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Manyfriendswerepres- ent when the Shasta His- torical Society honored El- lington Peek, the man be- hind Shasta Livestock Auction Yard, at the His- toric Cascade Theatre in Redding last Saturday. Each month the Shasta Historical Society fea- tures a different subject, like mining, or timber while May was livestock and they produced a video about Ellington since it is the 50th anniversary of the auction yard. They an- nounced a DVD will be available in the future, us- ing the program contents. Brad Peek narrated the program, and first video featured Jerry Hemsted giving Peek's early back- ground followed by wife Betty, who said she met Ellington in April and they were married in No- vember. He served in Ko- rea during that war. He was buying cat- tle, and had the opportu- nity to run the Susanville Auction Yard in Septem- ber 1955. Then the Shasta Livestock in Anderson was offered for sale or rent. Peek had $3,500 in his bank account and rented the Shasta Live- stock Auction for three years. Roy Graves recalled that Ellington had at his first sale 300 head of cat- tle in January 1956. Don Bailey was auctioneer, Bob Jones helped him sell, and Vic Woolery, Sr. ran the yard. John Owens mentioned "Ellington doesn't sit still. He's been broke and back again. Give him a mil- lion dollars and everyone in the country will have a bit." The three years at An- derson had passed, and Peek wanted to buy the yard. The run at Anderson had been so successful, the owners wanted more money than he could af- ford to pay. He went to work for Valley Livestock Producers managing their Red Bluff yard for one and a half years. Produc- ers offered no incentive to build the business, and it was a co-op. The manage- ment came under a cen- tral board, not local. In 1960 he went back to buying cattle for Maita Brothers feedlot in Elk Grove. While in 1961 he had the opportunity to lease and later buy the Shasta Livestock Auc- tion in Anderson again. It was only 6 acres and too small for all the cattle they could consign. They rented the field next door and built corrals to take care of the overflow. Ernie Peters described the old yard near the fair- grounds in Anderson on the video. Brad Peek told about John Trisdale who had come to Redding with John Crowe to clear the ground for the Shasta Dam, after building the Boulder Dam, Parker Dam. He told Elling- ton that he could get the money from the bank and we'll build you a new yard in 1965. They bought 70 acres in Cottonwood from Bob Jones and Vic Woolery, and after selling the An- derson yard they pur- chased additional acreage to total 112 acres. In his book "When to Buy, When to Sell" Elling- ton was quoted "He (Tris- dale) was the man who made Shasta Livestock Auction possible. We went partners on the land and buildings. I couldn't have done it without him and the local ranchers who put their faith in me. We were all excited about putting our first cattle through the spanking new sale ring." September 9, 2016 will be the 50th Anniver- sary Sale, since the grand opening was on Septem- ber 13th, 1966. Skinner Hardy was auctioneer, and the first animal in the ring was a billy goat. At their first sale that had 3,500 head, the sale didn't get started until noon and went after midnight. Jerry Hemsted men- tioned how Betty used to sell tack and boots in the lobby of the Ander- son auction yard and how the Shasta Western Shop was built. She started by borrowing $4,000 and when that was paid off, she would borrow another $4,000 to buy more mer- chandise. It was 10 years before she paid herself. "All in all, she ran it for 45 years. In April of 2009, when she turned 79, she decided it was time to re- tire. It was a great shop. She really misses it, of course, and she misses her customers. I really miss that money com- ing in because she wrote a check to herself each month. She saved my life more than once because her store made money when I didn't." Brad remembered the times when his fa- ther had an airplane, and only three wrecks, how- ever Maurice O'Keefe got a ticket for illegal landing on a road on the Klamath Marsh. Another time near Merced, they landed on a levy but there was a wil- low tree, with a snag hid- den in the branches, that tore the wing off. I remember Andy Giambroni telling about the time that Ellington's plane missed the airport runway in a fog, and they landed in a field, with the landing gear going up and the nose down. The third wreck was when the pi- lot forgot to put his land- ing gear down, at Burns, Oregon. In the 1970s and 1980s ranching was difficult. "You can ride out fluctua- tions, but the market has been known to fall out of sight now and then. In 1971 Nixon signed a freeze on beef and other products to counteract a rise in inflation. 1972 and 1973 were real bad. Then in July of 1973, Nixon re- leased all products from the freeze except beef. That broke a lot of people. "In August of 1973, Gus Steffan had four or five hundred heifers he wanted to sell and he said he was going to get 60 cents for them. I was try- ing to buy them for 55 to 56 cents. That was in Au- gust. Gus said, "Nixon's going to release the price ceiling on beef in September. The market's going up." Everybody thought the market was going up. Well, just the oppo- site happened. It went boom the other way. Gus couldn't sell his heifers. In two weeks he sent them over to my sale and they sold for 38 cents." "I'll never forget 1980. The Bank of American said no more cattle loans. They wouldn't loan any cattlemen any money, even to their old-time cus- tomers — who had been their bread and butter — because the banks had no loyalty." Red Emmerson men- tioned that Ellington liked to hold the mar- ket up by himself. Shasta Auction Yard had become the largest auction on the West Coast. Back in 1976, they had slides of the cattle, 15,000 head of cattle to sell on the Marsh, the Fort, and the Running Y west of Klamath Falls, and a bus tour for the prospective buyers. The tour proved that you didn't need to be in the same room with the cattle to sell them. "Andy took to video marketing like a duck to water. I wasn't sure how the buyers and the ranch- ers would accept what amounted to a marketing revolution but we had to try it." The first Western Video Market sale was in April of 1990. "I always remem- bered that Joe Harris told me that I ought to try the videos, and then when I was down at John Rod- ger's sale in late 1988, he told me that I ought to get in the video business. He said he would go partners with me. So I thought it over and came to the con- clusion that we didn't need a bunch of guys from Texas selling our Western cattle." "It went so well that three months later we sold 25,000 cattle at John Ascuaga's Nugget in July 1990 in one day. In the 20 years from the first WVM sale in 1990 to the end of 2010, we have sold 9 mil- lion head." JeanBartonhasbeen writing her column in the Daily News since the early 1990s. She can be reached by e-mail at jbarton2013@ gmail.com. JEANBARTON Peek honored on 50th anniversary of auction yard COURTESYPHOTO Ellington Peek and son Brad at the Cascade Theatre when Shasta Historical Society featured the man behind Shasta Livestock Auction Yard. TRACY Two young women will compete for the pres- tigious title of Dairy Prin- cess during ceremonies at the upcoming District 4 Dairy Princess Contest, to be held Sat- urday, June 4 at Glenn C o u n t y F a i r - grounds in Orland. T h i s year's con- testants are Gina Am- aro of Wil- lows and Cindy Montes of Orland. Gina is the daughter of Mark and Diane Am- aro of Willows. She is at- tending Willows High School and Butte College and participates in both 4-H and FFA. Gina shows yearling Holstein heifers at the Glenn County Fair. She also is a Glenn County 4-H All Stare and is active in leadership at Willows High School and partic- ipates in cheer and golf. Cindy is the daughter of Brian and Diane Mon- tes of Orland. She is at- tending Or- land High School and participates i n F FA . Cindy grew up helping her father, a supply s a l e s m a n and tank ref r igera- tion repairman for Mid- State Surge, and grandfa- ther on the dairy. She is very active in sports and plays volleyball, basket- ball and softball. Cindy is currently raising a market lamb to show at the Glenn County Fair. The young lady crowned as Dairy Princess will represent the dairy in- dustry in the counties of Tehama, Butte, Colusa, Glenn, Lassen, Modoc, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, Shasta, Sierra, Siskiyou, Sutter, Trinity and Yuba counties. She will serve the area as ambassador for the dairy industry at schools, service groups and with the media. The newly selected princess and her alter- nate will participate in a week of training, provided by the California Milk Advisory Board (CMAB), which includes industry tours, presentation and etiquette training. The contest is spon- sored by the District 4 Dairy Princess Committee and the CMAB. The con- test will begin at 6 p.m. with a no-host social hour, followed by dinner and the contest at 7 p.m. To purchase tickets for the contest, call Marlene Sil- veira at 828-9514 or mar- lenes78@yahoo.com. 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