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The Dunham Place is being nominated under Criterion A at the local level for the areas of Agriculture and Exploration/Settlement. The Dunham Place ranch has been a working agricultural property since it was first homesteaded and the ranch grew and evolved over time from a small homestead, to a working ranch, to a tenant ranch, and finally into a satellite ranch used seasonally to work cattle as part of a much larger ranching operation. In this, the Dunham Place represents the evolution of ranching over time from the early days of the ranching and farming industry in the Upper Green River Valley into the modern era. 

The Dunham Place is also being nominated under Criterion C at the local level for architecture. As ranches age and evolve over time, most of the existing ranch infrastructure is replaced or altered as needed to meet the needs of the operation, with the owners utilizing modern building materials as they become available. The remote nature of the Dunham Place, combined with its relatively early evolution into a tenant and satellite ranch, has served to preserve the historic ranching materials without the introduction of modern materials such as milled lumber, metal, or synthetic materials. The almost exclusive use of unfinished log is an extreme rarity for a working agricultural property in Wyoming.

The Dunham Place meets the listing requirements of Wyoming’s “Ranches, Farms, and Homesteads in Wyoming, 1860-1960” for both Criteria A and C. The house was constructed as a ranch home and was the center of ranching operations during the Dunham period; it continues to serve as temporary headquarters during satellite operations (Criterion A). The house retains the necessary integrity of workmanship, design, and materials necessary for listing under Criterion C. The rest of the ranch infrastructure meets the requirements for a historic district under the same criteria as they are critical to understand the workings of the ranch and how those workings changed over time as the use of the ranch changed. The contributing elements of the ranch all retain the integrity aspects of materials, design, and workmanship necessary listed as necessary in the Multiple Property Designation.

The period of significance for the Dunham Ranch begins in 1911 with the construction of the first extant ranch structures and extends to 1974. The end date was deliberately selected to encompass all of the ranch buildings and structures as they demonstrate the ongoing use and evolution of the ranch over time.