Volume 8 , Issue 40

The 101 Ranch, Murch & Smith

~~ submitted by Roy Kendrick ~~
(photo to the left is George Murch, Mike Sokoll & Poncho.) -- I made a very BIG mistake last week when I stated that the 101 Ranch had 101 acres. I meant to say 101,000 acres. At one time it covered more than 110,000 acres. The main headquarters was at Bliss, Oklahoma; now known as Marland, named for E.W.Marland the founder of the Marland Oil Company which bought the Continental Oil Company located at Orem, Utah and moved it to Ponca City (Oklahoma) where it became known as Conoco (now Conoco-Phillips after they acquired Phillips 66 of Bartlesville, Ok.). The main headquarters is now in Houston.

BUT... back to the 101 and the folks who created the excitement there. I'd mentioned that I met a couple of the performers several years ago, but I really didn't realize their importance at the time. George Murch was a bareback bronco rider with the wild west show, but I knew him as a local Perry fence builder who'd also trained his grandson Rick Ward in the trade. Rick still builds fences the way his grandpa taught him. George Murch and his friend Mike Sokoll (sometimes known as "Tex Mason") actually worked together on several ranches in Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle but with the 101 Ranch Wild West Show they traveled the world with many famous performers. They also made movies on the ranch with the ranch hands, some of whom became quite famous. Tom Mix, Buck Jones, Tim Holt, Lucille Mulhall, Bill Pickett, Hoot Gibson, Yakima Canutt, Jack Hoxie were some of the members of the shows and made their first movies on the ranch itself.

Another of my friends is one of the only living cowgirl performers, Wilma Smith. She's quite elderly now and in frail health, living (I believe) in a retirement home in Stillwater. When Wilma's husband A L. Smith died, she took over his trucking business and continued running it until the main oil boom "went bust" and she sold out and retired. I'm amazed that many of the folks who have known her for years haven't been aware of her early success with the 101 Shows. I'd asked her about it some years ago and was told by her daughter that they still had all the posters and handbills from the shows that she was with.

It's quite late right now and I need to get some sleep. Incidentally, Perry's gas prices are at $2.06.9. More later.
  |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

---