LONGVIEW, Alta. – One of Alberta’s oldest ranches will be preserved through a combination of a heritage rangeland designation and conservation easements.
The OH Ranch, owned by Calgary oilman Daryl Seaman since 1987, is now protected from future development and will continue as a working cattle operation in the Alberta foothills. Seaman has been ranching in the region for 50 years and has owned a number of area properties with a goal of range improvement. That included the OH, established in 1878, which includes forests, streams and native grasses like rough fescue.
Read Also
First annual Ag in Motion Junior Cattle Show kicks off with a bang
Ag in Motion 2025 had its first annual junior cattle show on July 15. The show hosted more than 20…
When the Seaman family took over the historic property he was faced with a major cleanup and restoration task.
“The OH was typical of a farmstead with a lot of old machinery. We had two acres of junk,” he said.
“I think we have improved it quite a bit. It is our whole raison d’etre to leave places better than we found them,” he told those gathered at the ranch for the announcement.
The heritage rangeland designation negotiated with the province protects about 10,200 acres of public land held under continuous leases by the OH on the Longview and Pekisko sections of the ranch.
The conservation easement protects the privately held land and conditions will be registered against the land titles. Future owners must manage the land according to the agreed terms, which include no new cultivation, subdivisions or surface drilling.
Craig Smith, president of the Southern Alberta Land Trust Society, said much of the province’s choice land is disappearing under subdivisions.
“There is more to life than the maximum cash conversion of land,” he said.
Under the conservation agreement, the society will help preserve the land that joins 16 other tracts in the region consisting of about 9,000 acres.
“We hope there are other landowners up and down the foothills who will see this as something they may want to do,” Smith said.
“A generation from now you will not have to close your eyes to remember what the golden West looked like,” he said of the ranch, nine kilometres west of Longview.
The ranch was started 125 years ago by Orville Hawkins Smith and Lafayette French, who were driving cattle north from the United States.
The pair started an Indian trading post in the High River area but the North West Mounted Police arrived a year later in 1879 and forced them to close the post because of unfair prices. Smith and French had about 300 head of cattle and started using the OH brand around then. They moved to the present day site of the OH Ranch in 1883 and sold it that year to Frederick Ings, who had moved to the area from Prince Edward Island.
Ings sold the property to Pat Burns in 1918.
At that time, the ranch was named the Rio Alta, which is Spanish for high river. The name was changed to OH Ranch Ltd. when it was sold to Kink Reoenisch and Bill Arden in 1950. Arden sold it to his son-in-law Doug Kingsford, who later it sold it to Seaman in 1987. He took over the 18,000 acre spread and a large herd of commercial Hereford cattle.
Seaman created four operations: OH Longview, OH Pekisko, OH Bassano and OH Dorothy. The ranches run a total of 2,000 head of Angus and Angus cross cattle.
