One of our esteemed members and member of the BoD "pokes the bear" to see if will respond.
In that light, I hope you enjoy some of my photos from the Best Show on Tracks, hosted at the Dan Best Ranch.
This is just a small number of the photos.
What a wonderful event and gathering of Caterpillar enthusiasts with their prized equipment.  Many one of a kind pieces!

Stay Safe & "keep 'em crawlin'"
CTS




 

That’s a good start CTS. Very nice photos. I didn’t make it to that one; I still hear about how the weather was! JM

Where is the picture of the 27 mules and the Holt Haines Houser Combine Harvester that is the real beginning of the Caterpillar Tractor Co. the mule skinner or driver was a friend of mine as was one of the crew, I was raised by a bunch of old horseman and mule skinners my dad being one of them, in my younger days I had a team myself, but I never thought I would get to see 27 head hooked to a ground power harvester in my lifetime! It was a HOT! Day but a great show a lot of beautiful restored Cats but I thought the Mules and the people that restored the Harvester and the mule people that made that happen were the standouts that day which I doubt it will happen again as many have passed on since then. 17afarmer Mike

17A Farmer - per your request

THANKYOU VERY MUCH nice pictures! I don’t know if many of you know this they only drove those teams with 1 line with the left or near leader being the brains of the outfit, a lot of them would drag a cast iron Stockton Plow standard behind the machine to make a mark for the near leader to follow, if they got to heavy grain then they would have to pull out and take part of a cut too keep the machine going which after a while created a crooked mess!! Hard hot work. 17afarmer

If you noticed, they had a truck tied to the combine, BRAKES in case of runaway team.
If I recall correctly, these teams had never worked together previously.

You are right they were all strange to one another some of them were hardly broke to harness I was told a wreck waiting to happen. In 1984 in Vernalis I saw 20 plus horses that had been hooked to 3 Stockton gang plows that had run off and somehow they only went 2 to3 hundred feet if my memory is right and got stopped with down horses tangled harness what a MESS luckily I don’t remember any horses that got hurt bad or people thank god. They had plans to hook them to a Harris Giant 24 ft. cut harvester that afternoon but the owner of the Harris said nothing doing!

Hi, 17A Farmer.
Did you also attend the 2011 Best Show Harvest Spectacular at the Jack Wallace ranch? I was there and helped to set it up for a week pre-show, had dinner with the mule people a couple of times and some interesting chats. GREAT People.

They managed to put together a 33-mule hitch for that show. I do have some photos of them at work but will have to do a little 're-organizing' to be able to access said photos as the drive that has them on it requires a power supply as well as the normal USB connection cable - will look at digging them out tomorrow.

I met Luke and his family briefly some years later, said, "Howdy", and had a short chat before we had to go our separate ways.

Just my 0.02.

Wallace Ranch - Best Harvest Spectacular 7-11-2011

Thanks for the pictures and memory's. Back when I had to really work so missed those shows.

My grandfather was an expert jerk line teamster from all the stores I have been told. Thirty-two to thirty-six head on a sidehill ground drive combine. Had wooden box on the operator station he kept rocks in, supposedly could hit any horse he wanted with his left hand. In the right a bullwhip he could kill a fly on the rump of any horse without hitting the horse, I was alway told. My dad was a natural born horsemen. Liked horses much better than tractors. But grandpa bought the Cat 35 Diesel in the fall of 34. The end of the big teams of horses. I think 12 head was the most dad ever drove.

Time and sweat to make a good dependable horse. Who has time this day and age to work 30 head of horses to make them dependable around a big crowd of people.