Cook began at once to make improvements to the ranch. He planted trees by the hundreds and carried water to them faithfully to get them started. As settlers failed to “prove up” their land claims over the years, he added new lands to the ranch and changed the name to Agate Springs Ranch in recognition of the native moss agates and the many springs in the valley. He and Kate raised fine race horses as well as cattle.
The period in which the Cooks took over the ranch was one of transition from the frontier days of migrations and Indian wars to more settled, orderly lives. Ranching and farming became the dominant mode of life in the eastern approaches to the Rockies. Even oil exploration played a part in the development of the land. The transition was a difficult one for many, Indian and settler alike.
In some ways Kate Cook represented both the old and the new in Nebraska. She was a fine horsewoman; one day she rode a bucking horse through the streets of Cheyenne sidesaddle to win a bet for her husband. She was refined, too, having taught herself French so she could read French literature. Her mother, Mary Graham, became the first postmistress for the small community around Agate.
And James Cook was more than an adventuresome frontiersman. He was actively interested in community and national affairs and in current scientific questions. He became a patient, knowledgeable mediator between the Indians and the settlers, and he was looked upon by the Oglala Sioux as a friend and host, and sometimes employer.
The Cooks became involved in a great scientific enterprise quite accidentally around 1885, the year before their marriage. On a ride up the conical buttes not far from the ranch house, a glitter under a rock shelf caught Cook’s eye. They found fragments of bones scattered on the ground. At first they assumed the bones were those of an Indian. But Cook found instead “a beautifully petrified piece of the shaft of some creature’s leg bone.” They carried it back to the house but didn’t report the find until after they bought the ranch. Erwin Barbour of the University of Nebraska was the first to respond to their reports and in 1892 became the first professional geologist to visit the area and do some prospecting.
The Cooks’ discovery thrust them and their ranch into a subtle battle in the American West, a continuing struggle to find the best fossils with which to reconstruct the ancient past. For centuries it had been thought that life on our planet was only a few thousand years old, but by the late 19th century science had evolved beyond that point of view. Now paleontologists and their excavation teams were scouring the West in search of fossils that might provide clues to the beginnings of life.
The two most noted antagonists in this feverish search were Professors Edward D. Cope of Philadelphia and Othniel C. Marsh of Yale University. Cook knew them both, but the discoveries at Agate would wait for the next generation of scientists.
University Hill, left, and Carnegie Hill dominate the Niobrara River Valley. The hills received their names from the paleontological teams that worked them from the University of Nebraska and the Carnegie Museum.
Cook had first met Marsh in 1874. Marsh had just arrived in Oglala Sioux country to hunt fossils, but the Sioux Chief Red Cloud was suspicious. Red Cloud was convinced Marsh and his men were just another party of gold seekers. Cook, an able linguist, was then trailing cattle from Texas to the northern railroads and reservations. He persuaded Red Cloud that Marsh wanted only “stone bones” and averted a potentially disastrous clash. This incident led to a lifelong friendship between Cook and Red Cloud. And for Marsh this proved to be the last of many expeditions as he relied on others to send him specimens from likely fossil sites throughout the West.