Sherry Millican is a fifth generation homesteader who owns and operates Triangle 5 Ranch in Oregon with her husband Todd Richey. The ranch has been passed down through Millican's family since her great grandfather settled there in 1865. Millican and Richey work hard to keep the ranch running and preserve its heritage, though rising costs and family disputes over inheritance have threatened its future. They hope that their son Curran, who now lives on the ranch, will continue the family tradition of multi-generational stewardship of the land.

1. Aliquis 8, 2014
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GatewayStories about people
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Country life
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3
herry Millican
“As you do your work
you can think about how
many hands have held
this.”P.24
S

2. “
When I look out on
the field, I can see
my great grandfather
tilling the land. They
were heartier people
than I.
SherryMillicanCultivating the land for the future

3. 1865
barn that towers over the acreage
is one of the oldest in Lane Coun-
ty. Additionally, the same white,
two-story house where Millican
was raised has sat at the top of the
dirt road for over a century. She
and Richey follow in her ancestor’s
footsteps by preserving the original
buildings, raising goats and horses
and growing their own hay. They
even use Robert’s remaining agricul-
tural tools.
“As you do your work you can think
about how many hands have held
this, how many hours of work and
tedium and love have gone into
making something that is great,”
Millican says as she gazes out the
wide kitchen window at the land
that bound her family together for
hundreds of years. “When I look
out on the field, I can see my great
grandfather tilling the land. They
were heartier people than I.”
She always knew keeping the ranch
in the family would be a challenge.
But she never imagined it would
start so soon. Two years ago, the
death of Millican’s mother, Neva
Millican, sparked a family dispute
regarding her will. Neva left a quar-
ter of the ranch to each of her four
daughters, three of whom had no
interest in living or working on the
family’s land.
03
Every time Sherry Millican drives her
‘94 Jeep Cherokee down Oregon Route
126, she passes a town marker crafted of
oversized, chestnut-colored logs on the
right-hand side of the road. The large
white letters on the sign read “Walter-
ville.”
The town is named after Walter Milli-
can, one of her ancestors who helped
settle the McKenzie River Valley in the
early 1900s. As the rolling green farm-
land whips by, she passes a street sign
for Millican Road—a nod to her great
grandfather, Robert Millican. About a
mile further, she approaches a wooden
arch at the entrance to a gravel road.
A rustic metal nameplate that reads
“Triangle 5 Ranch” sits overhead as she
drives under the arch onto the dirt road
and up to the 640-acre ranch that five
generations of her family have called
“home.”
Millican is a homesteader–someone
who makes both her home and her
living on the same plot of land. For her,
it’s more than her preferred lifestyle—
it’s the family business. She and her
husband, Todd Richey, own and operate
a ranch on her ancestor’s homestead.
It’s a tough job that requires demanding
labor from sunup to sundown as they
struggle to keep the ranch afloat and
meet modern standards. But the way
she sees it, if the next generation can
continue to drive under the Triangle
Ranch 5 sign, it will all be worth it.
“The future of the ranch—it can be
anything we want to build it to,” Richey
says. “We’ve got the ground to do any-
thing. Time is our biggest problem.”
Though they are in their 60s, the couple
ABOVE: Sherry Millican
and her husband doing
farming stuff.
Credits:Thatbadassphotographer.
Credits:Thatbadassphotographer.
continues to wake up every morning
and care for their animals, just as gen-
erations of Millicans have done before
them.
In 1865, Robert Millican joined the
wave of pioneers settling the west in
response to the Homestead Act of 1862.
After boarding a ship in New York,
sailing around the Isthmus of Panama
to Portland, and walking from Albany
to Eugene, Oregon, Robert received a
John Latta Donation Land Claim and
settled in Lane County.
Four name changes and 148 years later,
Triangle 5 Ranch is still run by the
Millican family.
Today, the ranch boasts three original
hand-built barns that stand as a tes-
tament to Robert’s meticulous crafts-
manship. The massive charcoal-grey

4. ‘“Sherry’s mom probably thought
the sisters would play well and try
to sell [their portion of the ranch]
to Sherry,” Richey says. “Well, that
wasn’t the way it went at all.”
illican’s three sisters didn’t see
ranching as a practical means of
making a living. Kathy Millican, her
oldest sister, pursued her dream of
having her own ranch and has since
retired on a smaller acreage. Her
other two sisters, Karen Coreson
and Sandra Welker, chose a different
lifestyle altogether.
“As I matured, the ability to earn a
living on any farm decreased. The
single-family farm became obsolete
as a means to make a living,” says
Welker, a retired dental hygienist.
“So I gravitated toward where I
could make a living and that was
away from the land.”
Though she acknowledges that
Millican has a better understanding
of the ranching lifestyle, Welker
and her sisters had other plans for
the land. Not seeing the ranch as a
practical or profitable venture, they
decided to place their portions of
the ranch up for general sale.
Lawyers were hired, negotiations
were made, and bitter feelings
transpired. Millican’s sisters wanted
to sell the land to a cattle rancher for
around $2.4 million, which would
be split between the four of them.
It was an offer that Millican and
Richey couldn’t afford to counter.
Devastated by the potential loss of
04
the family homestead and all the
sentimental value that it carried, the
couple was determined to fight in
order to save the land.
“I said to the girls, ‘I cannot sit here
and see everything that has been
our heritage bulldozed into a heap
and burned,’” Millican says.
Despite what Richey describes as a
strong reluctance from the three sis-
ters to sell the land to his wife, they
decided to hear the couple’s busi-
ness plan. Scrambling to counter the
offer, Millican and Richey proposed
to log $2.6 million worth of trees for
a profit that would be distributed
three ways. The sisters weighed the
couple’s proposal and ultimately
decided to take their offer.
“It was sort of like, we traded the
trees for the land,” says Welker.
“[Sherry] has the knowledge and she
is the best one to serve the ranch,
and it’s a means of keeping the
ranch in one piece. I’m very happy
that way and I’m sure [Sherry] is
too.”
According to land usage data from
the Environmental Protection Agen-
cy, small family farms represent
the majority of farms in America,
but economies of scale increasingly
favor growth in large industrial farm
operations. Data from the National
Agricultural Statistics Service in
2002 indicates that every week, 330
farmers leave their land.
Hoping to avoid joining that statis-
tic, Millican and Richey mapped out
I cannot sit here
and see everything
that has been our
heritage bulldozed
into a heap and
burned.
$2.4
M
ABOVE: Sherry’s family
having dinner.
Credits:Thatbadassphotographer.
Credits: That badass photographer.

5. It’s hard work but I can’t see myself
living in a cul-de-sac.”
But while Millican and Richey’s
passion continues to fuel the ranch,
its future remains uncertain. The fate
of the land, the traditions, and the
Millican homesteading lifestyle rests
in the hands of their only son, Curran
Manzer.
Manzer lives on the homestead with
his wife, Michelle. After moving back
to his ancestor’s land to help care for
his grandmother’s shop.
05
a way to continue to make a living
off their land. When they married
eighteen years ago, Millican tended
the ranch, took care of her elderly
mother, and worked a forty-hour-a-
week job. But once they launched a
trail riding business on the ranch,
Millican was able to quit her job.
“e were taking people horseback
riding every weekend. Every week-
end in the summer [it] was either
friends, friends of friends, or family,”
says Richey. “Nowadays we probably
see a thousand people a year.”
In addition to trail rides, the couple
is in the process of building an arena
for roping cattle and horseback rid-
ing lessons. Millican estimates the
overall cost of the arena could reach
up to $90,000 and take five years to
complete, but that the profit would
outweigh the costs. Other modern
ventures include logging trees and
renting out a portion of the land
to various agricultural companies,
which would provide enough finan-
cial support to help sustain their
traditional ranching lifestyle.
“The ranch is a living, breathing
entity,” says Richey. “It’s no different
than a sibling, or your son or daugh-
ter, and you have to take care of it. It
just doesn’t take care of itself.”
Every day the couple feeds and cares
for their fifty goats, sixteen horses,
and a single llama named Fuzzy.
Millican, who knows every animal
by name, takes special care of the
elderly animals, examines goats for
possible pregnancies, and disbuds
baby goats by removing their horns.
“[The animals] don’t care if you’re
sick, they don’t care if you’re hurt,
they don’t care if it’s Sunday, they
don’t care if it’s Christmas,” Millican
says. “You either love it or you hate it.
W
ABOVE: Sherry Millican
and her husband doing
farming stuff.
Credits:Thatbadassphotographer.
Credits: That badass photographer.

6. RATIONALE - COVER
Since the purpose of the magazine is to “tell stories about people”, I
tried to stick to my previously idea that was to emphasize visuals more
than text. The photo I used to produce the cover is one that I believe
has a strong concept about what the story is about. The picture rep-
resents Sherry’s emotions and life by being extremely simple. Also, the
colors I chose were all select based on the pallet of colors of the main
photo. The master head green color reflects Sherry’s hat and the UO
logo. As for the white color, I used it to balance the mix of colors of
other object (bar code).
I tried to follow the Z pattern but since the texts are all in white, I had
to find a position for them that wouldn’t affect its readability. That was
the biggest challenge. I also tried to use diverse design elements in or-
der to balance the image as more as possible. For example, the black
and white lines under all the titles in the cover. Also, I have putted for
the “Main Article”, a big “S” in order to address the attention of the
reader to that story.

7. RATIONALE - SPREADS
Hopefully I have designed the spreads in a way that it kept simple and
visually interesting. By adding visual elements on the text, like the
“1865” date and huge quote symbols, I tried to make everything more
visually attractive for the reader.
I also used photos that would add something to the story instead of stat-
ing (redundancy) again what was written on the text. The main image
on the first page is supposed to show the reader the kind of personality
Sherry Millican has. Following this “first judgment” the reader might
have, there is also a quote on the page that is supposed to represent her
emotions on the image. Also, it serves as a description of the article.
I decided to use Mesquite STD as a font style thus it is the one found
that most combine with the “cowboy way of life.” Pretty much all the
brown colors I used are supposed to follow the jacket Sherry Millican is
wearing.