Instead of ‘Keep Out,’ This Wyoming Rancher Invites People to Hike His Land

Most private ranches in Wyoming are lined with “No Trespassing” signs. Don Roberts used to have plenty of them himself. Then, more than a decade ago, he took a leap of faith that transformed his property into one of Sheridan’s most beloved public trails.

When the Sheridan Community Land Trust first approached Roberts in 2012 about creating a public access trail on his ranch, his reaction was predictable. “We were like every other ranch at the time,” he said. “We had lots of ‘No Trespassing’ signs up.”

But Roberts had been traveling and noticed something: people in other states desperately craved access to wide-open spaces. He’d grown up with the Bighorn Mountains as his backyard and never thought twice about it.

So he agreed to an experiment—a 3-mile trail segment on his property to see what would happen.

Today, that trail has become the Soldier Ridge Trail, a prized gem just west of Sheridan used by hundreds of people weekly. The problems Roberts feared—litter, wandering, stressed cattle—proved manageable, thanks largely to relentless public education by the Land Trust and trail users themselves who became extra eyes on the land.

“The response I got was so great from people wanting to be out there and thanking the Land Trust and thanking me,” Roberts said. “There was definitely trepidation, but that’s kind of a paradigm shift, certainly not what a rancher usually does.”

The experiment worked so well that when the Land Trust asked to add another trail, Roberts said yes immediately. Then another connecting them. “It just kind of snowballed.”

In 2019, Roberts created an easement to protect the working land around the first half of the trail. More recently, he donated 544 acres surrounding it—valued at $3.75 million—to the Sheridan Community Land Trust to manage in perpetuity. The Land Trust now protects 2,100 acres of working ranch land, wildlife habitat and open space on Sheridan’s western edge.

“The viewshed and character of Sheridan is so dependent on those hills which have had Indian traffic and buffalo on them and have looked the same forever,” Roberts said. “I wanted the Land Trust to be in charge of all that.”

The property now serves all three of the Land Trust’s missions: recreation on the trails, historical walking tours tracing routes used by Plains Indian tribes and Bozeman Trail settlers, and conservation of working ranch land—including plans to replace fences with wildlife-friendly versions and restore native grasses.

Roberts has no regrets. “I was glad I was able to do it.”