THE FRED COLUMN -- fred martin

You may think it presumptuous of me to declare the official location of

God’s country, but somebody has to do it.

You see, I am there right now: the Last Dollar Ranch, a 400-acre spread

just across the Dallas Divide, about 12 miles west of Ridgway, Colo.

That’s about 375 miles southwest of Denver and just over a gaggle of

soaring peaks from Telluride.

I am writing this in front of a fine, old, nickel-and-iron, wood-burning

stove in the small main room of the Last Dollar’s snug guest cabin. It

used to be the woodshed, but you’d never know it.

It is one of a dozen meticulously restored log buildings on a ranch that

have been here at the base of sky-scraping mountains since before we last

had a century turn on us.

It has been what passes for unseasonably warm here at 10,000 feet, but that seems to be coming to a halt right soon. I can tell because the Last

Dollar’s three cats are hunkered down just outside on a window ledge.

They speak to me: “Help, tenderfoot, we are meant to be inside with you

and that treasure of a stove.”

They and Sadie, ranch manager Duane Beamer’s sheep dog, are about all the

critters left here now (except Amy Beamer and their two great kids). The

Last Dollar’s horses and purebred Herefords were taken to winter pasture

a month ago.

I am here on this remarkable patch of paradise to soak up history and

atmosphere and see if I can help Newport Beach resident Vince Kontny in

his quest to preserve America’s cattle ranches. In Colorado, those are

disappearing at a clip of about three a day.

I wrote about Vince a couple of years ago. He’s a Colorado ranch boy who

has done well in the world. After graduating from the University of

Colorado at Boulder in engineering, Vince served with the Navy’s CB units

in Vietnam.

He took his discharge overseas and wound up in Australia, swinging a pick

on a railroad construction job of Irvine-based Fluor Daniel.

To drastically shorten this success story, Vince met and married Joan,

returned to the states and, eventually, became president and chief

operating officer of Fluor. He and Joan live near the Lido Isle bridge.

When Vince retired a few years back, he sought his roots. The more he

sought them, the more appalled he became at the state of ranching in the

United States.

With the gumption that took him from grunt to president of a worldwide

engineering and construction firm, Vince is on a mission to prevent vast

acreage of ranchland from becoming anonymous, nonproductive housing

tracts or 35-acre “ranchettes.”

“If the current trend continues,” Vince told a Denver Rotary Club

audience, “we’ll (lose) precious open space, wildlife habitat,

agricultural production and a ranching heritage that will affect all

future generations.”

For his part, Vince has taken ranches that had been in the same two

families for 100-120 years and restored them -- both physically and as

businesses. However, the profit side still needs some help.

Ranch manager Duane Beamer told me he’s hoping to get a market price of

80 cents per pound for Last Dollar calves next year. In 1993, the market price was $1.02 per pound.

Land prices are making America’s ranchers disappear. After all, why put

calluses on top of your calluses when you can sell out to a developer for

literally thousands of times the agricultural value.

As an example, Vince cites “a 200-acre parcel near Telluride with few

trees and no improvements sold for more than $4.2 million cash. Its

agricultural value would be less than $100 an acre.”

But, hey, ranches are outdated. Feedlots are the modern, efficient way to

go. So what’s the big deal?

Basically, says Vince, it is this: “We are losing our rich cultural

heritage -- our link to the true spirit of the Old West. And in an age

when people are struggling to define (their) values, the rancher has for

generations demonstrated the values we all admire: family, faith, work

and community.”

And that, says Vince Kontny, is something worth saving.

* FRED MARTIN is a longtime Newport Beach resident and Daily Pilot

columnist who now lives in Fort Collins, Colo. His column appears

monthly.