The S-bar-S Ranch provides a sense of time and place to the Experiment Station. An original pioneer center when it was built in the 1860s, the “Staige Stop Ranch” (as it was originally called) was donated to the university in 1967 by long-time Nevada socialite Helen Mayre Thomas. The gift—accompanied by a trust—carried a stipulation that the ranch be used to provide instruction in agriculture. Money from the trust—in addition to revenue from livestock sales—supports the ranch’s operating costs.

Today, the ranch serves as a research and educational center in cooperation with the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. This arrangement offers the University significant opportunities to interact with the tribe in innovative ways, as the ranch is located within the tribal boundary.

     One recent project was to contain the proliferation of Tall whitetop, a highly competitive, invasive weed. Following a major flood in 1997, the weed spread through many of the S-S Ranch’s fields, rendering them useless for agricultural purposes. Over a period of 18 months, S-S management followed an aggressive program that included sheep grazing as an alternative to the application of large amounts of herbicides.

This approach, which was recorded by students at NASA’s Ames Research Laboratory using satellite imagery, has proven to be highly successful, virtually eliminating Tall whitetop from the land and returning it to productive crop and pasture land