County, ranching are intertwined

By Janice Kurbjun
Times staff writer

Rancher Colleen Stratton presented the past, present and future of Carbon County’s agricultural and ranching industries to attendees at Tuesday’s “The Power of Place: Legacies of Carbon County” lecture.

Carbon County Higher Education Center Director Dave Throgmorton introduced the lecture by summarizing the role of ranching in the lives of Carbon County residents. “Agriculture is not just an industry, it is a way of life,” Throgmorton said.

The lecture was primarily attended by members of the ranching community, he said. “It was a ranching audience and they were loving one of their own.”

Stratton presented an hour and a half of information that dated back to the days of the first settlers of European decent — fur trappers — in Carbon County in the 1800s and ended with future implications to ranching.

“I’m so impressed with the homework that Colleen did,” Throgmorton said. “If that wasn’t a 30- or 40-hour job, I don’t know what was.”

She provided anecdotes to her facts with vignettes about specific ranch families, including her own.

According to Stratton, the Union Pacific railroad played a large part in the growth of agriculture and ranching in the West. The trains provided transport for sheep and cattle. They also carried west the population that would become modern-day ranchers.

“Ranchers then weren’t anything like the ranchers of today,” Stratton said.

The travelers, who originally headed west for the California gold rush, instead found themselves in Wyoming to run trading posts to supply goods to other folks on their westward journey.

Later, ranchers would come directly from Europe, the heritage from which Stratton herself descends. They were often poor and would work for shares of sheep, which eventually gave them the opportunity to go into business for themselves.

These early trade post managers began gathering wild horses and longhorn cattle that roamed the open land, Stratton said. She said the early ranch animals were released from Hernando Cortez’s conquistador party in Mexico. Grazing patterns brought them to Wyoming.

Cattle kicked off Wyoming’s ranching industry, but when sheep arrived 10 years later with the Mormons, Stratton said, it became more prominent, lasting through the 1950s. Sheep ranching then began to consistently decline while cattle ranching was on the rise.

Stratton indicated that as the industry grew, the reins tightened on thievery and poor herd management. Both practices simultaneously allowed some settlers to get started in ranching, but plagued the ranchers already in business.

Additionally, Stratton indicated that the rancher-railroad partnership grew in a different direction as track managers began to sell land to ranchers. The land often positioned them to continue to ship their livestock via the railroad.

Land regulation agencies appeared as the original draws of Wyoming agriculture — free water and free land — dwindled. Branding, counting, trailing regulations and fencing regulations all became common practice. Additionally, ranchers began paying fees to use grazing lands.
At this time, cattle feed transitioned from grass grazing to stationary feeding with hay, Stratton said. Cowboys stopped going home in the winters and instead stayed on the ranches to work with the hay.

A more recent trend in ranching is the reduced slaughter age for cattle, Stratton said. Slaughtering currently occurs at 18 months, while historically, the cows were slaughtered at 3 to 4 years of age. Stratton speculated that the nomadic nature of the ranching industry up to the early 1900s forced ranchers to take longer to fatten their cows after trailing them between winter and summer locations.

Stratton finished by raising questions about the future of ranching. She recently held a poll of fellow ranchers about their future in the business. Even with the obstacles they face, she said, they agreed that ranching in Carbon County should stay strong for years to come.

Throgmorton felt that most of those attending the lecture are already experts in the industry, “they learned some facts, odds and ends that they didn't know before.”

“And I always get a kick out of that, when you get a room full of experts and you can teach them something they don’t know about.”


Future Concerns

Colleen Stratton outlined five specific areas of concern to the future of Carbon County agriculture:

• Land disturbance due to oil, gas and methane well access roads. Drilling reduces acreage available for ranching and dust blown off these sites affects grazing.

• The sage grouse teeters on the edge of appearing on the endangered species list, which would cause state and national limitations on the use of land for ranching purposes.

• Recurring droughts force ranchers to sell herds and buy hay, forcing little profit and damaging business. Additionally, water calls exercised for endangered species in Nebraska often further damage a rancher’s access to water.

• Governmental reallocation of corn for the production of ethanol for fuel purposes increases feed costs. As the abundance of corn crops increase, wheat production goes down, which affects grocery prices.

• Higher paying jobs elsewhere in the state and region prevent family members from returning to work on the ranch. Additionally, the increased cost of land and the nearly 50 percent consolidation of family ranches since the 1940s has changed the landscape of the industry.