One day near the end of the 1970's, Raymond Plank - WWII bomber pilot, maverick visionary, founder and chairman of Apache Corporation, an independent oil and gas exploration company - stood amongst the falling plaster, bats and beehives of a second-story room in an abandoned ranch house in Ucross, Wyoming. The company had recently purchased the ranch where the house stood. Razing the buildings appeared inevitable, but looking out on grounds flanked by a big red barn, bunkhouse and a ring of 100-year-old cottonwoods, Plank felt the pull of history.

Built a century earlier, the complex was known as Big Red, and had served as the headquarters for the Pratt & Ferris Cattle Company which comprised four ranches: Big Red and Big Corrals in Wyoming's Powder River basin, and the PF and the Upper PF in Goshen County near the Nebraska line. Big Red was an imposing visual landmark on the prairie, a former Pony Express stop and on the stagecoach route that serviced Buffalo to Clearmont (1891-1911). Tepee rings on the hills testified to an earlier history as Indian hunting grounds.

Built in 1882 and one of the oldest standing houses in the area, the Big Red Ranch House serves today as the main office of the Ucross Foundation. © Rhona Bitner

Cowpokes in 1898 in front of the Big Red Barn, which today serves as an art gallery as well as a conference facility in the spacious loft. Courtesy American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming