Grand County, CO Photo - Path through some woods at the Sheriff Ranch in Grand County, Colorado.

Path through some woods at the Sheriff Ranch in Grand County, Colorado. The ranch, at the headwaters of the Colorado River near Hot Sulphur Springs in Grand County, Colorado, was once a vast cattle spread but has downsized in recent years. The Sheriff homestead was registered in 1881 with 1,350 acres and had as many as 250 head of Herefords by 1975. The ranch and its humble cabins rented to fishermen and women anxious to test prime trout-catching spots on the Colorado, have been in the Sheriff family since (as of this 2015 photo). With no electricity in the early years, trudging through deep snow to the barn's generator was a morning ritual to power the lights in the house, and heavy mountain snows often closed access to the ranch entirely for weeks on end in the bitter-cold wintertime. Sheriff ranch's registered brand-Bar Double S is still known to be the oldest registered brand in the county. In 1984 a large portion of ranch acreage was sold to Chimney Rock Ranch Company, and the Ida and John Sheriff turned to raising just a small herd of cattle.

Carol M. Highsmith (born 1946) is a photographer, author, and publisher who has photographed all 50 of the United States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico for 30 years. She specializes in documenting architecture, ranging from the monumental to the everyday and whimsical. Highsmith is donating her life ’s work of more than 100,000 images, copyright-free, to the Library of Congress, which established a rare one-person archive. Out of 14 million images, the Carol M. Highsmith collection is featured in the top six alongside of Mathew Brady and Dorethea Lange. Credit line: Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Credit line: Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.