The Buckaroos in Paradise Online Collection
The Paradise Valley Folklife Project documented more than thirty ranches and numerous other sites and activities. Although this breadth of coverage is represented in the Buckaroos in Paradise online collection in the selected set of 2,400 still photographs, the main emphasis here is on one ranch: the Ninety-Six. This emphasis exaggerates but does not misrepresent the work of the folklife project team, who visited the Ninety-Six many times: Marshall and Ahlborn made measured drawings of the ranch's buildings and documented furniture and tools; Marshall and Jones traveled with the 1978 fall cattle drive; Smock and Fleischhauer filmed the drive in 1979; Vennum interviewed Paiute Indians who worked on the Ninety-Six; Wilson, Jones, and Vennum attended the ranch's private rodeo; Deetz and his team dug for turn-of-the-century structures and artifacts; Gastañaga assisted Ahlborn and Marshall in videotaping interviews with Les Stewart about buckaroo gear; Fleischhauer copied photographs from family scrapbooks and photographed various ranch activities. Wilson, Marshall, and Fleischhauer conducted an extensive interview with Les Stewart in 1981. Altogether, the team visited the Ninety-Six Ranch about twenty times, and documentation of the ranch was prominent in the 1980 Smithsonian exhibition, just as it is in this online collection and the videodisc that preceded it.