Current Projects | Save A Ranch

	The Ladder Ranch The Salisbury and O’Toole family has been on their home ranch in the Little Snake River Valley for six generations. The Wyoming property is home to the site of the 1841 battle between beaver trappers and Native American warriors. Battle Creek, Battle Mountain, and Battle Lake take their names from this event. Just a couple of miles away lies the site where “Liver Eating” Johnson’s wife and unborn child were slaughtered by Crow Indians, leading to a life-long vendetta by Johnson.
	The Little Snake River Valley has been the stage for much of the West’s historical panorama. It has seen cowboys and sheepherders, madams and hustlers. Butch Cassidy and his gang used to hit Baggs after robbing the Union Pacific railroad to the north. They’d pay a dollar a bullet hole to bar owners to compensate them for their trouble. Today the mainstay of the economy is the ranching community, which raises livestock and crops in the Valley with additional grazing provided in nearby National Forest and Bureau of Land Management pastures. Residents have seen several booms and busts associated with the oil and gas industry. Currently that business is booming, creating development pressures as jobs abound and housing is scarce.
	The Ladder Ranch lies along Battle Creek. A cooperative project among the family, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department has enhanced the fishery while maintaining a viable irrigation system for the hay meadows which flank the stream. The meadows in turn provide abundant wildlife habitat for over 100 species of animals, birds, insects and reptiles. The creek boasts four species of wild trout, including cutthroat trout. The irrigation provides recharge to the groundwater, allowing late season flows in the creek. The Home Ranch is surrounded on three sides by the Medicine Bow National Forest and Bureau of Land Management lands. These grazing permits are leased by the family which has employed rotational grazing systems since the 1950’s.
	The Salisbury and O’Toole family prides itself on the quality of the cattle and sheep that they raise. While Americans struggle over food safety and quality issues, the lambs and calves raised here are marketed to a natural market. They spend their lives on fresh natural feed in the company of their mothers. Theirs is one of the last true “transhumance” operations in the United States, where the animals trail to the high country in the summer months and then go to lower ground in the winter. Their sheep trail approximately 150 miles each way between summer and winter pasture. The family raises the hay and alfalfa which is fed to their animals in the winter. The ranch also provides critical winter range to deer and elk, which make a similar migration as the livestock, along ancient trails. In recent years, drought and energy development have led antelope to leave their native habitat on the high desert and spend their summers on the Ladder Ranch and surrounding lands.
	The Battle Creek corridor provides a flyway stopover for myriad bird species, including many neotropical songbirds. Sand hill cranes spend their summers on the ranch meadows, which also hosts raptor species, from eagles to owls. Healthy insect life provides sustenance for birds and fish alike. The family is active in community and political affairs. Patriarch George Salisbury served his country as a tank commander in World War II, returning home to run the ranch and raise a family. His son-in-law Patrick O’Toole followed George into the Wyoming Legislature. Family members are active on local and state boards. Granddaughter Meghan Lally was the youngest member ever to serve on the Wyoming Board of Agriculture. George’s daughter Sharon O’Toole writes extensively on Western issues. Granddaughter Bridget O’Toole works in Public Relations and helps the family with that part of their business. Grandson Eamon O’Toole attends the University of Wyoming and hopes to join Meghan back at the ranch.
	Ladder Ranch is an archetypal example of a family ranch which depends 100 per cent on agriculture and ranch resources for its living. Family members hope that a purchased easement will give them the stability to allow future generations to continue raising food and fiber, and to protect their beloved landscape and its wild and domestic inhabitants from development for all time. The “Adopt an Acre, Save a Ranch” program provides folks who care about the West an opportunity to protect ranches and landscapes like the Ladder Ranch.
	Save A Ranch is a project of the Resources First Foundation. To contribute on-line click any of the buttons on the site and you will be taken to RFF's secure site so you can make contribution with your credit card. You can send your tax deductable contribution by mail also. Click here to download a contribution form fill in the necessary information, and mail it along with a check.