CK Ranch Brochure

CK Ranch Sublette County, Wyoming

“Buy land. They ain’t making anymore of that stuff.”

-Will Rogers

SUMMARY • Location: Daniel, Wyoming • Acres: 5,875 deeded / 6,515 total acres

• 4.5 miles of North Cottonwood Creek flowing through the ranch • Blue Ribbon Trout Fishing • Bordering over 5 miles of Forest Service • Mountain views • Diverse vegetation and wildlife • Waterfowl hunting, big game hunting and fishing on property

• Close to public lands that offer endless hiking, biking, skiing, hunting and fishing • Jackson Hole 1.5hrs away • Commercial air service in Jackson, WY or private jet-ways 30 minutes away in Big Piney, WY and Pinedale, WY

Offered for $17,900,000

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The CK Ranch is located in the heart of the Wyoming Mountain Range and boasts over 5,875 acres of some of the finest recreational hunting and fishing in the region. Since

homesteaded in the late 18oo’s, this is the first time this historic ranch has ever been on the market. Over 4.5 miles of blue ribbon trout fishing on this long stretch of North Cottonwood Creek has long been known as one of the most coveted spots for blue ribbon fishery habitat in the lower 48. The famous “Ryegrass Fishing Club” is downstream some four to five miles. The Wyoming Game and Fish has indicated that CK Ranch, and some of its tributaries that feed into Cottonwood, are home to the “purest” strain of Colorado Cutthroat in the U.S.

Many of these cutthroat can exceed 24” and 2 to 3 lbs.

While

bordering 5 miles of USFS, the CK Ranch also provides excellent big game hunting. The CK Ranch is a well rounded recreational property and the perfect opportunity to own a trophy big game hunting and fishing ranch. With no conservation easement in place, this is a clean slate property with numerous possibilities. Additional hunting camp available for purchase – adding over 15,000 hunting acres.

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SUBLETTECOUNTY•WYOMING PEOPLE. Almost everyone living in Sublette County has an appreciation for its nationally recognized outdoor recreation opportunities. In 2011, Pinedale was listed by Outdoor Life magazine as the second best place in the country for sportsmen to live. The agriculture community continues to thrive in Sublette County, mostly because of cattle ranching, although it is nowhere near the dominating economic force it once was. Tourism, another of the area’s oldest industries, also remains strong, with the county hosting visitors annually from around the world. While Sublette County is larger than Rhode Island, the population is still small—10,247 in the 2010 census.

GEOGRAPHY. Sublette County, Wyoming’s sixth largest, is located in the western part of the state and covers approximately 3.2 million acres, 80 percent of which are public land.

Elevation ranges from 6,280 feet in the valley to 13,400 feet in the Wind River Range. The county hosts more than 1,300 lakes. The mountain ranges give birth to numerous fast-flowing streams that find their way into the Green River.

Isolated geographically, first from railroads and then from interstate highways and population centers, the county retained its frontier culture far longer than many areas of Wyoming and the West, and its population remained sparse until well into the 20th century.

EARLY HISTORY. Three well-known archaeological sites place indigenous peoples for thousands of years in what’s now Sublette County. The Wardell Buffalo Trap is the oldest known kill site where hunters used bows and arrows, and dates back approximately 1,000 years. The Trapper’s Point Antelope Kill Site has been radiocarbon dated to 7,880 to 4,690 years ago. And archaeologists excavating the J. David Love Site in the Jonah Field south of present Pinedale uncovered the oldest burial in Wyoming, dating back 7,200 years.

Archaeological data suggests that people have lived here for at least 9,000 years.

Archaeologists also believe all of the natives were seasonal, moving out during the winter and returning for the summer.

MOUNTAIN MEN AND THE RENDEZVOUS. The first Euro-Americans to arrive in the Rocky Mountain region came for beaver in the mountain streams and rivers. Beaver pelts were relatively small and easy to transport and brought good prices in the eastern markets. Beaver fur hats were the fashion in the United States and Europe, increasing demand. What is now Sublette County lies in the heart of what was some of the most productive beaver country in the Rocky Mountain West. The Green River and many of the streams in Sublette County were heavily trapped by the mountain men.

Trappers were known to be in Wyoming as early 1807 when John Colter came to the country, but historians consider 1820 to 1840 the peak years of the beaver fur trade. In the East and Midwest, Indian and white trappers alike had long brought furs to trading posts. But opposition to the trade in the early 1820s from Indians along the Missouri River hindered the transactions. William Ashley of St. Louis adapted a Canadian trading system about this time that would be known as the rendezvous. Ashley put the word out to trappers to meet the following summer at a chosen site in the midst of the best trapping grounds to trade the season’s catch.

In the following decade, six annual trappers’ rendezvous were held near the junction of Horse Creek and the Green River near present-day Daniel, Wyo., in 1833, 1835, 1836, 1837, 1839 and 1840.

Here the season’s take in pelts was traded for powder and ball, Green River skinning knives, traps, blankets, trade beads and whiskey. But just at the time trapping killed off most of the beaver, silk hats replaced beaver ones. The beaver boom disappeared. The 1840 rendezvous was the last one.

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THE GREAT WESTWARD MIGRATION AND THE LANDER WAGON ROAD. Starting in the early 1840s, a trickle at first and later a flood of people began making the 2,000- mile trek from the Midwest to Oregon, California, and the 1,000-mile trek to Utah. As many as half a million people crossed what’s now Wyoming bound for these places before the transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869.

In what’s now Wyoming, the emigrants crossed South Pass, the only wagon route through the Rocky Mountains.

Many former mountain men with knowledge of western terrain became scouts and trail leaders for the emigrants.

Once over South Pass, they followed the Mormon Trail to Utah and Salt Lake City or chose any of a number of routes and cutoffs to California or Oregon.

First of these was Sublette’s Cutoff, probably blazed by William Sublette in 1826 as a shortcut between South Pass and the Bear River. This cutoff is located just south of the modern-day Sweetwater-Sublette County line. Second was the Lander Cutoff or Lander Wagon Road. This shortcut between South Pass and the Snake River region crosses what’s now the southern end of Sublette County.

It was built late in the history of the Oregon Trail and was the only portion of the trail constructed with government funds and expertise. The route took travelers north of present Big Piney, Wyo., up South Piney Creek through Snyder Basin and Star Valley, and into what is now Idaho, past Gray’s Lake to Fort Hall near present-day Pocatello, Idaho. This road was named in honor of Frederick W. Lander, an engineer with the U.S. Department of the Interior, who surveyed the path and supervised its 1857-1859 construction.

SUBLETTE COUNTY’S FIRST SETTLERS: Cattlemen. The area was not conducive for farming, but in the late 1870s, cattlemen recognized its grazing potential. A surplus of cattle in other regions combined with the completion of the transcontinental railroad to help make the cattle business possible in Wyoming. Cattle were turned out and fattened on Wyoming grass and shipped by rail to eastern markets.

Cattlemen discovered that, like the native buffalo, their stock could graze year-round on sparse but nutritious prairie grasses that cured on the stem in the dry climate.

Ranchers settled along the major watercourses, and at first had only limited competition for the surrounding grazing lands. They raised primarily beef cattle, but often maintained sheep and a few dairy herds. Some of the original beef herds were stocked with Mormon cattle from the Salt Lake Valley and outlying Mormon settlements. Many herds were also driven back over the Lander Road from Oregon, and from Texas via eastern Wyoming and Colorado.

The blizzard of 1889-1890—two years after the winter that killed so much stock in eastern Wyoming and Montana—wiped out many cattle herds in the Green River Valley on ranges already heavily overstocked. Ranchers gradually stopped depending on winter grazing for their cattle, cleared sagebrush in low areas and developed irrigation systems to grow natural hay for winter feed. In the late 19th century, cattle were shipped to market at three to four years of age. In the fall, cattle from Daniel, Big Piney and La Barge were trailed to Granger, on the Union Pacific Railroad near Rock Springs, a six-to-seven day drive. From there, they were shipped by rail to Chicago and later Omaha, Neb. When the U.P.’s subsidiary, the Oregon Short Line, was later constructed from Granger to Pocatello, Idaho, the nearest Sublette County shipping point became Opal in present Lincoln County, a five-day trail drive from the Big Piney area.

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SUBLETTECOUNTY•WYOMING Cattle drives from the Cora-PinedaleBoulder area in the northeastern part of the county to shipping points farther east often took more than twice as long, from 10 to 20 days. These crossed the small Little Colorado Desert and much larger Red Desert to such points as Rock Springs, Wyo., and Wamsutter, Wyo. Many of the cattle from the upper Green River Valley were also driven to Opal. Starting in the late 1920s and early 1930s, ranchers began using trucks to haul cattle, although trailing cattle to market continued in the county into the early 1940s. Some of the earliest Sublette County cattle ranches still operate today with fifth or sixth generations running the businesses.

Cowboys on horseback moving herds are still a common sight. This is particularly true on the Green River drift–the stock trail used since 1896 to move cattle from spring range in the southern end of the county to summer range on the U.S. Forest Service allotment in the upper Green River Valley and back again in the fall to the ranchers’ home places for winter.

–––––– LOGGING. A new industry–the production of railroad ties--was brought to the area when the transcontinental railroad was built across southern Wyoming in 1867-1868. Two important factors enabled this industry: large stands of lodgepole pines in the mountains and many “drivable” streams and rivers for floating ties to the Green River City, where the Union Pacific crossed the Green River. Ties were cut for the initial railroad construction, but eventually an enduring replacement industry developed and lasted into World War II.

Ties were cut for the initial railroad construction, but eventually an enduring replacement industry developed and lasted into World War II. Ties were hand-hewn by skilled “tie-hacks” from Sweden, Norway, Finland and Austria. The hewn ties were delivered to market by huge drives when the ties were floated down the Green River and its tributaries with help from the tiehacks. These “river rats” often rode the logs down the stream, and were paid well for their dangerous, backbreaking labor.

Centers of such activities included the Kendall tie camp on the upper Green River, organized in 1896, and big enough for its own post office by 1899. Supplying the tie camps with food and equipment brought more business to the area. Operations spread southward in the 20th century to the North and South Cottonwood Creek drainages in the Wyoming Range northwest of Big Piney. The tie industry flourished on the Cottonwoods throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Timber work moved north from there to North and South Horse Creeks in the 1930s. Ties were cut along both creeks and on Dry Beaver Creek near Daniel, where portable sawmills were in use by the late 1930s. Gradually, portable sawmills, chainsaws, tractors, road, and haul trucks replaced the broadax and tie drives. The era ended in 1940 when the Union Pacific stopped accepting hand-hewn, river-driven ties because they were too uneven and their quality inconsistent. Additionally, the railroad no longer wanted water-soaked timber as it was too hard to treat it effectively with preservative.

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ï‚– 640 Acres State Leased 5,875 Deeded Acres

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“Don't give your son money. As far as you can afford it, give him horses. No one ever came to grief, except honourable grief, through riding horses. No hour of life is lost that is spent in the saddle. Young men have often been ruined through owning horses, or through backing horses, but never through riding them; unless of course they break their necks, which, taken at a gallop, is a very good death to die.�

- Winston Churchill The Works Of Winston Churchill

Chopper Grassell 307.231.2603 Richard Lewis 307.690.8855 LiveJacksonHole.com