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Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Energy

Jeffrey City is best known for uranium and near abandonment after the yellowcake market crashed in the 1980s. 

But things are looking up for the near-ghost town in the central desert region of Fremont County. 

And that’s not because of Wyoming’s renewed uranium rush or Visionary Metals’ new nickel project nearby. 

Jeffrey City, which has about 60 residents after boasting around 4,000 during its uranium heyday, could be poised for a brand-new industry thanks to a Canadian geologist named Jean-Pierre Jutras, who said he’s on the verge of finding significant new sources of both ornamental and gem-quality jade.

“Wyoming jade is legendary in the circles of jade carvers,” Jutras told Cowboy State Daily. “Production has been curtailed for a long time, and everything’s been looked at quite a bit and picked over, but when I looked at Wyoming as a geologist, what struck me was that there was barely any information at all on the geology.”

Jutras’ company, Jade Leader, is taking a similar tack to that of 

, which is using new geological knowledge and new technology to uncover deeper veins of gold in the South Pass area and other Wyoming locations.

“We just decided to take a hard look and see if the sources of a lot of the surface material that was collected from the '30s all the way to the '70s could be identified and if we could understand if there was any significant potential for renewed production.”

At one time, Wyoming had so much jade laying around on the surface people could walk around and pluck it straight from the sagebrush.

That supported roughly 868 tons of jade production from the 1930s to the 1970s. There was even a company devoted to jewelry production that was sending 18 tons of materials into the world annually, to Taiwan, New Zealand, Europe, and Far Eastern countries.

But as the easy jade became rarer and rarer, the state could no longer support the scale anymore. 

Wyoming’s decline happened about the same time as the Canadian jade industry was starting to rise.

How A Canadian Became A ‘Jade-aholic’

Growing up in Canada, Jutras was interested in rocks and geology from a young age. A career as a geologist only seemed logical. 

In the 1980s, he was gifted some jade from a mine he was allowed to visit, which honed his interest in this semiprecious stone formed by intense environmental conditions found deep underground. 

“I took that home and I’ve been cutting and carving jade and other gemstones ever since then, alongside my geological career,” he said. “So I kind of became a jade-aholic very quickly, very early.”

It wasn’t until he was invited to a jade-carving competition in China, though, that he realized just how interesting — and valuable — jade is.

“To me, jade was like the little souvenirs and tourist shop pieces,” he said. “Once in a while there’s a historical piece that’s really nice. So I went to this festival not knowing what to expect.”

When he arrived at the Zi Gang Bei Festival in Suzhou, he witnessed a spectacle unlike any he’d never seen.

There were 550 competing jade carvers who had brought more than 1,100 pieces for judging. 

During the three-day event, more than 90,000 visitors streamed in to admire the pieces entered in the competition, as well as to buy jade. 

“I was so impressed, first, because of the quality of the carvings that were there, valued in the millions of dollars per piece,” Jutras said. “And we saw jades of all qualities. We saw carvings from Guatemala, New Zealand, Germany, Canada, the U.S., and, of course, China. And I looked at all of this and went, ‘I’m missing something here. How did I not know about this?’”

Jutras had planned to stay for just a week, but decided instead to stay longer and keep exploring this vast new world of jade, visiting all the carving towns and all of the major markets.

“In one of the towns I visited, called Shifosi, they said they had 125,000 carvers, just in that one town alone,” he said. “It was incredible, and essentially all of the businesses in China that sell jade go there because that’s the big manufacturing center. And I mean, it was display after display, buildings the size of airplane hangars, with 2,000, 3,000 vendors in them.”

It was during this time that he learned the jade the Chinese most prized came from Wyoming. It was also the jade that had disproportionately earned gold medals during the festival.

“It’s received extremely well at the highest level, in a culture highly sophisticated in the jade arts,” Jutras said.

The Chinese have been obsessed with jade for generations.

Emperors made entire suits of jade to wear on their journey to the afterlife.

“We’re talking about 7,000 little tiles of jade all connected together with gold wires that they would clothe the dead with,” Jutras said. “So they could go into the afterlife protected with jade.”

These jade tiles were often said to be too precious to steal, he added. That’s because only nobles were allowed to own it.

“They opened up a tomb and it had a sarcophagus of jade,” Jutras said. “And the thieves had gone in and stolen everything else, including the gold wire that was connecting the jade plates. But they left the jade because you just couldn’t fence jade if you weren’t a noble.”

While most jades worldwide consist of recrystallization of a previous rock, Wyoming’s jade appears to have crystalized at greater depths within the earth, resulting in a much purer, more predictable material that takes one of the best polishes found in nephrite jade worldwide. 

That is why it’s so highly prized by the Chinese.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Finding New Jade Sources"}]

Jutras returned from his Chinese trip after a month with a mission in mind.

Conventional wisdom had it that Wyoming jade had petered out in the 1970s, but geological knowledge had evolved since that determination was made, as had the technology for finding precious gems, minerals and metals. 

“What you have to unravel is why jade was in a particular location in the first place,” he said. “Where did it come from? So you could go to a place where people have picked all the surface stuff and see if there’s a source somewhere beneath it.”

Instead of chasing more famous, rock-hounding spots like Bull Canyon, Jutras instead sought bedrock targets, which he believes could be the original sources of all that loose jade once picked up by the bucketful. These are targets he believes can support a small, but steady, jade industry over the long haul.

The work, which began in 2018, has cost Jade Leader roughly $337,000, and has included six phases of field work north of Jeffrey City, including trenching, mapping, and scientific studies. 

Results of that work have been published in the Journal of Gemology, which is the British Gemological Society’s association publication. The peer-reviewed article outlines two distinct types of jade found by Jade Leader. 

There’s the smoother, more homogenous material that’s suitable for jewelry, which he refers to as gem jade. Then there’s a rougher, more mottled stone called ornamental jade.

Once, ornamental jade was only suitable for carving little souvenirs to sell in tourist shops, but Jutras said the time is right for a new use. 

“LED technology is improving all the time,” he said. “Cutting technologies are improving all the time.”

That now allows this type of jade to be cut into thin, translucent slices that can be backlit to stunning result.

“We see a space here where the ornamental jades can be an addition to the luxury stone market,” Jutras said.

To test the theory, Jade Leader has taken a small quantity of its ornamental jade to create a few test installations and see if this idea can find footing in the luxury architecture space. 

They’ve also sold a $50,000 batch of Wyoming’s rough jade into experimental projects where designers are testing how the stone looks in thin backlit panels.

Jutras’ vision for Jeffrey City will depend on finding demand for niche, high-end architectural and carving jade. 

For now, the project is in the early days. It’s backed by promising field work and it’s economically feasible, Jutras said, because his targets are small and have a small environmental footprint, one that does not require use of anything hazardous.

“We’re talking about 1 to 2 acres essentially, to harvest the material,” he said. “And then all we do is just jackhammer the rock and extract whatever jade is contained within it, and then put the debris back into the excavation for reclamation. There’s no need to build up any kind of large infrastructure at all.”

There’s also no need for large amounts of water to process the stone, nor any crushing, tailings or mechanical separation required. 

“It’s all done by hand,” he said. “And there’s no need for processing the material outside of just polishing a side of the pieces, so it shows us the inside texture, color and translucency of the stone.”

For now, Jeffrey City is still an open question. But if the market for architectural jade proves out, the windswept outpost might find itself a new niche in the jade world. 

Its second act might not be written in uranium at all, but translucent green instead. 

Jeffrey city jade inset 7 5 26

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>Jeffrey City’s Second Act: From Near Uranium Ghost Town To Jade Comeback | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Known for uranium and then near-abandonment, Jeffrey City is getting a second look from a Canadian geologist who says new science — and evolving markets — could turn Wyoming’s deposits of jade into a new industry for the tiny almost-ghost town.

Jeffrey City’s Second Act: From Near Uranium Ghost Town To Jade Comeback

Kerry Drake

Toa, a puppy on the Wind River Indian Reservation, didn’t have a name yet when he was recently rescued by a family in Ethete, which found him with a fishing line tied to his right front leg.

Some children were reportedly seen swinging him around by the line, severely injuring the leg. But thanks to the family that found Toa, his leg was not only eventually amputated he also helped find the 14 brothers, sisters and cousins from whom he had strayed.

It was a dramatic rescue, but one of many made possible by Yola’s Pet Rescue in Cheyenne, which focuses on getting stray and feral dogs wandering the reservation spayed and neutered, then finding people who will adopt them.

JM Marschner, who opened the clinic in 2017, told Cowboy State Daily she and her volunteers have worked with other rescue groups to find more than 3,000 dogs and cats on the reservation.

Marschner said she started working there because there are so many stray and feral dogs, and the reservation doesn’t have a veterinarian or animal shelter. The closest vets are in Lander and Riverton.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Two Large Litters"}]

When Toa was found, a call went to Yola’s Pet Rescue late on a Saturday night. Marschner dispatched one of her volunteers to the scene to meet the woman who rescued Toa, and together they discovered 18 other puppies from two litters. 

Four later died, and Marschner said while “it was touch and go” for the three smallest pups, 14 survived and were sent to the Laramie Animal Welfare Society.

Toa didn’t make that trip because a veterinarian had to perform an emergency amputation. After some recovery time, he joined the rest of his puppy pals in Laramie. 

That’s where he got his name, plus much love and attention from the staff and volunteers.

Corina Slyman of LAWS said dogs brought to the clinic can’t be adopted until they’ve been spayed or neutered, had their vaccinations, and been microchipped. LAWS works to arrange for foster homes, but doesn’t have enough space to keep rescued dogs.

“We mainly take care of puppies who come in, and many need to be bottle-fed and have special care,” Slyman said. “We work with other animal clinics in the region to get them adopted once they can be.”

Slyman said Toa looks is a strong candidate for adoption. 

“The tough little guy is doing really well,” she said. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Problem On The Reservation"}]

The Wind River Indian Reservation, like many others in North America, has had a large dog population for generations. Many of these “rez dogs” run loose, with no owners.

Without a clinic like Yola’s, the numbers won’t decrease. Even with the clinic and animal lovers like Marschner and a half-dozen volunteers, it’s a constant and expensive challenge.

“A lot of the houses on the reservation don’t have fences, so the dogs aren’t contained,” Marschner said. “So that’s part of the problem. If we find a dog we think may be lost, we post them on Pet Finder.”

Another huge factor is unwanted animals being abandoned, though Marschner is quick to note that people in Riverton and Lander turn their dogs loose on the reservation, too. 

“It’s not just a tribal problem,” she said.

Kisandra Roberts of Kinnear has been a Yola’s volunteer for about four years, after leaving a Lander animal hospital where she’d worked for 14 years. 

Roberts said often people don’t own the animals in their neighborhood, but they feel badly and want to help if dogs have puppies under their porch or in their sheds.

 "Before they know it, people can have 10 or 20 dogs,” she said. “And each female can have about 20 puppies a year. Kids will bring home a puppy and say they want to keep it when it’s young and cute. But when they’re no longer in the puppy stage, they’ll just kind of leave it to fend for itself.”

Roberts, who owns a rescued rez dog, said abandoned dogs “pack up” because they instinctively want to be with other like-minded dogs. She said a lot of feral dogs “absolutely won’t let us come anywhere near them.” 

Marschner said it’s a never-ending battle. 

“Mothers tend to have big litters, then they continue to have puppies,” she said. “It’s hard to find and catch many of these dogs so we can take them to a clinic and have them fixed.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Spay & Neuter Cruiser"}]

Marschner’s rescue organization has a mobile unit dubbed the “Spay & Neuter Cruiser” for clinics, but she said it’s usually more efficient to find a place in the community they’re serving.

Yola’s next mobile clinic is set for the Casper Health Fair on July 11-12. Spay and neuter clinics will also be conducted in Wheatland and also on the reservation later this month.

“Once we made the announcement in Casper, we were sold out in about an hour,” Marschner said. “That shows what the need is. We have a waiting list, but I don’t think we’ll be able to accommodate them.

“We set up like a ‘M*A*S*H*’ unit, with all of the medical supplies and equipment,” she explained. 

The equipment alone cost about $40,000, and Marschner said each clinic costs between $4,000 to $5,000.

The group largely depends on donations from individuals and grants from groups or companies. Marschner said she does her work for free.

“The critical piece to running the clinics is finding a vet and a vet tech,” she said. “That’s our biggest challenge. I think we’ll see more vets willing to participate.”

All spay and neuter operations on the reservation are free. In other places Yola’s helps subsidize the cost and negotiates a lower fee with veterinarians who agree to do the work so it’s more affordable for dog owners.

Yola’s makes monthly trips to the reservation to deliver dog food, and has also brought dog houses with straw for outdoor pets.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Expensive Surgeries"}]

The clinic has an annual budget between $60,000 and $70,000, Marschner said. The majority is spent on veterinary services, and the remainder is mostly used for dog food and spay and neuter clinic supplies.

“The money can go quickly,” she added. Toa’s amputation cost $900. If a rez dog has an encounter with a porcupine, which happens frequently, the medical bill can top $1,000.

“A lot of dogs will follow the river, and the super curious ones will go after the porcupines,” Roberts said. 

The subsequent fights never go well for the canines. Vets must anesthetize the dogs to remove quills, a process that can take hours and might need to be done multiple times.

“People can’t afford to take them to the vet, and if they don’t get care, they starve to death because they can’t eat,” Marschner said. “We always want to help with emergency care, like Toa’s amputation, but it does add up.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Rez Dogs Are Popular"}]

Roberts said many people want to adopt rez dogs and are willing to drive several hundred miles to do so, for several reasons.

“I transported three the other day clear down to Utah,” she said. “They get adopted pretty quick. People feel bad about what they’ve been through.”

But the dogs’ tough lives seeking food and shelter are part of what makes people satisfied when they adopt one. 

“They are very resilient,” Roberts said. “They’ve gone through so much, and just evolved over time to be able to withstand extreme heat, extreme cold. Things like rattlesnake bites don’t seem to phase them that much.”

She said her niece had a rez dog that ate about 10 pounds of chocolate, which is usually lethal to dogs.

“Her dog got into a platter of chocolate, ate it and was fine,” Roberts recalled. “That’s so crazy and unheard of. But these dogs build up a tolerance that most of your purebreds aren’t going to have. Reservation dogs have a tendency to outlive them, too.”

The dogs Marschner and her volunteers find on the reservation are mixed breeds. 

“We typically see Australian shepherd cattle dogs, mixed with a little Husky, German shepherd; that’s probably the most common mix,” she said. “Probably some pit too. They’re smart dogs.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Emotional Toll"}]

Marschner said the work takes an emotional toll on her and the other volunteers. 

“It’s hard, no one wants to say no to puppies, or euthanize puppies, but there are just a lot of them all over,” she said. "There are days, especially when you see the starving dogs and animals we try to save. That happens a lot. We had a Bullmastiff, starved and skin and bones. She weighed 52 pounds, and now she’s up to 120.”

Marschner said a dog named Willow also “touched a lot of hearts.” She weighed 22 pounds, about half normal weight. Willow had mange, so no fur or hair.

“It took us two to three weeks to find her after the initial sighting,” she said, adding that she's healthy now after being adopted by a Cheyenne Realtor.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"It Started With Yola"}]

Marschner had been a volunteer at her local animal shelter for 25 years, but her personal mission to help rescue dogs began in 2017, when she met the clinic’s namesake, a 5-year-old beagle-shepherd mix named Yola.

Military veteran John White was Yola’s owner. He adopted the once-stray dog from a Wyoming shelter, but when White was diagnosed with terminal cancer he needed a new caretaker for his pet.

“He posted on Craigslist a plea for a home for his dog written in (Yula’s) voice,” Marschner said.

The post went viral, leading to more than 1,000 people applying to take Yola. Like the others, Marschner wrote a brief essay, and White chose her to be Yola’s new owner. 

When Marschner picked up her new dog, White was too sick to see her. One of his friends asked her if she’d also consider giving White’s other dog, a bulldog-boxer mix named Boogy, a new home.

“How could I possibly say no?” Marschner said, so the pair came to live with her. They had many happy years together before Yola died from cancer. Boogy, who later lived with Marschner’s mother, died two years ago.

Yola lives on through the rescue clinic that bears her name. For puppies like Toa and others that desperately need help, Marschner said the clinic will continue its work to see that “no unwanted puppy is left behind.”

Kerry Drake can be reached at Kerry@CowboyStateDaily.com

Wind River and dog surgery 7 5 26

<title>Cheyenne Clinic 300 Miles Away Has Rescued 3,000 Wyoming Roaming Reservation Dogs | Cowboy State Daily</title>

With no veterinary clinics or animal shelters, roaming dogs are a problem on the Wind River Indian Reservation. A Cheyenne clinic 300 miles away has rescued 3,000 stray pets from the reservation since 2017.

Cheyenne Clinic 300 Miles Away Has Rescued 3,000 Wyoming Roaming Reservation Dogs

Employee kate meadows cropped

Kate Meadows

Business & Tourism

Business

[{"type":"text","text":"Trey Scharp received the phone call of a lifetime on his birthday."}]

It was December 2025, and the owners of the historic Flat Creek Ranch northeast of Jackson, Joe Albright and Marcia Kunstel, were calling with an unexpected question.

Would Trey and his wife, Shelby, like to own the ranch they had managed for more than two decades?

Albright and Kunstel, longtime journalists whose careers were built on documenting history, weren’t offering to sell the ranch.

[{"type":"text","text":"They wanted to give it away."}]

“It was truly an amazing birthday phone call,” Shelby Scharp told Cowboy State Daily.

Seven months later, the Scharps are settling into their first season not just as managers but as owners of a 140-acre guest ranch tucked beneath the iconic Sleeping Indian in the Gros Ventre Mountains. 

In a valley where ranches routinely sell for tens of millions of dollars and development pressure never lets up, Albright and Kunstel chose a different path.

"We didn't want it to fall in the hands of someone who would destroy the land, the wildlife or the buildings," Kunstel told Cowboy State Daily. "It deserves to be maintained."

The couple explained their motivation in a newspaper advertisement announcing the transfer: “Why are we doing all this? To keep our 103-year-old Ranch from falling into the wake of Jackson’s rush to develop mega-mansions and hulking hotels.”

As part of the gift, the Scharps agreed not to sell the ranch for at least 10 years and pledged to preserve its historic cabins, off-grid infrastructure and operation as a guest ranch.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"More Than Real Estate"}]

For Albright and Kunstel, both retired foreign correspondents, the decision was about conservation as much as succession.

"We felt that giving this land to people with the talents and background that Trey and Shelby have was the best way to keep this ranch going for another 100 years," Albright told Cowboy State Daily.

The couple spent 27 years restoring and preserving the ranch after buying it back from the Jackson Hole Land Trust in 1998. By then, many of the 1920s-era cabins had fallen into disrepair.

An extensive restoration project returned the historic buildings to life while modernizing the ranch behind the scenes. Today it operates entirely off solar power with a custom-designed water system. The property was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2001 and reopened as a guest ranch that same year.

Its history stretches back even further. A timeline on the ranch’s website is full of gems – characters and moments that have cemented the ranch’s place in time.

[{"type":"text","text":"“There are a million stories within the big story,” Shelby said."}]

In the summer of 1900, cowboy Enoch “Cal” Carrington camped on the land for a few days while working as a cook on a hunting expedition. Carrington returned the following summer, staked his claim and built a small cabin.

In 1917, Cal met Eleanor “Cissy” Patterson – Albright’s great aunt – at the Bar BC Ranch, where Patterson was staying as a guest. Carrington was the head hunting guide.

Carrington obtained a patent for a homestead in 1922 and sold the property to Patterson a year later, for $5,000. Patterson was an heiress to the Chicago Tribune.

Later, her niece and Albright’s mother, Josephine Patteron, would own the property.

In 1928, Cissy Patterson hired a man named Farney Cole to be caretaker. Cole famously beat a black bear to death with a waterlogged aspen limb in 1944. He had been using the limb to break up a beaver dam on the property when the bear, which had two cubs with her, attacked him.

Cissy longed to host Saturday night dances in the lodge at the ranch, and she made that dream come true in 1929, when she had a grand piano shipped to the ranch from Chicago. The instrument was hauled up the primitive bumpy road on an ox cart. It is still in use today.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Jackson Gambling Scene"}]

For a few weeks, Flat Creek Ranch was party to a thriving gambling scene in Jackson in the 1950s, As gambling raids swept through Jackson, hotel staff drove their guests out to the ranch, where a casino room was set up.

In 1986, Josephine Albright donated Flat Creek Ranch to the Jackson Hole Land Trust to guarantee the land’s permanent protection. She ensured that her heirs would have the first option to buy back the ranch at an appraised price upon her death.

Albright and Kunstel had not intended to buy the ranch in 1998, but they fell in love with Jackson and were ready to retire from longtime journalism careers.

The 1920s-era cabins remained on the land but were in desperate need of maintenance and restoration.

Contractor Porgy McClelland headed an ambitious restoration project that lasted four years. Cabins were moved and some were taken apart and put back on new foundations.

During the process, McClelland found old newspapers stuffed between logs for chinking.

, “He opened up one and found a box score for a baseball game in which Babe Ruth hit two home runs. It disintegrated into dust before he could share it too widely.” -

When the ranch was turning 100, Shelby suggested Albright and Kunstel write a book chronicling the history of the ranch.

“They jumped in with both feet and did this incredible coffee table book,” Shelby said.

 during the writing of the book, Flat Creek Ranch: Cissy and Cal Launch a Rip-Roaring Jackson Hole Saga. Newspapers on the platform date to 1911 for the city of Jackson. They also searched land records that told traces of stories.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"An Unexpected Opportunity"}]

The Scharps’ connection to Albright and Kunstel happened unexpectedly, in the early 2000s. The Scharps were managing a fly fishing lodge in Patagonia, Chile, when guests Joan and Huntley Baldwin mentioned friends in Jackson who were looking for ranch managers.

When Trey heard the name "Flat Creek Ranch," he wasn't immediately interested.

[{"type":"text","text":"Growing up in Jackson, he remembered it as a neglected property."}]

He told his wife, “I don’t think we can make a go out of it with an old ranch that is falling apart.”

The Scharps used the satellite internet they were only supposed to use to email their boss in Santiago to do a Google search of Flat Creek Ranch.

“The page loaded so slowly,” Shelby said. “The first five minutes were just pictures of a blue sky.”

[{"type":"text","text":"But when the entire page finally loaded, Trey was stunned."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“We realized the ranch had been completely refurbished,” he said."}]

Later, the Scharps would walk to a phone booth in the middle of nowhere, at a crossroads in rural Chile where busses sometimes stopped. Chickens pecked at their feet as they picked up the phone and called Albright and Kunstel.

[{"type":"text","text":"“I think we had the job two weeks later,” Trey said. "}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Carrying The Legacy Forward"}]

Within their almost 23-year-stint of the ranch’s bigger story, Trey said he can’t think of one memory that trumps all the others; there are too many.

“But there was that bald eagle,” he said. “We watched it take a Canada goose out of the lake.”

Learning that Kunstel and Albright wanted to give them the ranch was a total shock, Shelby told Cowboy State Daily.

During that December phone call, Shelby was nervous at the outset. She said she immediately wondered how she and her husband could afford to take on such an astounding piece of Teton County.

“And then I looked over at Trey and saw how grateful he was and thought, 'I need to be more like that',” she said.

The Scharps have agreed to own and preserve the ranch for the next 10 years. Its future is open-ended after that. They could decide to hold onto it, sell it or transfer it to a younger generation of the Albright family.

“We understood what Joe and Marcia wanted their guests to feel while they’re here,” Shelby said. “We never diverged from that.”

Now that the ranch is entirely in their hands, Trey said they will continue to improve the infrastructure, to keep the 100-plus-year-old cabins looking as good as they did in 2004, when he and Shebly saw the property together for the first time.

Being owners and managers is “the epitome of ‘same same but different',” Shelby said.

The daily grind hasn’t changed. But now, when she walks across a beloved bridge on the property in the early mornings, the reality sinks in: “It’s quiet and it’s like, ‘Oh, this is ours',” Shelby said.

“We’re not luxury. We’re authentic,” Trey said. “It’s authenticity here.”

He added that in the gift is a powerful message about land stewardship: “Not everything is for sale.”

Flat Creek Ranch sign 7 5 26

Instead of selling the century-old 140-acre Flat Creek Ranch for millions, a Jackson couple gave the property to its longtime managers. "We didn't want it to fall in the hands of someone who would destroy the land, the wildlife or the buildings," they said.

Cheryl "Sherry" Sue Caster, 67