Reub Long

Reub Long
Sage of Fort Rock at his ranch in 1966. Reub said this photo should be titled "One horny old goat contemplating another"
Born	26 January 1898 Lakeview, Oregon, USA
Died	28 July 1974(1974-07-28) (aged 76) Fort Rock, Oregon, USA
Occupation	Rancher
Genre	Story teller
Notable works	The Oregon Desert

Reuben Aaron Long (26 January 1898 – 28 July 1974) was an Eastern Oregon rancher, author, and story teller. He was known throughout Oregon as a witty and wise cowboy philosopher. In 1964, he joined E.R. Jackman to write The Oregon Desert, which is still a very popular book forty years after its original publication.

Reub was born in Lakeview, Oregon on 26 January 1898. His parents bought a ranch in the Fort Rock Valley approximately one hundred and twenty miles north of Lakeview in 1900. The family’s ranch was so isolated that they only made the 200 mi (320 km) round-trip to Prineville once a year to get supplies. On one of those trips, Reub bought his first saddle for $13.50 using money he had made trending livestock and selling coyote hides. At the time, he was seven years old.

The Long ranch had alkaline soil and insufficient water to produce good vegetables. When he was eleven, his parents sent him to the Summer Lake area during the summer to raise a garden. The garden was forty miles south of the ranch, but Reub made a round trip every three days. The first day, he would ride his horse to the garden site. The next day he spent tended and watered the garden, and then he rode home on the third day. In the fall, Reub’s family gathered two wagon loads of vegetables from his garden.

Reub had an older brother, Everett, and a younger sister, Anna. The Long clidren first attended school in Silver Lake. This required them to ride horses eleven mile to school each day, and then another eleven miles to get home each evening. Later, they attended school at a neighboring ranch only three mile from their home. Reub attended high school in Silver Lake, but only when he was not working. As a result, he never finished high school.

Reub lived his entire life on his ranch, adjacent to Fort Rock (now a state park) in northern Lake County. The ranch covered several thousand acres where he raised cattle and allowed wild horses to run free. Ranch life also provided the raw material for his good natured humor.