Cattle drive a Bickleton mainstay

BICKLETON, Wash. -- A cattle drive -- the old-fashioned, horseback kind -- brought traffic to a halt in Bickleton on Friday afternoon.

In Bickleton terms, that means five or six cars had to wait while a herd of cows moseyed around them down Market Street.

"There's not much traffic to stop," said Bob Harvey, an auto mechanic who organizes family members and friends in the annual cattle drive through the heart of this unincorporated Klickitat County community of 90 residents.

Harvey, 45, and more than a dozen volunteers meet every October to help area cattle rancher Mat Spalding move his cows from summer pastures to his barns for pregnancy checking, calf rearing and winter feeding. In exchange, Spalding allows them to hunt deer on his land.

About 40 cow-calf pairs, plus three bulls, spent the summer in the timber-covered hills west of Bickleton. It's only about eight miles from Spalding's ranch, which lies on the east side of town, and only half that distance is served by a road.

The easiest and quickest way is to drive them by horseback right through the center of town. Loading them into a truck would take too much time.

"It takes longer to corral them up and then haul them," said Spalding, 56.

Justin Harvey, Bob's 17-year-old nephew, added: "And it's fun."

Friends of the Harveys and Spalding come from as far as way as Texas and New York to help out and cowpoke.

"We just come up to play rodeo for a weekend," said Joan Gardner, who lives in Mabton. Her parents, Jay and Joyce Gardner, came from upstate New York and followed with a truck pulling the horse trailer.

The four-hour endeavor hardly disrupted life in Bickleton, known for wheat, wind farms and bluebird houses on every fence post. Cattle ranching is also common; so are cowboys and cowgirls driving cows down a road.

Spalding's drive is one of the few that goes through town, said Nelda Flores, a part owner of the Bluebird Inn tavern.

As the cattle mooed and the horseback riders whistled, a few patrons of the Bluebird and Market Street Café stepped outside to take snapshots. The driver of a minivan sped up his visit to the post office to beat the cows. The Schwan's man even pulled over and let the procession pass.

"I think it's pretty cool that it still happens because I think that's pretty old school," Flores said.

* Ross Courtney can be reached at 509-930-8798 or rcourtney@yakimaherald.com.