STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
John Peavey and Diane Josephy Peavey have been selected the Grand Marshals for the 2021 Wagon Days parade.
The two have made a big impact on the Wood River Valley.
Chief among their contributions is the Trailing of the Sheep Festival, which they created to educate people about the valley’s longstanding sheep heritage. The festival, which celebrates its 25th anniversary in October, brings thousands of people to the valley each year, contributing $4.5 million to the economy.
“A celebration of their positive impacts on this community is long overdue,” said Ketchum Mayor Neil Bradshaw. “I hope everyone can join us at Wagon Days to honor them.”
John Peavey, whose mother Mary Brooks was tabbed by President Nixon to run the U.S. Mint, spent summers growing up on the Flat Top Sheep Ranch that his grandfather John Thomas—a banker and U.S. Senator-- created out of homestead parcels in the 1920s.
After John Peavey took over the ranch, he spent 21 years as an Idaho State Senator. During that time, he launched an initiative to create Idaho’s Sunshine Laws. He also challenged Idaho Power’s bid to take water out of the Snake River to build a coal-fired plant on the river in the mid-1970s.
Closer to home, the former Marine supported efforts by Blaine County Recreation District to build a bike path on the Union Pacific Railroad right of way, which had been used for decades as a sheep driveway for sheep migrating to and from summer pastures.
Peavey grew up knowing about the West, her father Alvin M. Josephy Jr. having written for Time Magazine and penning a definitive book on the Nez Perce tribe. She worked in public policy in Washington, D.C., before John Peavey lured her to his ranch at the base of the Pioneer Mountains near Carey 39 years ago.
Wide-eyed, she began sharing stories about cattle drives near the Craters of the Moon National Monument and the West’s changing landscape on Idaho Public Radio. Eventually, she compiled many of them into her book “Bitterbrush Country: Living on the Edge of the Land.”
She wrote the librettos for pieces the Caritas Chorale commissioned celebrating Lewis and Clark and the Nez Perce friends.
She has recited poetry at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nev. And she has worked on a number of commissions, serving as vice chair of the American Lamb Board, literature director for the Idaho Commission on the Arts and the first director of the Idaho Rural Council.
The Peaveys will be honored at the Grand Marshals’ Reception on Friday, Sept. 3, at Ketchum Town Square. They will ride in the Big Hitch Parade on Saturday Sept. 4.