It’s time to check in on Charlie Colgrove, a Dickinson cowboy who wasn’t afraid to talk. Charlie and his brother, Bill, started the Lime Kiln Ranch in 1882, “just off in those big hills northeast of Lefor.” A few years later, they started another one on Thirty-Mile Creek.

“Holy God! The grass was good,” he said. “We’d get 1,000 tons of hay a year and had plenty of gazing for 400 head of cattle on each ranch... At the Lime Kiln Ranch, we got closed out on ranching in 1906, because the damn farmers came in and run us out. That damn Iowa outfit was about the worst...they grabbed all the good land. Land around there sold for $2.00 an acre, but after they came, it run up to $15.00 an acre...,” Charlie said. “I got some fellers to file on homesteads and then traded them out of it for a couple of old horses, a saddle or something. By God! A feller worked everything to get what he wanted.”

 

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