Routt County, CO Photograph - A mixed herd of wild and domesticated horses frolics on the Ladder Livestock ranch, a vast cattle and sheep-ranching operation that straddles the WY-CO border.

A mixed herd of wild and domesticated horses frolics on the Ladder Livestock ranch, a vast cattle and sheep-ranching operation that straddles the Wyoming-Colorado border, which the Little Snake River crosses 12 times on the ranch's property. This image was taken on the Colorado side, in Routt County. The Ladder name derives from neither the set of climbing rungs nor a family member of that name, but from the ranch's "lazy ladder" brand: the Roman numeral III laid on its side, which somewhat resembles a short ladder. The ranch, which traces to a simple, 160-acre plot homesteaded in 1864, must deal with different rules, regulations, and taxing structures of the two Rocky Mountain states that it bestrides.

Carol M. Highsmith (born 1946) is a photographer, author, and publisher who has photographed all 50 of the United States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico for 30 years. She specializes in documenting architecture, ranging from the monumental to the everyday and whimsical. Highsmith is donating her life ’s work of more than 100,000 images, copyright-free, to the Library of Congress, which established a rare one-person archive. Out of 14 million images, the Carol M. Highsmith collection is featured in the top six alongside of Mathew Brady and Dorethea Lange. Credit line: Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Credit line: Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.