Sunday, February 21, 2010

Mason-Lovell Ranch

East of the Bighorn River. February, 2010.

From the NPS Bighorn Canyon web site: "In 1883 . . . Henry Clay Lovell chose Willow Creek, in the Five Springs area, for the Mason/Lovell Ranch Headquarters. He built a bunkhouse, barn and corral and moved the home ranch from Nowood Creek to this site in 1884.

Henry Clay Lovell and Anthony L. Mason, owners of the ML Ranch had one of the largest and most prominent ranches in the eastern Bighorn Basin and the Wyoming Territory. They grazed cattle from Thermopolis to the Crow Reservation in Montana. It was estimated that they had as many as 25,000 cattle before the harsh winter of 1886-87. The ML Ranch lost roughly half of their cattle to exposure and starvation that winter."

1 comment:

walt said...

Would love to own thatproperty as a hunting Preserve!