WINNEMUCCA — Local rancher Buster Dufurrena was honored this weekend as the sixth recipient of the “Ranch Hand of the Year” award.  The award is sponsored by the Agricultural District No. 3 as a way to recognize those men and women who make their living as ranch hands, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

“We wished to recognize the outstanding ranch hands who have contributed so much, not only to the ranching community, but to cowboy heritage itself,” said Kim Petersen, Director of the Agricultural District No. 3.

This year’s award will be even more meaningful because it was 21 years ago when Buster Dufurrena’s sons, Tim, Dan and Hank, decided to kick off a little friendly competition between neighbors—a friendly competition that has now become the Winnemucca Ranch Hand Rodeo.

Now, two decades later, Humboldt County Commissioner and longtime Ag 3 member Garley Amos will honor their father as he is presented the award for his “lifelong dedication to the legacy and lifestyle of the working cowboy.”

Buster runs one of the last domestic sheep operations in this part of Nevada. He lives south of Denio in a valley so remote it’s still not named on maps. 

Buster’s father Alex was a sheepherder in Spain. He and his five brothers emigrated to America one by one in the first decade of the 20^th century, sending money home until there was enough cash for

the next brother to come over. Alex and Tom Dufurrena partnered with U.W Scott raising sheep and hauling wool to Alturas, California with teams of mules and horses. Eventually, by the time the partnership dissolved, Alex had acquired two small ranches near Denio, the Wilder and Bog Hot Ranches.

Buster grew up between these two places, wintering cattle, sheep and Belgian work horses at Bog Hot and summering in the Bilk Creek Mountains above Wilder. In 1940, the ranches were sold and the family moved 100 miles south to Winnemucca.

Buster attended high school in Winnemucca, but he spent weekends and summer vacations working on the ranches of northwest Humboldt County. Leonard Creek Ranch was his home away from home for the next 14 years as he studied veterinary science at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and later spent time in the US Army in Panama.

In March 1954, Buster returned to his ranching roots. His boyhood home had been absorbed into a larger ranch, Quinn River Crossing, and he went to work there, where his brother John was manager.

He cowboyed for Quinn River, married Linda Donahue, and started a family. When the cow boss left in the spring of 1956, Buster took over. Tim, the first of his three sons was born “the night before we left for the mountain to start the summer riding. I went to town with Linda the day before, and that afternoon I had to come back and head for the mountain. The crew had waited for me.”

Buster took over as ranch manager when his brother left in 1964. He managed Quinn River from 1964 until it sold in 1978, raising his boys, Tim, Dan and Hank, there. He and Linda also bought their own band of sheep in 1974.

When the ranch sold, Buster started over. He and Linda built a new place literally out of the raw desert, as part of the Desert Land Entry program, starting in 1978. They planted Lombardy poplars and Russian

today like it’s been there forever.

Buster and Linda raise alfalfa hay, and the place serves as headquarters for their cattle and sheep operations. Their two younger sons, Dan and Hank, live on the place with their families.

Buster is known to most people as a rancher—a sheep man. But there’s a back story to him that shouldn’t be missed. For instance, he loves to dance and in 1960, with no community hall in sight, he decided the community of Denio, 30 miles north, needed a place to dance.

He knew there was an empty mine cookhouse at Tungsten, 80 miles south, and after some talk with his neighbors, they pitched in to buy the building and move it, intact, from the mine and fix it up.

“George DeLong moved it on a truck and took out every gate between Tungsten and Denio,” Buster laughs. Almost immediately, a small branch of the Humboldt County Library was installed, with Buster’s wife, Linda, as the first librarian.

That’s just one instance. There have been plenty of others when Buster stepped forward to help fill the needs of the ranchers of Humboldt County and northern Nevada. He served for more than 30 years as an elected member of the Nevada State Grazing Board and served as part of Nevada’s delegation to the Public Lands Council of the Western states.

He also served on the BLM’s Winnemucca District Advisory Grazing Board and as a director of Harney Electric Cooperative from the mid-1960s. Most recently, he served as a Humboldt County Commissioner for eight years. During his tenure, the Commissioners investigated and built the Winnemucca Event Center in which the Ranch Hand Rodeo is now held. Buster was part of this major undertaking.

Linda, a highly successful landscape photographer, said life has not always been kind to Buster. However, she credits her husband’s outlook with weathering the worst. “Buster can look at a tough, complicated situation and see the positive aspects of it. He can see his way through the difficulties. He is a true optimist.”

Does he ever get discouraged? “Discouraged? No, you can’t get discouraged,” says Buster with the strength of a man who has beaten the odds. “If you throw up your hands and quit, then it’ll just follow you. You have to keep taking the risk.”

Buster will be named the 2010 “Ranch Hand of the Year” as part of a special ceremony at the Winnemucca Event Center during the Saturday, March 6, Ranch Hand Rodeo competition.   Past recipients include Frank Loveland, Loui Cerri, Harold Chapin and John and Tim DeLong.

For more information on the “Ranch Hand of the Year” award sponsored by the Agricultural District No. 3, please contact Ag 3 Director Kim Petersen at (775) 623-5071, ext. 104.

 Special thanks to Carolyn Dufurrena for contributing heartily to his article and to Linda Dufurrena for sharing her beautiful photos.