Ranching
Ranching in the Gunnison Valley is as old as the history of the area. The Ute Indians who were the first residents of this valley had no uses for fence or pasture. They took minimally from the land and being a hunter gather culture, their impacts were almost untraceable.
Alonzo Hartman arrived in late 1872 to attend to the Ute Cow Camp which was an extension of the Los Pinos Indian Agency. The site of that cow camp is close to what is the modern site of the city of Gunnison. Little did people know that what would follow for over the next 100 years would be a ranching legacy forever tied to this place.
The areas of Ohio Creek, Crested Butte, Cranor Hill, Taylor Park, Quartz Creek, Tomichi Creek, Cochetopa, lower Gunnison (Iola) and the Powderhron on down to Lake City are all steeped in the history of the cattle legacy.
Many of these areas are still home to large ranch operations and allow us to enjoy many wide open vistas provided by the thousands of acres of these ranches.
Family names like Moore, Veltri, Hartman, Sammons, McCabe, Trampe, Easterly, Buffington, Thorton, Spann, Vader, Mergleman, Outcalt, Howard, Phelps, Redden, Irby, Field, Piloni, Eilebrechts, Esty, Rouviere, Hildebrand, Hadley, Youmans and Hollenback are all recognizable as names that shaped the course of history in the cattle industry in Gunnison County.
Ranching was and still is hard work. There are many people who still embrace this life at often low returns. The spirit of the rancher is representative of the hearty nature and demeanor needed to carve a life out of this hard land.
Currently many ranches are under conservation easements to allow rancher
to continue to utilize the land rather then to cut it up into 35 acre ranchettes.
