Arthur Samuel “Artie” Joss

1935 -
Keeline

Artie is a descendant of pioneering Wyoming families. The family of Artie’s paternal grandmother, Clara Hitshew Joss, came to Wyoming in 1876. The Hitshews built a house at the head of Lance Creek about seven miles north of Keeline, in 1888. Art Joss Sr. bought this land and that is where Artie and Freida have lived since they married in 1964. Artie was born in Lusk in 1935 and was raised at the Twenty Mile Creek Ranch. When Artie was 10 to 12 years old, he was allowed to ride with the cowboys and started breaking horses. The Joss family ran about seventy mares with four studs on the Twenty Mile Ranch. Artie sold broke saddle horses and in the 1950s they brought better money than cattle. Everything on the Joss ranch, encompassing approximately 150,000 acres, was done with horses. Artie’s dad ran buffalo on the Horseshoe Ranch. (A.A. Spaugh, pioneer rancher, owned the Horseshoe Ranch and sold it to Artie’s granddad, Sam.) The buffalo had come from South Dakota and every summer they would head back to South Dakota. Artie was assigned the job of bringing them back when they escaped the pasture. They grunted as they galloped along but a cowboy could keep up with them on a good trotting horse.