Jordan Centennial Ranch History
Used with permission of Danese Jordan Reed.
Robert Emmet Jordan was born March 12, 1882, in Boone Iowa to Cornelius and Sarah Francis McCoy Jordan. He was five years old when his father died. His family came to Sioux County, Nebraska when he was eight. Robert “Bob” Jordan was united in marriage to Oressa Hunter at the home of the bride’s parents on October 1, 1902. Oressa was born February 8, 1883, at River Phillip Cumberland County, Nova Scotia to John and Margaret Caroline Dixon Huner. The young couple made their home on Indian Creek, Wyoming, where Bob was a foreman on a cattle ranch. Bob’s sunny disposition and open-handed hospitality made the Jordan home a place where people loved to stop. They were the parents of seven children: John, Raymond “Buck”, Sarah, Bernice, Margaret “Margie”, Dan, and Mary. John and Mary died at birth.
Bob and Oressa were hard working and ambitious. Bob was able to purchase land on Indian Creek from his employer and the family made their home there. Oressa staked a homestead claim on land to the north and west of the land Bob owned but their love for the area made them stay. The original home in which Bob and Oressa raised their family is no longer there, with the exception of parts of the foundation. It lives on in paintings and people’s memories.
Life on Indian Creek had its challenges and one of those left Oressa a widow in 1928. On a morning in December on the Mark Mortesen ranch, the neighbors had gathered to get ready to dip the cattle (a method used to delouse animals). The vat was filled with water and the fire had it heated to a boiling point. Vats were typically cooled before use. Bob decided to put the dip solution in the vat from a barrel when his foot slipped and he fell into the vat and disappeared completely. After climbing out, he rode his horse to the Mortesen house to get a change of clothes where he discovered how badly he was scalded. His life could not be saved and with his family at his bedside, he died at the age of 46. He was a man of true western type and a fine neighbor and friend.
Dan, Bob and Oressa’s son, moved back to the family ranch after completing his education. Dan married Velma Leona Zimmerman on August 14, 193, in Ardmore, south Dakota. Velma was the daughter of Grover Cleveland and Mildred Melissa Eberspecher Zimmerman. Dan was a progressive thinker and was approached to be the supervisor of the phone line project in the Indian Creek community. He made many improvements on the ranch to ensure the legacy of the place he loved so much.
Dan and Velma were very active in the Lusk, WY and Harrison, NE communities. Dan and Velma had three children: Carol, Dale, and Sherry. They would take their children to local dances, and they helped teach square dancing to anyone wanting to learn. This was not an easy feat considering Dan had some hearing loss from rheumatic fever as a child and a high school football injury. They held many card parties and dinners. They loved cards of any kind: bridge, pinochle, and poker, to name a few, They passed the love of cards onto their children and grandchildren.
Dan and Velma raised Hereford cows and bred them with Angus and Hereford bulls. Their son Dale was their right-hand man for many years. He and his wife, Dorothy Buckley Jordan, raised their three children, Diana, Danese, and Dean of the ranch as well. Dan and Velma’s son-in-law Durl Holtz (Carol) also helped out on the ranch on weekends. He and Dale raised cattle on the ranch.
In the 1960’s, they installed a pipeline which supplied water for the entire ranch from wells near their homes. This pipeline continues to be used and updated to this day. Dan was very conservative with the resources from the ranch and was able to feed his cattle well in both lean years and good. In wet years they hayed the meadows along Brush Creek. They also utilized water from Indian Creek for flood irrigation using submersible pumps for hand-move sprinklers along the creek bottoms and a tow line on a hay pasture west of the houses.
Dan and Dale were both excellent mechanics and did the majority of carpentry, plumbing, and electrical work on the ranch. They enjoyed dirt work and were able to build dams and fills with a small dozer and scrapers that hey were able to keep running, even though the machinery was ancient when Dan bought it. Dan seldom bought new vehicles; he purchased a pickup and a new car for Velma once every several years. Machinery was always “well used” when it was purchased and took a great deal of welding and mechanic work to keep it operational.
Although the focus of the ranch was work, there was time for the occasional fun here and there. Dale and Dorothy hosted several ice-skating parties in the winter. They were well attended. Bringing friends and family from all over the county. The family was very proud to follow in the footsteps of Robert and Oressa by always being known for a place where people loved to stop.
The tri-state marker for South Dakota, Nebraska, and Wyoming is on the property, recently celebrating 150 years since its original survey on August 17, 1869. In 1989, surveyors using modern equipment including Global Positioning System (GPS0 found the original marker to be less than one foot from the exact coordinates. The family has escorted many people from various parts of the country to visit and have their picture taken by or on the marker.
When Dale and Dorothy moved to town in the early 1980’s, their son Dan worked on the ranch most summers until graduating form college. Dean continued to run the ranch by himself for a few years until he retired and moved to town in the mid-1990s. Dan passed away in 1997 and Velma in 2004 after which Dale and Sherry operated the ranch together. Currently, Danese Jordan Reed’s daughter Kaylee Barner, husband Trevor and Dan and and Velma’s great-great granddaughter Roarke are currently living on and operating the ranch. This makes the 5th and 6th generation of the family to make the Jordan Ranch their home.
In the late 1970’s, Dan and Velma wanted to protect all their hard work by forming Nine O Cattle Company, Inc. They used their cattle brand “9” “O” as the inspiration for their corporation. The family is pleased this brand has been kept in the family and is held by Dean Jordan, Dan and Velma’s grandson.