Carbon County's JO Ranch A Throwback To An Untamed Wyoming

Only the hardiest of souls ever lived at the now-abandoned JO Ranch in Carbon County, located along an alternate leg of what was once the Rawlins to Baggs Wagon Road.

Homesteaded in 1885 by the Joe and James Rankin brothers, the ranch was part of the meteoric rise in sheep herding that followed the blizzard of 1886/87 that wiped out many cattlemen and changed the open range forevermore. 

Today, the JO is still much as it was 140 years ago. Isolated, wild and beautiful, surrounded by sand and sage and wind, its rugged stone buildings still stand. 

Oral history recorded in the National Register listing for the ranch has it that these buildings were made by a skilled stonemason in 1890. 

That makes the buildings as old as Wyoming itself.

The Rankin Brothers

Little is known about the early operation of the ranch. 

The Rankin brothers of Pennsylvania were Civil War veterans, serving on the Union side. Like so many young men of the time, they were lured West by the siren song of gold in the Black Hills.

All they found there were angry Sioux, who chased them away. They had no better luck in either Colorado’s flash-in-the-pan gold rush in Boulder and Clear Creek counties, or at Hahn’s Peak in Colorado.

Ultimately, they gave up on making a strike and instead opened a feed and livery store in Rawlins in 1872 where, like many others in southwestern Wyoming at the time, they began to think that true wealth might better be found in sheep.

History doesn’t record how many sheep the Rankin brothers had at the JO Ranch, which took its name from its brand.

But historical records for 1880 show 40,000 head of sheep shipped from the Wyoming territory by rails. 

By 1900, that had grown to 3.3 million sheep in Wyoming overall, and the climb wasn’t over yet. By 1910, the number of sheep would more than double to 7 million head. 

The Rankins were part of that sweeping rise of sheep, which began primarily in southwestern Wyoming. It’s a legacy that persists today. 

Wyoming as a whole also is still the fourth largest sheep-producing state in America.

Who Was Joe Rankin?

Joe Rankin earned himself a little slice of Wyoming history, first by acting as a guide for Maj. Thomas T. Thornburgh in 1879 and then later took a reluctant part in the Johnson County War.

Thornburgh had been sent to protect the White River Indian Agency at the behest of agent Nathan Meeker in 1879 — in vain, as it happens. Unbeknownst to Thornburgh, Meeker and eight other employees had already been killed by a band of Utes.

En route, the Utes ambushed Thornburgh and his men, killing Thornburgh early on in the action. 

Rankin rode 140 miles to Rawlins in less than 26 hours, changing horses at ranches along the way, to try and bring help to Thornburgh and his men. He arrived in Rawlins sometime between midnight and 1:15 a.m. on Oct. 1, sending a wire to the adjutant general at Omaha Barracks in Nebraska. 

That dispatched Col. Wesley Merritt and his command from Fort D.A. Russell in Cheyenne, who would successfully rescue a number of Thornburgh’s men.

Rankin Becomes A U.S. Marshal

Joe Rankin would complete his patent for the JO Ranch in 1890, the same year he was appointed U.S. marshal for Wyoming by President Benjamin Harrison. 

That put him front and center for the Johnson County War of 1892, when prominent members of the Wyoming Stock Growers sent armed forces to eliminate accused cattle rustlers. 

Rankin initially followed his orders, but later would delay serving warrants against the homesteaders, who believed the cattlemen were making unfair accusations to prevent them from breaking up the open range by homesteading 160-acre sections of it. 

Sen. F.E. Warren called for Rankin’s resignation as a result, but the Justice Department ultimately exonerated him, saying he had ultimately acted to protect the integrity of his office.

The Rankin brothers sold their ranch in 1899 to the Carbon County Sheep and Cattle Co. and Joe moved to Ogden, Utah. He was injured in a wagon accident while transporting mail, after which he moved to San Diego, where he died in 1919 at the age of 74.

What Life Was Like On The JO

Sharon O’Toole’s family was among the last families to run a sheep enterprise at the historic JO Ranch. 

Her father sold it to the Eureka Pool in 1964, which ran cattle until the 1970s. After that, it returned to sheep raising under Tom Grieve until it was finally sold off to the Pittsburgh and Midway Coal Mining Co. in the early 1990s.

More recently, the Bureau of Land Management swapped some coal leases for the land and has taken over management of the property, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and accessible to the public.

O’Toole paints a vivid picture of what it was like on this still isolated, still ruggedly handsome ranch, surrounded by hay meadows and sagebrush-covered ridges where deer and antelope play and mountain lions still roam.

“I was a child of about 7,” O’Toole told Cowboy State Daily. “And what I remember is that my mom would cook these amazing meals on a big old wood-burning cook stove.”

The stove is still at the ranch in one of the stone buildings, though it can no longer be seen since the buildings have been boarded up.

“Water came in for spraying directly into a hot water reservoir on the stove,” she recalled. “They had it piped in somehow, so we had plenty of hot water.”

O’Toole looked forward to sheep-shearing time every year, knowing she would get out of school for a time. She had chores and homework to do, but those didn’t take long. 

The rest of the time, she would read books from the Wizard of Oz series and brought dolls to play with.

“I remember sitting out in the dirt playing with Barbie dolls,” she said. “And Momma would tell me to watch out for rattlesnakes.”

O’Toole doesn’t remember any rattlesnakes, or mountain lions for that matter, though she knows they were both there.

Zane Olsen, who visited the ranch on a recent history trek with O’Toole, recalled that mountain lions were particularly fond of hanging out in the barns.

In fact, one bright and early morning, Olsen walked into the warming shed only to have a mountain lion come barreling out at him, leaping over his head. He was a little more careful from then on about entering the barn first. 

Sometimes, O’Toole was asked to help pack wool down in the territory bags, as they were called, which held the wool taken to market. She would stomp on the lanolin-coated wool until she could stomp no more.

After that, her mom would always take out a huge washbasin and fill it with hot water from the burning wood stove. That would get rid of all the Barbie doll dirt, as well as sticky lanolin and any ticks from stomping wool.

The Unforgiving Land

The JO Ranch as O’Toole remembers was vibrant and full of life and laughter. 

She and her family would spend weeks getting ready for sheep-shearing time, and those days remain among her fondest memories.

Her mother would cook whatever she could ahead of time for the occasion, recipes that O’Toole herself often uses when she’s feeding a crowd.

“She was really famous for her brownies,” O’Toole said. “She made them for every potluck, every funeral dinner. And she freely shared the recipe.”

O’Toole had never thought to ask where the recipe came from, but one day learned the secret. 

She was sorting through an old recipe box and there it was, on a card cut from the back of a box of unsweetened chocolate. The chocolate was sold under the Betty Crocker brand.

“She also had what she called poor man’s cookies,” O’Toole recalled. “They were a thin oatmeal cake that she would frost, and that was good.” 

Dinners were stick-to-your-ribs, hearty affairs. Big stews, pots of chili, rich casseroles. 

O’Toole remembers a plate of fluffy, soft dinner rolls her mother had made working its way down a line of hungry men seated at a long table, followed with a piping hot shepherd’s pie.

The men could shear as many as 1,500 sheep in one day, according to historical records about the ranch on file with the National Register of Historic Places. In that same document, O’Toole’s father, George Salisbury, estimated at least 10,000 sheep would be sheered at the ranch in any given year at peak.

The names of many of the men who sheered the thousands of sheep are still carved above the wooden stalls where the shearing took place, along with the dates of their service. 

Seeing those names was a poignant moment for O’Toole, given that she was just a child the last time she was at the JO Ranch.

Wildlife have reclaimed much of the territory. Mountain lions, deer and antelope.

But the stone buildings are standing a test of time, like an incredible cowboy spirit wrapped in sand and sage and wind. They have refused to surrender despite 140 years of time and elements in what has always been, and still remains, an unforgiving land.

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.