Rural Heritage December 2025/January 2026

motors on them. If cattle were in a pasture, including winter, you had to go and start the pump to fill stock tanks.” Stock and wildlife in upper Hell Canyon made use of both Scotty Springs. Other places where there weren’t wells with pumps made use of dams and natural ponds and seeps. The dams seasonally held water but only in years with good precipitation. Seeps dried up by July. Bruce says, “Dams quit being a reliable option around 2002. Drought years from 2001-2010 meant there wasn’t much water in any of them. Even the wells started drying up because the water table dropped from drought. When the dams and seeps and ponds dried up, before we got it fenced, everybody’s cattle came in from all over to the Springs. “When we came, there was a pipe that came out of East Scotty Spring then into a tank then the overflow from that tank went into a pipe that went downhill to another tank, all on top of the ground. We used it that way from 1975 until about 1990. In the summer, cattle in Hell Canyon would come into these spring tanks to water. “I put in a pipeline from our log house to a nearby well in 1978 and also hooked up the line to the corrals to it.The well had an electric pumpjack so it was easier to start. Then we put a submersible pump in there. Before that, the house and corral were serviced by the well house, and that well went dry; plus it was heavy in Epsom salts. So, we had to do the pipeline up to the well because the well went dry and the water was better. Electric service was at that well when we got here. It was nice to be able to go up there and turn a switch rather than start a darn pump. “Even after that first pipeline to the well, we were still using Briggs & Stratton gas-powered pumps because the pipeline wasn’t to the stock waterers. Eventually, I ran the pipeline all the way to and under the highway to the Gadiant pasture that we leased and then purchased. But if cattle were in pastures with no pipeline, we had a big tank and a pumpjack and motor and we chopped ice in winter. “When we got the pipelines from the well in, to stop having (frozen) tanks to chop, we put in waterers with electric heaters in them where we had power. They were a step up, but the electric bill was pretty tough. Then we started putting in Mirafounts that used ground heat to keep the waterers ice-free. They have an insulated tube 5 feet down – corrugated culvert. The top had a little 4-inch hole for the pipe.

Heat came up from the ground to keep the waterer from freezing. We had to kick the float to break ice or pour hot water in them. We had them freeze solid if they weren’t being used. Now I’m putting in Cobetts to replace the Mirafounts. They don’t freeze up as bad. They also have a deep tube into the ground, but it goes down 10 or 11 feet, so that ground heat keeps the water from freezing solid as long as there’s stock drinking daily.” At this early point of the Murdocks owning the ranch, they were relying on dams and seeps and electric or gas-powered pumps on wells for stock watering. The spring water was being shared with neighboring ranchers’ cattle. Bruce wanted that water for his stock, and several key junctures helped turn that desire into reality. The first was when Bruce and Linda’s former neighbor in Colorado bought the Marty ranch adjoining Scotty Springs ranch. Ellen Trevarton became a collaborator until the end of her life in both livestock and land. An early project together was adding the adjoining Miller ranch to their collective holdings in 1979. There isn't much to see at East Scotty Spring because it has been completely enclosed to preserve the water's high quality. The spring is at the base of the corner of the rock walls shown here.

December 2025/January 2026

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