Wyoming Cattle Baron Otto Franc’s Historic Old West Ranch Lists For $7.95M

One of the places in Wyoming whose history is inextricably tied to famous Wild West outlaw Butch Cassidy has just hit the market for a cool $7.95 million. 

The Old Pitchfork Ranch, which includes the headquarters of one-time banana tycoon and Wyoming cattle baron Otto Franc, has just been listed with Live Water Properties. 

Cassidy worked a circuit with other cowboys in that area of Wyoming when Franc was establishing his ranch on the banks of the Greybull River around 1878-1879. 

It’s not known for certain if Cassidy ever slept at the ranch or worked for Franc, but Cassidy’s name is nonetheless inextricably bound to the cattle baron. 

That’s because Franc filed the only horse thief charge to ever stick against Cassidy. It was his second horse theft charge, filed three days before the first one fell apart. 

Franc filed that charge on behalf of a neighboring rancher, which Cassidy maintained was a frame job to steal Cassidy’s livestock and drive him off the range. 

The incident happened at the time of the Johnson County cattle wars and the lesser-known horse thief war. 

That was a time when some of the state’s most powerful ranchers hired people to shoot and kill people they’d accused of being cattle and horse rustlers. 

Regardless of whether the charge was false, it ultimately led to Cassidy’s one and only prison term in 1894. 

Cassidy at the time vowed to take revenge and show Wyoming what a real outlaw looked like. And he would forever after blame Franc for his life of crime, claiming he would have gone straight but for that. 

Cassidy lore and the history of Wyoming ranching, are thus both bound up in this historic, one-of-a-kind property near Meeteetse. 

“The Old Pitchfork Ranch isn’t just land — it’s the original headquarters of Otto Franc,” Jenkins said. “(He) helped shape the identity of Wyoming ranching. When you step onto this property, you’re walking into the very place where the Pitchfork story began more than a century ago.”

The ranch is the second oldest in that area, according to the real estate listing, and still has many of the original structures that Franc built, including his restored adobe residence with its 18-inch-thick walls. The adobe home was tough, built to withstand all comers, be they Indians or outlaws. 

The property also includes the restored bunkhouse that housed Franc’s cowboys as well as a cabin that was moved from the adjacent Pitchfork Ranch, which was a favorite of famed aviator Amelia Earhart when it was a dude ranch.

The Pitchfork Ranch, at 96,115 acres, is available as well in a separate listing for $52.8 million. 

An Adobe Home Where Cattle Roam 

When Greg Luce bought Otto Franc’s headquarters in 1992, cattle were unabashedly walking through what had once been the cattle baron’s home.

The structure had been built to withstand all manner of Indian attacks, but even it was not impervious to wind and rain and cattle, which wandered in and out as they pleased. 

“There were no doors on it,” Luce told Cowboy State Daily. “There were no windows in it. There were still floorboards, some of which had been broken through over time,”

It was still a remarkable piece of history, though, and Luce couldn’t shake the idea of saving it.

“It was amazingly sound, that’s what our engineers found,” Luce said. “So, I immediately started looking at restoring the original historic Pitchfork Ranch in phases.”

The first phase of the restoration was the log cabin bunkhouse, where Franc’s cowboys would have stayed. That was a simpler, more doable project, one that didn’t require quite as many specialists as the adobe.

“We had the logs pulled, numbered, and cleaned off,” Luce said. “New chinking was applied after that and then they were rebuilt into the original form of the cabin.”

Luce and his wife used the bunkhouse as their residence while they worked on restoring the rest of Franc’s headquarters.

“(The adobe) was not habitable at all,” Luce said. “There was no water, no electricity, no plumbing, sewer, or anything.”

Luce hired an architect to help guide the process, to ensure it was restored as close to the original as possible, while still modernizing the structure, to make it amenable to modern occupants. 

That effort included both restoring the original wing of the adobe, as well as adding a new wing perpendicular to the old of roughly the same size. 

“It’s not adobe,” Luce said. “But there are references to the adobe and to the stone lintels that were used at the windows. The roof line pitch is the same, and the height is the same. 

"So it reflects the original while providing more modern structure and amenities … making it really a great, wonderful, warm place for us to live in the midst of all that history.”

The finished home is stunning, with warm wood floors that complement the historic structure, including river-recovered longleaf heart pine flooring, river-recovered cypress ceilings and beams and custom cabinetry by Norseman Designs West.

Time For A New Steward

Luce has mixed feelings about seeing the Old Pitchfork Ranch.

“It was a labor of love and money, not all of which we could afford to do at once,” he said. “So we were fortunate to be able to do it in stages, and then, in the final push, to really respect what Franc had built.”

There have been moments when Luce’s been ready to call the whole sale off.

“I told Latham after I looked through the listing and then I did that little video, I said, ‘Latham, let’s call the whole thing off. I don’t know how we’re gonna leave here.’”

But there’s a time and place for everything, Luce added, and he and his family have reached that time and that place, where he knows objectively it’s time to pass on this piece of Wyoming history to a new steward.

“My kids love the ranch,” he said. “But my kids are not going to want to love the ranch and be ranchers. And their ability to even come out with little kids and careers — it’s difficult for them to make that time to enjoy the ranch as much as they have in the past.”

Luce believes it would be great, though, if a buyer happened to buy both the Old Pitchfork Ranch and the adjacent Pitchfork Ranch, to put them back together again.

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