Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years
Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years
Worland Middle School chaperones and students pose outside the Arapaho Ranch Field Station during their visit in May.
A tipi that was put up by Wyoming Indian students staying the night at the ranch casts a warm glow in front of the Ursa Major constellation on July 29, 2023.
Students from Wyoming Indian visit the Arapaho Ranch Field Station, where they are going to learn about prarie grass and its ability to sequester carbon dioxide.
The Arapaho Ranch, with its headquarters six miles west of Thermopolis, has long been a symbol of Native American culture in the West, but new developments are making the ranch a place for hands-on education in history, science, agriculture and art.
According to arapahoranch.org, the ranch's website, it was originally established in 1867 on 75,000 acres outside Thermopolis and it grew to become the largest sheep ranch in Wyoming by 1918. The ranch fell victim to the Great Depression and went bankrupt in 1928. It remained in limbo until 1940, when the Northern Arapaho Tribe purchased it along with seven neighboring ranches, forming a single ranch covering 350,000 acres.
The Northern Arapaho ran cattle on the ranch, at one point having the distinction of being the largest organic beef producer in North America, before changing practices. Today, the Arapaho Ranch encompasses 450,000 acres, comparable in size to a small country. It maintains a herd of 5,000 heifers, a number that the tribe hopes to increase as they grow their operation.
The ranch has operated primarily out of a large red barn built in 1907 that has been used continuously for over a hundred years. Just down the highway from the barn is an Italian Villa-style mansion built in 1917. The 5,000 square-foot mansion was originally a symbol of opulence, filled with luxurious furniture, tapestries and exotic animal hides. Although much of the original furnishings remain, much of the art in the American-built mansion has been replaced by art that is culturally significant to the Arapaho, much of it courtesy of Barrie Bryant, the mansion's caretaker and the Ranch's documentarian.
In his position, paid for by the National Endowment for the Arts, Bryant is charged with the upkeep of the historic mansion, officially titled the Arapaho Ranch Field Station. He said, "For the past 35 years, I was a full-time artist, and collaborator with my late wife, who died April 27, 2022. After she passed, the Wyoming Arts Council had awarded me a $25,000 grant to do a big documentary. That's when I spoke with Larre Hoffman, my colleague who is very involved with the Arapaho tribe. I told her I'd like to see what's going on out here."
Bryant's position entails several duties, the primary one being the upkeep of the mansion. He mows the lawn, handles renovations, and keeps the place livable for guests to the ranch. When he isn't busy keeping up with maintenance, Bryant documents the rich history of the ranch.
He visits with ranch employees, both former and present, to preserve their stories, and regularly photographs the natural beauty of the ranch. He also organizes educational trips, primarily for local Native American school children to visit the ranch and learn about their heritage. Bryant said that the ranch has had educators teach students about archaeology using petroglyphs found on the ranch and nearby sites. Students have come to the ranch to work with horses, learn about water quality, see how to raise cattle and much more.
Bryant, the only full-time staff member at the ranch who is not a member of the Northern Arapaho Tribe, has been instrumental in bringing outsiders onto the ranch. He said, "The former ranch manager didn't really like talking to outsiders. He didn't see the value in it," said Bryant.
Since he started at his position, Bryant said that he was able to speak to the ranch's board of directors and allow access to retired Bureau of Land Management archaeologist Mike Bies to document the ranch's rich array of petroglyphs left by previous Native American nomadic inhabitants, some possibly also Arapaho.
Bryant said that they hosted a tour to Worland Middle School summer students earlier this month; the first school tour given to public school students on the ranch of which Bryant was aware.
As Bryant continues to grow the ranch's educational outreach, he says that the largest hurdle for them right now is gaining status for the Arapaho Ranch Field Station as a nonprofit, educational entity.
The ranch board applied for this status in January, and Bryant anticipates that by September they could have nonprofit status. He said, "That will open up a lot of funding opportunities for us. Right now, we want to make the old company store a museum, but we need to put a dang roof on it."
"We're just inching along and making do with what we have," said Bryant.
Bryant hopes that additional funding will allow for upgrades to the mansion. Currently it can house 14 guests, and it's a great destination for both educational and artistic retreats, in Bryant's eyes. "We're just not ready to do that yet," he added. He laments the state of disrepair of the mansion's plumbing that renders it unable to continuously house occupants, but he excitedly looks toward the future of the ranch.
