Young Caden Sharpe can’t resist looking back at the photographer as he walks between his grandfather, Richard, and his father, Luke, on the family’s KOK Ranch near Poncha Springs, Colorado. If you’ve crossed Colorado on U.S. Highway 50, you’ve probably seen the KOK Ranch. East of 11,312-foot Monarch Pass, the road descends into the Arkansas River Valley—level green country walled by mountains that remain snow- topped long into the spring. Sharpes have been ranching here since 1917, and recently the family elected to pro- tect their 235-acre ranch with a conservation easement that will prevent the kind of development that has over- whelmed too many Colorado ranching valleys. Ease- ments reimburse ranchers for the development rights
to their ranch, often enabling them to keep ranching rather than needing to sell and break up the land. Should Caden choose to stay on the ranch, the KOK easement makes it more likely that one day he’ll walk down this road hand in hand with his own young son or daugh- ter. Negotiated with the support of its donors by The Trust for Public Land and funded by the Great Outdoors Colorado state funding program and the federal National Resources Conservation Service’s Farm and Ranchland Protection program, the easement will be held by the Colorado Cattleman’s Agricultural Land Trust. It is the third ranchland easement negotiated by TPL over the last few years, part of a broader effort to protect ranches in the Arkansas River Valley.