White Grass Dude Ranch Fact Sheet
WyomingOverview
For more than 20 years, the National Trust has been involved in saving places in America's 388 National Parks. From the Plum Orchard Mansion at Cumberland Island National Seashore to the majestic Many Glacier Hotel in Glacier National Park, the historic places in our National Parks showcase the breadth of American history. As with cultural resources under the care of many federal agencies, historic places in our National Parks are threatened by a lack of funding and often a lack of agency will to protect them. This is particularly true in parks where some park managers believe protecting cultural and historic sites conflicts with their mandate to protect natural resources. These threats are reflected in the fact that 20 National Park sites have appeared on the National Trust's List of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places since its inception in 1988.
Important Saves
McGraw Ranch, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado
The Park Service estimates that its maintenance backlog for historic structures is $1.5 billion. This was one reason Park managers in Rocky Mountain National Park proposed demolishing fifteen historic buildings at McGraw Ranch. The other reason was perceived conflicts between the preservation of cultural resources and the protection of natural resources in the park. The National Trust intervened and partnered with Rocky Mountain National Park to convert the ranch into a research and learning center for the park.
The Trust raised more than $800,000 toward the $2 million project, receiving generous contributions from more than 100 National Trust members and grants from area foundations and the Colorado Historical Society's State Historical Fund. In addition, some 80 National Trust members volunteered their time and skills to assist with the rehabilitation of log buildings during summer workdays at the ranch. This creative adaptive use of vacant historic buildings has become an influential national model and is leading to several similar projects in other national parks.
Plum Orchard, Cumberland Island National Seashore, Georgia
Cumberland Island National Seashore was established as a unit of the National Park Service in 1972, due in large part to the generosity of existing landowners who wanted to save the special character of the island from development and preserve its natural and historic qualities.
In 1982, a large portion of the island was designated a wilderness area to further quell private development efforts. However, within the wilderness boundary were 25 significant historic resources including Plum Orchard, Georgia's largest historic house. Access restrictions imposed by the wilderness designation made it extremely difficult for the Park Service to maintain the property or propose it for any kind of adaptive use. As a result, by the 1990s, several significant historic resources had collapsed and were lost.
The National Trust advocated for the protection of historic resources on Cumberland Island as a signatory to a 1998 memorandum and strong participant on the National Seashore Committee. However, none of these efforts cured the conflicts created by the wilderness designation and in 2001, the Trust called for a change in the boundary. Under the leadership of Congressman Jack Kingston, Congress amended the Cumberland Island Wilderness Area boundary in 2005 removing the 200-year old, National Register listed "Grand Avenue," the principal road, from the wilderness designation so that visitors could again enjoy easy assess to the Plum Orchard and High Point Historic Districts.
Current Issues
Isle Royale National Park, Michigan
At Isle Royale National Park in Michigan, a wilderness island in Lake Superior, the Trust is working with park staff and seasonal residents to assure the preservation of dozens of cabins built in the late 19th and early 20 century when the island was home to a thriving commercial and sport fishing industry. To acquire the archipelago in the 1930s NPS granted life leases to the owners of cabins and fish camps. Today those properties are often unmaintained by an aging generation, but the Park has no funding to assure their preservation, even though most have been determined to eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. The Trust is working with the families of the original lessees, the Park staff, the Michigan SHPO, and the regional office of NPS to find a solution that will preserve this tiny bit of historic residue of civilization on a wilderness island.
Ellsworth Rock Garden, Voyageurs National Park, Minnesota
The Trust is also working with the Ellsworth Rock Garden in Voyageurs National Park in Minnesota. Within that relatively new and largely wilderness park lies an unique cultural landscape created between 1944 and 1966 by a Chicago contractor during his vacation visits to Lake Kabetogama. Over 22 years, Jack Ellsworth converted a 60-foot granite outcroppoing into a formal terraced garden dotted with hundreds of dry-stack retaining walls, water features, vernacular sculptures, objects, and seating, all crafted from the native stone using only his own labor and without the benefit of power tools. When the land was acquired by NPS in the 1970s, the gardens fell into disrepair as the park was intended to return to its natural state.
Recently the National Park Service has taken an interest in reclaiming the gardens and preserving this important cultural resource. Because the gardens were not formally planned, there is very little documentation recording what Ellsworth created. Cultural resource staff at the Park created the annual "Ellsworth Blitz" – an intensive week-long work session of brush clearing, archaeological excavation, and stone conservation. Using a grant from the National Trust, the Blitz has also involved training by the Dry Stone Conservancy from Kentucky. Each year a small group of volunteers, including staff of the National Trust, gather at Ellsworth to clear brush, restore damaged sculptures, and document portions of the site. Work is slow but sure.
Elkmont Historic District, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee
The Elkmont Historic District is located in the Little River Valley of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Significant for its architecture and its role in helping form the national park, Elkmont was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994 and was awarded Save America's Treasures status in the late 1990s. In 2004, the Tennessee Preservation Trust listed Elkmont on its most endangered list. Later that summer, Elkmont was named in the National Trust's 11-Most Endangered program.
Elkmont is comprised of 72 early-twentieth century cabins; wood-frame structures whose modest simplicity of form and function belies their significant role in the Park's formation. The district has been continuously occupied by Anglo-Americans over the past 120 years and utilized by man for logging, agriculture, habitation, and most recently, recreation. Prior to European settlement, this alluvial valley was inhabited by Native Americans.
In the years before the Park's establishment, Elkmont's early dwellings were erected by prominent Tennesseans who were drawn to the Smoky Mountains by the region's great hunting and fishing opportunities. In 1900, lumber interests purchased land and timber and began to log the mountains' primeval hardwood forests. By the time that two-thirds of the mountains' forests were depleted through logging, community leaders among the summer visitors decided that loss could no longer be tolerated and began advocating for the establishment of a National Park. Advocates included Colonel David C. Chapman, chair of the Tennessee Park Commission, Tennessee Governor Austin Peay, and Colonel W.B. Townsend, co-owner of the Little River Lumber Company and the Little River Railroad. The National Trust believes the story of the Great Smoky Mountains can be told through the Elkmont Historic District.
The National Trust has long expressed interest in Elkmont, and has partnered with the National Park Service in undertaking the required complex legal process which will determine Elkmont's future. National Trust staff has taken an active role, urging park administrative staff to seek solid ground in balancing the needs of environmental as well as cultural resources. We believe the retention of a critical mass of buildings and their thoughtful reuse falls well within the Park's mandate of promoting biodiversity, scenic refuge, and the continuum of human activity.
More on White Grass
White Grass Dude Ranch
Learn about recent activities to promote the rehabilitation of the historic White Grass Dude Ranch and about preservation projects completed by the Historic Preservation Center.
Western Center for Historic Preservation at the White Grass Dude Ranch
National Trust for Historic Preservation partnership with Grand Teton National Park to rehabilitate the historic White Grass Dude Ranch to become a center to train park staff, volunteers and contractors in the preservation and reuse of rustic structures.
