“Took over the ranches or purchased the ranches? If I remember correctly they were sold.”
The ranches were pressured into selling by Fed interference with water and land access—do your research. It’s a pattern repeated over and over again by the Feds.
How about you just post your evidence instead of making claims. How could they be pressured into selling if they owned the water and the land? Most likely they leased grazing and water rights and when you do that there’s always a risk of it being shut off. If you’ve set yourself up to be dependent on someone else your a fool. I’m starting to see that there’s very few here that even have the simplistic understanding of ranching and what it takes to survive at it. Like I said before we’ve had this place for over 100 years, never borrowed against it, never leased and damn sure never depended on anybody else. The land only provides so much and you have to stay within it’s means. We have limited grazing and water so we run a limited amount of cattle (here it’s 18 head per square mile, 22 on a good year). If we wanted to run more we’d have to lease both grazing and water and that would put us under somebody else rules something I would never allow.