According to Gertrude Rader, who grew up in Whitewater and lived there at the time, a major conflict between sheep ranchers and cattle ranchers broke out during the years of 1906 and 1907. While no one was certain how many mend died during the conflict, Rader asserts that several disappeared. Cattlemen dynamited sheet herds and drove them over cliffs of the Gunnison. Both sheep and cattle were poisoned. Sheep herders would often give lambs to small children. When asked for a lamb (presumably by the child of a cattle rancher), one sheepherder bashed the lamb's head on a rock and killed it before giving it to the child. The sheepherder's herd was poisoned soon after.
