This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2004, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
HYRUM - The past 14 months have felt more like 14 years for Dan Christensen, who last year took control of northern Utah's Hardware Ranch for the state Division of Wildlife Resources.
Given the number of changes under way at the 14,400-acre wildlife-management area - located 15 miles up Blacksmith Fork Canyon near the southeast Cache Valley community of Hyrum - his task to turn the ranch into a self-sustaining regional education facility appears overwhelming.
Christensen says his biggest test will be the implementation of a five-year plan to wean the ranch off of tax dollars. A strained economy, he says, has made it increasingly difficult for the division to operate the ranch, best known for its horse-drawn sleigh rides through a large herd of feeding elk.
"We have $19,000 less than it takes to keep the lights on," Christensen said earlier this month, shortly after announcing plans to the Hyrum City Council to sever financial ties with the state of Utah. "We have the . . . absolute need to establish a nonprofit vehicle for financing Hardware Ranch."
The state purchased the ranch in 1945 from the Box Elder Hardware Co. Then, the Hardware Ranch Wildlife-Management Area was established to operate a winter-feeding program for Rocky Mountain elk, which since the 1930s had been interfering with agriculture and Cache Valley towns that encroached upon the animals' traditional winter feeding grounds.
The plan worked. Over the decades, the elk learned that they no longer needed to migrate to the valley during winter to find food, and Hardware Ranch has been a popular tourist attraction since. It hosted an estimated 50,000 people over the past year. It is also a favorite area for sledders who enjoy riding on groomed snowmobile trails laid out in the hills between Logan Canyon and Blacksmith Fork Canyon.
Recent improvements - better ranch roads and the addition of nature exhibits, plus upgrades to the gift shop, visitors center and concessions area - could combine Hardware Ranch and Logan's American West Heritage Center into "the biggest attraction north of Lagoon," Christensen said, referring to the Wasatch Front amusement park.
"The scale that we're looking to do this at hasn't been done in the state of Utah," he said. "Of course it will have to remain under state ownership - and that's fair and proper. But what we're going to try to do is move outside the very rigid constraints of the federal grant that doesn't allow us to keep any of the money we make or to go to other places to explore [additional] funding."
Christensen said Hardware Ranch is poised to announce formal partnerships with Bridgerland Applied Technology College and the American West Heritage Center - collaborations that would enable the ranch to operate year-round.
If things go as planned, Hardware Ranch will be welcoming many more visitors than the 1,600 head of elk that have already begun to arrive.
"Our goal is to go after $1.5 million in educational grants. We think we can do that," he said, adding that the facility is planning a state-of-the-art education center and a 3-mile-long, $200,000 trail along Curtis Creek. It "will be the premier educational-trail complex in the western United States."
The ranch already hosts several major events each year, including bike races, marathons and the annual Elk Festival, which attracted 1,600 visitors last month. A new program, Wagons Wild, brought an estimated 20,000 visitors to Hardware Ranch last summer to enjoy a naturalist habitat in the improved park area along Curtis Creek - complete with horses, wagons and a Dutch-oven dinner.
Another promised change is a proposed land swap with Blackfoot Fork landowners to consolidate boundaries and to provide better and easier access to some of the prime hunting ground surrounding the ranch, according to Christensen.
"When that announcement is finally made at the state level," he said, "I think everybody in the valley will have reason to cheer."
Hyrum Mayor Gordon M. Olson called the plans "ambitious" and encouraged the City Council to explore ways to promote the ranch.
"We appreciate having the opportunity to be the gateway city," Olson said. "I think we need to look at more ways we can help each other."
That's easy, Christensen said.
"What you have to do is keep coming, keep bringing your wallets, keep having a good time and have the vision. We've been given the latitude to do [something unusual and] to try to bring that into play at the highest level."
For more information about Hardware
Ranch and its upcoming
opening for the
winter season,
go to its Web site at http://www. hardwareranch.com.