The Last Ranch: A Colorado Community and the Coming Desert

By Sam Bingham

Book Overview

In a book that is "must reading for those interested in the future of the american West" (Kirkus Reviews), Bingham shows how ranchers in Colorado's San Luis Valley-along with a Rhodesian expert, a Canadian billionaire, and a Hindu mathematician-coped with an unfolding environmental disaster: the rapid desertification of their land.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0156005395
• ISBN13: 9780156005395
• Release Date: October 1997
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.7" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

The Last Ranch

This is a great book for anyone interested in Colorado and the San Luis Valley. It has a great amount of history for the small valley. Allen Savorys' grazing methods are also discussed. I didn't know it at the time I started reading it, but several people I know are quoted in it. That makes it that much better for my reading pleasure.. not that it matters to many others though.

Traditional Colorado ranch meets New Economy

The old ranching ways were simple: raise as many cows as the land would handle. The new ranching realities include many new concepts, some quasi-experimental, of protecting and renewing the vegetation and handling the cattle, under the watchful eye of the Forest Service that manages the summer grazing allotment. The first economic reality is that with the best dawn-to-dusk efforts, raising cows makes a poor living. The second economic reality is that neighboring ranches may be bought up as tax write-offs and playthings by rich folks from the city. This is the true chronicle of one family buffeted by these forces, and like a good novel, has a surprise ending. The writing is good. The story is compelling for anyone who travels through the Colorado mountains and wonders just what is happening on those scattered ranches in the distance. It is a story that stays with you years after all the novels have evaporated from your brain.

Where have all the cowboys gone?

Like a string of wet years followed by the worst ever drought, the Last Ranch shows that progress is as much about going forward as it is going back, in that lessons must be learned and relearned by every generation, and what at once seemed right, is not right, and the obvious, easiest path is the slow road to ruin. I learned a lot about change and my interest in evapotranspiration was increased. There are enough details without explanation to where you can draw your own conclusions or where you are pointed to further consideration. Bingham points out ever so gently that our problems are social and individual, not political or technological. What a cast of characters and organizations.

very accurate

The San Luis Valley is a unique place which is hard to describe. This book has done an excellent job and is very accurate. I was born and raised there and my grandfather founded the town that much of his story relates to - Center, Colo. I can attest to the accuracy. It is also a very interesting story.