This is a self portrrait of A.D. Stillman, who homesteaded our family ranch in Pleasant Valley, back around 1900. My Grampa Wallace Monk bought the ranch from the Stillman family, and then sold it to my Dad after WWII. As a kid, I remember a small book of photographs that was found in the attic of the old ranch house by my Mom, with some glass negatives. This one was always my favorite. A.D was a rather interesting guy- he dabbled in photography, and we have some great old turn of the century photographs of the ranch that were his. He was also a bit of an inventor, as most ranchers have to be, but especially when you live so far out of town in the early 1900's. He lived in Pleasant Valley on the "Home Place" with a son and his wife, and when he was in his eighties, he decided he did not want to be a burden on the family anymore, and was determined to kill himself. Apparently the family had some kind of idea this was what he had planned, because they had hidden all firearms from him. He supposedly worked out in the shop, and over time fashioned himself a working gun out of some scrap metal. When the family left him alone for a time one day, he left a suicide note, saying that he was going to climb to the top of Meadow Peak, and shoot himself. When they returned, and found the note, they organized a search party, but the search party started looking at the top of Meadow Peak, and being old and frail, he hadn't made it very far up the trail. The story says that he found or had
earlier made a hole in the ground, and piled up rocks and rigged it so that after shooting himself, he would fall in the "grave" and the rocks would cover him up. So about a half-mile or so up the mountain from the ranch house is a place we always knew as "Stillman's Grave"
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