“Founders Of The Open Buckle Ranch”

Cornelius Augustus Craven, known in western Dakota as Gus, was born in New Jersey in 1854 and came out to see the West twenty years later. He never went back for he knew the cow country was for him. While trailing cows from the Kansas railhead to Wyoming, he acquired a few heifers, which in time were to carry the well-known (Open buckle bar) brand. In 1881 Gus married Jessie Megan of Ft. Collins, Colorado and to that union seven children were born.

Constantly in search of water and better grazing they located close to White River just east of the mouth of Eagle Nest Creek in the 1890s and in 1914 established the present Open Buckle Ranch further up that creek at a fine spring flanked by the picturesque pine clad Badlands and rich neighboring plateaus, twelve miles Northwest of Wamblee. After Gus Craven’s death in 1929, Jessie Craven and her eldest son, John, carried on the Open Buckle tradition, and only their courage, stamina and respect for Gus Craven’s wishes, brought them through severe drought, depression and blizzards that involved heavy losses. But again, under their guidance, the Buckle herd was rebuilt. John died in 1953 and Jessie, well past 90, with Ted, her second son, continues to carry on the heritage of Gus and John, cowmen, both.

Jackson County, 1 mile west of intersection of Highway 73 and 44