History
Arapaho Ranch is in southern Sheridan County, Nebraska. The ranch lies about 25 miles south of the Niobrara River and 50 miles north of the North Platte River.
Homesteaders first settled the area, beginning about 1890. Thirty-one homestead claims were filed on the land that is now Arapaho Ranch. Those homesteads were granted patents by six different presidents on the United States; Benjamin Harrison, Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William H. Taft and Woodrow Wilson.
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Ten of the homesteaders were women, twenty-one were men. Some of the homesteaders claiming land side by side were brothers, brother and sister or father and daughter. Some of the men and women married each other. Most of the homestead claims were sold as soon as the patents were granted. After 100 years no evidence of the homesteads remains on the land.
In 1942, E.H. and Mary Boyd bought 7,440 acres and operated as a unit for more than 30 years. At one time Mrs. Boyd put the ranch in trust for the benefit of Creighton University Medical School in Omaha, NE.
During the Boyd’s tenure on the ranch big teams of draft horses put up the hay, fed the hay in winter and filled the six team-plus horse barn which is still in use today.
The stallion barn was moved to the ranch from Fort Robinson when the army closed down the cavalry training unit there.
One more family owned the ranch and named it Arapaho Ranch before the Imig family bought the ranch in 1984 and made it there home.
Imigs brought their herd of Registered Hereford cattle which was established in 1948 by Roger Imig with the purchase of two purebred heifers. He used the proceeds from his State Fair Champion Steer, a Hereford.
About forty purebred production sales were staged in the sale facility on the ranch with bulls and heifers selling into 22 states and Canada.
The 30’ x 100’ calving barn was built in 1985. It holds 21 pens for mother cows and their babies on cold winter nights.
Nebraska Highway 250, a two-lane blacktop road between Rushville, the Sheridan County seat, and Lakeside was completed in 1988, vastly improving access to the ranch.