Jim O’Rourke has deep roots planted along Chadron Creek, on a family ranch where he and his wife, Lora, have lived since 1988. Both Dawes County, Neb., ranchers had professional careers in range management that have taken them all over the world, but the ranch where they are raising their two children, Seth and Shannon, has always been their passion and a testing ground for the stewardship practices they have embraced.

When Nebraska Farmer stopped by the historic RuJoDen Ranch south of Chadron in October to visit with Jim and Lora, the 2018 Nebraska Leopold Conservation Award winners, it was a clear, cold morning with a dusting of snow on the Pine Ridge. After being invited into their home, just a stone’s throw from the creek, we sat down at their table and visited about the heritage of this ranch.

First homesteaded in 1882, much of the riparian fields along the creek — as well as bench land — had been tilled, and cattle herds had heavily used the rangeland, Jim says.  Jim’s grandparents, Frank and Jerene O’Rourke, purchased the ranch from the original homestead family.

Born in a dugout near Gordon, Frank worked as a cowboy on the well-known Spade Ranch. Jim’s father, Joe, was trained in range management and worked his entire life for the U.S. Forest Service in Colorado and Wyoming, where Jim grew up. 

Frank and Jerene built a dance hall along Chadron Creek in 1950 as the first permanent structure on the ranch. It was in that room, in what is now Jim and Lora’s ranch house, that we sat down for the interview. Before the purchase by the O’Rourkes, the tilled land was split between potatoes and rye. A herd of 17 horses — one for each of Frank and Jerene’s grandchildren — grazed around the ranch when Jim was young.

In the 1970s, Jim and his father began to seed formerly cultivated land back to grass. In the meantime, Jim was gaining valuable experience in rangeland management. He holds a Ph.D. in range management and has worked on private ranches and for the Bureau of Land Management in Colorado, as well as the U.S. Forest Service in Wyoming, Arizona and New Mexico.

He taught range management at Utah State University and started the successful Chadron State College (CSC) range program in the early 1990s. He has spent years abroad working in livestock and range management in Tanzania, Morocco, Nigeria and several other African countries.

Lora, too, is invested heavily in range expertise. Growing up in Utah, she has a B.S. in range science from Utah State University and just recently retired from a career as a rangeland specialist with the U.S. Forest Service.

Both Lora and Jim served as president of the Nebraska Section of the Society for Range Management. Jim served as national president of SRM, as well as president of the International Rangeland Congresses after having served on that organization’s Continuing Committee.

The couple believe in the conservation value of small ranches such as RuJoDen. “If you put together the acreages in small operations across the region, it is a lot of acres,” Jim says. “Conservation is just as important on those ranches as in the bigger operations.”

The practices they’ve employed focused on range, but also on wildlife enhancement and forestry management. With the tilled land seeded back to permanent grass, the O’Rourkes allow custom grazing for short periods of time, with long rest periods. “We used to have two pastures, and now we have 25 paddocks,” Jim says.

“We graze 10 to 14 days, and then allow the paddock to rest for the rest of the season,” Lora says. They use the same principle in grazing riparian areas for extremely short periods to improve streambank stabilization and water quality through grazing. “With short rainfall, we believe there isn’t adequate moisture for the plants to recover without the rest,” Lora says.

They’ve expanded their riparian areas along the creek and planted nearly 10,000 trees and shrubs of about 100 different varieties around the ranch. They had extensively thinned the ladder fuel on Ponderosa pine-covered ridges before the massive 2012 wildfires ripped through the region.

“We lost only about half of our pine trees to the fire thanks to the thinning and a change in wind direction at the right time,” Jim says. “That compares to places where landowners hadn’t done any thinning and all the trees were lost.”

Today, a hired crew continues the fuel management process on the ridges by hand-cutting trees and allowing them to deteriorate, reducing the fire hazard and soil erosion.

The practices they’ve implemented have had results, including improving water quality and fisheries on the creek and in their trout-fishing pond on the ranch, where Lora especially enjoys one of her favorite pastimes.

Improving not only soil health, but also the abundance of wildlife, birds and beneficial insects on the ranch has yielded results, with bighorn sheep, elk, deer and antelope making regular treks across their land, in addition to migratory birds and native bird species.

As a way to make the small ranch pay, the O’Rourkes used their fascination with sheep herder wagons of the West to establish a unique form of agritourism. They rent out three historic sheep wagons, tucked into quiet canyons on their land, to guests and hunters who are seeking tranquility in the Pine Ridge.

Outfitted with only bunks and a wood cookstove, guests can stay in these “Sheepwagon Hideouts” and learn from their hosts about the ecology and management practices being implemented on the ranch. Lora also established the RuJoDen Ranch Horse Motel, so travelers passing through Dawes County can lodge their horses safely overnight at the ranch in their pine-board pens.

From teaching their guests about the Pine Ridge to hosting CSC range management short courses or FFA range judging, the O’Rourkes continue to teach new generations about proper range management and its effect on natural resources. “We’ve even had two prescribed burns on our range with students from CSC,” Lora says.

In addition to a wealth of range knowledge, the O’Rourkes have collected a myriad of old iron relics of farm machinery from decades past. “I went to a farm sale a few years ago and picked up numerous implements for just $15,” Jim says. 

They continued to add to their collection of old-time implements, providing guests with a glimpse of the agricultural past of the region through their collection, which is stored in one of their pastures.

Learn more about the RuJoDen Ranch and the conservation efforts of the O’Rourkes at sheepwagonhideouts.com.