Essay by Linda Hasselstrom
Rural life – July 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine
LISTEN UP, FOLKS, here’s a vocabulary lesson from a rancher and writer who’s tired of bad writing distorting Western history.
A ranch is not just any patch of rural ground, and the saying, “All hat, no cattle,” is more than a joke. It’s true most ranchers prefer not to reveal the size of their places, but despite differences, a real ranch is measured in hundreds of acres. To populate the plains, the U.S. government offered 160 acres to anyone with guts enough to start an agricultural enterprise.