Con
Shea Basin is named after Cornelius (Con) Shea.
Shea was a pioneer rancher, who is credited with bringing beef cattle to
supply miners in Owyhee County during the late 1860s.
He was born in Ontario, Canada in 1840 and sailed around Cape Horn to
reach San Francisco in 1857. By
1864 Con Shea had moved to Silver City where he worked as a blacksmith, a miner,
and a teamster. He had the
reputation of being a gambler and drinker.
In the late 1860s, financier Christopher Moore asked him to trail a herd
of longhorn cattle from Texas to Silver City, where miners were hungry for meat.
In
1869, Con Shea and his team of 15 buckaroos drove more than 1400 cattle, some of
which were longhorns, from Central Texas to Owyhee County. The trek
over the dusty Osage, Wichita, and Smoky Hill trails took 6 months.
Joseph and Martha McIntyre accompanied the drive in an ox-driven wagon
with seven children in tow from Collin County, Texas. Their 15-year-old
daughter, Marietta (Ettie), fell in love with Cornelius along the trail.
Shea led another cattle drive from Texas to Idaho in 1870, and he and
Ettie were married in December of that year.
Con
Shea is said to have received $20,000 in gold for the first herd that he brought
to Owyhee County. For many years, steers
were driven into Silver City every week to supply meat for mining camps.
From 1873-1899, cattle also were trailed from Owyhee County to Nevada,
Oregon, and other parts of Idaho.
By the
1880s there were more than 100,000 cattle in Owyhee County.
Con
Shea used the basin between the mouth of Sinker Creek and the mouth of Rabbit
Creek to winter his cattle for many years.
Cattle thrived on the white sage (also called winterfat) and bunchgrass
that grew in the Basin. Shea lost
most of his cattle in the severe winter of 1888-1889.
Winterfat and bunch grass are now rare in Con Shea Basin, and the area is
dominated by non-native grasses and weeds.