About Us
WELCOME TO RAFTER STAR RANCH, WYOMING.
Step back into the 1880’s
So you think you wanna be a cowboy? Then perhaps it’s time to take a step back in time, about 140 years to be exact, try on some boots and live the cowboy life for just a short while! We’ll take you on the adventure of your life, and live just like they did on horseback, sleeping in a tent, and eating out of an 1800’s chuck wagon with traditional foods! If you’re ready for the Old West Adventure and you’ve got the True Grit to live it the way they lived, then you may have arrived to the right place, the Cowboy Cattle Drive…
Keeping Cowboy Traditions Alive!
Good’ol Cowboy Cooking, Dutch Oven on an open flame.
We pride ourselves in keeping the cowboy traditions alive and taught to anyone willing to learn. Our Cowboy Cattle Drive is 100% the real deal. It’s not to be confused with a hotel resort vacation where you get some horseback rides in between the lunch and dinner table, hell we don’t even have tables! You will step into the boots of a real cowboy for a week and earn your food, just the way they do each day. This isn’t your bread & breakfast vacation and it’s not for the faint of heart. You’ll be doing all the real work and learning all the real skills while in the real wilderness. Riding, roping, fishing, archery, campfire stories, nighttime card games, 3 squares a day and did I mention lots of horse riding? Yes, this is an adventure week. While we don’t require it, a good pair of cowboy boots and hat would be a good idea to have already when you arrive.
We are located in the northern central part of Wyoming, just south of Sheridan Wyoming and are to this day some of the most beautiful open country in the United States that you can enjoy. This land approximately 120,000 acres is still home to many cattle ranchers who still grow and herd their cattle in the traditional and all natural organic way; herding them up to the grazing mountain meadows in the spring where they can graze all summer long and bringing them home to the ranch in the fall. Western outdoor adventures style Cowboy Cattle Drive include a process is over 140 years old and you will partake in a real working cowboy ranch who’s cowboys eat and sleep in the mountains all summer.
Our 1880’s Original Chuck Wagon
Cattle Drive Seasons run June-September
The season starts every year depending on the spring conditions. However, we generally trail the herd during the first week of June. We offer you a tremendously unique experience in that for a 5-day / 5-night adventure, we bring you into our world. Your trip begins with us by landing at the Sheridan, Wyoming airport where we pick you up and deliver you to our Cowboy Camp located just 30 minutes south of Sheridan in the rolling green foothills of Murphy’s Gulch Creek.
Don’t forget your Cowboy Boots!
At Cowboy Camp we introduce you to your basic horsemanship skills, introduce you to the equipment and get you started working with a horse. We’ll go over the schedule for the week and get you setup with any extra equipment you might need. You’ll spend your first night down in Cowboy camp and the next morning we’ll all head up to the mountaintop to Cow Camp. And yes, theirs a difference between Cowboy Camp and Cow Camp. Cow Camp is where we spend the summer with the Cows up at elevation, around 7,000 feet. We highly suggest you come with your own pair of boots, broken in just right!
Here’s to new friends!
There are limited spaces for OPENING and CLOSING week. These weeks are the toughest weeks to book your vacation because every night of the trip we are moving the herd up or down the mountains and building and breaking camping daily with Chuck Wagon in-tow.
However, these weeks are definitely a couple of the most rewarding and if you’ve been on a trip with us previously and felt real comfortable, you might want to book an OPENING or CLOSING week trip, they book up in a hurry and theirs limited space. We also like you to have horse experience for these week trips. However, if your unexperienced but have that cowboy grit and attitude, well then we’ll make you a cowboy yet. And along the way you’ll meet some new friends!