By Steven Wade Veatch
The dawn was cool and crisp on an October morning in 1877 when George and Gilbert Searight, supposedly looking for better opportunities, herded 14,000 unruly longhorns from Texas onto an area ten miles west of Casper, Wyoming. This site, where the North Platte flows through a valley between Coal Mountain and Bessemer Mountain, is where the Searights opened up their vast, open-range Goose Egg Ranch (North Platte River, 2019).
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| A Texas Longhorn is known by its distinctive horns. |
The longhorns wandered far and wide over the open range as far as the eye could see. The Searights brought another 13,000 head the following year and, on a final cattle drive in 1879, brought 16,000 more head from Oregon (North Platte River, 2019). The Searights thought these large herds of cattle would give them a chance at success.
The name of the ranch came from an interesting story told around the flickering campfires of Wyoming. Some say during the first spring out on the range, some cowboys discovered a nest of Canada Goose eggs. The men brought the eggs back to a grizzled camp cook, “Old Over Slope,” to fry up for their breakfast. The wily old cook got his name from his lack of ears—frostbite took them (North Platte River, 2019). After breakfast and much debate, the cowboys decided they should call the land the “Goose Egg Ranch,” a fitting name for the new cattle operation. This tale may be true. If not, it should be.
Six years after the Searights started the Goose Egg Ranch, they built a substantial ranch house on a rise near a bend on the north bank of the Platte River. The Searights had the lumber, hardware, and other materials used to build the ranch house hauled in by freight teams from Cheyenne, a trip over 225 miles on rugged, dusty roads.
The Searights completed the ranch house in 1883 and built it like a small stone fort, designed to withstand an Indian raid. It was, however, left alone by the Indians. It seems the Searight brothers kept the peace with the local tribes.
Searight and his brother lived in the ranch house until 1886, when they saw what was coming like a freight train—the overproduction of cattle by the large Wyoming ranchers. This caused beef prices to fall during 1886. Searights sold out to the Carey brothers and the Swan Land and Cattle Company before the bottom fell out (Hunt, 2019).
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A postcard view of the Goose Egg Ranch house.
Wooden ranch
buildings are in the background.
From the collection of S.W. Veatch.
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Also, Searight sold out in time to sidestep the winter of 1886-1887 that devastated Wyoming's cattle business. Snow started falling on November 13 and continued for a month (Cattle Trails, 2019). In mid-December, temperatures warmed enough to change the snow into slush. Then, in late December, temperatures fell to almost 30 below zero, changing the slush into a slab of ice. January 1887 brought the coldest spell in memory and a relentless blizzard tore through the area for three days. One cowboy wrote:
It was all so slow, plunging after them through the deep snow . . . . The horses' feet were cut and bleeding from the heavy crust, the cattle had the hair and hide wore off their legs to the knees and the hocks. It was surely hell to see big four-year-old steers just able to stagger along (Episode 7 "Hell Without Heat", 2001).As ranchers gathered in saloons to discuss their heavy losses, Searight was counting his cash. Some ranchers lost up to 20 percent of their stock.
Things would never be the same on those Wyoming grasslands, and Searight made the right decision to sell. Cattle prices fell like a rock, and the weather turned bad. But there was a larger, lasting change coming to the range—homesteading, which brought the systematic taking of land, the placement of barb wire, and the end of the open prairie. Change also came to Searight’s Goose Egg ranch house. As a sentinel on the grasslands, it operated as a hotel, then a restaurant, and as the setting for part of Owen Wister’s novel, The Virginian.
Time took its toll on the stone ranch house and it deteriorated over the decades. Despite efforts to save the ranch house, the owners demolished it in 1960. Today, nothing remains of the Goose Egg ranch house.
References
Cattle Trails. (2019, February 13). Retrieved from Wyoming Tales and Trails: http://www.wyomingtalesandtrails.com/cattledieoff.html
Episode 7 "Hell Without Heat". (2001). Retrieved from The West: The Georaphy of Hope (Rocky Mountain PBS): https://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/program/episodes/seven/hellwoheat.htm
Hunt, R. A. (2019, February 13). Wyo History. Retrieved from Wyoming State Historical Society: https://www.wyohistory.org/encyclopedia/natrona-county-wyoming
North Platte River. (2019, February 13). Retrieved from Wyoming Tales and Trails: http://www.wyomingtalesandtrails.com/bessemer.html