with his own sheep.
Robert was born in Alturas, on September 25th 1923, not terribly far, as Douglass says, from the Smoke Creek Canyon ranch. He suggests it quite likely that Theresa would have been employed as a cook at the ranch but opted to stay with Basque friends in Alturas when she was close to term in order to be nearer to medical care. This would be in keeping with Basque practice, since, as an ethnic group, they were renowned for offering each other support in dealing with life’s practicalities. It is known there were several Basque families out at Alturas at the time. The Laxalts had little connection with Alturas otherwise and so Robert’s birth there would have been consistent with his parents living nearby at Smoke Creek Canyon.

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As it stands today; the Smoke Creek Canyon ranch still withholds some secrets. It is known to be one of the older ranches in Washoe County, occupying a position close to the old settler trails and coach routes. Even the Western Pacific Railroad made it out to the eastern borders of the Salt Creek desert, bringing with it the telegraph, the post office and small stores; relative hustle and bustle compared to the vast emptiness of today. Douglass believes the ranch has been in Basque ownership at various points in its history and was likely built by Basques and possibly owned by Basques until the 1970’s. As he observes, even non-Basque owners would have hired Basques to be sheepherders. The main stone house, now derelict, strongly resembles a stone basseriak farmstead of the Basque homeland. Its structure and character is otherwise totally out of place in the Nevada desert.
He explained that in Euskal Herria (Basque Country), typically, in a two-story basseriak, the ground floor would comprise a stable for four or five milk cows and maybe a couple of pigs all cozily housed under the upstairs family living quarters . This would facilitate the type of small scale animal husbandry that was typical and essential to the Basque lifestyle with a family’s best and most valuable livestock sheltered with them under the one roof. But, as he points out, In America, livestock graze on a very different scale to that practiced in the Basque country. Douglass therefore doubts the stone cottage at Smoke Creek Canyon was used as a true basseriak. He thinks it quite likely the rancher would well have had a milk cow for domestic use but doubts animals would have stabled inside the house.
The layout does show the living quarters for the family were on the second floor but Douglass suspects the downstairs was probably used for storage. That would be one difference. Also, in the Basque country the farms are very small in scale and might comprise only eight or ten acres of land in total. This would have been farmed intensively and the crop taken upstairs to be stored. The whole attic area would have been used for storing whatever small-scale crops were grown and harvested, such as apples and potatoes. Again, Douglass doubts that practice was mirrored at Smoke Creek, although he admits it would not have been impossible. The Smoke Creek property did have an apple orchard, so it is possible that apples were stored up in the attic, but that, Douglass admits, is speculation.
Despite its unique place in Nevada history, there are currently no plans to renovate the stone house. It has long since been stripped of its furnishings and lacks any wiring or plumbing. It has suffered from subsidence, which caused a serious crack in one wall and a pronounced lean in a part of the structure. Although, in theory, it could be restored, Douglass thinks the Smoke Creek area too isolated for restoration to be worthwhile.
He is thinking of remodeling the other residence on the property; a little, white, wooden house, built in the 1980’s which could be brought up to code without too much work, although it is currently uninhabitable. The wooden house could be used as a place to stay for short periods at a time; Douglass has no plans to live up there permanently.
The group owners of the Smoke Creek Canyon ranch are leasing out the grazing rights to a cattle farmer. Cows and calves are pastured there for about six months of the year to fatten till they are moved either to market or to California for the winter. The ranch is also used to raise about three hundred acres of alfalfa that has to be cut three times a season.
The Smoke Creek area is also the annual temporary home for The Espil sheep shearing operations as the flock makes its way to the summer grazing grounds in the Warner Mountains above Alturas
Thus life continues on at Smoke Creek at a rather slow and weary pace. Ranchers hold on to their livelihoods even as the little towns, such as Gerlach, are stripped of their lifeblood in the current cruel economy. But, as life has a habit of moving in cycles, it is possible that one day the true value of the historical and anthropological secrets, held in the whispering grasses and the ancient rocks, might emerge to be fully appreciated and breathe new strength and new life into the region.

JT Basque Bar and Restaurant, by Alina Bryant. Click to enter the virtual-reality environment.

Clare O’Toole

The tradition of family style dining offered by the Basque hotels and boarding houses of the great sheepherding era; is as popular today as it ever was. It attracts a very relaxed clientele who turn out to have a good time. They turn up to experience a sense of Basque culture, to soak up the atmosphere as much as the food.

The J. T Basque, Bar and Restaurant in downtown Gardnerville captures the conviviality, the sense of family bred service, the reliability of a good, hearty meal served with wine, that has come to represent the traditional fare of a Nevadan, Basque kitchen. The walls are warmly decorated and display an enigmatic hat collection whilst the ceiling in the bar is covered in dollar bills, donated as good luck charms. There’s an old piano and a jukebox with a combination of Basque and American music.

The bar and restaurant are always bustling.

J.T.’s is owned by Marie Louise Lekumberry and her brother, Jean Baptiste. They took over ownership in 1993, following the death of their father Jean. He was the migrant in the family, coming from the French, Basque country to the Carson Valley in 1947, to work as a sheepherder. As was often the case; having saved some money he branched out into the hotel trade and, with his wife Shirley and brother, Pete, took over what was already an established Basque concern with a curious history.

The building has had some extensions added since the old portion, including the bar and half the front dining room was, in 1896, uprooted and transported to Garderville, via Genoa, from Virginia City, by local entrepreneur, Hans Nelson. Its current name is derived from the Jaunsaras and Trounday families who were the first to turn its use to a sheepherder hotel and dining room, in 1955. The Lekumberrys kept the J.T. name to preserve the continuity of its Basque heritage.

JT Basque interview by Alina Bryant

In the early days, under Lekumberry ownership, Jean tended bar whilst his wife ran the dining room and brother, Pete, though lacking any professional chef training, cooked up the generous meals, designed to meet the hungry sheepherders’ appetites. Diners all sat round a long table to partake in the meal of the house, served in one seating.

In the midst of all the activities, Jean and Shirley raised three children on site. They soon learned the skills of the trade.

There are still some large tables at J.T.’s, but mostly dining is on a more intimate scale. The menu is a set dinner, usually a tureen of soup, salad, beans, a stew course and fries with your choice of entrée, usually either beef, lamb, chicken or shrimp. The shrimp is a modern addition to reflect the maritime flavor of cuisine from the Basque homeland. Home grown, organic meat is prevalent, as the family believes in the importance of growing and raising their own local produce for their kitchen.

The Espil Ranch, by Clare O’Toole

For explorers of the outer reaches of Northern Nevada, hoping to get a feel for the life of the remote and legendary west, a trip into the desert lands that straddle the triangle northeast and northwest of Reno could turn up some surprises and iconic images of the past. An expedition during fall, or through the colder months, that took you by alfalfa pastures around Lovelock and BLM grazing land to the northwest; or, come spring, a visit to Pyramid Lake and the Smoke Creek Canyon district; or, during summer, a foray further west towards the Warner Mountains and Alturas in California, might reveal what has now become a rare sight in Nevada. If you keep your attention focused to distinguish their uncanny camouflage against the dry sagebrush and sandy soils, you may be able to distinguish large flocks of sheep, peacefully grazing, or steadily making their way along two hundred and fifty miles of trails between their winter and summer pastures. You won’t see the lone tent of a solitary Basque sheepherder. But if you are intrepid enough to step into the wilds, the remnants of the old Basque sheep camps can still be found. But you may catch sight of Basque rancher Brent Espil and his team of Mexican and Peruvian sheepherders. They watch and manage the sheep as they make between eight and twelve miles a day when on the move between seasonal grazing grounds.
The Espils are modern ranchers, very proud of their Basque heritage and proud of still being in the sheep business. Between Brent and his brother John, they own or lease land running sheep and cattle across a vast acreage that is mostly wilderness. At one time, and for a good hundred years from the mid 1800s onward, immigrant Basque shepherds kept the sheep industry alive. Brent and John Espil are now among the last of their kind to uphold the tradition, following in their grandfather’s footsteps. Martin Espil was one of the early Basque sheepherders, attracted to Nevada; making it to Winnemucca in 1897. The family has owned and run sheep from their Smoke Creek Desert ranch for fifty years. It is one of several properties owned or leased by the Espils over the years.
Brent described how he’d come across old sheep camps when out on horseback.
“There will be broken wine bottles and old Prince Albert cans – their little trash pile; and I’ll think about it. Before this, that poor Basque had to come out here having no idea where he was and they’d give him a Burro and say, ‘here’s your grub, here’s your coffee and here you go.’”
Running sheep, as Brent explained, is labor intensive, particularly when their grazing land is in the High Sierras. The land close to their home ranch cannot support them all year round. Bands of sheep, up to two thousand in a bunch, are trailed between the cooler, high elevation summer pastures and the lower elevation grazing plains and alfalfa pastures. Feed and water sometimes have to be shipped out to them. Since they are a modern, mechanized business, this can be done by truck; but there are times when the only way to reach the sheep is via horse and burro, reminiscent of the shepherding lifestyle of the past.
Brent aims to have the sheep near to the home ranch for the spring lambing season when they are most vulnerable and needing close attention. If there’s a drought, the mothers may not be able to make enough milk to support their lambs and predators will circle, cougars and coyotes, often purely for the fun of the kill.
“A lot of people got out of the sheep business years ago, laborers being hard to find. Many turned their BLM-allotted sheep grazing permits over to cattle. You don’t have to be there 24/7 for cattle. You can let them go for a few days or weeks or whatever and then move them from pasture to pasture. Cowboys, historically, have been easier to employ than good sheepherders.”
He explained how a combination of circumstances has all but killed off Basque sheepherding. The industry has faced some bad years. Wool was almost worthless not many years ago.
“It didn’t even pay to have the sheep shorn; ranchers couldn’t afford to pay shearers. Sheep didn’t make any money. Lamb prices were bad, predators were bad, and government regulations were really bad. One of the things that hurt a lot of the sheep people was the reintroduction of Bighorn sheep in certain areas. They won’t allow domestic sheep to be close to them. Historic sheep ranges have been turned over to Bighorns.”
“You have to have a passion for what you’re doing. If you don’t have that passion for it, after beating your head against the wall for a few years you say; to hell with it, I’m going to go to town where I can make some money.”
Brent’s wife, Victoria, works as a teacher for the school district. She has to make an eighty mile round trip, driving the dusty dirt roads to teach at the primary school in Gerlach. The economic downturn and rural isolation have forced the Gerlach high school to close, as the little town was severely impacted by the closure of the gypsum mine in nearby Empire. The few remaining students, mostly the offspring of ranching families, are taking their classes online. Victoria’s school’s total enrollment now consists of but nine pupils; one of those she collects on her daily commute. She considers herself lucky to have been able to keep her job. Their Espil’s son has thus far opted to seek his fortune outside of ranching, thinking it offers too little return for too much commitment. However other members of the wider Espil family have expressed an interest in continuing the family ranching tradition.
As a second generation Basque American, Brent Espil said he feels entirely American but likes to keep up with Basque heritage and culture when he has the opportunity. He and Victoria have been all over California and Nevada trying Basque restaurants, enjoying the food and the Picon Punch. They make a point of visiting San Francisco once a year to watch a baseball game and find another Basque restaurant to try.
If he gets a chance, Brent likes to take the family to a Basque festival, whether in Elko, Reno or Winnemucca. He admits there has been no way he could make the time to get to them all.
“That’s part of the reason there’s probably not a lot of people in this business as you miss a lot of the things even with the cattle end of the business.
“We’ve never had time to do the rodeo and can’t do a lot of the festivals, living so far out. By the time you get some place you’re tired and you don’t feel like going to a party or a festival with the younger people, especially at our age. In our younger days we did get away with it a little more. It’s hard. It seems like every time we take off there’s a catastrophe. Something happens on the ranch or with the sheep and you have to get home and take care of them.”

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The Cuisine:
Omelette Basquaise
Café Sopa
Beef Tongue and Sauce
Sopa de Invierno (Pyrenees Winter Soup)
Sheepherder Casserole
Basque Salad
Garbanzo & Chorizo
Lomo (Pork Loin with Pimento)
Cold Tongue with Oil and Vinegar
Arroz Con Leche (Rice Pudding)

There has been a Basque boarding house or hotel in the location of the current Santa Fe Hotel since the first decade of the twentieth century. Current owner, Phil Zubillago, recalled how his great uncle worked for the original Basque hoteliers during that early period. That hotel burned down in 1948, to be replaced, a year later, by the current building. There was a change of ownership, and the hotel passed into the hands of the Zubillago family, where it has remained ever since.

Santa Fe restaurant, by Mike Schembri. Click to enter the virtual-reality environment.

As a member of a first generation Basque family, Phil Zubillago grew up a native Basque speaker. His father only spoke the native tongue to him and, as was so often the case with young Basque immigrants, the Basque hotels offered a home-away-from-home atmosphere where it was quite possible to get by without the need to learn English. They were a magnet to the lonely sheepherders, providing a virtually self-supporting culture that insulated transient Basque workers from the wider American experience. The seasonal nature of sheepherding work provided ample opportunity for the Basques to find repast for mind, body and soul among the welcoming local, ethnic community who congregated at these local havens. Alliances were formed, marriages, births, deaths, all took place under the roof of the Basque hotels. The migrant workers socialized and did business under the guiding arm of their own community.

Santa Fe restaurant interview by Mike Schembri

The hoteliers readily learned English themselves. To Phil Zubillago, it was his second native tongue and he speaks English as any American might. He remains grateful he he was able to sustain his command of Basque. As he points out, it is not an easy language to learn in comparison to Spanish or French. The Basque tongue has unique roots, uncommon to the normal family of Indo European languages. And, though a small country, there are seven provinces and seven different dialects within the language. After exposure to the language during the naturally, linguistically attuned years of childhood, it is much harder to acquire, and very few non-native Basques are able to speak it. Zubillago is glad there has been a resurgence of teaching the Basque language in his home country.

Nowadays, although the restaurant at the Santa Fe trades under its Basque character offering authentic cuisine, the clientele are mixed, indistinguishable from any other small hotel in town. The days of major migration from the Basque country are over since it was mainly the post-war economy that saw the intense wave of immigration in the early days of the hotel’s life. Zubillago maintains contact with members of the local Basque community who, he says, are a cohesive group when standing as one against adversity. He says Basques have enormous pride in their culture, and that pride usually has a bit of stubbornness with it. Even though there is cohesiveness, there is also tremendous diversity within their culture and if among a group of Basques on their own, the differences become apparent.

Marlette Lake by Lucas Pakele. Click to enter the virtual-reality environment.

The Laxalt Sheep Camp at Marlette Lake, by Clare O’Toole

A favorite retreat of the Laxalt children was their father Dominique’s sheep camp up at Marlette Lake, where he had purchased more than a hundred acres of grazing land high in the Sierras, two thousand feet above the eastern shores of Lake Tahoe. Dominique is said to have herded sheep in these mountains for decades, operating out of his base camp at Marlette.
The experience of accompanying their father onto the wild hillsides where, in the Basque immigrant tradition, he had proudly braved the elements, the isolation, lack of home comforts and all the dangers of predators, made an indelible impression on the younger Laxalts. Robert Laxalt immortalized his father’s experiences in his literary classic, “Sweet Promised Land.” Paul Laxalt chose Marlette to mull over his political future when, in 1986 he was considering making a run in the upcoming, 1988 presidential elections to replace his friend, Ronald Reagan. Back in his days as governor of Nevada, Paul had cooperated with Reagan, then governor of neighboring California to launch the Tahoe Regional Planning Association in 1968, intended to prevent environmental damage from overdevelopment. Reagan had been a visitor to the Laxalt sheep camp and, according to author Joxe Mallae-Olaetxe, carved his name on one of the trees. *“Speaking through the Aspens: Basque tree carvings in California” (University of Nevada Press, 2000)
Reporter Brendan Riley quoted Laxalt as saying, “these last few days, I sit in the middle of all of this and I know if I go [for president] and I’m elected, this is gone…The fringes of the presidency have no appeal for me now. If I could run the country right out of Marlette, by myself, it would be very simple.”
Riley described the camp as a collection of tents and weathered buildings, a beat-up old truck, split-log tables and no telephone.

Marlette Lake Sheep Camp Mutton Bar, by Tiffany Moore. Click to enter the virtual-reality environment.

Gabriel Urza, Dominique’s great granddaughter recently wrote in a ski blog extolling the virtues of the slopes near Marlette and the joys of staying in a rustic ski cabin: “My family still maintains about 180 acres of land in an area otherwise surrounded by National Forestland, the last remnants of a sheep grazing range that my great grandfather had purchased in the early part of the last century.” While the outdoor pursuit may have changed from sheepherding to skiing, the pleasure of the wild escape is clearly still in the Laxalt blood.
The Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno, has a revolving display of artifacts donated by the Laxalt family, garnered from the sheep camp at Marlette. As evidenced in the accompanying photographs, the items are representative of the simple life of the sheepherder, showing cooking equipment, a pack saddle and sheepherding gear.
*Speaking through the Aspens: Basque tree carvings in California (University of Nevada Press, 2000)

Click on the image, and then drag within the window to rotate this water can from the Laxalt Sheep Camp at Marlette Lake.

Click on the image, and then drag within the window to rotate this lantern from the Laxalt Sheep Camp at Marlette Lake.

Click on the image, and then drag within the window to rotate this milk bucket from the Laxalt Sheep Camp at Marlette Lake.

Aroborglyphs on Peavine Peak, by Jenny Mortimore. Click to enter the virtual-reality environment.

Speaking Trees
by Clare O’Toole

Basque sheepherders have largely been absent from American folklore; their lonely travails did not easily lend themselves to dramatic interpretation. The American cowboy, on the other hand, became a romanticized cult hero, immortalized on the silver screen. His counterpart in the livestock industry of the mid-nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the sheepherder ,remained unnoticed, his song unsung.
But there is one form of Basque storytelling that captures the imagination in a quieter yet compelling way – the Basque arborglyphs (tree carvings). Hundreds of thousands of Aspens stretching from Washington to Texas and from California to North Dakota, bear witness to the lives, longings and sentiments of these lonely carvers, immigrant Basque sheepherders who came to America to find a better life. These dutiful men, coming from a uniquely proud and individualist culture, found themselves alone and isolated in a vast landscape, full of predators of which they knew nothing. It was a rude awakening for them, coming as they did from their relatively green and fertile land. Their feet had barely touched American soil, let alone tramped the Nevada desert, when they were charged with protecting and caring for up to one and a half thousand ewes and their lambs. They began this work with nothing but a horse or donkey, their dogs and their sheep for companionship, a canvas tent and a gun for protection. These young Basque men had to learn to stand their ground and make peace with their predicament or risk becoming “sagebrushed” (going crazy) or worse, admitting defeat, looking for alternative work, or heading back to their far-away homeland.
Arborglyphs became a means for the sheepherder to humanize his landscape, declare the presence of his own personality amongst his natural surroundings, calling out to his fellow sheepherders and leaving a legacy for all those who followed in his footprints. Basques who made their way to America during the gold rush era, whether coming via Argentina or direct from the Basque country via Ellis Island, were not captured in any population census. Often the aspens are the only record of Basque immigration, especially since the most popular motif, to be found on eighty percent of the trees, is the carver’s name, date and place of birth.

Cheryl Surface interview by Tiffany Moore

With little or no time to acquaint themselves with American culture, before they were put to work tending sheep, these men held on to powerful associations with their homeland. In later years, as the practice of personal documentation became an established facet of the Basque sheepherder’s experience, messages became bolder. Some trees reflect the carver’s political concerns during such crisis times as the 1936 to 1939 Spanish Civil War or during World War II. They are generally written in the Basque tongue or in “phonetic” English and are therefore hard for a non-Basque to decipher. Where the carver attempts English; spellings add to the overall humor, such as “seeps” or “chips” indicating “sheep” and “fok,” “chit,” and “sanabich” which does not stand for “sandwich” but, more likely, what the sheepherder might be tempted to utter when a cougar savaged his “chips” in the night, or the camp tender was late bringing in supplies.

Arborglyphs of Hobart Reservoir, by Tiffany Moore. Click to enter the virtual-reality environment.

Generally, Basques are not known as complainers. It goes against their pride, and therefore humor was used as a powerful tool to raise complaints and fears to a higher level of wit and bravado. Arborglyph inscriptions might seem pretty restrained compared to our modern habits of self-expression. The so called “pornographic” images of naked women reveal very little that could be considered seriously salacious. Some might be accompanied by a comment about an escapade with a local prostitute, eager to cash in on the loneliness and longings of these displaced, hardworking souls. Yet the speaking Aspens were not carved for our benefit but rather to create a conversation amongst brethren. Although it was not considered manly to admit to loneliness and fear, if such emotions expressed through humor, the sheepherders lament was acceptable to his brethren. Each individual knew full well what was the reality behind the laconic laments and references to home.

More arborglyphs of Hobart Reservoir, by Tiffany Moore. Click to enter the virtual-reality environment.

The images as we see them are not as they would originally have appeared. The distinctive dark marks standing out against the pale bark of the Aspen can look like brushstrokes. But they are actually the result of scarring and take a few years to form after the initial incisions have been made in the bark. If the carver applied too heavy a touch to his design and cut too deeply into the bark, the resulting scarring would blur the desired image and outlines might merge into one another.
Aspen trees are not long-lived; it is unusual to find carvings over a hundred years old. The trees tend to die off by around the sixty year mark, many even sooner. They fall prey to the ravages of development, fire, vandals, disease and normal old age. In Nevada, Basque tree carvings can still be found high above the east shores of Lake Tahoe and on the Peavine mountain range. Joxe Mallea Olaetxe, a UNR Basque history instructor, has catalogued over 20,000 trees in these locations in a passionate bid to preserve what remains of a living Basque museum. His dedication is responsible for bringing recognition and respect to this aspect of Basque culture that has for too long been overlooked.

Click on the image, and then drag within the window to rotate this

Click on the image, and then drag within the window to rotate this Basque arborglyph. (VR object by Michelle Horton.)