Rabbit Creek Country: Three Ranching Lives in the Heart of the Mountain West

Introduction

z xv z introduction n In the early 1840s, John Charles Fremont pushed north through the eastern foothills of the Rockies in what is present-day Larimer County, Colorado. He was a little off course. Instead of ascending the main branch of the Cache la Poudre River, as he thought, he was going up its north fork, the North Poudre—of which Rabbit Creek is a tributary. He thus became the first Euro-American explorer to write a description, however brief, of Rabbit Creek country, the main setting of this book. It is not likely that Fremont knew what the little creek was called, though the Mountain Utes and early trappers doubtless had names for it. Nor did he specifically mention the creek in his journal. Nevertheless, the wild beauty of the surrounding region made a profound impression on him, and he wrote extensive notes on the uninhabited landscape and its flora. Two-thirds of a century after Fremont’s passage, John and Ida Elliott bought a thousand acres of land on the middle fork of Rabbit Creek, eight miles away from the small ranching community of Livermore, Colorado. The year was 1910. The Elliotts were part of the intensive EuroAmerican settlement that occurred in the region during the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth. This book tells their story and the interwoven story of Miss Josephine Lamb, a mountain teacher who lived and ranched with them. z I first entered the valley of the Middle Rabbit on foot with four friends. It was a crisp December day in 1997 when an act of trespass led to the discovery of an abandoned ranch. Like Fremont’s party, we did not know our exact location or the name of the creek. Our walk began on public land—the Cherokee State Wildlife Area. Jacques Rieux was leading; he had ridden horseback here, though never this far upstream. We had followed a two-track along the North Rabbit, through bare cottonwoods introduction xvi and greenish-blue junipers, and then veered west up another creek, drawn by the beauty of the valley. Low hills rose ahead of us, and cattle and four woolly horses grazed the tawny grasses. No buildings as far as the eye could see. We hiked around an immense monolith, the old granite a latticework of faults and fractures. This was the peak we would later call “Symbol Rock.” Thenwewerestoppedbyafence.“PrivateProperty—NoTrespassing.” Marie-Laure snapped a picture of the sign. We squeezed under the barbed wire and walked on, climbing a bluff that overlooked the creek. Below, in the draw, among trees on a bend of the stream, was a house. We were simply astonished. We had walked an hour without seeing any structure. Was the house inhabited? We did not see or hear any signs of life. No dogs. Cautiously we made our way down the steep slope. The house was derelict, yet the roof was intact. In a journal entry dated December 12, 1997, I set down my first impressions of the place. “The oldest part of the building is built with rough-hewn timbers, log-cabin style. . . .This was later added onto. . . . The external walls, especially on the south side . . . are full of doors and windows. . . .The rooms are large. One was painted an Easter egg blue, Minoan blue according to Rick. . . .The various textures and fadings of the blue-painted plaster. . . . Blue with white streaks, or dappled white. The floor littered with broken-off blue plaster . . . the pieces with fine fissures like craquelure . . . the light streaming in. An old ‘Mission oak’ chair sits in the doorless doorway looking south. Its bottom cushion eviscerated. . . .The old cookstove in the house is riddled with bullet holes. The location and the house show an unusual attention to . . . aesthetic values. Dave is right . . . the excessive number of windows and doors, the blue room.” The presence of a dwelling transformed how we experienced the unnamed valley. The realization that the occupants had reveled in the beauty of the terrain put a different slant on the way we saw it. We had noticed a striking pair of rounded granite peaks rising out of the broad meadow south of the house. Now we saw them framed by the large windows and doors that had been set into the south-facing wall (page 66 in chapter3).Thehabitationmadeusimaginewhatitwasliketoliveandwork in these environs—bringing cows in from the pasture, hauling meat from the “icehouse,” jars of preserves from the root...