Routt County Cowboys: The Other Steamboat
Near Steamboat Springs, Colorado
Visitors who arrive in Steamboat Springs expecting only a ski resort are sometimes surprised to see actual working cattle operations within a few miles of the ski lifts. Routt County is genuine ranch country, and has been since the early eighteen eighties, when homesteaders followed the removal of the Yamparika Ute and began claiming the valley's broad, well-watered meadows for grazing.
The conditions were ideal. The Yampa Valley sits in a natural bowl that collects both moisture and warmth, producing abundant grass that could sustain cattle through the summer. Ranchers ran herds across the surrounding hills and high parks, shipping cattle by rail after the Moffat Road arrived in nineteen oh nine. At its peak, Routt County was a significant cattle-producing county, a fact that coexisted alongside the ski economy without much apparent contradiction. Cowboys and ski racers shared the same small town, sometimes from the same families.
That dual identity is part of what makes Steamboat feel different from more polished resort towns. The Tread of Pioneers Museum on Oak Street documents the ranching era with artifacts, photographs, and oral histories from the families who built the valley before the lifts arrived. The summer rodeo series has run for decades, drawing competitors from across the region.
Today the ranches are smaller and some have been subdivided, but the agricultural character of the Yampa Valley persists. It is still not unusual to drive into Steamboat behind a cattle trailer on a September morning, with ski season two months away.
