• Smokey Mayfield, a ranch supervisor in the Texas Panhandle, once played the fiddle as a warmup act for country performer Tennessee Ernie Ford?
• Empire, a 1962–1963 NBC Western dramatic series set on a New Mexico ranch, provided the first recurring role for future film star Ryan O'Neal?
• the Charles Boyd Homestead is a group of three buildings that were once part of a pioneer ranch that supplied beef to logging crews in Central Oregon?
• the Pitchfork Ranch, established east of Lubbock, Texas in 1883, is one of the few modern ranches larger than it was at the time of its founding?
• Marsha Looper, a Republican state legislator elected to the Colorado House of Representatives in 2006 by a 2-to-1 margin, is also a systems engineer, real estate broker, and rancher?
• Margaret Formby, the daughter of Texas ranchers, was the founder of the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth?
• B.P. Newman, a business entrepreneur from Laredo, began operations with a dairy distributorship but branched into restaurants, subdivisions, apartments, and ranches throughout much of Texas?
• Clarence Hailey Long, a ranch foreman in the Texas Panhandle, was the inspiration for the original Marlboro Man advertising campaign by Philip Morris?
• Joseph McCoy was a 19th century cattle baron who is often cited as the inspiration for the phrase "The Real McCoy" because he made good on his pledge to Texas ranchers to get them a good price for their Longhorn cattle if they drove them from Texas to Kansas on the Chisholm Trail?
  
• Senator William A. Blakley of the U.S. state of Texas worked as ranch hand as a young man?

Facts on topics related to Ranch

Cowboy

• sonofabitch stew is a cowboy dish made with meats and organs from a freshly killed calf?
• the oddly-named Saints' Roost Museum in Clarendon, Texas refers to the town having been a prohibition settlement in the 1880s that cowboys referred to as where the "saints roost"?

Domestic sheep

• besides causing anemia and reducing weight gains in sheep, the blood-feeding fly Melophagus ovinus can also stain the wool and devalue it?
• in 1903, a toll of 10 pennies (equivalent to £8.00 today) was levied to take a flock of twenty sheep across Maidenhead Bridge?
• the possibility of scrapie resistance in sheep was tested by experimentation with a selection of Swaledales (pictured), a breed of domesticated sheep native to the Yorkshire Dales and the fells of Cumbria?

Montana

• 'Asta Bowen's novel Wolf: A Journey Home is based on the recorded lives of a pack of wolves relocated from Pleasant Valley, Montana, to Glacier Park in 1989?
• Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer had a small role as Sheriff Strunk in the 2007 film A Plumm Summer?
• Montana's 30 percent tax on coal production, upheld in Commonwealth Edison Co. v. Montana (1981), was once called "the most significant piece of legislation enacted in Montana in this century"?
• Montana's Shonkin Sag was created when glaciers blocked the Missouri River, forcing it to cut a new channel at right angles to the existing drainage valleys?
• Montana's Sleeping Giant Wilderness Study Area (namesake landform pictured) was designated a federal wilderness study area in 1981, delisted in 1982, and designated again in 1985?
• Elm Coulee Oil Field, Montana, is the highest-producing onshore field found in the Continental United States in the past 56 years?
• Hell Gate, a ghost town in western Montana, was the scene of several notorious lynchings in 1864?
• Katie Blair became the first teenager from Montana to place in the Miss Teen USA pageant's 24 year history, when she won the Miss Teen USA 2006 crown?
• French athlete Jason Lamy-Chappuis, who beat American Johnny Spillane in the final stretch of the individual normal hill/10 km Nordic combined event at the 2010 Olympics, was born in Montana?
• although the Montana Fish and Game Board, the predecessor to the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, was established in 1895, the first game warden was not hired until 1898?

Cattle

• arson was suspected when the last original boô (pictured), a building where a farmer rested when grazing cattle far from a village, burned down in the Netherlands?
• cattle infested with ticks can be treated with an extract from the African tree Margaritaria discoidea?
• Copeland Creek was significantly degraded by cattle overgrazing in the 19th century, but restoration efforts have reversed that trend?
• Herbert Mayfield, one of the Mayfield Brothers, a bluegrass band, earned his living as a welder for cattle feedlots in West Texas?
• Kim Kang-woo spent about ten days acquainting himself with a cow to prepare for scenes in the film Le Grand Chef, likening the experience to working with a sensitive actress?
• M. D. Madhusudan, who received the Whitley Award for 2009, uncovered links between coffee production in Brazil and cattle ownership and grazing in Bandipur National Park?
• Rancho Los Encinos near Los Angeles was founded in 1797, and raised cattle, sheep and wheat, and was a stagecoach stop, before becoming a real estate subdivision with Los Encinos State Historic Park at its heart?
• Velika Planina is a high-altitude settlement in Slovenia having huts whose oval roofs (pictured) have wooden shingles that extend nearly to ground level to accommodate cattle?
• after overcoming Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1989, K-Bob's Steakhouse (sign pictured) still operates in mostly smaller cities in the cattle country of New Mexico and Texas?
• ancient herds of White Park, a rare breed of horned cattle, have been preserved in Great Britain from the Middle Ages?

Hawaii

• 2005's Hurricane Kenneth (pictured) brought heavy rainfall to Oahu and Kauai in Hawaii, enough for its name to be considered for retirement?
• Dave Burrell's operatic live jazz album Windward Passages was his response to land development in Hawaii during the late 1970's?
• Hawaii's Chain of Craters Road has been blocked repeatedly by lava flows from Kīlauea volcano (pictured) since it was built in 1928?
• hula master George Na'ope was designated a "Living Golden Treasure" by the state of Hawaii?
• 'Opaeka'a Falls (pictured) on the Hawaiian island of Kauai is named after the native freshwater shrimp ("rolling shrimp" in Hawaiian) that "roll" down the falls?
• AMiBA (pictured) is a radio telescope located on Mauna Loa in Hawaii that is being used to observe the Cosmic Microwave Background and the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect in clusters of galaxies?
• Ah Jook Ku, a journalist and writer based in Hawaii, was the first Asian American reporter for the Associated Press, as well as the first Asian American female reporter for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin?
• Ben Finney, one of the Polynesian Voyaging Society founders who designed, built, and sailed the Hokulea on its first voyage from Hawaii to Tahiti, wrote his thesis on surfing for his M.A. degree?
• Betsey Stockton, the first unmarried female foreign missionary, was a manumitted slave who established schools in Hawaii and Canada?
• Cross Seamount, a landform arising from the ocean floor southwest of Hawaii, is used by the NOAA to study tuna migratory patterns?

Livestock

• Alonzo C. Mather was awarded a medal in 1883 by the American Humane Society for the humane treatment of the livestock transported in railroad stock cars he designed?
• dew ponds are man-made ponds placed on the top of hills, built for watering livestock?
  
• a forage harvester is used to create silage feed for livestock?
• all members of the genus Zigadenus are unpalatable to livestock because of the presence of alkaloids?
• during the Agra famine of 1837–38 in the North-Western Provinces of India, approximately 800,000 people died of starvation and an even larger number of livestock perished?
• the charity Heifer International allows you to give a family a gift of livestock in the spirit of sustainability?

Native Americans in the United States

• "urban Indian" activist Bernie Whitebear was the brother of groundbreaking health care administrator Luana Reyes and of sculptor, curator and memoirist Lawney Reyes?
• Alexander Hamilton's son William S. Hamilton helped recruit Native Americans to join the U.S. against Sauk Chief Black Hawk during the 1832 Black Hawk War?
• artifacts discovered at Mound Bottom, Tennessee show that the site was part of a vast Native American trading network extending to the Great Lakes, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Appalachian Mountains during the Mississippian era?
• Native American Thomas Wakeman organized the first Sioux Indian YMCA at Flandreau, Dakota Territory on April 27, 1879?
• Native American activist Robert Robideau was acquitted in the 1975 shooting deaths of two FBI agents, for which his cousin Leonard Peltier was later convicted and is serving two life sentences?
• Native American sculptor Willard Stone became a master wood carver despite an accidental explosion that cost him his right thumb and two fingers when he was 13 years old?
• Native Americans lived at the Canfield Island Site (pictured) on the West Branch Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania for thousands of years, and now hold an annual pow wow there?
• Native Americans occupied the Rogue River around the Rogue River Ranch (pictured) over 9,000 years before European settlers arrived?
• Oklahoma historian Angie Debo won numerous honors for her books on Native American history, but never found a permanent position in an academic history department?
• Cardinal Mahony petitioned Rome to name Padre Serra Church after Junipero Serra despite controversy over his treatment of California Indians?