Whew alot has been going on lately so yes I am very late with this Newsletter but honestly I have felt this past two weeks like the absent minded professor....as always too much to do and so little time. I have a bit of very exciting history to share about Elko County and wool. Some of you may very well know all of this but I figured there might be some who do not or may have wondered about it here it is:

There were alot of sheep in this area and I thought what did they do with all of it ? I did a little bit of research and did not find a wool mill or anything about anyone spinning it for weaving so this led me to our museum where I found out exactly what was done with it. The sheep were sheared, it was loaded into bags, put on the train and sent back east for processing. Which may sound a little bit boring until I was told how much....Ellison Ranching owned 2 percent of Nevada's total sheep. In 1913 an entire train was needed to haul 29,320 wool fleeces that was sold to the Knight Woolen Mill for around $30,000.00 which wasn't a bad amount back then.

The war made wool prices go up from .27 to .45 per pound in 1916 doubling the Ellison Ranch profits from wool sales. From 1916 to 1919 they sold 157,000 pounds of wool!!! In 2009, 80,000 pounds of wool were sold and shipped to Roswell Wool Company in New Mexico, it is auctioned off to various mills including Pendleton and SmartWool. To this day Ellison Ranching still sells the wool.

If time allows, my next history hunting adventure may be finding out if we are using yarn that was made by our area sheep. Personally I would be thrilled to find out if maybe Brown Sheep, or maybe even Lion Brand uses wool from our area, would be kinda neat knowing that.

The above information was obtained from the Northeaster Nevada Museum Ellison Ranching company Centennial and the very appreciated help from Ms. Toni and Ms. Claudia who saved me from having to go through tons of archived information.

Be on the look out for several craft shows, it's that time of year again. Relay for life will be having theirs on Saturday November 27th at the Red Lion and I did get a table with a couple of friends because this show is always fun to do. Keep warm and Hopefully the next Newsletter won't be late.