The Joe Saval Company, LLC is the management company for the ranch founded by Joe & Jesusa Saval in north-central Nevada. It is the namesake of a Basque emigrant. Originally Jose Zabalbeascoa in his native Vizcaya, Spain, he arrived in America 27 March 1892 at the age of 17 and changed his appellation. Joe Saval and his older brother John had been engaged in Europe by agents of John Gilmore Taylor a prominent Nevada sheepman, who preferred to hire hard working French and Spanish Basques. John G. Taylor sheep operation’s base property ranged East-West along the Humboldt River corridor, and North-South in Humboldt, Lander and Eureka counties. They both agreed to work for payment in sheep in lieu of wages.
The Saval brothers “hived off” with John G. Taylor, meaning they ran their sheep concurrently with those of Taylor. This they did for eight years. In 1900 they went out on their own as “tramp sheep herders” or landless, itinerant sheepherders, who utilized the open range without either base property or a home ranch.
During their first two years running independently Joe Saval acquired two parcels of property near Austin, Nevada – one each in Italian and Steiner Canyons. In 1902 Joe Saval bought the Snow Canyon Ranch north of Elko, ceased being a “Tramp Herder” and was now a flock-master in his own right. From his headquarters at Snow Canyon, he trailed his sheep from Elko County, south to Austin and later Fallon Nevada, utilizing their vast knowledge of the terrain gleaned while herding for John G. Taylor.
This was the model the Saval Brothers used between 1902 and 1917. In 1917 Joe Saval acquired the Buffalo Ranch in Buffalo Valley, Nevada. That same year he married Jesusa Guridi, with whom he would have three daughters, Josephine, Dolores and Marian. In 1918 John Saval was killed in an automobile mishap, leaving Joe & Jesusa to run the livestock operation, which was branching out to include cattle and horses.
In 1920 he acquired a town home in Battle Mountain as his headquarters when he bought the former home of the W.T. Jenkins Company accountant, located next door to the home of Louise & Ernest Marvel, who came to be known to the young Saval family as Aunt Louise and Uncle Ernest.
For the next 18 years Joe & Jesusa consolidated their holdings in Northern Nevada, with a concentration in Buffalo, Jersey & Dixie Valleys, where he bought many of the smaller outfits, while continuing to run running both sheep & cattle “in common” with his neighbors on the Public Domain.
Joe Saval dies in 1938, leaving the ranching operation to be run by his widow & daughters. With the help of several loyal employees and ranch hands she settled Joe’s Estate, disposing of the Elko County property including their beloved Snow Canyon and headquartering the outfit in Buffalo Ranch for the livestock and McCoy Ranch for the haying.
From 1938 to 1952 the business of the outfit was changing. Horses were eliminated in the 1930s when the US Cavalry ceased purchasing remounts; there was less and less reliance on sheep and more and more on cattle, which were in high demand during WWII. The Saval operation ranged as far North as U.S. Highway 40; as far South as the Clan Alpine Mountains; to the East to NV Highway 8A (now 305) and Westward into the Pleasant and Buena Vista Valleys
In 1952 Jesusa’s son-in-law Tedo Bartorelli became the Ranch Manager, and began to modernize the outfit. Under his guidance the ranch began to acquire its present boundaries when discussions were initiated with the Bureau of Land Management and the neighbors about range land divisions. Between 1958 and 1964 negotiations were begun with other ranchers on all sides of what would become the Saval Allotment. The goal was an exclusive allotment which was achieved with two exceptions, trail privileges for one neighbor and a dozen pairs in one of the pastures with another. The boundaries, however, were fixed.
The negotiations began on the far north of the Saval Allotment to divide the northern end of Buffalo Valley. Next were negotiations to define the South Buffalo Valley Unit, followed by the Buffalo Valley -Pumpernickel agreement which in turn was succeeded by an agreement for separating the South Buffalo Allotment from the Pleasant Valley Allotment. The most difficult negotiation was the separation of the South Buffalo Valley Unit into two separate allotments. Finally, the discussions went back to the North end to define the Copper Canyon allotment.
To recap, in chronological order the following six Rangeland Agreements were made:
| Date | Area |
| February 1964 | Smeltzer Pass |
| February 1966 | South Buffalo Allotment |
| October 1967 | Pumpernickel and Buffalo Valley Units |
| December 1969 | Buffalo Valley Unit and the Peasant Valley Unit |
| November 1971 | Agreement Dividing The South Buffalo Valley Unit into Two Allotments |
| March 1972 | Saval-Copper Canyon Grazing Unit Division |
These Rangeland Agreements led to eight Fencing Cooperative Agreements between the Saval’s and their neighbors at the time. Note that the fences were built as supplies and funds became available rather than in the order the Rangeland Agreements were negotiated.
| Year | Fence |
| 1969 | Grass Valley Buffalo Fence |
| 1973 | Fish Creek Division Fence |
| 1973 | Home Station Division Fence |
| 1974 | Pinnacle Mountain Fence |
| 1974 | Buffalo Allotment Fence |
| 1975 | Copper Canyon Fence |
| 1977 | Pleasant Valley-Buffalo Valley Fence |
| ? | Pleasant Valley Fence (additions) |
After 1977 the Jesusa Saval Ranch was secure within its allotment boundaries. She oversaw the operation, her son-n-law was the day-to-day manager, her three daughters sided in these efforts and the eleven cousins all helped work the ranch.
In the late 1970s Tedo Bartorelli shifted the duties of Cow Boss to others and began to spend more time with his family and grandchildren. Jesusa Saval died in 1982, and the family realized that there were fewer and fewer family members able to assume the duties of the day-to-day operation of the ranch. In the mid 1980s the family made a decision to sell their herd, but retained the real estate, continuing to lease the ground to other operators. In the 1990s the ownership of the operation was altered when one of the sisters purchased her siblings interests, and in 1992 the present Joe Saval Company, LLC was formed to manage the ranch. Since that time there has been a succession of lessee operators, both sheep and cattle, with whom the Saval Family has had a working relationship as well as a proprietary interest in their herds.