Ranch A | |
Location | Crook County, Wyoming, USA |
---|---|
Nearest city | Beulah, Wyoming |
Coordinates | 44°29′27″N104°6′53″W / 44.49083°N 104.11472°W |
Area | 410 acres (170 ha) |
Built | 1932 |
Architect | Ewing, Ray; Juso Bros. |
Architectural style | Rustic |
NRHP reference No. | 97000227 [1] |
Added to NRHP | March 17, 1997 |
Ranch A, near Beulah, Wyoming, was built as a vacation retreat for newspaper publisher Moses Annenberg. The original log ranch structures in Sand Creek Canyon were designed in the rustic style by architect Ray Ewing. The principal building, a large log lodge, was built in 1932. Other buildings constructed at the time included a garage with an upstairs apartment, a barn, a hydroelectric power plant, stone entrance arches and a pump house. The lodge was furnished with Western furniture and light fixtures made by noted designer Thomas C. Molesworth. Many of these furnishings, among the first of Molesworth's career, are now the property of the state of Wyoming and are in the Wyoming State Museum. [2] [3]
Annenberg bought the property around November 1927 from Frank LaPlante. Annenberg and his son Walter were going to Yellowstone National Park and stopped to eat in Beulah. Impressed with the trout he was served, Annenberg inquired after the property where the trout was raised. He bought the 650-acre (260 ha) ranch from LaPlante on the spot the next day for $27,000 [today worth around $303,000 in 2010 dollars] in cash, which Annenberg produced from his pocket. [3] Annenberg added more parcels to bring total acreage to more than 2,000 acres (810 ha). Moses and Walter Annenberg were the chief users of the ranch; Sadie Annenberg and her daughters came to the ranch only once. Guests arrived by rail at Aladdin, Wyoming, where the tracks ended, on private railcars owned by Annenberg. As publisher of the Daily Racing Form , Annenberg had a telephone communication center installed in the basement for coordination of horse racing information. [3]
The design work was done by South Dakota architect Ray Ewing, who hired the Juso Brothers to build the structures. The Jusos were Finnish immigrants who used traditional Finnish log building practices to fell, trim and erect the logs for the lodge and supporting structures. Work took place during the Great Depression, employing sixty to seventy workers, a significant project for the local economy. [3] Site planning and landscape architecture were done by South Dakota landscape architect J.R. McKay. [4]
Annenberg came under Federal investigation for his business practices in the late 1930s and was convicted of income tax evasion in 1940, was imprisoned, and died shortly after his release in 1942. Annenberg's heirs sold the ranch to Wyoming governor Nels Smith, Bill Walker (Cheyenne, Wyoming) and Sam Keener (Salem, Ohio). Ranch A was used as a dude ranch for twenty years, and was featured in an October 1956 issue of National Geographic . In 1963 the Fish and Wildlife Service bought the ranch, using it as a genetics laboratory for salmonid research under the name "Spearfish Fisheries Center Complex." After 1979 the genetic research was replaced by fish diet research. [2] The ranch was deeded to the state of Wyoming in 1996 for educational purposes. [3]
Sand Creek is a spring-fed stream with a consistent water temperature that is ideal for raising fish. The complex is located on the floor of the canyon with sandstone cliffs rising to either side. The lodge is sited near the northern canyon wall. Square in plan, the two-story lodge measures about 74 feet (23 m) by 75 feet (23 m). The second story overhangs the first, creating a long veranda across the front of the building, supported by stone piers with standing log sections as columns. The entrance is a knotty pine double door with iron strap hardware. The second story is a side gable dominated by shed dormers extending nearly the full width of the building, front and back. A small cross gable marks the center of the second story. A walkway extends directly from the rear of the second floor to the hillside behind. The interior features an atrium extending to the roof, surrounded by living spaces on both levels, framed in log construction. [4]
The garage is also of log construction, measuring 44 feet (13 m) by 44 feet (13 m), with three bays for vehicles, one of which has since been closed in. The second floor is framed as a smaller version of the lodge, and houses a three-bedroom caretaker's apartment. [4]
The barn was built about 1935 and measures about 63 feet (19 m) by 43 feet (13 m). The peeled log walls rest on a concrete foundation. A gambrel roof crowns the two-story structure. Other contributing structures include the pump house (1932), built in stucco with applied half-timber detailing and a rolled roof edge. The 1933 hydroelectric plant is similar in style and construction. Dams are associated with each building. A root cellar, stone walls, a lily pond and its feeder canal all date from the historical period. [4]
Additional buildings include the fish hatchery lab, a 1967 brick building, the distinctive Sawtooth Building (ca. 1964) or Wet Laboratory, another hatchery building with a sawtooth roof profile, and several apartments. [5]
Ranch A presently comprises 645 acres (261 ha), owned by the state of Wyoming. [5] It is managed by the Ranch A Restoration Foundation as an education center. [2] It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997. [1]
On April 23, 2013, Congresswoman Cynthia Lummis introduced the Ranch A Consolidation and Management Improvement Act (H.R. 1684; 113th Congress). [6] If passed, the bill would require the federal government to transfer 10 acres of federal lands in the Black Hills National Forest to the state of Wyoming. [7] Wyoming would use the land to connect different, separated pieces of Ranch A. The bill would also remove current restrictions placed on the land that prevents the foundation managing the site from some types of fundraising. [8] Currently, outside groups are not allowed to rent any of the property, which would change under this bill, increasing revenue. [9]
National Park Service rustic – sometimes colloquially called Parkitecture – is a style of architecture that developed in the early and middle 20th century in the United States National Park Service (NPS) through its efforts to create buildings that harmonized with the natural environment. Since its founding in 1916, the NPS sought to design and build visitor facilities without visually interrupting the natural or historic surroundings. The early results were characterized by intensive use of hand labor and a rejection of the regularity and symmetry of the industrial world, reflecting connections with the Arts and Crafts movement and American Picturesque architecture.
The Old Faithful Historic District in Yellowstone National Park comprises the built-up portion of the Upper Geyser Basin surrounding the Old Faithful Inn and Old Faithful Geyser. It includes the Old Faithful Inn, designed by Robert Reamer and is itself a National Historic Landmark, the upper and lower Hamilton's Stores, the Old Faithful Lodge, designed by Gilbert Stanley Underwood, the Old Faithful Snow Lodge, and a variety of supporting buildings. The Old Faithful Historic District itself lies on the 140-mile Grand Loop Road Historic District.
The Lake Fish Hatchery Historic District comprises nine buildings built between 1930 and 1932 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the National Park Service Rustic style. The buildings exhibit a consistency of style and construction, with exposed gable trusses and oversized paired logs at the corners, all with brown paint. The district is located on the shore of Yellowstone lake near the Lake Hotel The hatchery was established to provide Yellowstone cutthroat trout eggs for state and federal hatcheries outside Yellowstone.
The Roosevelt Lodge Historic District comprises the area around the Roosevelt Lodge in the northern part of Yellowstone National Park, near Tower Junction. The district includes 143 buildings ranging in size from cabins to the Lodge, built beginning in 1919. The Lodge was first conceived as a field laboratory for students and educators conducting research in the park. It later became a camp for tourists, specifically designed to accommodate automobile-borne tourists. The Lodge is a simplified version of the National Park Service Rustic style.
St. John's Episcopal Church and Rectory form a complex of log structures in Jackson, Wyoming. The rectory was built first: in 1911 it was a hostel and community center under the supervision of Episcopal Bishop Nathaniel Thomas. Church services were held there until 1916, when the church was built. The church and hostel are among the largest log structures in Jackson Hole.
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The 4 Lazy F Ranch, also known as the Sun Star Ranch, is a dude ranch and summer residence in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, built by the William Frew family of Pittsburgh in 1927. The existing property was built as a family retreat, not as a cattle ranch, in a rustic style of construction using logs and board-and-batten techniques. The historic district includes seven cabins, a lodge, barn corral and smaller buildings on the west bank of the Snake River north of Moose, Wyoming. The property was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.
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Thomas C. Molesworth (1890–1977) was an American furniture designer who was a significant figure in the creation of a distinctly Western style of furniture and accessories, using hides, horn and natural wood. Molesworth's style drew from the Arts and Crafts Movement and from vernacular design characteristics of western American ranches and farms. He is credited with popularizing the "cowboy furniture" style. To produce his designs, Molesworth operated the Shoshone Furniture Company from 1931 to 1961 in Cody, Wyoming with his wife, LaVerne Johnston Molesworth.
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