The state of nativity for Oscar McNay, a prominent stockgrower of Bighorn County located near Hyattville, is California, where he was born on April 6, 1857, but he did not long remain there. When he was two years old his parents, H. W. and E, M. McNay, natives respectively of Ohio and New York, went by the isthmus route to new York and from there after a short time to Kansas. They spent two years at Wyandotte, two at Fort Leavenworth and from there they removed to Council Grove in Morris County. In that town their son, Oscar was reared and educated and when he was twenty years of age he went to Texas, from whence after due preparation in 1878 he trailed cattle north to the Big Bend of the Missouri River. From there he returned to his Kansas home, and in 1879 went to St. Joseph, Missouri and took a course of special training in a business college. After leaving the college he worked for two years for the Western Union Telegraph Co. and then went by way of San Francisco to The Dalles, Oregon. At that point he accepted employment from Henry Lovell and in his service drove cattle to the Bighorn basin in Wyoming, where he tarried and rode the range for a number of years and in 1887 engaged in the stock business for himself, limiting his operations to cattle. In 1896 he located land on North Wood River the ranch on which he now lives comprising 160 acres on which he has 100 good cattle well cared for and kept in excellent condition. He also has a drove of superior horses and they as well as the cattle give evidence of the intelligent attention bestowed upon their raising. Some years ago his father died. His mother is still living on the family homestead in Kansas.
