A Ranching Community: Its Life and Its People, John Fetcher
by Thomas Yeomans
This article originally appeared in theWinter 2025-26 issue of Art with Altitude.
In 1961, Thomas Yeomans made a series of written observations about his time living on a ranch up near Hahn’s Peak, the people he worked with and the life they chose to live. Below is the last part of a three-part installment that shifts the focus from Thomas’ co-workers to his boss, John Fetcher.
Part III—John and his brother, Stan, were raised in Lake Forest, Illinois in what we might term “a good family.” At Harvard he majored in engineering and graduated cum laude. He was on the squash team, skied and swam a lot, and played the violin. His record at Harvard shows him to have a fine mind, superior athletic ability, and a fair degree of musical skill. When he graduated, he got a job with the Budd Car Company in Philadelphia, a job which sent him all over Europe. He married a Smith girl and settled down to his job in an ample house in Philadelphia. John’s most notable characteristic is energy and drive, and this soon caused him to rise in the company until he was president of the engineering division, ranking just under the president of the whole company. A good position, a model debutante wife, and all the pleasures he had been long accustomed to were his. He had succeeded in every way, and yet he left Philadelphia, and brought his young family to a rundown ranch on the western slope of the Rockies.
He did this because he wanted his children to grow up in the country, and because there was little hope of further advancement in the company for the president’s son had precedence for the top office. His brother, a professor at the University of Chicago, brought his family, too, and together, green and ignorant,
but full of enthusiasm, they started in on ranching. The first years were hard, for they had to start from scratch and with no experience in any sort of husbandry. But John’s dynamic drive was given an outlet and he poured his whole strength into the operation, and within ten years his ranch was the most prosperous one on the western slope. He has made it a science, and it has paid off.
Besides ranching he skis and plays squash regularly. He is on the Olympic Ski Committee and is in charge of part of a ski area development in Steamboat Springs. He participates in the politics of
the county, and has a hundred different projects going at the same time, both on and off the ranch. He is a mass of driving energy, and few people can keep up to him in a day’s work. He fixes all the machines himself in the machine shop, and never wastes a minute on the job. One night he stayed up until three o’clock fixing the bailer so that it could be bailing by eight the next morning. And he drove it himself all the next day, except at the end, when he helped us stack bales. He is always searching for improvements, for more efficient means, and the rapid success of his ranch is the result of this. He is always moving, always being productive, and he expects others to be so too. He once told his son, who was listening to a record of the Kingston Trio, that there were only three things he should be doing—(1) reading a good book, (2) practicing his clarinet or (3) sleeping. The Kingston Trio was not included among these productive activities. If you like to work and can keep up with John, both in, body and mind, then you get along well, but otherwise the going is rough. He will explain something to you once, but he then expects you not to ask again.
He is high principled and dynamic, but at times a bit blind to others’ needs. His life has been highly successful and he believes in it. But what he fails to realize is that there is more than one way to live one’s life, and this sometimes rubs people the wrong way. He is high-minded and talented, but not too tolerant. He brought many innovations to Steamboat Springs both in ranching and in community improvement. The effect of his single personality on the community is staggering when one thinks of all he has done. He has improved the skiing, the schools, the politics, the ranching, and helped out in many other ways. He is known all over the countryside, and is highly respected. But it is hard for people to see someone
so much more successful at what they have been doing for years, and for every word of respect there was one of envy and derision, and it is to the differences which caused this friction that I turn now.
Most of these people’s time is spent at work, and most of them could count the number of days of real vacation they had had in a year on one hand. Up every morning at six-thirty or before, we work from seven-thirty to six, with an hour out for lunch. John gave his hands a day and a half a week off, plus two weeks of vacation, but this was one of his innovations which had never been heard of before. Most ranchers worked their hands very hard, and gave them just enough to live on. Though John demanded hard work, he paid well. He was quite enlightened as to the ranch hand’s needs, and was liked by his men for it.
Steamboat Springs is a traditional society, relying on what it has learned from its fathers and resisting all innovation. “What’s good enough for my father is good enough for me” is their attitude, and they feel that if a change is made, it ought to be made slowly, and by a native. You can imagine how much they hated having an easterner, a green man, straight from a business office, coming into their territory and show them how incompetent and slow they were at a job they should know all about. It was painfully clear to the other ranchers that John was far outdoing them, and he took no pains to hide it. They admired and hated him at the same time, and would come to borrow his machinery, and then curse his methods behind his back. They saw it worked, but they had to defend themselves and their dignity as ranchers by cutting down his method. Many times I heard grumbling from the westerners about John’s new-fangled ideas, and they had a good chuckle when for some reason he failed. They took it as an insult that he should succeed, and though he was admired by most, he was hardly taken in as a friend by many.
When I worked with John, we worked all the time, and if we met someone, John would seldom spend more than two minutes talking before he was back working. At lunchtime we would get out sandwiches and a thermos, and be finished with lunch in twenty minutes. Then back to a long afternoon’s work with no after dinner snooze. This feverish activity I’m sure is a characteristic of the east, or at least not of the West.
John was the only one who had any books at all in the whole community, and his was a good library. The largest social unit is the community, and this too is very much felt among the ranchers. As I have said, most of their entertainment is in terms of the community and there is a sense of sharing and mutual aid among neighbors. Howard was always fixing things for other people, and getting advice from someone else. This was John’s trouble. He could not become a living part of the community, and therefore could never be fully accepted. He lived in the community, but never became a part of it. People seldom dropped in on John except to talk business, for they knew their welcome would be short.
There are many societies where it would take a long time to be accepted, but here, though I had to show I could work, I was soon taken. Friendship means a lot to these people, partly because they are such a small and inter-dependent group, but also because they have natural tendency toward it. Both their loves and hates are quite deep and unqualified.
This then is the Fetcher ranch community, Steamboat Springs, Colorado. My experience there has meant an untold amount to me, and I have tried to record here the thoughts and feelings of some of these fine people, and their way of life. TY
