Shirk Ranch

Setting. Shirk Ranch in Guano Valley, Oregon.

Layout of buildings.

Main house and gate.

Kitchen.

 

 Bill Vickers' grave. 

He was shot in the ranch kitchen in 1889 and buried on a hilltop about a quarter mile away. Bottles that decorate his grave are mostly from the ranch dump.

Stone reads: Bill Vickers and J. Gunkle shot August 17 1889.

People lately commemorate his grave with money and bottles but he may not have been the best guy. 

 
The story I found is that he broke out of jail in Silver City, Idaho by burning the jail down. Another prisoner was killed in the process.
While he was on the run he picked up a teenaged sidekick, J. Gunkle.

Vickers had passed through before so they expected he might return. The ranch had a system where the women could signal the men working in the fields that there was trouble at the house by waving a flag. And return he did, eventually.

J. Gunkle was posted as lookout along the road leading to the ranch, but he could not see the armed men coming in from the fields. Bill Vickers was eating dinner when they walked in. He was supposedly reaching for his gun when they shot him.

J. Gunkle put his hands up when confronted but was shot anyway, possibly accidentally.

This according to Johnnie Cactus Smyth in his book "Sunshine, Shadows and Sagebrush", which I perused at the Lakeview Library while my car was getting fixed.