The Pitchfork Ranch at Meteetsee, Wyoming, is sure a pretty place. Peach Blossom and I drove up there over Father's Day week-end last year, when we went out to the Mule Days celebration and auction northeast of Cody, Wyoming. If you go through Meteetsee, an interesting stop is the museum in which there are a lot of old-time cowboy photographs, taken by Charles Belden. He ran the Pitchfork Ranch for a lot of years, during a very photogenic time period.
Here in Nebraska, the old Fawn Lake Cattle Company was a fine ranch. It was also called "The U Cross" because of the brand that went on the cattle. The U Cross comprised about sixty-five thousand acres, and another ranch under the same ownership was the Star, which was another 35,000 acres. The whole empire was managed by Mose Rossiter for a lot of years. When he died, John Kime ran the ranch until he was killed in a helicopter crash in February of 1968.
I feel privileged that I had the opportunity to see the place in its heyday. On August 12, 1966, I was with a friend helping him get some hay machinery moved from his south ranch to his north ranch. This was a distance of sixty miles cross-country through the Sandhills, usually just through pastures, but occasionally on a trail road. He was driving a small Allis Chalmers tractor (about 35-40 horsepower). With the tractor, he pulled a four-wheel haysled. On this haysled was a "horse sweep", which was what some would call a buck-rake. When in use, it was powered by two draft horses. I was fourteen years old at the time, and my duty for the trip was to drive the team of draft horse that would power the sweep after his haying was in progress. The horses were hitched to an old rubber tired wagon and my "seat" was a leather bottom wooden chair that had seen its better days. It was sometimes hard to keep the thing balanced, if the horses were trotting and the bumps were bad. My passenger was the neighbor's eleven-year-old son. He rode on our pile of bedding.
The sixty-mile trip took two and a half days, and two and a half inches of rain fell on us as we made the pilgrimage. We were in a goose-drowner of a downpour as we neared the U Cross. We hadn't planned to stop at the ranch, but due to the pouring rain we decided to pull in and seek shelter to get dried off. It was about 11:30 when we trotted into the yard. A big horse barn was on the premises, and it would hold close to a hundred horses in box stalls. Keep in mind that at that time (1966), all the work on that ranch was done with draft horses. They put up several thousand tons of hay in big six or seven ton stacks, and then all this hay was fed out in the wintertime on haysleds pulled with horses. Cowboys were on hand to assist us, and we unhooked the horses and put the team in the barn. They invited us into the bunkhouse to get dried off. About then the dinner bell rang, and we joined the cowboys as they ran through the rain to dinner.
After a nice dinner of steak, potatoes, beans and biscuits, we went outside. The rain had let up a little bit, so we harnessed up to resume our journey. The U Cross hands went to brand some late calves. They were leaving the barn when we did. It was impressive that as they rode out of the yard, there were fourteen cowboys mounted on their horses, and one cowboy was leading a saddled horse for John Kime (the boss) to use later. These cowboys were all full-time ranch hands, and this was just a regular day in their way of life. Mr. Kime accompanied them driving a pickup which contained the branding irons, stove, and other supplies necessary to accomplish their afternoon task.
The big barn was a landmark in itself. Regretably, a few years later some kids were playing with matches in the haymow, and it caught fire and burned to the ground. As mentioned earlier, it was big enough to have stall space for nearly a hundred draft horses. Another part of the barn had stanchions for milking a few cows. On the west side of the barn there were many wagons parked. Each wagon was loaded for any particular job that might come up. One wagon held all windmill equipment, two or three wagons had fencing supplies, and other wagons were just empty and avialable. The ranch was very self-sufficient. One or two guys were hired to garden, do yard work, milk cows and take care of a few chickens. An elaborate butchering set-up made it easy to process beef. The ranch was a long ways from any town, and only trail roads made traveling anywhere a time-consuming project.
Anyway, the whole experience stuck in my youthful mind as a wonderful opportunity to get to see an old-time premier ranch in operation. This ranch was one whose ways had changed very little from what it would have been like seventy-five years earlier. Now it is forty years later and the old Fawn Lake Cattle Company will never be quite the same. At this time (2006), the U Cross is owned by Ted Turner.
