Wyoming Hereford Ranch

The Wyoming Hereford Ranch records primarily cover the period from 1921 to the late 1960s, during which the Lazear Family managed the day to day operations of the ranch. There is very limited information on the early years of the ranch. Although the focus of the records is the business concerns of the ranch, some personal information about ranch employee, including personnel and training files. Also included is personal correspondence, some of which details the Lazears' mission work, and personal as well as business photographs. The collection also contains maps and blueprints of the Wyoming Hereford Ranch area, and some artifacts that detail both the personal and the business life of the ranch; cattle records including breeding, certificates of pedigree, feeding, veterinary reports, sales and shipping; financial and legal records; yearbooks and other material documenting the operations of the ranch.

In 1883 Alexander H. Swan founded the Wyoming Hereford Association, the predecessor of the Wyoming Hereford Ranch, to establish a pure bred Hereford herd in Wyoming. The ranch was situated in Laramie County, Wyoming, on Crow Creek. Swan went bankrupt in 1887, a disastrous year for ranchers due to bad weather conditions, and the herd was taken over by Henry Altman and Dan McIllvain of Cheyenne, who bought the then 30,000 acre Crow Creek ranch and the herd in 1890. They owned and operated it for twenty-seven years under the name Wyoming Hereford Association.

In 1916 the ranch was sold to the Hereford Association of Wyoming, with James D. Husted as the head of the organization and his nephew Raymond Husted as ranch manager. The philanthropist Henry P. Crowell had a financial interest in the ranch. The Husteds had difficulty meeting running costs and sold the ranch to H.P. Crowell in 1921. In August of that year he renamed it the Wyoming Hereford Ranch.

Crowell brought in Robert Wells Lazear, who was responsible for developing the high quality herd over thirty-seven years as manager. Not originally destined for ranch work, Lazear was trained as an engineer at the University of Michigan. His brother, Edward Tuthill Lazear, came to the ranch at the same time, but became a lawyer, and his firm in Cheyenne represented the ranch.

In 1928 the Wyoming Hereford Ranch bought most of the famous Fulscher and Kepler herd in Holyoke, Colorado, a part of which was the famed bull Prince Domino. Prince Domino spent the last two years of his life improving the herd at the Wyoming Hereford Ranch and is buried in front of the office.

In 1951 two British bulls were introduced who would further define the elite nature of the herd. Free Town Contrite, from P.E. and T.F. Bradstock in Tarrington, Hereford, and Vern Diamond, from Captain R.S. de Quincey of Marden, Hereford, were jointly owned by the Wyoming Hereford Ranch and Suncrest Hereford Ranch in Phoenix, Arizona.

The Wyoming Hereford Ranch Foundation was set up in 1938 to ensure the ranch’s continuation after H.P. Crowell’s death, which occurred in 1944. The ranch was sold to Thomas E. Leavey and Dorothy E. Leavey in 1957 after the death of Robert W. Lazear. George W. Lazear, son of Robert Lazear, continued as ranch manger.

The ranch was put up for sale again in 1967 and was purchased by Nielson Enterprises Inc. of Cody, Wyoming. A prairie fire in March, 1968, killed thirty-nine cows and four calves. Another twenty-two calves died soon after in a twenty-four hour blizzard.

When the ranch went up for sale in 1976, Sloan and Anna Marie Hales bought the biggest portion of the herd. They leased the ranch on which they maintained the cattle until it was sold in 1978 in fourteen parcels. The Hales bought 11,300 acres in this sale with the hope of continuing the registered pure bred Hereford herd.