This week I want to give a huge shout-out to the Silver Spur Ranch, headquartered near Encampment. It’s a big corporate-owned place with ranches in Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, and New Mexico and is the fourth largest commercial cattle operation in the United States.
The multi-state operation is managed by Thad York, who grew up on the home ranch near Encampment.
Thad’s grandfather Ole Jim York spent decades managing the ranch that first took the name Silver Spur, for its spur styled brand, back when it was owned by William D. Sidley. Through the decades many other ranches in the Encampment area and across the West have been added and are part of the overall Silver Spur Ranches.
This year the Spur planted some potatoes on the Bar M Ranch just outside of Encampment. The story around town was that it was a test to see if potatoes would grow in our area.
Had they asked me, I would have told them that people were growing potatoes in the Encampment area by the early 1900s. One of the ranches now a part of the Silver Spur is the VX Ranch, which was homesteaded by Peter Verplancke, and is the ranch where I grew up. After his marriage, Peter plowed land for a garden for his wife Emma, who raised, among many other things, potatoes.
They kept enough spuds to feed their family and likely sold some to neighbors, but most of their crop was hauled to North Park, Colorado, to sell to Walden residents. After Peter’s death in 1909, Emma continued raising potatoes with her next husband, my grandfather Charles Vyvey, who had worked for Peter hauling the potatoes to Walden.
Another Encampment man also made a productive business from growing produce, including potatoes.
The Grand Encampment Herald reported on April 2, 1902, that J. J. Wombaker was making “Good Profits from a Little Patch of Irrigated Ground.”
The Herald reported:
“J. J. Wombaker came into this country with his family four years ago last September and settled on placer ground at the junction of the north and south forks of the Encampment River. There were but three log cabins on the Grand Encampment townsite at that time, and two of these were occupied by men only, there being but one family here.
“The trip into the country was made with a two-horse overland prairie schooner. Mr. Wombaker took up a good piece of land and with irrigation has made it bloom and blossom with abundance, realizing each year a snug sum of money for his labor.
“He is known far and wide as the ‘vegetable man,’ and during the season makes trips to Saratoga, Walcott, Rawlins, Battle and Rudefeha, besides supplying the people of Encampment with vegetables as choice and palatable as those raised under circumstances apparently much more favorable.
“During last season Mr. Wombaker raised from six acres of ground 35,000 pounds of vegetables, which brought him the handsome price of $1,700. Mr. Wombaker’s experience with land under irrigation should appeal as an object lesson to the many thousands of farmers in the East who are laboring away year after year on a big farm and realizing only enough to make ‘both ends meet.’
“The West is full of opportunities such as Mr. Wombaker has undertaken, not only in the line of vegetable cultivation but in every line of agriculture and its ally, stock raising.
“The stories of the mineral wealth of the hills in this vicinity furnished the inspiration which brought Mr. Wombaker here, and while he has devoted the greater portion of his time to gardening, he has not failed to secure some choice mining claims on which he is doing the assessment work each year. His experience is the same as that of all the pioneers of the camp; the longer he is here the better the camp looks to him and with each succeeding year his confidence in the district increases.”
More recently, in the 1980s, Robert Helmer raised potatoes on his ranch a few miles southeast of Encampment. This time of year, he invited those of us living in the area to come down to his place and pick our own potatoes from his fields. When Helmer quit his operation, the potato growing ceased in the area for around 30 years.
Then this spring the Silver Spur planted potatoes on Bar M land and just recently they harvested them. Once harvested, the Spur donated around 2,000 pounds of potatoes to the Encampment FFA and another couple thousand pounds to the Little Snake River Valley FFA in Baggs. The kids helped with the harvest, and then they set up operations to sell the potatoes.
In both cases the FFA chapters are raising money so some of the members can attend the National FFA Convention later this month in Indianapolis and to take part in other FFA activities.
Steve and I took our gunny sacks to town last Friday and got some potatoes for winter. We were more than happy to pay for a product raised right in our valley, harvested by local teenagers, and knowing that some of them will get to experience the national FFA Convention.
We noticed that the FFA members had sorted some of the potatoes by size, and in helping with the harvest, they certainly would have learned something about farming – which is not as prevalent in our area of the state, in part because the elevation in Encampment is 7,343 feet above sea level.
This is not the first time the Silver Spur has supported local schools – and I’m certain it won’t be the last. This donation was a true benefit to two communities – Encampment and Baggs – who don’t have much in the way of local grocery stores. And now our “root cellars” are full of potatoes.
Candy Moulton can be reached at: Candy.L.Moulton@gmail.com
