Trout Creek Ranch

Est. 1889

Trout Creek Ranch

Established in 1889, Trout Creek Ranch was one of the first homesteads on the North Fork of the Shoshone River, which now refers to the 60 mile highway between Cody, WY and Yellowstone National Park. The valley surrounding Trout Creek, which receives year-round water from Trout Peak, has a unique and sometimes humorous history.

Andy Chapman originally settled the land when it was still open range, but he moved on quickly. In 1889, Wesley Bloom took over the land and was the first to establish water rights on Trout Creek, which became the official establishment date of Trout Creek Ranch (May 25, 1889).

In 1902, the Murrays purchased the ranch for $9,000 and built what the current residents call the Murray Cabin on the west side of the creek. The cabin is still used with the original wood floors in the two bedrooms. The original layout has endured, except the wood shed on the east side of the cabin was turned into a kitchenette in the 1990s.

The Millers then purchased the ranch in 1910 for $5,000 and built a large log house on the east side of the creek, which they named the “Big House”. This turned the Murray Cabin into what they called the “Mess Hall”, given it was the foreman’s house and the foreman’s wife typically made everyone’s meals.

Given Mr. Miller's wealth, the “Big House” was large and had several luxuries for the time, such as warm running water. Though he didn’t run cattle like many working ranches around TCR at the time, Miller was an avid hunter. He also raised a pet bear from a cub; he kept the bear on a chain and wrestled with it daily until he could not break the “bear hug,” and Mrs. Miller shot it in 1915.

In 1916, the deMauriac family bought the ranch and moved to TCR in 1917. Mr. deMauriac was wealthy from the stock trade and kept his wealth through the Great Depression. The family did several things to make TCR what we call a working hobby ranch today, from running sheep to having dairy cows. The old dairy pallor is still in use, having been turned into a stall barn for the performance horses that connects to the indoor arena.

The deMauriacs enjoyed the ranch greatly in the summers and often brought many guests, but it never paid for itself. According to Scoot McCoy, it cost the family between 50 and 60 thousand a year to run the ranch, except one year when the family ran cattle and made a profit of $15,000.

The family is infamous on the North Fork for doing wild things, mostly because of Alice “Babsy” deMauriac. She has the first record with the Wyoming Livestock Board of the ranch’s original brand, the T hanging C.

Alice was known for being headstrong, unique, and rowdy. She met her husband, Bennett Hammond, in Europe and married him in Athens, Greece in the 1930s. They had two children, Maury and Lucy, who many nannies and caregivers attended to over the years. When Ben and Alice divorced, Ben went back to New York to continue pursuing what became a successful modeling career. Alice was a divorced single woman in the 1940s running a working ranch. She was often seen haying in the hay field south of what is now the North Fork Highway. Alice also ran to be a US congresswoman in the 1940s. Two current ranch employees started a production company that puts on equine events and named the company after Alice.

One morning Alice accidentally burned down the Big House, leaving only five chimneys and the foundation remaining. The $50,000 home’s foundation was used for a smaller Sears Kit home, which is home to the current TCR manager and his family. Meanwhile, Alice and her family moved into the white log home just northwest of the Big House, a smaller Sears Kit home with five bedrooms, but made to look like a smaller Big House. This house still stands today, painted the historical white, and is in full working order for guests of the current owners to stay in.

Trout Creek Ranch and the surrounding areas have a rich history full of funny and tragic stories. To learn more about the people who settled this land and how it became what it is today, check out Ester Johansson Murray’s book A History of the North Fork of the Shoshone River or the Park County Archives.

Morris Ranch

Fred Morris bought the land just west of Trout Creek and north of the river in 1904. He established water rights from Trout Creek in 1906. Originally from England, Fred had learned how to build ships, and his wife, Mary Cody, was from Dublin, Ireland.

This couple had big aspirations and worked hard to achieve them. They wanted to run a successful dude ranch, which they did. They built a large lodge with a 55 x 25 foot dining room, a billiard room, ten log cabins, and two larger cabins.

The most impressive feature of the ranch was the creation of a 71 x 30 foot swimming pool, the first on the North Fork, and it was fed from Trout Creek. The original ditch is still seen on TCR today, running behind the current agriculture manager’s house and going to the Morris Ranch. The water went underground and traveled over two miles; a piece of pipe can still be seen sticking out of the hillside on the lower part of the ranch.

The ranch also was home to the first ranch rodeo on the North Fork.

Fred and Mary Morris had one son, Leonard, who was born in 1905 and became a collegiate athlete. There was talk of him competing in the 1928 Olympics for javelin and fencing.

The Morris family had several wonderful long-standing employees whose stories can be read in A History of the North Fork of the Shoshone River book.

In 1935, Fred and Mary stopped running the dude ranch. Leonard and Dot, Leonard’s wife, took over running the ranch. In the 1950s, the Morris dude ranch hosted the legendary western movie star, John Wayne.

By the 1990s, the ranch had fallen into disrepair; by 2001, it was a dump site desperate to be cleaned up. The owners of Trout Creek Ranch purchased it, combining the ranches and calling the old Morris Ranch the Broken H, after the historical brand. To learn more about the clean up and recovery process of the historical land and cabins, check out our ecological page here.

To learn more about Trout Creek Ranch, Morris Ranch or the North Fork contact the Park County Archives. If you have stories about TCR or Morris Ranch we would love to hear them!

Park County Archives

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