Photo by Gary N. Miller - Sisters Country Photography

A member of Sisters Rodeo Association since she moved to Sisters in 1971, Dorro Sokol has been an influential community member who has watched a town of about 400 residents grow into the thriving, diversified small city it has become.

“People ask me if I’m not disappointed in the growth of this once quiet little town,” Sokol expressed, “but the caliber of people who have moved in is quite extraordinary. I have enjoyed them coming here.”

The owner of Pine Meadow Ranch, Sokol tried cattle ranching on her 320 acres, but soon learned that the former mint farm was “not a good environment for raising cattle.” Winds leveled one of her hay barns and 39 pine trees in two different storms. So, Sokol revamped the ranch to grow hay. In the 1990s, she converted seventy acres within the urban growth boundary into the attractive Pine Meadow Village.

Sokol began herding horses on her Shetland Pony at the age of four on her family’s ranch in San Paula, California, east of Santa Barbara. She graduated from Stanford University with a degree in physical therapy, working in that carrier while her husband, Don, matriculated Stanford Law School.

The couple had ranching in their blood, so they moved a young family to the historic Oxbow Ranch in Prairie City, Oregon, where their four children learned to herd cattle on Shetland Ponies, descendents of their mother’s ponies. They had 2,000 cattle on 16,000 deeded acres and 140,000 total acres with leases of public lands.

Her physical therapy degree came in handy on the cattle ranch, where she applied that knowledge in inventing a splint for newborn calves who had hip dysplasia. “I used Coke bottles as splints,” she explained, “tractioning the hind legs into a stretch that helped them stand and nurse. Otherwise, they’d have died.” She proudly states that this is a standard of veterinary medicine today, with casting replacing Coke bottles.

While she raised four children (Eva, Doug, Chris and Mary), Sokol also herded and branded cattle, vaccinated, pulled calves and did C-section deliveries along with haying.

Her husband was a pilot, having served in the Army Air Corp. When the Sokols decided to move to the Oxbow, an airplane made the civilized world accessible.Sokol became licensed to fly, too.

The family flew to Bend for medical and dental services and to shop. When Mt. Bachelor Ski Area was about three years old, they began flying the kids there to ski. They flew to Baja, “where there wasn’t yet a road,” to Canada, and even the Bahamas. They traveled all over the West.

She speaks fondly of the airplanes she has owned, a Comanche, a Travel Air, and her prize, a Beechcraft Twin Engine Bonanza, which is now in an air museum in Nampa, Idaho. She flew her plane for the last time when she was 85-years-old.

When the marriage ended, Sokol purchased the acreage in Sisters. “I had been friends with Sisters residents Dorothy and Harold Barkley for many years, a friendship that developed because we were all pilots. The decision to buy some land and relocate here with twenty cows was easy.” It fit her ranching life. “I’ve never wanted to live in a town. I like ranching and everything about that life.”

Sokol became a member of Womens’ Oregon Trail Riders in the late 1960s, riding all over Oregon and in Idaho, Montana, Nevada and Northern California. In the late 1980s, she quit riding and began hiking. “I didn’t want to haul long distances or ride someone else’s horse.”

In Sisters, she served on the Sisters Planning Commission for ten years as the out-of-town commissioner. She was a member of Bend Rotary Club until she became a charter member of Sisters Rotary Club in 1990, serving as president in 2001-2002.

In the late 1980s, Sokol trekked to Antarctica on a Stanford University excursion.

She has done ten Stanford University expeditions, traveling mostly in third world countries.

When her selection was announced, Sokol was speechless, a rare occurrence for this modern pioneer woman, who speaks her opinion and lives an eclectic life that sprawls from horizon to horizon.

— Courtesy Bonnie Malone, Sisters Rodeo