Welcome To The Ranch!

Please be as comfortable as possible. Boots are preferred as our ceremony will be outdoors and amongst the beauty of our local Sandhills.

Haythorn Land and Cattle today is spread over two ranches in two Nebraska counties. In this, the largest grass stabilized dune region in the world, gramma, blue stem and buffalo grass holds down the sand and keeps the dunes in place.

Today, Craig, the great-grandson of Harry Haythornthwaite, his wife Jody and sons Sage, his wife Kelley, and Cord are partners. Craig got his first taste of ranching when he went on a trail drive at the age of four. He got soaked to the bone, split his lip when he fell off the chuck wagon, and then proceeded to get sick. Naturally he loved it. Thus far this century, every single male member of the Haythorn family has been an honest-to-goodness cowboy, and Craig and Jody's two young sons, Sage and Cord, are carrying on the cowboy tradition.

You might say the late Waldo Haythorn, accomplished the same thing. Through blizzards, low prices, and high taxes, he had managed to keep his family firmly established in its proper place, the Nebraska Sandhills.

Because of the presence of the aquifer, no one around these parts has lived through a drought in the Sandhills. But there sure have been some memorable winters. The "Big Die Up" of 1885 and 1886 almost wiped out Harry and Emma when they were getting started and Waldo and Craig's mettle was well tested on March 27, 1975, when a nasty blizzard killed 750 of their calves.

Old cowboys are fond of saying, "If a man has staying power, he is said to have grit." Well, if you stay in the Sandhills for any length of time, you are bound to have grit in your hair and your clothes, and in your mouth so bad you can taste it. For over 118 years, the Haythorns have shown they have plenty of grit in their character, too.

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