A Vast Amount of Trouble: A History of the Spring Creek Raid

A Vast Amount of Trouble is the first comprehensive study of the most important incident between sheepmen and cattlemen in Wyoming history. Although sheep raids in Wyoming had occurred for years where men were killed and thousands of sheep slaughtered no cowboy had ever been convicted of a crime associated with a sheep raid. The story begins in late March 1909 when five sheepmen headed east from Worland Wyoming driving 5 000 head of sheep. A few days later the men and their sheep camped on the banks of Spring Creek where they thought they had safely brought the herd across the cattlemens deadline beyond which sheep were forbidden. That evening however the camp was raided by seven cowboys and three of the sheepmen were brutally murdered. State v. Brink the trial that followed what is now known as the Spring Creek Raid was one of the great symbolic struggles in Wyoming history – the final focus of the decades-long battle between sheepmen and cattlemen. Before the trial ended the governor of Wyoming became deeply involved as did the French ambassador to the United States. Big Horn County almost went broke the militia was called out and many people went through an experience that became the defining event of their lives. The convictions of Herbert Brink and four of the assailants marked the only time that cowboys in Wyoming were found guilty of raiding a sheep camp but the convictions put an abrupt halt to the killing that had plagued Wyoming for years.