Spade Ranch was assembled beginning about 1888 by cattleman Bartlett Richards, a Vermont native, with his brothers DeForest and Jarvis, Will Comstock, Charles Jameson, and others. By 1900 its range comprised about 500,000 acres, chiefly in the rugged Sandhill areas of Sheridan and Cherry counties. Much of this land was public domain open to homesteading, but farmers who tried to cultivate Sandhill homesteads usually failed. In the 1890s the ranch illegally fenced much of the nearly uninhabited land, drilled wells, introduced Hereford cattle, constructed trails, and built telephone lines to ranches and towns. Its acreage shrank after 1905, when Richards pleaded guilty to fencing government land. After unsuccessful federal court appeals from a 1906 land-conspiracy conviction, he was imprisoned for one year at Hastings, where he died at age 49. Today the core of the ranch is owned by the Bixbys, associates of Richards since 1908, and the surviving ranges reflect the vision of early Sandhill ranchers.