Alice Platt Nation was born in Laramie, to Wayne and Georgia Platt. They brought her home to the Platt Ranch near Encampment, where she attended school and graduated. She spent her formative years following in her parents’ footsteps helping them with all the cattle work, riding, branding, calving, working in the hayfields, irrigating, and fencing.
Her favorite things were riding with her mom and dad bringing the cows off the Forest lease then looking for the renegades who didn’t want to come in. She was always sneaking on colts behind the barn, getting caught, and getting banished from the barn. It was a prelude of years to come.
In her early 20-30s, she cooked and day labored cowboying for different ranches. She would make breakfast and have the guys saddle her horse so she could help gather, calve, brand, wean, preg-test, shear, tail lambs, mouth sheep, whatever was needed at the time.
She day labored at the following ranches: Dumb Bell Ranch, Norman Park-Manager, Alcova; Platt Ranch, Wayne and Ralph Platt, Encampment; TA Ranch, Francis Ravenscroft, Saratoga; VR Ranch, Jack McGuire, Glenrock, and also the ranch out at Garfield Peak; Shamrock Ranch, Lee Irvine – Owner, Lee Martinez- Manager, Casper; UC Ranch, Con Murphy, Alcova.
She moved to Casper for about two or three years and broke colts for the track, ranch, worked barrels, roped, and spoiled horses for K-G Stables, Frank Knapp. She also broke colts and started them on the track and out the starting gates for Cooks Fabrication, Ron Cook Sr., Casper.
In 1982, she moved back to the family ranch at Encampment where she brought in more colts to start for the track and broke horses for the ranch. She took over the cattle part of the operation, day and night calving, doctoring, tagging, pairing out with her mother and other general ranch duties. She loved to calve.
In 1989, the ranch partitioned for the first time and she moved to Sheridan, where she worked for Red Barn Ranch, Ken Noddings, Big Horn, and at the Bradford Brinton Memorial, starting race colts during the day and calving at Beckton Red Angus for Cam and Spike Forbes, in Sheridan. When the colts went on the road for the racing year, she worked for Beckton Stock Farms, day labor riding and fencing.
Around 1991, she hired on as night calver on the OW Ranch, Jim Gercio – owner, Dave Vineyard-Manager, in Otter, Montana. She lived at the Trail Creek Ranch, where she also day labored horseback, but ran the cow operation for Charlie Conley at Bear Creek Ranch. Soon after she moved back to Encampment to work again for her parents, who called and wanted her to come back and help them with the calving. She was to spend the next 30 years there. She leased the ranch in 1998.
The ranch was partitioned in 2009, when she became the owner/operator. During this time period she sold off her cows and brought in cattle to run for Steve Husted, and Brad Carlson, both of Riverton, and Dwayne Martin Jr., of San Luis Obispo, CA. She day labored and night calved for the Fishhook Ranch, Nick Jamison – Owner, Steve Moulton – Ranch Manager, in Encampment, for six years along with running her own ranch.
She married Bill Nation whom she had met when she was a young girl when he was a cowboy for the Tom Trowbridge and Val Evans Ranch on Cow Creek, near Saratoga. In 2022, she and her husband sold the ranch and bought a smaller ranch in Northern Wyoming where they now live and run 40 cow/calf pairs and where they are still riding horses and working cows.