To Survive, This Cowboy Family Must Fight Bucking Broncs, Drought, and Tourism

We call it flyover
country^[1], the vast, seemingly
empty swathe of land most of us only see from 30,000 feet while
travelling coast to
coast^[2]. But as Pulitzer
Prize-winning journalist John Branch writes in his new book,
The
Last Cowboys^[3], “Down there, in the
nooks and crannies, there are people working extremely hard to make
a go of it.”

When National Geographic caught up
with the author at his home in San Francisco, he explained how he
spent nearly five years with the Wrights as a fly on the wall, how
bronc
riding^[4] is a vital source of
income, and how climate change is affecting the family’s cattle-ranching^[5]
operation.

At the heart of your book is the Wright family of Smith Mesa,
in southern Utah. Introduce us to them and talk us through some of
the challenges they face to preserve their way of life.

Their origins in Utah go back about 150 years to the Mormon
migration^[6]. Relatives of the
Wrights going back seven generations ended up in the heart of Red
Rock Country. With wild scrub oak and big, red sandstone
formations, it looks like something from a John Wayne western.
They’ve been running cattle for 150 years, out there on their own.
But they are now at the edge of Zion
National Park^[7], which gets 4 million
visitors a year, near a town that is growing gangbusters because of
its proximity to the park and recreational opportunities in that
area. So they are slowly getting surrounded by a lot of people, who
bring all the pressures we see across the American West. Not just
urbanization. They’ve run out of room to run, so they are in a
dilemma, trying to figure out how to build a cattle operation for
the family and future generations while they are surrounded by
growth.

One of the things that fascinates me is the pivotal role of
rodeos in the family’s life. Tell us about Cody and how staying on
a bucking bronc for eight seconds is about much more than sport for
the Wrights.

It is amazing! The Wright brothers, led by Cody, are
among the best saddle bronc
riders^[8] going these days. Five
brothers are professional rodeo cowboys and now three of Cody’s
sons have become professional rodeo cowboys, too. A brother-in-law
is a saddle bronc rider, as well. They were recently at a rodeo
where nine of the contestants were Wrights. [laughs]

The key is Cody, the oldest brother, who became one of the best
in the world. Part of it is just fearlessness. I’ve been around
these animals and they are big and mean and do whatever they can to
throw you off. So rodeo requires not only talent and fearlessness,
but also the willingness to go through the grind of hundreds of
rodeos. They’re putting 100,000 miles on their trucks to go to
these rodeos and there’s no guarantee that they’re going to get any
money out of them. I’ve seen them drive hundreds of miles to a
rodeo, hoping to stay on for eight
seconds^[9], and walk away with zero
dollars.

Some of them may win a $1,000 prize or even $10,000 or $20,000.
Cody won a $100,000 grand prize a few years ago in Calgary. They’re
chasing to become one of the top 15 earners for the season. If
you’re in the top 15, you get invited to what they call the
National Finals Rodeo, which is like their world championship. It’s
over 10 nights in Las Vegas and you can make $200,000 or $300,000
if you’re hot. But unless you’re really good, and can get some
consistency in your paychecks, you’re chasing rodeos and not making
anything.

I’ve covered a lot of professional athletes in this country,
from professional football to hockey, and I’ve never seen athletes
who are tougher than rodeo
cowboys^[10]. Part of that is the
culture. You expect to get hurt but then move on to the next rodeo.
Cody has metal rods in both his legs. But if they get hurt, they
will make zero dollars, so it’s in their best interests to just
suck it up.

You write, “Evelyn was the glue that held everyone together,
which was true in most ranching and rodeo families.” Tell us about
this formidable matriarch and the role of women in the
West.

Evelyn is barely 60 years old, has 13 children, 37 grandchildren
and now at least seven great-grandchildren. But she looks about 50.
She is whip-funny and really smart, dark-haired, average height.
She could walk into any mall in America and fit right in. She is
also an elementary school teacher in the little town where they
live. She and her husband, Bill, were raising 13 children when Bill
became an alcoholic and she left him, with eight or nine children
in tow, and went back to school to get her teaching degree. She
said, “I’m gonna do this on my own.” He came crawling back about a
year later and they ended up with 13 children and all those
grandchildren.

As the wife of a rancher, like her daughters-in-law and most
wives of rodeo cowboys and ranchers, she is the one at home,
raising the children. Most of them also have jobs. But they are the
ones keeping their families going while their husbands, the rodeo
cowboys, are on the road for 200-250 nights a year chasing rodeo
checks.

One of the biggest challenges they face is drought. But Bill,
the family patriarch, is a climate change^[11] denier. Explain that
contradiction and why drought is so damaging for livestock.

I’m not sure Bill’s a denier, but he’s very much a pragmatic man
who only worries about things as they affect him. It doesn’t matter
to him if climate change is a real thing. All he knows is that his
ponds have become increasingly dry every year over the last decade
or so. Whether that’s climate change or a run of bad luck doesn’t
matter to him.

But things like drought and climate change affect
his herd^[12] in strange ways. Where
they live there isn’t a lot of grass because it’s high desert and
the cows are very spread out. Yet when there’s no rain, there’s
even less feed than usual. The ponds that retain water from the
snowmelt in the mountains dry up and the herd’s gestation cycles
get thrown off. In a typical year, Bill would put his cows in with
a few bulls and nine months and 10 days later, the gestation period
for a cow, 90 percent of them would give birth to calves. But with
the drought and lack of feed, their cycles are out of whack. That
90 percent figure is dropping, which makes it hard to make money in
the cattle business. We think about climate change and drought and
lack of water in big-picture ways, but to Bill it’s a micro
relationship.

Like many ranchers in the West, the Wrights lease their land
from the Bureau of Land
Management. It’s not always an easy relationship, is
it?^[13]

Most of the land ranchers run cattle on in the West is federal
land. For most of them, who can’t afford their own land, it’s
cheaper than going out and buying tens of thousands of acres. But
it’s a love-hate relationship. They believe the prices are fair but
they don’t know what the government will do down the road, like
decide the land you’re renting can’t support the number of cows you
have on it anymore, and tell you that you have to cut the number of
cows in half. Or instead of using the land for cattle, rent it to
mining companies. Where the Wrights are is a great area for hiking,
camping, or mountain biking. So, as much as Bill appreciates the
ability to rent tens of thousands of acres from the government, he
worries about what will happen 10 or 20 years from now.

Many ranchers are feeling squeezed by the federal government.
We’ve seen that in the case of Cliven
Bundy^[14], who has been fighting
the government for more than 20 years over what is called the
desert
tortoise^[15], which was declared an
endangered species. The federal government said, “You can no longer
run cattle on this part of that land because we need to protect the
desert tortoise.” Over two decades Bundy kept resisting and racked
up a lot of fines from the government. They came to him and said,
“You owe us $1 million in back fines and we are going to take your
cattle off this land physically.” There was then an armed standoff,
with militia people from all around the country coming to protect
Bundy’s land, which is about an hour from where Bill Wright is.

Bill Wright feels the greatest threat to his way of life is
people. Explain the uneasy relationship with nearby Zion National
Park.

Zion is now one of the most popular parks in the country and is
growing by leaps and bounds in popularity. The land that Bill owns
abuts the border of Zion National Park and Bill also worries that
Zion will come along and decide to expand its boundary onto the
federal property he uses for his cattle, squeezing him even
farther. He also gets calls from developers who would like to buy
his land and build housing units or hotels because it’s so
beautiful and right outside the national park boundaries.

He’s in a dilemma between his head and his heart. Do I cash in
and move my entire operation somewhere else, but give up 150 years
of my family history? There’s also a lot of pressure from
conservation groups, who come to him and say, “We have a trust and
we can pay you a certain amount of money to sign a contract saying
you will never sell it to developers and we will let you stay on
that land.” He is constantly trying to figure out what to do.
That’s the main tension of the book: What will Bill do with his
family’s land as the world closes in around him?

You spent five years with the Wright family, on and off. Tell
us how they reacted to a journalist from “back East” being a fly on
the wall, and what you learned from that experience.

When I first approached them it was for a New York Times
story. I said I’d like to do a story on your family and spend some
time with you, and they were open-minded about it. Almost five
years later, I kept showing up and they seemed to appreciate
somebody showing interest, though I think they were also confused
why I found them interesting. But they are so kind that they never
had the gumption to tell me to go away. [laughs]

I’m still touched by their closeness and how they stick up for
each other. They are an example of “family first,” which we don’t
see very often anymore. I also find the family extraordinary
because they live day by day. They are as pragmatic a group of
people as I’ve ever met. No problems ever seem to faze them,
whether it is drought, a family issue, or the rodeo circuit. They
might get bucked off six times, but you go for the seventh because
better luck might come your way. They are resilient people who have
been doing this for 150 years, and will keep going for at least
another few generations. “Life could turn in a moment. You just
hold on and try to find the rhythm of it,” is as close to a family
mantra as they have.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.