The Valley Ranch Cowboys

Before I forgot, I wanted to recognize something that I kind of slipped in under the radar with my last update: the addition of a new team page.

The Valley school, also known as Valley Prep or the Valley Ranch, is unlike most schools in state history. The school, located about 50 miles southwest of Cody, was in short a college prep academy tucked away in the furthest reaches of the western Wyoming mountains, along the south fork of the Shoshone River.

Valley Ranch was a boy’s preparatory school and dude ranch owned and operated by Irving H. Larom, and in 1929 the Cody Enterprise said the school “more than likely is the only one of its kind in the United States. The masters are the very best and come from some of the most well known universities in the country. The graduates do not have to take an examination to enter any university or college.”

In addition to their normal school work, Valley Ranch students had to participate in outdoor activities — including football. Horseback riding, mountain climbing, track and field and polo were also among the options for the “Cowboys.”

The book “Welcome to my West, I.H. Larom: Dude Rancher, Conservationist, Collector” explained the school in depth. Larom, a Princeton graduate who first came to Wyoming, opened the Valley Ranch in 1915 and first opened the prep school in 1922 after recruiting numerous instructors from back east. Each student paid $1,550 per semester (almost $20,000 per year in today’s money), a fee that included tuition, housing, books, food, supplies and the use of a horse and saddle — but did not cover the students’ .22-caliber rifle.

But even the Valley Ranch program wasn’t immune to the Great Depression of the 1930s. The football team ended after the 1931 season and the school ceased operation in 1934.

Some of the buildings from the Valley Ranch school still stand, as does the ranch itself — the physical remnants of an interesting part of this state’s educational history.

–patrick