My father used to tell me stories about his dad, Kirk, and one thing came up again and again: Kirk hated building fences. But our ranch depended on them. By the time my father was running the I Lazy D, fencing was constant work. We had more than a dozen...

Before Wyoming had fences or towns, a young Danish immigrant named Ike Miller stood on a windswept ridge in Carbon County and made a decision that would define generations. My great-grandfather Ike was a deliberate man, conscious of the weight of history and driven to create a lasting legacy. Born in 1844 on Møn, an 84–square-mile island off Denmark’s southeastern coast, he grew up knowing his future was uncertain.

The HO pasture was our winter range in the early 1980s, a broad sweep of Wyoming land where cattle roamed far and wide. Getting to the eastern reaches to check the herd meant crossing Dirtyman Draw, and that was never easy. The two-track road dropped down into a cut that sometimes ran twenty feet deep and then crossed the drainage channel where Dirtyman spilled into Seminoe Reservoir. When the reservoir was full, the shoreline turned into a soggy mess, too wet to cross.