ROY ROGERS DOUBLE R BAR RANCH: HAPPY TRAILS AND COWBOY TALES LIVES ON
There was a time when cowboys ruled the day, or at least the airwaves, and the good guy always won. From Tom Mix in the early 1900s, to Clint Eastwood and Kurt Russell today, most of us have wanted to be a cowboy or cowgirl at one time or another. Many of us grew up knowing that among the cowboys of the cinema, Roy Rogers was king, and Dale Evans was his queen.
Like any respectable western royalty, Roy and Dale had a horse ranch. It wasn’t in the wilds of Montana, and not even in the prairies of South Dakota. Nope. Not even close. The Roy Rogers Double R Bar Ranch, built in 1920, was sittin’ regally along the banks of the Mojave River in the small Route-66 community of Oro Grande, just outside of Victorville, California, and a few miles from their home in Apple Valley. Roy died at the age of 86 after a life well-spent.
Roy owned the ranch until the day he died in 1998, and after Dale followed him a few years later, the ranch was owned by a succession of investors and such, including Ernesto Enriquez, the son of one of Roy’s horse trainers, Carlos. Still, the 67 acre ranch seemed to be lacking the drive and spirit that was present when Roy would ride the range on one of his many horses and, sometimes, even a Honda motorcycle, much to the dismay of the local sheriff (something about a pesky helmet law).
Okay, now some of you might not know about Roy Rogers. Don’t feel bad. It happens. So just in case ya’ don’t, let me tell ya’ about the King of the Cowboys. Roy started out as a fellow from Ohio by the name of Leonard Slye. He was born in 1911, and when he was about 20, he followed his sister to Lawndale, a town near the Pacific Ocean. By early 1931, with a few family businesses in decline, Leonard took up picking peaches for a time. This was during the Great Depression. See the Steinbeck film, “The Grapes of Wrath” to get a feel for what that was like.
Anyway, by about 1932, Leonard, with motivation from his sister, auditioned for a spot on a local radio show, even though shyness just about did him in. A local music group, “The Rocky Mountaineers” offered him a job. As they say in Hollywood, the rest is history. Even if Hollywood doesn’t say that, by August of 1931, Roy–I mean Leonard, was a member of the band.
After changing the name of the group to “The Sons of the Pioneers,” and changing his name to Roy Rogers, the cowboy genre would never be the same. Soon to become the King of the Cowboys, he starred in 88 feature films and, along with Dale Evans, had the long-running “Roy Rogers show” on television, from 1951 to 1957.
It might have been the syndicated re-runs of the Roy Rogers Show that caught the eye of a young Jim Heffel, growing up in Wilmington, just a few miles from Roy’s original California home in Lawndale. In any case, 10-year-old Jim saw a cowboy riding down a street in the famous western town of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and knew what he had to do. Just like Willie Nelson sang in 1980, “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys.” And they still are.