http://travel.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/travel/herding-sheep-in-basque-country-idaho.html?src=dayp

Mr. Etcheverry is one of the last Basque sheepmen left in the
American West, where there were once hundreds, if not thousands, like him. He
learned the business from his father, Jean Pierre Etcheverry, who emigrated from
the Basque Country, a region in the Pyrenees Mountains comprising parts of
southern France and northern Spain, in 1929. Back then sheep outnumbered
Idahoans seven to one, a peak that coincided with the tail end of Basque
immigration to the western United States. Tens of thousands settled in Idaho,
Nevada, California, Utah and Wyoming, many finding work in the sheep trade or
establishing boardinghouses and restaurants catering to Basque herders. Though a
precise tally is elusive, Basques once roamed Idaho’s sheep ranges in formidable
numbers. Today, just two or three remain.

The paraglider pilots at he PWC flew over this territory this
week, and we rode up Brundage Mountain through a herd of sheep being herded by I
assume a Peruvian, as he didn't speak English.

But the Minidoka has its advantages. Mr. Etcheverry’s herd (some
7,000 ewes and 1,400 yearlings) munch on a profusion of native grasses and
plants like goatsbeard, desert parsley and rabbitbrush, which lend their meat a
distinctive flavor. And despite the desolation, the land holds a wild beauty.
The Minidoka is plopped down in the crotch of the Snake River Plain and the
Sawtooth National Forest, one of the great natural landscapes in the western
United States. To the north lie the snowcapped peaks of the Pioneer Mountains;
to the west, Big Southern Butte — a 7,550-foot-high volcanic dome covered in
lodgepole pine and Douglas fir — and farther west, the Caribou-Targhee National
Forest, where Mr. Etcheverry will move his sheep in late summer.

A handful of tourists are drawn each spring to the Minidoka’s staggering
wildflower yields and omnipresent fauna. In one afternoon, Mr. Etcheverry and I
spotted pronghorn antelope, golden eagles, yellow-bellied marmots, western
meadowlarks, long-billed curlews and an unfathomable number of red-tailed hawks,
all while encountering perhaps one other car.