National Register Listing

Boswell, N. K., Ranch

a.k.a. Boswell Ranch

S of Woods Landing off WY 230, Woods Landing, WY

At an early date in the history of Wyoming the livestock industry was established in the Laramie Plains. Stock-raising was attempted there after 1862, the year in which traffic became heavy along the Overland Trail, a great, western, transportation artery passing through the area. The industry took root in the Laramie Plains because of the abundance of nutritious grasses and the availability of water. According to Historian Robert H. Burns, three of the earliest men to engage in the livestock industry in the Laramie Plains were Phil Mandel, Tom Alsop, and Charley Hutton. Mandel was one of the earliest settlers in the Plains, having made the first recorded land claim there when Wyoming was still a part of Dakota Territory. As station-master at the Little Laramie Station on the Overland Trail, Mandel purchased footsore, worn-out cattle from passing freighters, turned them out on the range, and found that they did remarkably well through the winter. Tom Alsop's interest in the Laramie Plains area dates from 1863 when, returning east from Salt Lake City, he was caught in a snow storm on Sherman Hill near the present city of Laramie, and was forced to turn his oxen loose to shift for themselves. He and his men continued on horseback toward Omaha, expecting that the oxen would die of exposure and starvation, but when Alsop returned the next spring he found them in a sheltered valley along Sand Creek, about twenty miles west of Sherman Hill. Not only were they alive, but they were healthy and had grown fat from the grass they had eaten. Together with Charley Hutton and Ed Creighton, Alsop started ranching at the Big Laramie River Crossing of the Overland Trail, located some eight miles southwest of Laramie.

From convenient watering places along the Overland Trail, ranching spread throughout the Laramie Plains and, following streams and creeks, penetrated nearby hills and mountains. It is understandable that at an early date the Big Laramie River, a major stream draining the east slopes of the Medicine Bow Range, would attract agricultural settlement, and that its banks would become dotted with ranches. The flow of the river was continuous, although the water level was irregular depending upon the season and the weather. This life-giving water not only served to quench the thirst of people and stock and provided the means for irrigation of small gardens, most importantly it was used to irrigate bottomland meadows, enabling man to produce forage crops to sustain livestock during periods of inclement weather. In such a way was the basis for permanent settlement laid. It should be noted that settlement also was based upon the Union Pacific Railroad, which not only provided a means for shipment of stock to markets, but itself created a demand for railroad ties, timber, coal and roadbed ballast, all of which are found in, or bordering, the Laramie Plains.

Local significance of the building:
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1977.