Gale Greenlee is the fourth generation of his family to call this area home. This month, Western Horseman magazine is telling his story.
“Old black-and-white photos of his great-grandparents, Eli and Sarah Jane Greenlee, hang on the walls of his dining room,” the magazine tells readers. After Eli died, Sarah Jane married Tom Veach. That couple bought a 60-acre farm near Cortez and planted the Greenlee and Veach families firmly in the Montezuma Valley. Their children all started small family farms and ranches around Cortez.
Greenlee, 72, lives on the ranch his grandparents homesteaded in 1918, in the shadow of Mesa Verde.
Greenlee’s parents, George and Lois, are still well remembered here. They married and moved to the ranch in 1935. According to the magazine, they started out raising sheep and had eight dairy cows.
“George also bought a Hereford bull to breed to the cows to start his own herd,” Western Horseman explains. “Today, Gale raises a small herd of purebred Herefords, descendants of his father’s original cattle line, on 3,200 acres of deeded ground plus some leased land.”
Greenlee was born in a cabin on the ranch and lived there for eight years until his parents bought more land and a larger home nearby. His younger sister, Grace Vandenberg, lives in that family home and occasionally invites friends to get-togethers in the original cabin.
In the Western Horseman article, Greenlee compares his philosophy of running cattle with his father’s.
“My dad lived with his cows. ... If the cattle have enough country to roam, plenty of feed and water, and the fences are secure, then I just leave them alone until we need to rotate pastures, unless we need to doctor them.”
Some years it was his earnings as a certified public accountant that kept the ranch accountant.
More changes may come with the next generation, Greenlee said. All of his children — Farrell, of Cortez; David, in San Francisco, Calif., and Molly, a teacher in Grand Junction — have expressed interest in returning home and taking over for their dad.
“As far as I’m concerned, I’d like to always see Hereford cattle on the ranch, but it will be up to them what they do with it. There have been some folks interested in using the ranch for ecotourism.
“I’d rather have the ranch preserved and share it and the wildlife and history here with the public than have it subdivided.”
For now, Western Horseman says in closing, “He considers his years as a cowboy a tremendous honor, with a legacy as deep as that of the artifacts buried beneath the soil.”
“Among those raised in the saddle,” Greenlee told the writer, quoting novelist Max Evans, “the word ‘cowboy’ is always one of such honor that it is used with great care.”
