Anderson Ranch after the deaths of his in-laws, James and Catherine Anderson, which made Henry and Christina Frawley into the largest landowners in Lawrence County by the year 1910. Henry purchased his first Hereford cattle from the Rockefellers in Arkansas and bred draft horses in a large-scale operation that made him a key player in the ranching history of western South Dakota.
The next decades, as the previous, were punctuated by successes and failures, tragedies and triumphs, inheritance and buy-out, and the ranch was ultimately handed down from Henry and Christina, to their son, Henry II, and his wife, Anne; and from Henry and Anne to their only son, Henry III( Hank), and his wife, Molly, who were the last of the Frawleys to live on and work this iconic piece of the American west, residing in the historic Draper Roadhouse for as long as they lived on the ranch. Their only son( who passed away in 2024) had no interest in ranching, and over the years financial troubles crept in.
And so, the Frawley story arrived at a point known by too many ranches in the modern day: What do you do when there is no next generation, or when the next generation has no desire or ability to pursue an agricultural life, or when financial burdens stack up against the ranch and there is no relief in sight?
For decades, the Frawley family had stewarded this land in the Centennial Valley around Elkhorn Peak. In 1974, it was added to the National Registry of Historic Places, describing the Frawley Ranch as“ a living illustration of the failure of the 160-acre homestead concept on land ill-suited for farming. The growth of the Frawley Ranch to its present 4,750 acres was made possible by the acquisition of unsuccessful homesteads, and the application of suitable uses to the natural and economic environment.” The Frawleys had turned down lucrative offers to mine the limestone on top of Elkhorn Peak, preferring to preserve and conserve the land and its resources, and they had insisted upon protection of homestead sites and relics when the interstate came through. For decades and decades, they had pushed back against development in favor of their generational livelihood.
People tend to fall on one of two sides when it comes to ranchland and development: either development is purely an evil, or development is purely a good. Some see only the destruction of ranchland and the breaking up of a family operation when a new development goes in, and some don’ t see the loss of the land at all as new housing developments crop up, displacing agriculture. But not all stories are that simple.
Hank and Molly Frawley, in the late 1990s, were days away from having to watch their beloved ranch be sold off a parcel at a time, when a surprising and fortuitous offer was made by two developers, Daryll Propp from Colorado, and Mike Kreke from Hagen, Germany, to purchase the whole ranch in 1998.
Of the nearly 5,000 acres on the ranch, Propp and Kreke determined to develop no more than 1,000 acres of that, in what has since been built up into Elkhorn Ridge, a housing, recreational, and commercial development, while the rest has been kept in historic preservation. The Frawleys retained a small acreage and the Draper Roadhouse, and worked cooperatively with the new owners of the ranch as the historic preservation began. The Frawleys lived in the Draper Roadhouse until Hank’ s death in 2017 and Molly’ s subsequent move to North Carolina to be closer to their only son, at which point she sold the Draper Roadhouse and the small acreage to Elkhorn Ridge. Molly and their son both passed away within the last few years. myblackshillscountry. com Down Country Roads
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