Sheep Industry News November 2024

Peaveys, Trailing of the Sheep Celebrate Patriarch John Peavey at Annual Festival KARI DEQUINE HARDEN Idaho Mountain Express

construction began along the abandoned Union Pacific Railroad line in 1986 and was completed in 1991, connecting Bellevue, Hailey, Ketchum and Sun Valley along more than 20 miles of paved bike path. The full length of the trail was made possible only through the consent of the local sheep ranchers, who had always used the route to move sheep from their summer grazing grounds in the north to their wintering pastures in the south. When the irritable bikers questioned what the sheep were do ing on their trail, Peavey helped flip their perspective – educat ing the community on what the bikers were doing on the historic sheep migration route. “The bike path wouldn’t be there if the sheep ranchers didn’t allow it to be built on the sheep right of way,” said Carol Waller, who was leading the Ketchum/Sun Valley Chamber & Visitors Bureau in 1997 and helped the Peaveys get the festival up on its hooves. Instead of fueling the conflict, Peavey and his wife, Diane Josephy Peavey, took the opportunity to showcase and celebrate sheep ranching in the Wood River Valley. They invited residents to tag along behind the sheep as they made their way south. From that small annual gathering of sheep trailers grew the fes tival that today welcomes people from every state in the country and across the globe, and has an economic impact of more than $6 million on the local economy. From cooking classes and sheepdog trials to poetry read ings and sheep shearing demonstrations, the festival honors not

R ancher Jake Peavey’s earliest memories of the Trailing of the Sheep Festival begin when he was a toddler, riding on a flat-bed trailer watching in wonderment as crowds lined Main Street in Ketchum, Idaho, to see his family’s flock of sheep move south to their wintering ground. “I remember thinking, why do so many people care about our sheep going down the middle of the road?” he said. To young Peavey, it was simply what they did every year be fore the snow fell. Peavey was born in 1996. It was the same year his grandfather – third-generation sheep rancher John Peavey – founded the festival. At the inaugural event, Jake Peavey had not quite entered the world, but still trailed the sheep inside the belly of his then pregnant mother. Every year since, he has remained an integral part of the Big Sheep Parade – the culminating event of the five-day festival dedicated to celebrating and preserving Blaine County and Ida ho’s rich and storied history of sheep ranching and sheepherd ing. The 28th annual Trailing of the Sheep Festival last month had a particular poignancy because it honored the legacy of John Peavey, who passed away on June 16 at age 90. It was out of Peavey’s approach to conflict resolution that the event was born. When bikers on the Wood River Trail became upset because sheep droppings on the pavement were impeding their ride, Peavey used the conflict to share with residents newer to the val ley the region’s deep history and sheep ranching heritage. Trail

See TRAILING OF THE SHEEP on Page 24

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