Eight years ago, David Ellsbury stood at his mother’s deathbed. She only had one request. Her final wish was that their family ranch would never be developed. She didn’t want a developer to carve it up the way they had everywhere else. And that’s exactly what the Crook County rancher did. Earlier this year, all 2,506 acres of the Ellsbury Diamond E Ranch were locked into permanent protection through the Wyoming Stock Growers Land Trust. No developer can touch it. No subdivision can fragment it. For David Ellsbury, protecting the land and the family tradition was a word he gave to his dying mother. “It will never be developed,” Ellsbury told the Cowboy State Daily.
Protecting the last homestead
Pic credit: Wyoming Stock Growers Land Trust
Back in the 1880s, four of Ellsbury’s great-grandfathers had staked homesteads in the area northeast of Sundance. “My great-grandfather was such a visionary, and he didn’t know it. What a brave man,” Ellsbury said.Talking to the Sundance Times, he recalled, “I, along with my father and grandfather, invested our lifetimes working this ranch to provide for our livelihoods. With the threat of encroaching development looming across my fencelines, I felt the need to preserve and conserve my family’s legacy and heritage for our future generations. I share the sentiment often credited to Chief Seattle, ‘We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children’.”One by one, those original properties vanished. At least one was swallowed by a housing development. Of all the homesteads his great-grandfathers claimed, Ellsbury’s is the only one still undeveloped. In fact, he once tried to buy a neighbouring property before it was subdivided. But developers were faster than him. So he couldn’t protect it. He saw the homestead disappear. That was happening right outside his fence.
The land will never be developed
Pic credit: Wyoming Stock Growers Land Trust
In order to protect the ranch, Ellsbury had to trade something else. He cannot sell the land for development. He cannot subdivide it. What he can do is keep it working, keep cattle grazing, keep hay cut, and keep the rhythm of seasonal labour that has structured his family’s lives since the 1880s.But that’s exactly what he needs. The easement is irrevocable. It’s not temporary, or ‘for now’; it’s forever. His descendants inherit the land with the same constraints built into its title. They don’t get to choose the easy path. They get to choose the one his family has chosen for five generations.
Passing tradition
Ellsbury has twelve grandchildren. The oldest, in junior high and high school, are old enough to work the land. He is teaching them what the place wants and what it offers in return. “I’ve got to do it for them,” he said. They are learning belonging, which is something beyond ranching. And he is seeing them take to the work with genuine interest, not out of obligation.David Ellsbury, however, no longer owns livestock. He had to let it go after suffering a heart attack. “A heart attack makes you stop and think,” he said. He passed the livestock operation to his sons.The ranch sits within wildlife corridors designated by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. So it shouldn’t be a surprise to see elk move through it. Mule deer are a common sighting. U.S. Forest Service land borders more than two miles of the eastern parcel and surrounds the western section. So the landscape basically functions as one integrated system. Protect this piece, and you protect the whole.Crook County is changing. Energy projects, mining, and residential subdivisions are fragmenting operations and destroying the agricultural character that made the place liveable.Ellsbury knows this more than anyone else. But this easement is permanent. So all his descendants can do is work the land, improve it, and live from it. Christine Adams, the Wyoming Stock Growers Land Trust executive director, called the project one of the most meaningful she’d been part of. The family said no to money and instead chose to protect their land at all costs. “It’s a testament to (the Ellsbury family’s) persistence, stewardship and respect for the land,” she told the outlet.The Land Trust now manages more than 327,000 protected acres across Wyoming.And Ellsbury’s began with a promise to his mother. She saw the land around her disappear. That deeply disturbed her. She was upset, and “on the day she died, she told me she did not want what happened to that place to happen to this place,” Ellsbury said.“I have followed her wishes. It is of utmost importance to me to keep it going in the family, for it to stay in the family name,” he added.Ellsbury made the bet to honor his mother’s wish. He’s spending the rest of his life making sure it pays off.
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