Inside Centennial Valley’s Deerwood Ranch, First-Of-Its-Kind Wild Horse Sanctuary

“You’re going to ruin that ranch,” Rich and Jana Wilson heard more than once. 

The Wilsons were trading cattle for wild horses at their 4,700-acre Deerwood Ranch in Wyoming’s Centennial Valley, a change some neighbors initially viewed with suspicion.

In 2012, the Bureau of Land Management selected the family-owned ranch as its first wild horse ecosanctuary on private land. 

Fourteen years later, the ranch has become a destination. About 350 BLM mustangs graze its pastures beneath the Snowy Range, drawing visitors for guided tours and overnight stays. 

Many of those tourists then continue to nearby Centennial for pizza or steaks and ice cream or cocktails. 

Deerwood is now one of four BLM public off-range pastures, contracted operations where visitors can see wild horses hanging out and living large in the grassland setting, while also learning about the federal Wild Horse and Burro Program.

The ranch also hosts adoption and sale events. 

“I think the biggest problem is that people are just uneducated,” Rich Wilson said. “And that’s our job, to help them understand it. These horses are protected, and somebody has to take care of them. There’s 90,000 of them that people are taking care of.”

The BLM only has room for about 35,000 wild horses on federal land, he added. 

“So they had to come up with something,” he said. “There’s no slaughter in the U.S.”

Horse That Tamed The Herd

Among the friendliest horses is Saddlebroke, one of the unadoptable horses that live out their days at Deerwood Ranch. 

“This is the horse that tamed the herd,” Wilson said as the horse ambled up to check on his human friend and get his nose rubbed. 

All of the other horses hung back, watching the scene play out, twitching their tails. But Saddlebroke had, at some point in his life, learned that humans sometimes bring treats, so he’s not as shy. 

Wilson leaned on that in the beginning to help his new herd of wild horses get used to him enough that he could feed them hay in the winter. 

Loyal To A Fault

The BLM doesn’t want the horses to become too tame, however, so Wilson doesn’t feed treats to the others. Just Saddlebroke, because he already knew of them. 

These wild mustangs are loyal, Wilson added. 

He recalls how one of the horses arrived at the ranch with a pal, whose side he never left. Wilson thought the two new horses would eventually socialize and start mingling with the herd, but two years went by with no sign of the ice breaking at all. 

Then one of the two horses died.

“He was in the herd that same day,” Wilson said. “He took care of his buddy until the day his buddy died.”

Easy Street For Horses

For the horses that wind up at Deerwood, life is mostly uncomplicated. They graze, drink from the creek, and do not have to keep a work calendar at all.

“They got the memo that all they have to do is eat and poop,” Wilson said with a chuckle. “They don’t have to socialize or anything else.”

The freeze brand on the rear of these horses means they are unadoptable, Wilson said. 

Primarily that happens when a horse is too old, he explained. But it also happens if the horse has been through three adoption rounds without being chosen. 

Deerwood holds about 350 of these unadoptable horses, which spread out across the 4,700 acres at will.

Teachers, Not Ranchers

Neither Jana nor Rich set out to be ranchers. The two were studying to be teachers when they met in Sheridan and married 42 years ago. 

“My dad asked if we would like to come out and try ranching,” Jana said. “So we thought, ‘Yeah, we can try that for a little while.’”

That was 41 years ago.

Initially the two were cattle ranchers, but as their children grew up and left the ranch, they started thinking about changing the operation. It was too much for them to handle themselves.

“Most of our help, the last one was graduating,” Wilson said. “Our help was leaving. The ecosanctuary was something we thought we could handle, the two of us. We wouldn’t have to hire help or anything.”

Initially, locals weren't too supportive of the shift in plans. 

Wild horses, in general, have become controversial, Jana acknowledged.

“We just kind of tread lightly and do our own thing,” she said. “And our neighbors now accept it. I think at first our neighbors just had visions of these horses running rampant throughout the valley like elk or something.”

But the horses are, for the most part, respectful of fences. As long as the hay and the grass are good, they typically see little need to go elsewhere. 

When The Horses Escaped

There was one year, though, when some of the horses did go on a little walkabout.

Wilson received a phone call from a woman in Centennial who told him she thought she had some of his horses.

At first, Wilson didn’t believe her.

“I said no, because every day we feed, we count them,” he said. “And in the wintertime, we can do an inventory.”

But then she told him there were numbers on the rear of the horses, and Wilson realized she had to be right. His horses had flown the coop. 

“I think it was 2014,” Wilson said. “We had so much snow that year that every fence from here to Centennial drifted over. So one afternoon, one of them got the wild hair to go see Centennial.”

That resulted in roughly 70 horses peeling off from the herd.

First thing the next morning, Wilson went to town with a friend who had a track vehicle to round up his wayward horses. 

“You didn’t have to be Daniel Boone to track them, because you could see right where they went,” he said. “They had just walked over every drifted fence.”

Wilson left the fences as they were, based on advice from an “old-timer” who said the horses would just go back home the way they came, as long as the way was still open. 

When Wilson and his friend arrived where the horses had gathered, they looked straight at him with an almost deer-in-the-headlights look. 

“They were like, ‘Oh, crap, we’re in trouble!’” Wilson said with a chuckle. “They ran all the way back to the ranch. We did have three of them who were like mothered up to a mare that was there, but we pried them away and they all ran home. They’ve never been back to Centennial since.”

Even Grumpiest Have To Smile

Wilson’s busy season used to be calving, but now it’s the summertime, from May through September, when the ranch offers tours. 

During all the time the Wilsons ranched with cattle, no one ever came in and said, “My, what beautiful cows you have,” Wilson said. 

“But everybody who comes here, they just fall in love with the horses.” 

He’s lost track of the number of times a grumpy husband let Wilson know he’s only there for the wife but nonetheless leaves the ranch with a smile. 

“By the time they leave, they’re part of it, too,” Wilson said. “The horses are just so social.”

Some visitors come from as far as Europe to the ranch to see the horses, Wilson said, which he would have never guessed when they first started the eco-sanctuary.

Some of those tourists came to see wild horses in the Red Desert but came up empty.

“This is the place where they’re guaranteed to see wild horses and to learn about them,” Jana said. 

Horses Speak For Themselves

The fact tourists can rent cabins and spend the night is a bonus.

The Wilsons both said they really enjoy the reaction of people to the wild horses. 

“We’ve had people say, ‘We’ve been all over the world and this tops what we’ve done,’” Rich Wilson said. “These kinds of things are rewarding because the horses just speak for themselves.”

Others describe something harder to name.

“There’s just something magical about this place,” Jana said. “You drive in the gate and you can just feel it.”

Jana calls her time with the herd “horse therapy,” and her photography hobby gives her an excuse to spend lots of time with them.

The Wilsons expected to raise cattle like a lot of other ranchers, but have ended up building a strong tourist attraction in the Centennial Valley that offers the beauty of wild horses surrounded by earth and sky.

The price of the tour is $75 per adult. But the view is full of the free blue sky and peace — and that’s priceless.

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