The HOP Ranch was a historic ranch in El Paso and Pueblo counties in Colorado, located approximately 35 miles (56 km) southeast of Colorado Springs, in the Chico Creek basin just south of present-day Hanover, Colorado. Sometimes referred to as the Holmes Ranch or the Chico Basin Ranch, it was among the first cattle ranches established in Colorado Territory in 1871 during the times of open range before fences became prevalent in the west. It operated for 58 years until it was sold in 1929 to a Drinkard and Emmert company, Horse Creek Land & Cattle Co. of Denver. The HOP Ranch was located in what is currently the northernmost portion of the present-day Chico Basin Ranch.
The HOP Ranch was named for the three original partners – H for William T. Hurd, Superintendent of the Michigan Central Railroad stockyards in Detroit; O for William HOlmes of Wayland, Massachusetts, a six-year veteran merchant seaman and mate who had sailed aboard clipper ships throughout the world; and P for Samuel A. Plumer – a successful real estate investor and financier also of Detroit.
Cattle operations
Hurd, Holmes, and Plumer formed a partnership in Detroit to establish a livestock enterprise in cattle and ventured to Denver, Colorado in 1871. From there they took a wagon to Fountain, Colorado where they located, established, and purchased rights to the land which would eventually become the HOP Ranch. William Holmes remained in Colorado to become the on-site ranch manager while Hurd and Plumer returned to their home base in Detroit.
William Holmes homesteaded much of the land that would eventually become the HOP ranch. Other properties were also added by private acquisition of William T. Hurd. In 1884, the business partnership of the three men was formally incorporated in Detroit, Michigan as the HOP Livestock Company, Inc. Officers of the corporation were Samuel A. Plumer, President; William Holmes, Vice President and Superintendent; and William T. Hurd, Secretary and Treasurer. Much of the land acquired through homesteading and through private acquisition was deeded to the HOP Livestock Company.
In its early days of operation, the HOP Ranch shipped cattle to market from the nearest railhead in Hugo, Colorado for delivery to Kansas City and Chicago. Later when the railroad reached Pueblo, Colorado, cattle were shipped to market from nearby Fountain, Colorado. During typical ranch operating years, HOP Ranch would ship as many as one-thousand head of cattle to market. William Holmes and his younger brother James were among the first to import Hereford cattle to Colorado when they shipped a dozen well-selected cattle, mostly bulls, from Canada in 1874. After a visit to the ranch in October 1878, Wm. T. Hurd and his wife departed to winter in the east. Upon their departure, it was thought he and the Holmes brothers had "the finest lot of Hereford cattle in Colorado." On October 30, they shipped to market "the finest lot of half blood Herefords that were ever shipped from the state." This hearty breed of white-faced cattle would dominate the Colorado ranching landscape just a few decades later.
Dangers
When the HOP Ranch was founded in 1871, living on the Colorado prairie was a dangerous prospect. Relations between settlers and Native-Americans were tense and there was an undercurrent of deep mistrust over land ownership. Unscrupulous persons went to the American Old West to avoid the law, and others that took advantage of a perceived lack of law. Even the natural elements presented hazards. In November 1864, 100 miles due east of the Chico Basin, Colonel John Chivington led roughly 675 US volunteer soldiers in an attack on a Cheyenne and Arapaho village of about 700 people. In the end, approximately 200 Native-Americans were killed, most of them noncombatant women, children, and elderly. Then a few years later, in September 1868, members of the US Army and of several tribes of Plains Indians became involved in the Battle of Beecher Island near Wray, Colorado, about 200 miles northeast of the Chico Basin. The battle turned into a nine-day siege and by its end, a few dozen Army soldiers and Plains Indian warriors were killed and many others wounded. Both of these events were important incidents, among others, that preceded Custer's Last Stand in the Battle of the Little Bighorn in southern Montana in June 1876.