After mother's death, Wyoming rancher vowed to protect 2,506 acres forever

Eight years ago, David Ellsbury stood at his mother's deathbed. She only had one request. Her final wish was that their family ranch would never be developed. She didn’t want a developer to carve it up the way they had everywhere else. And that’s exactly what the Crook County rancher did. Earlier this year, all 2,506 acres of the Ellsbury Diamond E Ranch were locked into permanent protection through the Wyoming Stock Growers Land Trust. No developer can touch it. No subdivision can fragment it. For David Ellsbury, protecting the land and the family tradition was a word he gave to his dying mother. “It will never be developed,” Ellsbury told the Cowboy State Daily.Protecting the last homesteadBack in the 1880s, four of Ellsbury's great-grandfathers had staked homesteads in the area northeast of Sundance. “My great-grandfather was such a visionary, and he didn’t know it.