Gary Steele Lozier was born on July 13, 1946, in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He lived in Sublette County his entire life. His mother, Ellen Steele Lozier is third generation of an original pioneer Wyoming rancher who settled in the Silver Creek/Boulder area in 1886. Gary’s father, Jack Lozier’s family, came to the Upper Green River Valley of Wyoming in the 1890s as well. The Lozier family ranch was known as the Box R. Both families were cattle ranchers; they raised horses as well, and at times sold to local ranchers, and also out-of-state and regionally. Gary Lozier married Sharlene Potter in 1969 and they had three boys. Raising their three sons, Tad, Bryon and Monte, on a ranch is what Gary and Sharlene wanted to do. All three sons learned how to ride, rope, feed the hay with a team and sled, doctor the cattle, hunt with horses and carry on the cowboy way of life.
Gary’s first sitting in a saddle happened before he could walk, as he spent a good amount of his early days at his Grandpa and Grandma Steele’s ranch at New Fork outside Pinedale. At around eight years old, Jack and Ellen and their four kids moved to the Rahm Place north of Cora, Wyoming, and Gary began living his dream of horses, cowboys, ranching. Like most ranch kids, learning to ride horses happened in childhood, out of necessity. In the long, cold months of below 0 degrees Wyoming winters, Gary and two of his younger sisters rode horses five days a week to and from the Bar Cross Ranch School, a one-room, country, log-built cabin with a wood-burning stove for heat. There were no “snow days.”
Their teacher, Linda (Branch) Eggeman remembers; all eight students came by sled, rode horses or walked the distance, regardless of the weather. Early in the dark, brittle winter mornings, Gary, his dad (and one of two sisters or the other, alternating weeks), would walk the mile or so to Rob and Mum’s, harness the feed team, hitch the loaded sled and head home again leading three saddled horses for Gary and his sisters to ride to school. During the week, his Dad did the actual feeding alone; on weekends, Gary was out there side-by-side with his Dad, driving the team, unloading the loose hay from the sled, and clearing snow from the haystack and digging another load for the next morning’s feed.
This early connection is where Gary first learned the discipline, the consistency, and the kindnesses that horses need, how to catch, saddle, cinch it up; how to harness a team; how to pace and respect the horse’s nature, how to partner up with it, cool it down, and to reward it for work well done. That first spring in 1955, he started learning to work cattle, helping his Dad and Rob Lozier, drive the cattle to summer pasture a horseback. It was during Gary’s first summer of haying season on the Rahm Place that he learned to run a mower, to take responsibility of maintenance for the horse team, and learned to drive a team of horses.
When he was 12, the family now with five kids, moved to Boulder, Wyoming, where Jack had bought his own ranch. Summers, Gary worked with his dad, his Grandpa Steele, Uncle Bud Steele, and Rob Lozier on the family ranches in Boulder and Pinedale, mowing hay, dragging the fields, irrigating the growing grass for haying season, cowboying, building and repairing fence, branding and doctoring cattle, shoeing horses, whatever needed to be done.
Below are memories of Allene Steele Dana about Gary Lozier when he worked for her father, Allen (Bud) Steele:
“I can remember Gary was always at the right place at the right time when we were moving cattle. He worked faster than many of the cowboys on horseback, but always got the job done. He rode good horses that could really walk and travel and watched a cow. My dad always sent Gary to the lead, moving the cattle up the trails on the Forest allotment. The downfall and rocks were terrible. Gary could get through it and was usually able to stop the cows from ducking down a trail and brushing up. His horses were sure footed and he knew what his horses could navigate through. Gary knew the cow trails and usually knew what the cows were going to try before they did it.
“I remember a little buckskin mare he broke named Toy. I was about 10 years old at the time. My siblings and I were much younger than Gary. When the days got long while gathering the Stud Horse Butte Allotment and moving cattle up on the Forest Allotment, he was always full of antics to help us kids forget about being hungry, thirsty, tired and sore. We were riding along Sand Draw one day all grumpy and tired. Out of the blue, Gary screamed “WATER,” then fell off the side of his horse like he was plunging into a creek, right in the middle of the dry, sand filled draw. His horse snorted and jumped to the side, then stood looking down at him wondering why he fell off at a walk. We all broke out into giggles and forgot about being grumpy. He was happiest when he was moving cattle, or working with cattle.
“Later in life we rode together off and on while working at Antelope Run Ranch. Some of the men that were hired were pretty much a wreck around cattle, so it was always good to work with Gary. No matter what you did with cattle Gary was good help and could cheer the crew up with his antics and stories.”
Many ranchers in the Boulder area ran their cattle in the spring on the desert between Boulder and Farson. At each spring’s end, when the grasses in the mountains were growing rich and abundant, Gary worked with his dad, his Grandpa Steele and Uncle Bud to gather their cattle on the desert and sort them off from the other ranchers’ stock. Then they would drive them from the desert to Burnt Lake for the summer pasture. This was a 10-day drive horseback. The first day was sandwiches packed in a cotton flour sack behind the saddle, the rest of the 10-days’ provisions going by packhorse, and the ten nights: a bedroll and campfires,…the pinnacle summer of any boy with the dream of a “Cowboy’s Life.”
Practiced from the Rahm Place, Gary would be up much before dawn in the winters. He would harness the feed team, come back in for breakfast, go back out to feed, be back in the house in time to catch the school bus 12 miles into Pinedale. He learned the huge job of what it takes to run a ranch, not just the cowboying… but the doctoring skills, the range management. He learned to hunt early, too, since the mainstay of the family diet was usually out-of-season wild game, cows being too valuable to be used for food. Those hunting trips with his dad were horseback and pulled off in the wee hours of midnight’s darkness to avoid the Game and Fish wardens.
When Gary built at corral so he could practice calf riding, he built a chute to release the calf and he would spend hours practicing riding calves, so he would be able to ride the big broncs and bulls when he was old enough. He mentored his younger brother, Deb (at the tender age of four or five) on the milk cow calves. He built a bucking barrel to hone his bronc riding technique of the future. One winter, Jack built a kid-size feed sled for Gary’s Christmas. Gary would “harness up” his sisters and have them pull it through the drifts of snow. Like a team of horses in a high drift, they soon started to balk. His only choice was to cowboy up and take up the singletree himself.
In grade school, he raised a few calves and sheep through 4-H and when he went into high school, he was an active member of Future Farmers of America. Gary graduated from Pinedale High School and went out on his own in 1964. For a number of summers and falls, he was an outfitter and guided hunters for Dan Dinsmore, Circle S Ranch, Grant Beck and Larry Moore. He was always using horses for riding and packing into the mountains. He worked for a time for his Uncle Bud as a ranch hand.
In the mid 1960s he joined the WRA (Wyoming Rodeo Association) where he rode saddle broncs, bulls and team roped. He won buckles in all three events. In 1969, while working for the Murdock Ranches in Pinedale, he married Sharlene Potter. It was there that he first worked moving cattle to the forest on the Green River Drift. He was immersed in and loved every minute of that cattle drive.
In 1971, he went to work for Gordon Mickelson on the 67 Ranch in Big Piney. The Mickelson Ranch would be home for the Lozier family for 20 years. This job was feeding the cattle in the winter with a team of horses, from calving cows in the spring, to branding and cattle drives all horseback. The 67 Ranch had a grazing permit called the Taylor Allotment which was used when moving cattle to and from the main ranches to the forest grazing allotments. It usually took at least one day to gather the cattle and to search for run-backs before going on to the forest…a 25 to 30-mile, day-long cattle drive, in total two long, long days. The drive back home in the fall went faster since the cows knew they were coming home and came straight down the road passing the Taylor Allotment. Working the cattle would begin again in the fall, calves and culls would be shipped, cows and heifers preg tested and vaccinated. The cycle of the “Cowboy Life” would start over again.
Gary loved all his horses and dogs; he trained them all for the ranch life where they would be valuable partners and the veritable third hand that is always needed for ranch work. He always made it a point to reward the horses with grain after they were caught and saddled for the day’s work ahead; the dogs were loyal, well-cared for and always eager and enthusiastic to share time and do the work that needed to be done. He understood how cows think, how they behave, their nature. His tack barn was as organized and as efficient as his corrals; saddles soaped and oiled, blankets in place, bridles hung, grain fresh.
In 1996, Gary went to work for the New Fork Ranch on the Green River, at that time owned by Don Kendall. It was there that he got to ride up the Green River Drift again. Moving cattle from the Sprout Wardell place on the Green River to the final forest pasture stretches 70 miles and taking two weeks of horseback riding. For Gary, riding up the Drift on the spring drive was, and will always be, the pinnacle of cattle drives.
Gary had his 24-7 cowboy career interrupted in 2003 when he was diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer. He survived radiation and chemo therapy treatments, and a few years later, surgery. Although he was not able to continue with his many years of experience as a full-time ranch hand, he continued to stay in the saddle, day riding for area ranchers.
During the spring at the Miller Ranch branding in 2015, Gary was roping calves. His horse shied. He landed hard. Maybe he took it as a sign, a portent. Still, he was determined, and that same fall he would again mount the saddle on a horse called Crackers while loading cows on the shipping trucks for Boone Snidecor. Gary knew then, it would be his final ride. This lifetime cowboy’s last cattle call was on June 28, 2016, following almost to an exact year, the date of the death of his first-born son, Tad Lozier. He would have turned 70 years old fifteen days later.