The History of Three Peaks Ranch

By Anne McGowan Advancement Communications Coordinator

Wewere really just looking for a place to keep horses for the summer, not necessarily a place to buy,” said Rob Hellyer, describing how, in 1972, NOLS came to purchase Three Peaks Ranch, the epicenter of the school’s horse courses.

Now seated comfortably in the booklined living room of their own ranch home outside of Lander, Wyoming, the Hellyers shared their memory of those days, five decades ago, when Martha, Rob’s wife and NOLS’ first female instructor, and Rob, the energetic right-hand man to founder Paul Petzoldt, made a decision that altered the way the school ran courses in the mountains.

Three Peaks is NOLS’ 71-acre irrigated ranch located near Boulder, Wyoming on the west side of the Wind River Mountains, an almost straight shot over the range from NOLS headquarters in Lander. Last summer, ranch staff and friends from years past celebrated Three Peaks’ 50th anniversary with a party, pig roast, horse show, and stories shared by NOLS stalwarts who were vital to the founding of the ranch—like the Hellyers. They also shared their story with The Leader, recalling when a horse ranch was just a deep desire and an answer to a problem.

Horses were an integral part of NOLS since its founding in 1965, used—as they are now—for some re-rations, carrying heavier pieces of equipment, and, of course, teaching horse skills.

But horses came with unique stumbling blocks. Among them: where to pasture the animals, how to keep from monopolizing Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service corrals in warm weather, and how to feed them year-round.

In 1970, access to the Winds and to American Indian outfitters through the Wind River Reservation near Lander was halted, so roadheads on the west side became the primary route NOLS courses used to reach the mountains. NOLS had access to corrals there, acquired through a special-use permit, but they were temporary, and a 128-mile drive each way from Lander.

“So, we mostly rented pasture, but in the back of our minds, we were always looking for a place that we could buy to keep horses,” Rob explained. That was solved thanks to friends he had made near Boulder.

“A guy told me about a place for sale,” he remembered. “It was ideal. It was more than 50 acres, had a couple BLM leases, and was irrigated, so we had pasture. It had a barn and corrals, and one house.”

One summer Friday in 1972, on the return to Lander from a speaking engagement in Jackson, Rob and Martha took a detour through Boulder, toured what was then known as the Steele Ranch, and immediately wrote a check for $4,500, one-tenth of the purchase price.

“That was just to hold it. It seemed like a lot of money for us, but it was a very good deal,” Rob said, “and it solved our problems.”

As they returned to Lander to share the news with Paul (who, Rob said, was well aware of the school’s equine challenges and fully supported the purchase), Jim Allen was already moving horses and equipment to Three Peaks.

To call Jim NOLS' first ranch manager doesn’t begin to cover his duties. “He was in charge of everything,” Rob said.

Jim Allen, who also attended the 50th anniversary celebration and shared his ranch story, is a fifth-generation Lander, Wyoming native, who wanted to be a horse packer from the time he was in grade school. In 1968, when he was 15 and judged too young to get hired on at local outfitters and dude ranches, Jim enrolled on a NOLS course—with Paul as his instructor—in the Wind River Mountains. After that, he approached Paul seeking work. Recognizing Jim’s horsemanship, Paul hired him on the spot to pack horses with Rob and Martha.

I n the winter of his junior year of high school, Jim worked in the NOLS office, developing the field rationing system still used today. Students for the first time, for example, were required to break down huge chunks of cheese and massive amounts of hot cocoa mix into smaller course-sized portions before their course hit the trail.

R e-rations required food to be delivered to courses every 10 days or so. For a time, food and supplies were brought to a central area in the Winds and courses were re-rationed from there. Eventually, though, as NOLS grew exponentially thanks to the 1969 documentary film Thirty Days to Survival, re-rationing—at Jim’s recommendation—returned to a more mobile system, delivering goods to courses on horses, often unbroken and purchased at auction. The creatures were wild and challenging, Jim remembered, but he and his fellow packers—men and women—had an advantage: working knowledge of trails in the Winds River Mountains and the energy, strength, and bravado of youth.

“ We broke a bunch of horses there,” Jim recalled of his 17-year-old self and his fellow NOLSies. “When you’re that age you didn’t care. You get the job done. We got the food in.”

So, when Three Peaks was purchased, it was natural that Jim, with so much NOLS horse and organizational experience behind him, would be named the ranch manager. At age 19, he took over.

B ut not without help. A perk of the place was that previous owners Leonard and Velma Priebe retained life tenancy on the house.

“ They were a tremendous asset to our NOLS crew and students,” Rob Hellyer remembered. “They were a wealth of good information on the ranch and Leonard was an accomplished cattle and horse hand and had a wonderful disposition. The NOLS crew really looked up to him and Velma.”

Still, life on the ranch wasn’t particularly cushy, Jim recalled.

“ We scrounged up mattresses and lived in the loft of the barn,” he said. “The stairs to the loft were army surplus from airplanes. We built the round corral.”

But the goal was reached: NOLS now had a home for re-rations and horse programs.

For the next seven summers, Jim ran the ranch, working diligently to add outbuildings and corrals as needed, buying and breaking horses, and keeping NOLS students fed and supplied. In 1979, he turned the operation over to the younger folks who worked for him.

T he man who dreamed of being a horse packer since childhood said, looking back, his favorite part of the job was the mental work.

“ The logistics of re-rations and all that— we invented that whole deal,” he remembered. “It was a whole lot of hard physical work, but it was fun too. I mean, it’s kind of a unique experience: where else but on a NOLS course do you see pack horses doing what they’ve done since ancient times?”

Jim and his wife, former NOLS instructor Mary Stone Allen, went on to own and run Allen’s Diamond 4, Wyoming’s highest elevation dude ranch. He is still a licensed and active Wyoming Outfitter and has held a license for 50 consecutive years, as long or longer than any other Wyoming outfitter.

Three Peaks Ranch clearly holds a special place in the hearts of all who’ve spent time there, as evidenced by the crowd who gathered for the anniversary party last summer, swapped memories, and gathered by the fire to hear Rob and Jim share stories of those early days. And, if the reaction to those tales on that cool summer evening was any indication, the Hellyers and Allens—and their dedication, hard work, and love for Three Peaks and the school— hold a very special place in the history of NOLS.