Lee Dusa, a former IBM executive, had spent years looking for an untouched part of the Rockies for his dream of a conservation ranch. He and his wife, Gail, found beautiful Eagle Ridge Ranch in the mid-1990s. Rather than turn the ranch into dozens of small plots, which would have been the logical thing to do from a profit-only perspective, Lee spent years developing the conservation side of the ranch. In making decisions about the future of the ranch, Lee consulted not only his new neighbors, longtime local ranchers Harry and Carl Miller, but also experts from the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the weed control board and county extension service of Gunnison county, the U.S. Department of Wildlife, the state forest service and a private streams consultant.

One of the goals the Dusas had in mind was to keep the lovely views that have always been a great pleasure for anyone who drives on Ohio Creek road (County Road 730). The homeowner sites are carefully picked to be beautiful, private, and also discreet, and the houses are often invisible from the road. The ranch roads and buildings are unobtrusive. The views have been preserved for the children and grandchildren of people alive today. The covenants of the ranch prevent its ever being further subdivided.

Another goal was to keep the agricultural side of the ranch going. “The joys of ranch life without the work,” as Lee once put it. Homeowners at the ranch love the sight of peaceful cows grazing in the green meadows of Eagle Ridge Ranch. The local elk herd often grazes there too.