Cow Camp: History since 1922

Alexis Barker
NLJ Reporter
 
In 1922, roughly 20 miles north of U.S. Highway 16 on Boles Canyon Road in Weston County, Cow Camp was established, according to Weston County Historical Society member Dr. Mike Jording, 
The society celebrated the camp and shared its history on Aug. 26 with a gathering and picnic. Jording said that the recent event was not the first time the camp was the focus of a society event. 
“We had an in-town presentation roughly six years ago, and this year we met at Cow Camp,” Jording said. “It meant tremendously more to be out there.” 
The picnic, according to Jording, included presentations by both Gene Baldwin and Wally Cash, both former cowboys at Cow Camp. Baldwin, bragging during his presentation about being chosen for the best dishwasher award in the 1950s, talked about Cow Camp and his memories from the time he worked there. 
According to the camp history, guided by Baldwin, Cow Camp was originally a homestead building. Since 1922, the site has been used by U.S. Forest Service permittees as the summer home of the Beaver Creek Cattle Association rider and camp of cowboys. 
In the 1950s, the Forest Service called the cattlemen of the area together to discuss overgrazing, a meeting that led to the creation of the Crow’s Nest Upper Beaver Creek Cow Camp. The camp used the original homestead buildings that consisted of a house for the cowboy and his family, a bunkhouse for the drivers and workers, a cookhouse, corrals for the horses and a barn. 
“In 1972, Cow Camp burned to the ground,” the compiled history states. “A few years later the Beaver Creek Cattle Association bought a house. … The house was moved to the Cow Camp for the use of the cowboy on duty.” 
The history notes that at some point a bunkhouse was moved to the property as well. 
To this day, Cow Camp is still managed by a cowboy, currently Pat and Vicki Hayman, who have the same duties as the first cowboys at the camp, which has not been modernized much, according to the notes. 
According to the history notes, domestic livestock have grazed the land at Cow Camp for more than 100 years, although past grazing was considerably higher than today. 
Overgrazing became an issue in the 1950s, the history states, and since then, grazing has been more closely monitored, with decisions to reduce grazing coming from the Forest Service. 
Since 2010, a five-herd, two-pasture deferred rotation has been in place. 
“The allotment’s exterior boundaries have remained more or less unchanged since the allotment’s establishment,” the history states.