Jim and Iris Willadsen, 91 and 90, spent their lives watching the landscape around Pole Mountain change.

They remember when the road across the mountain was gravel. When cowboys slept at a nearby camp and poker games could be heard until daylight. They remember when the mountain belonged largely to the military, not the public, and recreation was limited.

Through all those changes, one thing remained the same: they continued stewarding and working the land.

The Willadsen family was among the first to receive a grazing permit on Pole Mountain, and it remains one of the few original permit families still connected to the land today.

“From the first time they issued permits, we were one of the first,” Jim Willadsen said. “It's kind of a neat thing to be here all these years.”

Pole Mountain is approximately 55,000 acres on the Medicine Bow National Forest and is a popular recreation location given its closeness to Laramie, Wyoming. Less than a 10-minute drive to the city, the area sees year-round heavy usage from visitors who want to explore more accessible public lands. For the Willadsens, Pole Mountain holds more than cattle, it holds memories and the story of family. It is the community of public-land grazing that has helped sustain small ranches in southern Wyoming for generations.

Their story is part of a relationship between ranching families and public lands that has evolved for more than a century across the landscape between Cheyenne and Laramie, two of Wyoming’s largest cities. Livestock grazing overlaps wildlife habitat, watershed protection and recreation, such as mountain biking, hunting and fishing.

Balancing those multiple-use demands requires permits, pasture rotations, fence repairs and a close partnership between ranchers and the Forest Service. It also requires decades of experience stewarding the land, the kind learned by spending years observing cattle, noting where water stays and seeing how the grass responds after a dry year.

“I spent a lot of hours up here,” Jim Willadsen said. “A lot of days…cold, windy, snowing.”

A mountain in transition

Pole Mountain looks much different today than when Jim Willadsen was young.

The main road through the valley, Happy Jack Road, had not yet become the paved highway visitors use today. Many of the roads and recreation trails did not exist. Hunting and fishing were restricted when the land was under military control.

He remembered spending summers at a cow camp while soldiers trained nearby. When the military prepared to fire artillery, he helped move the cattle out of the way. He recalled the soldiers marching the 50 miles from Cheyenne to Laramie.

“They walked all the way out of Cheyenne, up a dirt gravel road to the camp here,” he said.

Large groups of cattle grazed together, with Herefords generally on one side of the mountain and Angus cattle on the other. Gathering them required days of riding, sorting and moving livestock back to their ranches.

During roundups, the cow camp became a social center for the riders. Iris Willadsen remembers another part of camp life, feeding the riders when they came to help.

“I did a lot of cooking for all of them. I cooked a brisket, I think that's what brought the riders,” she half-joked.

In the old days, cattle were herded and moved down trails with riders on horseback rather than loaded into modern livestock trailers. A roundup could take up to six days. Riders gathered mixed herds, separated cattle then moved them across miles of open ground.

Today, trucks and trailers can complete much of that work in hours. The change has reduced dust, livestock stress and sickness, Jim Willadsen said. But it also ended a way of working that shaped generations of ranchers.

“A lot of people got some real education as cowboys,” he said with a grin. “It was a good place to get bucked off up here.”

Why the public range matters

The roots of public-land grazing in the West reach back to the Homestead Act of 1862. At the time, the law offered settlers 160 acres if they lived on and improved the property for five years.

“That plan had worked really well back East, where the rainfall patterns were 60 to 80 inches of rain a year," said Bob Mountain, retired national grasslands coordinator for the Forest Service. “But when you get out here into Wyoming, you're only getting 12 to 14 inches of rain in an average year, and some places are even less. In some areas, it can take roughly 40 acres to support one cow for a year.”

Early settlers quickly learned that 160 acres was often not enough to maintain a family and livestock operation. Ranches depended on higher-elevation public lands for summer forage while preserving lower private lands for other seasons.

“What became the public lands had to be the basis of their year-round operation,” Mountain said.

Pole Mountain later passed through several forms of ownership and management. The Army acquired land in the area for cavalry maneuvers in the early 20th century. After World War I, the Forest Service administered the land, which ultimately became part of the National Forest System in 1961. Today, the Forest Service administers permits for approximately 5,500 permittees. With livestock grazing on over 74 of the 193 million acres of National Forest System lands, across 28 states.

Grazing permits allowed ranching to continue while establishing limits on livestock numbers, seasons of use and range conditions.

Several ranching families say those permits remain essential. Bill Bonham's family has grazed cattle on Pole Mountain for more than six decades. Without summer range, he said, the ranch would not be economically viable.

Guy Landers, a permittee and fourth-generation rancher whose family settled in the area in 1877, said Pole Mountain provides pasture his operation could not easily replace.

“We couldn't run the cattle that we run now without this summer pasture,” Landers said.

(left) Guy Landers rides with two of his grandchildren on Pole Mountain in the Medicine Bow National Forest near Laramie, Wyoming, June 15, 2026, while moving cattle through a wooded portion of the grazing allotment. Landers is a fourth-generation rancher whose son and several grandchildren are interested in continuing the family’s agricultural operation. (right) Kendall Eisele, and her father, Mark Eisele, sort cows and calves in a corral on Pole Mountain in the Medicine Bow National Forest near Laramie, Wyoming, June 15, 2026, as they prepare the herd for summer grazing. Multiple generations of ranching families participate in the work required to maintain livestock operations connected to public lands. (Forest Service photos by Travis Weger)

The permits also help preserve private ranches and open spaces surrounding the public land. Cattle move to higher elevations during summer, reducing pressure on lower pastures and allowing ranchers to reserve forage for later in the year. It also helps protect riparian areas, which are green corridors of vegetation along streams and other water sources and help protect water quality, stabilize banks and provide wildlife habitat.

“The public lands are tied to the private lands,” said Mark Eisele, permittee and president of the Pole Mountain Cattlemen's Association. “They're the watersheds that have the riparian areas and all the resources that tie that together seasonally.”

More than turning cattle loose

Public land grazing is sometimes misunderstood as ranchers release cattle and return months later.

In reality, permittees regularly ride the allotments, repair fences, check water, monitor vegetation, treat sick cattle and move animals away from heavily used areas. Drought conditions may require reductions in the number of cattle allowed on the land.

Landers said ranchers visit the allotments at least twice a week, and sometimes more. They watch where cattle gather, move them away from creeks or other sensitive areas, maintain fences and rotate the areas where cattle graze, to prevent overuse.

Bonham said Forest Service standards have sometimes been stricter than the decisions he might make on private land.

“It taught me to be a better range manager,” Bonham said.

Ranchers weigh rainfall, water availability and plant health. Pastures may be grazed for shorter periods and then rested, allowing vegetation to recover.

New technology is expanding those options.

Rancher Toby Kimzey uses virtual fencing collars, with digital boundaries programmed into each collar. When an animal approaches a boundary, it hears a warning tone. If it keeps going, the collar delivers a brief, low-level pulse.

Once cattle are trained, Kimzey said, virtual fences can keep most animals away from sensitive streamside areas without requiring permanent fencing across every section of land.

“It's definitely a game changer,” Kimzey said.

Shared ground

Pole Mountain is no longer the quiet landscape Jim and Iris Willadsen knew as children.

Campers, hunters, cyclists and off-highway vehicle riders now share the area with livestock. Ranchers described gates left open, cattle chased by bicycles and grass damaged by vehicles.

Bonham said that when he was young, seeing one fisherman during a full day on the mountain made it feel busy. Today, it is rare not to see multiple vehicles. The increased use creates a different environment, but ranchers also recognize that Pole Mountain belongs to the public.

People have a right to recreate and hunt, Eisele said, just as permittees pay for the ability to graze. Each group must remain accountable for its effect on the landscape.

“When we can interact in that regard, everybody comes out on top,” he said.

The Pole Mountain Cattlemen's Association helps ranchers coordinate livestock movements and communicate with the Forest Service. The relationships allow managers and permittees to adjust when weather, recreation or changing range conditions disrupt the original plan.

“Pole Mountain supports cattle, wildlife, recreation, streams and wetlands,” Eisele said. “No one person can fully understand every resource. So, you interact with the people who do.”

Passing it on

Jim and Iris Willadsen have lived long enough to see nearly every part of ranching change.

The roads, trucks and number of visitors changed. Management became more technical. Work has become faster in some ways and more complicated in others.

What has not changed is the responsibility attached to using the land.

For generations of ranchers, Pole Mountain has provided grass, water and a chance to keep family operations intact. In return, ranchers maintain fences, manage cattle and help care for a landscape they do not own but consider part of their lives.

Nancy Bath, a fourth-generation rancher and former permittee on Pole Mountain, grew up checking cattle and putting out salt with her father. She later helped manage her family's operation and spent years riding Pole Mountain several times a week.

She hopes future generations understand how much work has gone into maintaining the land while sharing it with others.

“Ranching needs to stay in our future,” Bath said. “It has to stay in our future.”

Landers has a son interested in continuing the ranch and several grandchildren considering life in agriculture. Bonham still raises cattle connected to bloodlines from his grandparents’ herd. Eisele hopes younger producers will continue to have opportunities to build operations connected to public grazing lands.

For Jim and Iris Willadsen, the future is rooted in a principle older than the roads, trucks and technology that now shape the mountain.

“Learn how to love it and take care of it and pass it on to somebody else,” Jim Willadsen said. “Leave it the way you found it.”

He paused in reflection.

“And maybe make an improvement. That's key … Yeah, that’s key.”

Rangelands make up about half of national forests and grasslands and are one of the most extensive land types within the western U.S. Rangelands support grazing, recreation, clean drinking water, clean air, forest products, food, energy, and minerals. Properly managed rangelands provide forage for livestock and support the food supply chain and biodiversity.