Western WY - Weekend on a Ranch

Starting in the fall of 1947 (that's 61 years ago!!) and for the succeeding 4-years (including a few summer schools because I was "such a good student"), I attended a boys prep school in New England - The Hotchkiss School - with some 90 classmates.

Far too few classmates I maintained close contact with; others, our relationship was refreshed at our 50th reunion. One such classmate is Hort Spitzer. He is a retired business owner who with his wife, Juli, now lives in a beautiful home in Wilson (near Jackson) WY, and owns a ranch some 80 miles to the southeast in Daniel (near Pinedale) WY. Juli is a long-time resident of the Pinedale area and maintains her own place there.

Hort and Juli hosted an evening at their Wilson home where, while having cocktails, we saw a bull moose very nearby. The weekend before the 4th of July I was their guest at the ranch.

Here's Hort and Juli at Hort's ranch.
At least almost every weekend find Hort and Juli on Hort's ranch which contains some 2,000 acres bordered by 15-miles of fence. To the "city slicker" like me, the land in that region appears wild, barren and valueless - as far as the eye can see in all directions. 20-miles to the west, the endless view is arrested by the snow-capped Wyoming Range; in the distance to the north and northeast by the glacier-ridden Wind River Range. Otherwise, this apparent wasteland visually goes on forever.


However, the land is not barren. It is alive. With some very hard work it can be economically viable, as I was soon to learn.


On Hort's ranch there are two primary activities - growing grass to be harvested as hay and for grazing cattle. Harvesting the grass and ranging cattle are both cash "crops." Hort grows the grass - cattle owners lease huge areas to range their cattle, and a haying outfit comes in to harvest the grass for hay.

With Hort and his ranch hand, "Smoot," I spent the heart of a day on a super sized ATV going cross-country all over the ranch, checking on, repairing and adjusting the vast irrigation system.

Here's Smoot and the ATV. Note the wet tires which is evidence we are travelling in a well-irrigated grass area.


Water from various streams originating in the Wyoming Range course through the region including Hort's ranch. Built mainly by homesteaders in the mid-to-late 1800s, an intricate network of irrigation canals, dams and diversion channels enable spring and summer flooding of the what appears to be useless land.

The water combined with last summer's cow manure enriches the soil, enabling natural grass to grow to feed this year's grazing cattle, as well as harvesting grass/hay from 700 or so acres. This past winter was a big snow year and abundant water courses and saturates the ground - virtually everywhere we drive.

Any areas not getting appropriate amounts of water cause us to stop and Hort and Smoot to adjust the diversion dams and culverts, as well as checking for and destroying beaver dams. My job was to open and close fence gates, take pictures, and ask a million questions.

Here you see Hort installing a diversion dam made of plastic coated canvas. The dam causes water to overflow the irrigation ditch and spread out over the grass areas on both sides.



On an adjacent ranch are original homesteader cabins and, up on the hill in the first photo following - a proverbial one-room school house. The schoolhouse was built in 1901 and operated continuously until after the WWII period. Hort pointed out that it was obvious the last cabin inhabitants had vacated abruptly as we saw many items left behind, including a shirt hanging on a hook (which I failed to photograph!).



Here you see Hort and me standing in front of a device used to manually create haystacks in the "olden days" before machinery.


Driving back to my portable home in the Jackson Hole WY area, I took the "back road way." 20 miles to the west of the ranch along an undulating dirt road, seeing Antelope and free-ranging cattle, abruptly the Wyoming Range juts upwards.

One begins the climb up to and over McDougal Gap near 11,134 ft Lander Peak, descending to near the headwaters of the Grey's River which drains the canyon northward between the Wyoming Range and the Salt River Range which parallels and is just west of the Wyoming Range.

VERY remote, stunningly rugged glaciated cirques and valleys, and contorted geological formations are a feast to to one's visual senses. The Grey's River is at flood stage, draining into the Snake River. Sorry - no photos!!

Here you see free-ranging cattle, the Grey's River and 10,103 ft Stewart Peak at the north end of the Salt River Range and nearing the "town" of Alpine WY. Alpine is the point where the Grey's River joins the Snake River, which in turn turns west into Idaho to continue its circuitous route to the Columbia River and finally the Pacific Ocean.