1899 Casorsos with Joe (back left) & Felix (front right)

In the early 1920s, Joe Casorso bought the last 100 acres of orchard property from the Belgo-Canadian Land Company. At first, he concentrated on fruit growing. He opposed the formation of the B.C. Fruit Grower’s Association with its government monopoly on fruit marketing, because he was loading his fruit on freight cars in Kelowna and very successfully marketing it himself on the prairies. When his fight against the Fruit Grower’s Association had lost him a lot of friends and the Association had finally forced him to stop his own fruit marketing, he became fed up. He sold his orchard property, even the ‘Belgo mansion’ which he had bought from Grote Stirling, its builder. His wife, Ethel, a New Zealander suggested that he enter the sheep business which he did. Cattle also seemed an obvious choice. His younger brother, Felix also owned land in Black Mountain and had been an organizer of the Black Mountain Irrigation District. Close to each other, they set up their headquarters at the base of Black Mountain close to the school at the bottom of the long hill on Highway 33. He formed the Black Mountain Cattle Company which remained a lucrative business even after his death. He acquired 10,000 acres of range land which included the Pyman Ranch high on Black Mountain.

1940

Joe Casorso’s farm buildings were located at the bottom of the Highway 33 hill not far from the old Black Mountain schoolhouse almost exactly where the highway now runs. The road then ran to the south of its present location on the other side of the old Black Mountain School.

For a while, the Casorsos grew large fields of onions and tobacco. Their tobacco drying barn was located in the present triangular chain-link fenced field in front of the present Black Mountain School. Joe later used this for lambing. There was a red-roofed cookhouse and several other sheds and buildings close by. Older Joe Rich residents remember seeing the lambs that had died during the spring lambing lying just outside that barn.

Felix Casorso’s red barn was located just west of his house which he had bought from the Belgo-Canadian Land Company who had built it. The house now belongs to the Sandanas. It is beside Highway 33 at the low crest of the hill before the descent to the Black Mountain Pond. The barn burned down in 1943, but was rebuilt. These barns were landmarks to the Joe Rich people and they knew and liked the Casorso brothers. Many stopped in on the way to or from town or left horses, wagons, sleighs or vehicles there if the road or the weather was particularly bad.

1948

Bill Kopetski, from Saskatchewan, started working for Joe Casorso in 1945. He became his foreman in 1951 and when Joe died, the foreman for Jim Stewart who bought the Black Mountain Cattle Company. He didn’t like riding horses and so he always drove a jeep and hired others to do the riding when it was necessary. For a while, he hired Iris Uppenborn who was a great rider and must have been a favourite with the horses. She was only 5 feet and 2 inches and weighed just over a hundred pounds. She loved horses. At times, the Black Mountain Cattle Company had as many as 30 employees particularly during lambing and sheering in the spring.

Joe Casorso also had about 400 cattle and their calves. These were driven as a separate herd to the Greystokes. Most of the cattle drives through Joe Rich occurred when the cattle business had been expanded after the Black Mountain Cattle Company had reduced the size of its herd of sheep.

For years, Casorso’s men drove the large herd of sheep, about 3000 adult animals and their lambs, from Black Mountain to the Greystoke area at the beginning of July as the last of the snow was melting. The drive took two to three days. There were three shepherds, Harry Blackett, from England, Bill Tracey and a fellow named Jack. They often weren’t all with the sheep at once. Bill Kopetski remembers that there were some problems with them drinking and staying off the job for a few days. They sometimes lived for a while in the sheep herder’s cabin in the Greystokes. It still stands, solid and low walled.

Jim Weddell says that he was always happy to see the sheep going to the summer range, because he knew they would keep the grizzlies occupied and he wouldn’t have to worry about them getting into his cattle. In September, Casorso’s shepherds would drive the sheep back down again and right through Kelowna to the ferry to cross the lake to fall pasture on the west side of the lake at Whiteman’s Creek just south of Vernon. It was a three day drive from the west side ferry dock. The ferry took only 300 sheep at a time and therefore many trips were needed. When they had finished taking the sheep across, they took the ferry to the middle of the lake and hosed off the deck before they returned to carrying human passengers. Sheep were also grazed at Winfield, Okanagan Centre and on Vernon’s commonage area. The herd of several thousand sheep was an impressive sight as it moved along guided by shepherds and dogs or in the case of the cattle, by riders on horses and by dogs.

Monti Philpott remembers the shepherd coming along in a jeep pulling a noisy little steel-wheeled trailer with a small cabin on it in which he had a stove and a cot. As they passed the Philpott house, the sheep usually ate all the leaves and the berries off Inez Philpott’s blueberry bushes. She would always be annoyed, but Monti and the other children were secretly happy, because they hated picking the pesky little blueberries. The shepherd usually stopped for the night on the property where Radomskes now live. When the herd went by it completely filled the Joe Rich Road. On one occasion in the 1950s, one of the Philpotts came around a corner with a load of logs and hit the herd. Several sheep were crushed and stuck in the wheel wells. It was hot weather and after a few days, the truck had a terrible odour.

In winter, the sheep were kept at Black Mountain where they stayed outside in the valley between Black Mountain and Bell Hill. In the early spring, the lambing took place. In March, a group of sheep shearers came down from Vernon. They brought their own equipment and each man sheared about 150 sheep a day.

The cattle were handled separately. Margaret Weddell remembers seeing hundreds of cattle passing along the top of the cliff on the north side of Mission Creek where Three Forks Road now runs north of the highway. Bill Kopetski and Jim Weddell were good friends. Bill says that as his cattle herd came through Joe Rich, they usually crossed Weddell land and Jim never objected. Sometimes Casorso’s cows picked up a few of Jim’s and they went off together to the Greystokes to be separated later according to their brands.

Driving and pasturing their sheep and cattle from Black Mountain to the Greystokes, grizzlies, black bears and cougars were a major problem. The ranch hands often shot them, but sometimes skilled trackers and hunters had to be called in. One of these was Charlie Shuttleworth of Okanagan Falls. Casorsos also grazed some pigs, but the ferocious sows were strong enough and smart enough to look after themselves and protect their piglets from predators.

Joe’s wife, Ethel died at the age of 61 in 1946. Joe never retired, but at the age of 74 on February 19, 1960, died of cancer in the Kelowna Hospital. The final event was a fall over the bed rail and down onto the floor in an attempt to get out of bed. He always wanted to keep moving. Felix died on January 18, 1973 at the age of 82. His wife, ‘Ronnie’ still healthy, lives on in Rutland.

The Black Mountain Cattle Company was sold to Jim Stewart, an American, after Joe Casorso’s death. For nearly 10 more years, Stewart continued to run cattle and, for a shorter time, sheep through Joe Rich to the Greystokes each summer. He stopped raising sheep in 1962, when they developed a bad problem with foot rot. The government was afraid that this might be transmitted to the deer in the grazing areas and so the sheep business was phased out. The cattle herd was increased from 400 to 600 and the cattle drives to the Greystokes increased and continued into the 1970s.

1961