William Plutarch Vandevert was a frontier mail carrier and a range rider for the famous Hashknife Outfit in Texas.  At a young age he shot one of the largest grizzly bears in California.  When he founded Vandevert Ranch with his wife and children in 1892, there were few settlers and no communities of any size in Central Oregon.  The ranch itself became a gathering place, a stage coach stop, and the site of the one-room schoolhouse that still stands on the ranch today.  The main business of the Vandevert family was raising whiteface cattle, branded with the Hashknife brand.   

A granddaughter of William Vandevert, Grace Vandevert McNellis, grew up on the ranch and wrote a book about her family and the ranch, Home on the Vandevert Ranch, Where the Skies Were Not Cloudy All Day.  The book is available by contacting Grace at Mcnellis9020@comcast.net