The Last Cattle Ranchers
Photography: Laura Lamando
THEN
There were once hundreds of cattle trails between the summer and winter ranges of northern Utah. The slow movement of herds flowed back and forth like a sea tide.
Cattle ranching in the West would not have prospered without Utah’s grassy mountain valleys. The western frontier of Utah territory prior to 1700 was desolate yet rich in natural resources. Indigenous Americans, wildlife and native plants thrived. Melting winter snows from our mountaintops drained and pooled into wetlands. Swift running rivers and tributaries poured through alpine valleys, nurturing hungry seedlings. Rangelands became dominated by tall, perennial bunch grass.
Growing in “bunches” allows grass to store precious moisture and stay green longer into the growing season so grazing wildlife and grassland song birds can survive. Even during winter, elk and deer paw through crusted snow for this nutritious, yellowed grass. In fact, some say that the name of our neighboring town, “Kamas,” was derived from the Mootka Indian word “chanas” meaning “grassy plain nestled in the hill.”
Utah’s clear streams, bountiful forage and temperate desert landscape became rangeland for the Texas longhorn and their six- to eight-foot horn spans. By the late 1700s, Mexican vaqueros in Spanish trading parties trailed cattle on the Old Spanish Trail from settlements in what is now El Paso, Texas, through New Mexico, north to the Great Salt Lake and then westward across Nevada to the ranches of southern California.
The irascible Longhorns were also driven north to feed the increasing population of miners in the Rocky Mountain states. The more docile, short-horned breeds, like Durhams, which were trailed from the east with the westward expansion of settlers, were cross-bred with the Longhorns, eventually replacing them. Primitive ranches built in Utah’s high mountain valleys housed the arriving livestock.
By 1840, trappers built trading posts in Utah for overland pioneers traveling to the West Coast. These became the first permanent cattle ranching operations in our state. Trading the emigrants’ trail-weary stock for strong cattle on a three-to-one margin proved to be very profitable. In no time, sizeable herds were grazing in Utah.
The Mormon colonization of the Utah territory began with Brigham Young’s arrival in 1847. He quickly recognized that “the natural wealth of this country consists in stock raising and grazing.” Within three years, Mormon settlements stretched beyond the Salt Lake Valley and into the upper valleys of the Wasatch Mountains. Some 12,000 head of pulling and breeding stock arrived with each new wagon train. Many of them wintered in the west desert. In the spring they followed the melting snowline to lush rangelands near Kamas, Heber and Snyderville (now part of Park City).
The livestock operation of the Mormons differed from traditional western ranching, where cattle herds were scattered across the open range. Mormon-owned co-ops, or stock companies, laid claim to grazing lands near their core settlements to keep strangers off the open range.
This “common range” method allowed village cattle to graze together, even though they wore different brands. This unique system fostered social and religious ties, but cattle need to range. The Mormon practices led to over-grazing and deterioration of native grasses.
The sale of cattle brought gold and new life to cash-poor Utah during the California Gold Rush. Beginning in 1848, Utah’s cattlemen exported enough cattle to the Golden State to feed the hungry fortune seekers for years. And when silver was discovered in the Wasatch Mountains, emigrants in the mining towns of Park City and Alta were fed beef from Utah’s rangelands as well.
By 1865, as the Civil War ended, Utah was crossed by not only dozens of cattle trails, but the Oregon Trail, Western Trail, and Old Spanish Trail. Millions of unbranded, wild cattle were roaming the Texas plains. The war-hardened men and former slaves who rounded up these cattle, many of which landed in Utah, were the first to be called “cowboys.”
Cowboys on cattle drives were usually assigned six horses each and rode them in half-day rotations. A herd of several thousand cattle traveling overland was managed by 12 cowboys and a trail boss, and covered about 450-500 miles per month. In 1866, a cowboy working a herd from a Texas cowtown to Cheyenne, Wyoming could earn $30 to $60 a month.
The western cattle industry was transformed in 1869 by newly enacted federal land policies and the joining of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads at Utah’s Promontory Point. This change caused the western landscape to change dramatically.
Eventually, all cattle were shipped by rail, which costs less than trailing them overland. Native American tribes were settled on reservations, much of the open range was designated as federal land, and private property was fenced. The railroads brought thousands of settlers west, demanding beef. Acres upon acres of unused, virgin grasslands across the far reaches of Utah territory became rangelands controlled by cattle companies. Cattle ranching was here to stay.
NOW
In today’s Park City, the term “ranch” most likely refers to a recent land development with residential lot sizes ranging from one to 25 acres. These subdivisions, or “ranch clubs” bear little resemblance to a true working ranch. The romanticized ranch lifestyle we see portrayed in glossy brochures rarely includes images of castrating calves, missing fingers and sub-zero feedings.
Cattle ranching in the arid high country of northern Utah remains a hard-scrabble life for most. The small number of people still working cattle ranches today do so in the face of shifting cultural and political conditions.
Vince Rogers runs cattle in the sagebrush no-man’s land between the urban and rural boundaries of western and eastern Summit County. Like most Utah cattlemen, he has a small cow/calf operation. During the winter months, his mother cows range on an undersized patch of ground near the Salt Lake International Airport. He must feed them supplemental hay. If the cows remain strong and healthy through the winter, they will calve in early spring.
When Vince can regulate when his bulls are with his cows, and the mothers are birthing around the same time, the birth rate can be as high as 95 percent. In June, when grass in the higher elevations has turned green, Vince rounds up his 300 pairs of cows and calves and a bull or two by horseback. He herds them into cattle chutes and waiting semi-trailer trucks for transport to Park City. All summer, they graze on the high desert forage in Brown’s Canyon. In October, when the calves weigh about 500 pounds, they are separated from their mothers and sold. In today’s market, a Hereford steer brings around $1.35 per pound.
Vince claims he was the last guy to have a cattle drive on Old Ranch Road in Park City. He speaks with the distinctive drawl of a Utah native. “Did I ever tell you about the time I roped that mountain biker cutting my fence in Round Valley?” he asks. “Hell, I could’ve lost some cows.”
Apparently, mountain bikers from Park City were using a trail on some private property he leased for grazing in Round Valley. A modern day range war, of sorts, took place. “He’d cut the fence and I’d have to repair it, everyday,” Vince recounts.
The frustrating and hazardous behavior continued until Vince waited up one night. He rode his horse to the fence line and lassoed the trespassing biker, who used his cell phone to call the sheriff. As he tells it, Vince was “cuffed and thrown in the clink” until a Park City lawyer came to his rescue and sprung him. Shortly after this incident, Park City purchased the land as permanent open space.
By contrast, Ensign Ranches owns and manages consolidated portions of two historic ranches in the upper reaches of Echo Canyon, on the east side of Summit County. The Castle Rock Ranch, formerly part of Anschutz Land and Livestock, and the Heiner Canyon Ranch, originally part of the Deseret Livestock Company, are part of roughly 120,000 acres in Summit and Uinta County where 5,000 cows and nursing calves are grazed each summer. In the fall, the cattle are shipped 130 miles west to their winter range which is almost half a million acres of private and public land in Skull Valley in Tooele County. Portions of this ranch are protected by a conservation easement. “It’s a tremendous opportunity and good stewardship to profitably manage this resource while preserving and enhancing it for the future,” says Chris Robinson, a Park City local who is one of the ranch owners.
The 2002 Agricultural Census states that of the approximately 1.2 million acres in Summit County, 618,928 acres—or roughly 55 percent—are in green belt (agriculture) terrain, with about 70 percent designated for cattle grazing. Cash receipts for farming and ranching, which includes dairy cows, cattle, sheep and mink, totaled $20.7 million dollars in gross sales for Summit County in 2004.
Sterling Banks, who’s served as the Utah State extension agricultural officer in Summit County for 25 years, says, “Full-time ranching has dropped,” and he predicts that, “It will continue to drop over the coming decades. Part-time ranchers, with money, who don’t need to rely on livestock income, are moving to small, 20-acre ranchettes in the mountains.”
Only a few of the countless cattle trails that once zigzagged from Utah’s summer to winter ranges are left. The slow-moving herds that were driven back and forth by cowboys are delivered today by truck drivers. What lasts is the tenacious cattle rancher, his precious rangeland and a rural way of life that is disappearing, yet oddly imitated. The lonesome sound of moaning cows and their bawling calves remind us of our high country legacy. It may also be a timely call for our generation to save a piece of western heritage for the next.
Leslie Miller spends her high-altitude summers riding, golfing and writing from a porch overlooking East Canyon Creek.
Your comments may be edited for brevity and foul language.